Professional Advice…
So, how many of us have been where Roy has been? C’mon now… don’t be shy. Raise your hands…
🙂
Anyway, saw “The Dark Knight” yesterday afternoon with my daughter. I’ll just add to the big huge choruses of “Love it” that have already been shouted. But here are a few things you may or may not have heard before – no real big spoilers here so if you haven’t yet seen it, you have no fear of reading what I’m about to type.
Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker:
A week or so before the movie opened, two local DJ’s on the radio were arguing about Nicholson vs. Ledger as The Joker. One of the DJ’s opinion is that Ledger – no matter how great his performance – could NEVER be compared to Jack simply because of the great career Jack has had over the years. To me, that was a little crazy. That’s like saying a rookie Cal Ripkin Jr. could never be compared to Brooks Robinson. As a rookie, that’s true – Cal couldn’t compare to Brooks. But 20 years later, can you say the same thing? No way – so for me, that was a shaky premise to base your opinion on.
Now, I may be in the minority about this but I was never a tremendous fan of Jack’s Joker. When the original Batman movie came out, I thought Jack would have been a great Joker if the movie came out 15 or 20 years earlier when he was younger and thinner. In fact, I even thought the guy that played Jack’s character in the Bruce Wayne flashback would have been a better Joker. Jack got that part because of his crazy smile and his previous portrayals of “crazies” like his character in “The Shining”. No, for my money, a better Joker back then would have been William Defoe. If you don’t believe me, go rent “Streets of Fire” again and watch the climatic fight scene at the end of that movie. THAT vision of Defoe’s character screaming in frustration has always stuck in my mind as “the perfect Joker”.
But what Heath brought to “The Dark Knight” was a very Hannibal Lector kind of flavor to The Joker. And, at various points in the movie, there were very similar feelings of “what’s gonna happen next” that I had when I first saw “Silence of the Lambs” even though this was “supposed” to be JUST a superhero movie…
The neat little twists on the casting of this movie
The most obvious being Jake Gyllenhaal’s sister playing the role of Rachel this time. But what about Eric Roberts and Aaron Eckhart? After all, Aaron played the love interest to Eric’s sister in “Erin Brokovich”… And even though they didn’t share the screen at the same time, you had the president from “The Fifth Element” and Gary Oldman in the same movie. Those were all nice little twists but that’s not what caught my attention the most. The thing that struck me the funniest was the casting of Nestor Carbonell as the mayor of Gotham. If you all don’t get the irony of THAT, then shame on all of you TICK fans out there!!!
Nestor Carbonell played Batmanuel in the VERY short lived live-action version of The Tick – the obvious SPOOF version of Batman! C’mon people! Where’s your geek-cred when you REALLY need it?
Harvey Dent’s makeup
Not only was the makeup incredible but the anticipation as to when, where and how they were going to show it was fantastic as well. Remember that feeling of dread and anticipation I mentioned earlier? This was especially true in Harvey Dent’s case and the way Christopher Nolan built up that tension of Two-face was fantastic.
Speaking of Harvey Dent…
I just finished listening to The Major Spoiler Dark Knight podcast with Scott Johnson’s guest appearance and I just wanted to point out one thing when they were mentioning Two-face’s suit (this is about as much of a “spoiler” as you will get)…
Guys, if you recall in the movie, his suit wasn’t “split in half” until AFTER he dealt with Eric Robert’s character and the car crash/explosion. THEN his suit became “split”. So I took it that that was the result of the car flipping over on Harvey’s side and ruining that part of his suit. That would also explain how he might be able to survive that climatic fall. If he can survive a car explosion…
Gary Oldman
Man, it is still so weird seeing him play not only a good guy (yeah, I’ve seen Harry Potter) but also a more “normal” person. And, quite frankly, it’s pretty refreshing too. Needless to say, his Commissioner Gordon is absolutely fantastic – just as it was in the first film.
Christian Bale’s “Bat voice”…
I’m not sure what people don’t like about this. I liked that from the first movie and liked it even more this time around.
Micheal Cain’s “Alfred”…
Even stronger then the first time around. And I loved the little story he had leading up to “some men just want to see the world burn” speech.
Well, I could go on and on and on but then the comic would never get posted for today so I’m cutting this short by saying The Dark Knight simply was fantastic.
-Chris
