The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

[Jimski]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Yep, jv is right, Memento is still the film by which to remember Christopher Nolan. The Dark Knight was just Heath Ledger away from being just another (good) superhero movie.

[Fatter Hipper]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Memento? Really? I thought that was rather tedious. I'll have to give it another go.

The My Family skit of Memento was far funnier than any My Family episode has a right to be, although it must've been lost on 90% of the audience and it certainly wouldn't have been funny unless you'd seen the film.

[Wyatt Earp]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Films/TV shows that pose moral questions more interestingly than The Dark Knight, part 312.

My Darling Clementine
The Searchers
The Conversation
Genesis of the Daleks
Any episode of The Wire

Fuck right off with your artificially contrived nonzero sum scenarios.

[Brandenburger Toro]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

When did I mention artificially contrived nonzero sum scenarios, Wyatt? And, like, fucking chill.

Memento is great, but there's not a great deal to it beyond the structural pyrotechnics, superb as they are.

[Wyatt Earp]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Toro De France wrote:

When did I mention artificially contrived nonzero sum scenarios, Wyatt? And, like, fucking chill.

No no, I mean "Fuck right off, makers of the latest Batman movie, with your..."

[Reed John]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

My Darling Clementine
The Searchers
The Conversation
Genesis of the Daleks
Any episode of The Wire

But none - not ONE - of those films have Batman in them, so I'm less interested.

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

I got news for you. Dark Knight will never be mentioned in the same breath as Seventh Seal or Cries and Whispers.

It's a completely different kind of cabbage though. Given the numbers of fingers in the pudding, no Hollywood production is ever going to produce as personal a vision as Bergman's or most of Kurosawa's did. It's like comparing a small press book of poetry with the latest Robert Ludlum novel. I mean if you must make those comparisons it'd be fairer to contrast The Dark Knight with Tora, Tora, Tora! Kurosawa's disastrous brush with Hollywood.

[Jimski]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Memento is great, but there's not a great deal to it beyond the structural pyrotechnics, superb as they are.

Oh I dunno, the fact that rather than memory keeping him in the past (as is traditionally perceived), lack thereof was keeping him in the past, was quite an interesting idea to explore. (He could never move on because he couldn't remember having moved on.) Memento got my mind working far more than anything posed by The Dark Knight.

[Reed John]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

I don't think the ethical dillemas in the film are supposed to be especially vexing. I think the point is to creat interesting characters by showing how different characters respond to the challenge that face them.

My favorite movie ever is Fargo. Certainly, what is right and what is wrong is very clear in that story, but I don't think that makes the characters or their choices less interesting.

[jason voorhees]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Adc, did you see Toro's touts?

[Amor de Cosmos]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Just now. A shade OTT perhaps, but that doesn't materially affect my point.

[ian.64]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Seen it myself now and Nolan knows how to deliver a sleek, well-made and even distinctive technical lesson in big-budget movie making.

Did I enjoy it? Well, yes, with reservations. I'm as thick as a plank so all this heavy, portentious stuff about 'good/evil', morality and justice washed over me somewhat, and perhaps vitiated some of what was on screen. That's probably the trouble with the Batman series for me (either in Burton's or Nolan's interpretations), the need to go 'dark' and give some solemn backstory to the glum, caped bleeder never really worked for me at all. In Burton's original Batman, the killing of Wayne's parents (and it's aftermath) was as emotionally affecting as licking a stamp, as were the following sequels and there sometimes ham-fisted approach to this boring 'oh, you and I are the same evil bugger, Batman, you and I are both sides of the same coin' gubbins.

And so it was with The Dark Knight. No matter how intense Christian Bale's performance (and he's one hell of a performer when the occasion demands), I can't get wrapped up in this 'inner turmoil' thing that besets him nearly every moment, and where I'm perhaps supposed to see Batman as this anguished, complex figure, all I really see is this bashing machine who seems to be carrying this ton of bricks called 'Hurt & Sadness' around with him. There's no life there, just a scowl and a slightly silly deepened voice. Bale, though, gives all this depth and feeling, no matter what my reservations are on the character.

