Dark Knight

[Plane Sailing]

Just seen it, and I'm astonished at what a dark and disturbing film it was - it was a 12a in the UK (children 12+, or younger children with an adult), but I felt it had a lot of really disturbing stuff in it.

Heath Ledger has defined the joker (with credits to screenwriter and director too). This was the most awfully CE villain I remember seeing portrayed anywhere, and there really was a feeling that he could do -anything- next.

There were some scenes that seemed stupid to me

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1. Batman is driving his motorbike towards the joker, who is playing chicken with him. Batman, who just seconds ago easily wove the motorbike back and forth between the wheels of a juggernaut(!) twitches away from the joker and crashes, knocking himself out - when he should have just flicked out an arm or leg as he drove past and knocked the joker silly.

2. (this one is probably just poor editing) After taunting the cop while in the cell (and why would they have a cop in the room with him, when they can watch him from outside the locked cell?), the cop goes to assault him and the next thing you know Joker is in the police dept with the guy hostage and a knife to his throat and I'm thinking woah - although we didn't need to see the Joker beat the guy, we should have had something between one scene and the next appearance.

3. Batman facing two-face in the warehouse. Two-face flicks the coin upwards AND WATCHES THE COIN; Batman does nothing. No batarang or bat-shuriken to take out Harvey or the knife while he's not looking. He does it later, but he really should have acted at that moment.

4. I was wondering whether Bruce ever did get around to reading the instructions about the exploding forearm spikes, since he never bothered using them at some points when they would have been particularly useful (e.g. against the rottweilers).
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Having said that, there were some great lines in the movie (from all characters) and some excellent scenes. One of my favourites was:

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On the boat with the prisoners, when the burly tough prisoner says 'give the detonator to me, and I'll do what you ought to have done 10 minutes ago' - and then chucks it out the window. Great scene.
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I did feel that a lot of fight scene editing was too dark and too confused. Nolan might be trying to make you feel 'part of the action' but it just made it a confused mess, and actually makes you feel LESS 'part of the action' - like the handheld camera fetish of some directors, it makes the film look as though you are looking through a recording of a handheld camera rather than actually being there because (surprise surprise) you don't get the jiggly effect with your own eyes. Bah!

It was a good film. In my personal comic-book-film pantheon I'd place it just below Spider Man 2 (which still has top spot in my book)

 

[Morrus]

[sblock]
1. Batman is driving his motorbike towards the joker, who is playing chicken with him. Batman, who just seconds ago easily wove the motorbike back and forth between the wheels of a juggernaut(!) twitches away from the joker and crashes, knocking himself out - when he should have just flicked out an arm or leg as he drove past and knocked the joker silly.

-- As I saw it, he intended to crash into and kill the Joker, as the Joker wanted him to. Only at the last second did he overcome that urge and flicked the bike away, losing control.

[/sblock]

I did feel that a lot of fight scene editing was too dark and too confused. Nolan might be trying to make you feel 'part of the action' but it just made it a confused mess, and actually makes you feel LESS 'part of the action' - like the handheld camera fetish of some directors, it makes the film look as though you are looking through a recording of a handheld camera rather than actually being there because (surprise surprise) you don't get the jiggly effect with your own eyes. Bah!

I wonder how muh of that is due to the choreography; an attempt to disguise that it wasn't actually elite combat martial arts acrobatic maneuvers?

 

[Plane Sailing]

I wonder how much of that is due to the choreography; an attempt to disguise that it wasn't actually elite combat martial arts acrobatic maneuvers?

Possible, but Christian Bale in Equilibrium had some very credible elite martial arts combat - the fight scenes there knocked spots off the fight scenes in Dark Knight.

Cheers

 

[el-remmen]

I did feel that a lot of fight scene editing was too dark and too confused. Nolan might be trying to make you feel 'part of the action' but it just made it a confused mess, and actually makes you feel LESS 'part of the action' - like the handheld camera fetish of some directors, it makes the film look as though you are looking through a recording of a handheld camera rather than actually being there because (surprise surprise) you don't get the jiggly effect with your own eyes. Bah!

