Wookey
Muppet is not a slur
I watched The Dark Knight last night on an imax screen after months and months of patient waiting and gleeful anticipation. Sadly, I have to report that claims of brilliance, legendary magnificence and stupendous fabulousness are (as surely we all knew they would be?) greatly exaggerated.
The film is two and a half hours long, but feels like three. We actually thought it was three as we came blinking out of the cinema rubbing our numb arses. It has the plot of three movies squeezed into one film, and for a large part of it I was confused as to what exactly was going on, and where the story was going (not in a 'Oooh, what a nice surprise!' way, but in a 'What a jumbled mess!' way.
First things first; Heath Ledger is good. He's not 'brilliant', 'earth-shattering' or 'Oscar-potential' - but then, this is a Batman movie remember, he was never going to be those things. But in the stage he's given, with the script he's given, the boy did well. His performance is arresting, delicious and noteable. In fact, if it wasn't for him I would be putting this film down as a stinker.
Christian Bale is alright, he has a silly raspy voice that grated after...oooh, about three words. His performance never really touches the emotional depths of Batman Begins, and yes, I'm aware of how that sounds as I'm typing it, but it's true.
The love interest Rachel is dowdy and plain looking, which makes a mockery of the line the Joker speaks when he says: 'And yes, you are BEAUTIFUL!' when she clearly is nothing of the sort (unless Gotham just has very low standards).
The stunts are OK, nothing earth shattering. The special effects are good, the sometime hero Harvey Dent (Twoface, in one of the extra plotlines that wasn't needed) has a great face burn job that looks realistic even though it must be CGI.
Gary Oldman is alright. Everyone is alright, it's just that the plot is pony, there was not a single laugh in there for me (I actually groaned instead of laughed) and the script is dreadful. Really, quite dreadful.
The worst thing is the direction, there are large parts which are confused, especially some fight scenes and car chases. You could have lost an hour of the film and it would have worked better. One theme appears to be the Joker's anarchic nature, he claims to be 'chaos, which can only ever be fair' - and yet he his finely honed and executed schemes are far from chaotic, and this inaccuracy grated on me.
There is one spectacular scene when the Joker, dressed as some lunatic nurse, blows up a hospital, and walks away clapping and walking a stiff-limbed walk like a mad doll. Those few seconds, where the baddie looked like a real madman, and the explosions ripped across the screen, and the humour came to the surface and was real instead of forced, that moment felt like a proper Batman movie. If they had repeated that for three hours, it would have been a far better film.
Another highlight is the 'social experiment' laid by the Joker, with two ferries loaded with explosives. One ferry is full of crooks, the other full of regular people - and each group is given a detonator, with the knowledge that they can each blow up the other boat and save themselves, or neither blow up a boat and risk being blown up at midnight by the Joker anyway. That scene resolves very nicely - but it's all rather rushed, and confused, and under-exploited. Much like the whole film, the good bits fly by, and the bad bits stand out like sore thumbs.
In all, I would urge you to go and see this purely because Heath Ledger's final performance deserves to be seen. That said, I feel quite resentful that the marketing department for Batman have clearly exploited Heath's death and cranked this movie up into the event of the decade, using the promise of a career-statement performance that his was never going to be. We can only ultimately be let down when the promise doesn't come true. There is no Joker soliloquy, no scene in which he steals your breath and which could be forever repeated as evidence of his incredible potential. The most that can be said, perhaps, is that Heath was great enough to mask the flaws of a messy movie - not a skill to be overlooked, but not the work of a legend either.
Finally, this is not the finely crafted review I would normally write (what Wookey, you put effort into this shit?!) but just my first thoughts on waking up this morning. I actually am so disappointed with Dark Knight that I don't feel like crafting a smart-arse review at all, I have better things to do. Like plan what I'm going to wear for Watchmen.
The film is two and a half hours long, but feels like three. We actually thought it was three as we came blinking out of the cinema rubbing our numb arses. It has the plot of three movies squeezed into one film, and for a large part of it I was confused as to what exactly was going on, and where the story was going (not in a 'Oooh, what a nice surprise!' way, but in a 'What a jumbled mess!' way.
First things first; Heath Ledger is good. He's not 'brilliant', 'earth-shattering' or 'Oscar-potential' - but then, this is a Batman movie remember, he was never going to be those things. But in the stage he's given, with the script he's given, the boy did well. His performance is arresting, delicious and noteable. In fact, if it wasn't for him I would be putting this film down as a stinker.
Christian Bale is alright, he has a silly raspy voice that grated after...oooh, about three words. His performance never really touches the emotional depths of Batman Begins, and yes, I'm aware of how that sounds as I'm typing it, but it's true.
The love interest Rachel is dowdy and plain looking, which makes a mockery of the line the Joker speaks when he says: 'And yes, you are BEAUTIFUL!' when she clearly is nothing of the sort (unless Gotham just has very low standards).
The stunts are OK, nothing earth shattering. The special effects are good, the sometime hero Harvey Dent (Twoface, in one of the extra plotlines that wasn't needed) has a great face burn job that looks realistic even though it must be CGI.
Gary Oldman is alright. Everyone is alright, it's just that the plot is pony, there was not a single laugh in there for me (I actually groaned instead of laughed) and the script is dreadful. Really, quite dreadful.
The worst thing is the direction, there are large parts which are confused, especially some fight scenes and car chases. You could have lost an hour of the film and it would have worked better. One theme appears to be the Joker's anarchic nature, he claims to be 'chaos, which can only ever be fair' - and yet he his finely honed and executed schemes are far from chaotic, and this inaccuracy grated on me.
There is one spectacular scene when the Joker, dressed as some lunatic nurse, blows up a hospital, and walks away clapping and walking a stiff-limbed walk like a mad doll. Those few seconds, where the baddie looked like a real madman, and the explosions ripped across the screen, and the humour came to the surface and was real instead of forced, that moment felt like a proper Batman movie. If they had repeated that for three hours, it would have been a far better film.
Another highlight is the 'social experiment' laid by the Joker, with two ferries loaded with explosives. One ferry is full of crooks, the other full of regular people - and each group is given a detonator, with the knowledge that they can each blow up the other boat and save themselves, or neither blow up a boat and risk being blown up at midnight by the Joker anyway. That scene resolves very nicely - but it's all rather rushed, and confused, and under-exploited. Much like the whole film, the good bits fly by, and the bad bits stand out like sore thumbs.
In all, I would urge you to go and see this purely because Heath Ledger's final performance deserves to be seen. That said, I feel quite resentful that the marketing department for Batman have clearly exploited Heath's death and cranked this movie up into the event of the decade, using the promise of a career-statement performance that his was never going to be. We can only ultimately be let down when the promise doesn't come true. There is no Joker soliloquy, no scene in which he steals your breath and which could be forever repeated as evidence of his incredible potential. The most that can be said, perhaps, is that Heath was great enough to mask the flaws of a messy movie - not a skill to be overlooked, but not the work of a legend either.
Finally, this is not the finely crafted review I would normally write (what Wookey, you put effort into this shit?!) but just my first thoughts on waking up this morning. I actually am so disappointed with Dark Knight that I don't feel like crafting a smart-arse review at all, I have better things to do. Like plan what I'm going to wear for Watchmen.