All other performances were very good. Gary Oldman overcomes his Ned Flanders looks and delivers one of the best turns in the movie, giving a little restive, nervous humanity in the midst of so many bullish portrayals. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are dependable, which sounds like faint praise but sums them perfectly for me: not too much, not too little, just right. Maggie Gyllenhall is an improvement on Katie Holmes, but is given little to do, the acting meat having being thrown to her male colleagues to devour. As for Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent, Eckhart is excellent, although when he does, in fact, transform into his Two-Face persona, he just becomes another ordinary film villain, removing a huge amount of depth gained by his fine portrayal up to that point. He's just a psycho with a gun and a CGI-facial.

Ledger.

He was very good indeed. Excellent, in fact. But quite a few things bugged me, one of them being the waves of accolade he's received for his role. Now I'm watching it and I'm impressed. But not that impressed. Not overly, but just enough to nod in appreciation of his performance. I was also thinking of whether the Joker's character was almost a licence for any actor to go mad (in a sense) and revel in its showy, pantomimic possibilities, and, in turn, play above themselves. It's evident in Jack Nicholson's turn and even as far back as Cesar Romero's hammy '60's incarnation. Could any other actor have done as effective a job as Ledger in the role? Is it an offence to suggest that someone could have done it differently yet perhaps be as good?

Perhaps they could. But Ledger's turn is something to watch, even if I'm not exactly jumping in slavish agreement with those who think it's one of 'cinema's greatest screen psychopaths' or that it's even Oscar-worthy.

Oh, and a big finger to the Birmingham Odeon whose sound levels were such that Gary Oldman's concluding speech was drowned out by music and sound effects. And that the screening of the movie was preceeded by the playing of James Blunt's 'You're Beautiful' six fucking times (the opening few bars greeted with sighs and laughter by the half-empty theatre on every play). It was far more unsettling and uneasy that anything Nolan, Bale and company had hidden up their sleeves.

[JtS]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

I saw it on saturday afternoon, on my own in Camden Odeon. I don't think I'd been there before. Screen 1, which I presume is the biggest screen didn't seem to have that many seats. It was big and wide and shallow, it reminded me of screen 2 at the ABC in Enfield which was knocked down years ago.

I wasn't that keen on how the screen was a fair bit higher than the seats. My ideal seating position in a cinema is dead centre, with my eye line being level with the top of the screen. It gives a comfortable viewing position. Sometimes if you too low down and too close to the screen you have to turn your whole head to see from side to side of the film.

Anyhoo... I liked it, I did feel it was a bit long but it pretty much had to be to fit in the whole Joker plot. I thought they could have trimmed some of the chase scene where the Joker is trying to blow up the secure police van with Dent in it.

I was interested by the suggested violence. Having read what Ian Duncan Smith had written to the Times, I was expecting it to be violent, but it was a bit different.

The pencil scene and the knife in the mouth scene was pretty horrific in it's suggestion. The rest of the violence was pretty cold.

I thought Rachel Dawes was a lot less believable this time. Gylenhall isn't attractive enough. The big thing tho' was would the assistant district attorney really be so open about dating the DA? Unlikely. It took away all her credibility in the legal field for me.

I didn't find the plot as hard to follow as some of the people on the thread. I must have missed the suggestion that Batman was going to rescue Rachel but the Joker had switched the addresses. It made more sense to me that the dark knight would make a decision based on what is most important to him, that being the best interests of Gotham, rather than Rachel.

I certainly didn't believe Dawes when she said she'd give Bruce Wayne a chance when he was done as Batman.

I thought the bullet into the concrete thing was quite straightforward. The real one had shattered, so he needed to try to piece it back together to get the fingerprint by imitating the shot. Just like finding the instructions to put a jigsaw together.