I agree. I felt the fight scenes themselves were severely lacking.

We are not the only ones to think so.

 

[The Grumpy Celt]

I did feel that a lot of fight scene editing was too dark and too confused.

I agree. Also, there were one or two scenes that for a moment actually lost focus. This kind of thing bothers me. I liked the movie, but some of the errors seemed movie school stuff.

 

[Darth Shoju]

I wonder how muh of that is due to the choreography; an attempt to disguise that it wasn't actually elite combat martial arts acrobatic maneuvers?

I'm guessing that Nolan either doesn't put much stock in the importance of fight scenes or he just has no idea how to shoot them. I complained about this issue in Batman Begins but I didn't run across many that agreed with me. It seems more people are starting to notice it now though.

 

[John Crichton]

I'm guessing that Nolan either doesn't put much stock in the importance of fight scenes or he just has no idea how to shoot them. I complained about this issue in Batman Begins but I didn't run across many that agreed with me. It seems more people are starting to notice it now though.

I actually saw/heard/thought there was more complaining about the fight scenes in BB. They were my biggest complaint.

Like you, I'm thinking that he's just not very good at filming fights.

 

[Darth Shoju]

I actually saw/heard/thought there was more complaining about the fight scenes in BB. They were my biggest complaint.

Like you, I'm thinking that he's just not very good at filming fights.

In retrospect, I think the scenes in this one were actually more clear, but still tough to follow at times.

I'll have to agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed here about some of the flaws of the movie... [sblock]eg) I found it amazing that the Joker could load two ferries with rigged diesel fuel, when those ferries were going to be used to transport thousands of people. You'd think they would have been pretty careful about checking those boats out first...[/sblock].

Still, it was a fantastic movie and easily the best superhero movie I've ever seen. The thought that stuck with me at the end, though, is a rather sad one: instead of getting to see Ledger reprise his role, we're going to be stuck with a multitude of pale imitations by people getting off on how "cool" the Joker is. Youtube, real life, so forth -- we'll see twits in makeup and purple coats trying to be cool through imitation. You thought the Austin Powers imitations were bad?

I mean, not that everyone who does a Joker impression is a loser, but I just see it being taken waaay past the point of irritation.

 

[Richards]

The thing that bugged me the most in this movie involved the Batmobile. In Batman Begins, it was established that what Bruce had painted black and used as his Batmobile was originally a military vehicle used for crossing rivers and towing cables behind it to enable the quick construction of bridges. I highly doubt that the military specifications called for it to have a

Spoiler

built in, ejectable motocycle

. That was kind of cheesy to me - yes, I imagine it could have been added to the vehicle in the span of time between the two movies, but not likely without changing any of the original vehicle's appearance.

Still, an enjoyable film.

Johnathan

 

[Klaus]

The thing that bugged me the most in this movie involved the Batmobile. In Batman Begins, it was established that what Bruce had painted black and used as his Batmobile was originally a military vehicle used for crossing rivers and towing cables behind it to enable the quick construction of bridges. I highly doubt that the military specifications called for it to have a

Spoiler

built in, ejectable motocycle

. That was kind of cheesy to me - yes, I imagine it could have been added to the vehicle in the span of time between the two movies, but not likely without changing any of the original vehicle's appearance.

Still, an enjoyable film.

Johnathan

[sblock]Well, theoretically it wouldn't even need the big blasting cannons the Tumbler sports. Seeing that it does feature a "cannon seat", one could assume that the vehicle would have an "ejector seat" that didn't leave the driver undefended. If the Tumbler was built to make bridges damn fast, it would have to be built for situations where such speed is needed, i.e., in the midst of combat. And if the Tumbler is the first to cross a river or canyon, it'd also be the first target. [/sblock]