[JtS]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

6) What was going on with that building with the hostages and the Joker. I didn't follow how the story got to that set piece and who were all the people in the building - just hostages or some of the mob? And were all those cops that Batman was slugging corrupt or just cops that didn't understand what was really going on so Batman didn't hit them too hard.


Right, after the joker blew up the hospital he jumped on a bus, he took the people on the bus as hostages.

The Joker had dressed some of the hostages up as his henchman, hence they had guns gaffer taped to their hands, and were effectively tied up. The Joker either wanted a distraction or wanted the police to kill the civilian hostages.

The cops Batman was fighting weren't necessarily corrupt, he was just making sure they didn't kill/injure the people the police thought were Joker Henchmen (but in fact tied up hostages dressed as henchmen).

[Mark Felt]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Hmmmmmm.

I find the debate on this one a little strange. While I can obviously see why the film mightn't be some people's cup of tea (too dark, taking-itself-too-seriously-for-a-movie-about-a-bat,-a-clown-and-a-special-effect - not really, but some people will be some people), I can't understand the people who pick holes in either the plot (which for me was as tightly and perfectly wound as a swiss watch) or its length (it was exactly as long as it needed to be to tell the story of Joker bringing Gotham and its hero down to his level). Whether the character of Two-Face has been sacrificed to that story (and the script freely available online at the moment does describe him post-tumble as dead, and the ceremony over which his pre-crime visage presides as his funeral) may turn out to be something for fans to feel robbed by, but I don't think its deniable that the story that they set out to tell was told almost perfectly. If its not your kind of story, fine, I understand why you wouldn't like the film. But on its own terms - wow.

I don't know what to pick out as best, there is so much to choose from here, but I have to say what I absolutely adore about these two films is how they take these potentially ridiculous characters ("Two Face"? come ON!) and give them such believable, character based origins. Even down to the silly suits and party tricks. The Joker's smile deliciously unexplained; Harvey's name a holdover from his good-guy past; his coin; his suit; the Bat Pod as an escape mechanism rather than a funky new toy invented by the Bat-Q division; I just fucking love it.

[repeater]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Reed of the Valley People wrote:

Watchmen. I'm optimistic. The images in the trailer seem pretty direct from the comic. But this trailer seems to be really for the fan boys.

Are fans of the comic getting excited about this then? I didn't think they would be, considering Alan Moore's standpoint and the way his comics have been butchered in the past.

I haven't seen the Dark Knight yet. All the gushing's put me off, and I don't like the director and cast. I'll watch it in a year or two, when everyone's stopped going on about it!

[Brandenburger Toro]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

You don't like Christopher Nolan, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, or Christian Bale?

Do you also hate icecream, justice and fun?

I wondered when Mark Felt would turn up, and evidently missed it. That's an excellent post.

[repeater]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Just in case that wasn't a rhetorical question - no, I don't like Nolan, Ledger, Oldman and Bale. Or to be precise, I haven't liked any film they've been involved in.

[EIM]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Crikey. There's some good films you've not been liking.

[repeater]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Such as?

[EIM]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Leon. True Romance. The Firm (kinda). 3.10 to Yuma. Shaft. American Psycho. Fucking Pocahontas even.

Unless you mean that you've never liked any film they've been involved in *together*.

[repeater]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Shaft!!! I don't like any of those enough that I would want to watch them again.

[EIM]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

What films do you like?

[repeater]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Ten off the top of my head: Battle of Algiers, Quick Change, Stray Dog, Prince of Darkness, 12 Angry Men, Sabata, The Hill, El Topo, Manhunter, Assault on Precinct 13.

Apologies for the temporary hijacking of the thread.

[jason voorhees]

The Dark Knight, or Ledger's Last Ride

Tightly-wound-as-a-Swiss-watch?

Maybe-a-swiss-watch-that-got-run-over-by-the-Batcycle.

(Sorry,Im-reduced-to-making-bullshit-snarky-comments.Im-getting-paid-on-Friday.)