Been a while since my last entry, and since I've had a couple requests for a new one I figured I'd give my thoughts and review on The Dark Knight. Where to begin? I want to first say that the money this movie is making is unprecedented and I think this is the first movie to really have a legit shot at breaking Titanic's box office records. Other movies have had huge opening weekends before (although The Dark Knight just broke all those records), but the staying power of this movie has carried over beyond the weekend and into the week. Titanic was an incredible anomaly at the box office because it made its $600m domestically not based on a gigantic opening weekend (it only made $28m in its 1st weekend, as compared to the $158m that The Dark Knight just grossed), but rather because it just stayed around forever. Will The Dark Knight have that kind of staying power? No, absolutely not. Titanic was still making good money in theaters five months after it was released, back when DVDs were a brand new medium. Five months from now The Dark Knight will probably be on DVD in stores. It might last 2-3 months in theaters, but that's about it. And it'll be facing much stronger competition at the box office than Titanic did because it's out during the summer rather than late winter and early spring the way Titanic was. So it remains to be seen what kind of legs The Dark Knight will have, to see if it really has a shot at what Titanic did, but consider this: in 5 days The Dark Knight is already over a third of the way to Titanic's total, and by this time next week could be well over half of the way there.
Enough about the money its making though, lemme talk about what I thought of the movie itself. Back in 2005 I saw Batman Begins and wrote a review of it in which I basically said I loved its pragmatic approach to the comic superhero genre, and thought it worked so well as a "real world" approach to the character that it was almost disappointing once Bruce Wayne showed up in the Batman costume. I felt like in the same way that Tim Burton's Batman redefined comic book movies by using his flair for visuals to present a real comic book-like appearance to everything, Batman Begins redefined comic book movies by presenting everything in as "real" a way as possible, and you see that more and more in comic book movies nowadays.
The Dark Knight has taken this approach to a whole new level.
The new movie has entirely ditched any attempt to look cartoonish and visually is the antithesis of what Tim Burton set out to do with his Batman movies. I've heard some comparisons with The Dark Knight and Heat, and the comparisons definitely have some validity to them. I've always felt that Michael Mann's crime movies (Thief, Manhunter, Heat, Collateral and even Miami Vice) always tried to ground themselves in as much realism as possible, and in addition to usually showing the sheer technical precision that must mark any successful high-end heist and/or real detective work, his movies are usually almost entirely humorless. Batman Begins took steps in this direction, attempting to show how Batman could do the things he did as if he was a real person, and what technology, training and real mindset he'd need, but the movie was still a fun ride and had a definite sense of humor about itself. In The Dark Knight the "fun" aspect is definitely toned way, way down in favor of a very dark, serious approach to everything, and in my opinion it works beautifully. The movie is an honest to god serious crime movie that, much like the last movie, only "breaks character" a few times with some of Batman's less believable gadgetry.
One of the biggest (if not more subtle) visual shocks of this movie is the amount of it that takes place during the daytime. For me it really set the tone right off the bat as the whole opening scene takes place right in the middle of the day. There are, of course, many scenes at night as well, but how often do you see bright daylight scenes in a Batman movie? The daytime scenes give the city backdrop a much more "real" feel to it, much much moreso than there was in the last movie (which was already infinitely more real seeming than any previous depiction of Gotham in any of the other Batman movies).
The characters in The Dark Knight are incredible as well. Heath Ledger's Joker is everything that Jack Nicholson's Joker was not, in that he is scary (rather than funny) and he most importantly makes you feel that Batman actually is the underdog in the fight, which after the last movie I would have thought would be pretty impossible. Jack Nicholson's Joker was a hugely entertaining spectacle onscreen, but his character was mainly a thorn in Batman's side because he stole enough money to match Bruce Wayne's spending abilities by having his own gadgets to try to rival Batman's. In this movie, Heath Ledger's Joker has the upper hand because he's more committed to what he's doing than Batman is, much in the way that a real terrorist is. He's a maniacal person with sadistic goals who has no regard for anyone's life (especially his own), and it takes Batman a long time to even be able to wrap his head around how you deal with someone like that. As a result the Joker is always one step ahead of Batman and not the other way around.
For instance, in Tim Burton's Batman the Joker's evil plan was to use cash to lure Gotham's civilians to the streets so he could gas them with poison-filled parade balloons, but Batman was able to rather easily foil this plan by just showing up with his Batwing and flying off with the balloons. Even in Batman Begins Ra's Al Ghul's plan was to similarly gas the city using his own device, but Batman used the Batmobile to destroy it and save the day. In this movie there is no plan like that, and instead the Joker is more akin to John Doe from Se7en or Jigsaw from the Saw movies in that he simply sets up situations to challenge people's morals and in which his goal is just to create chaos through cleverly hidden and difficult to diffuse methods. In the end it is not Batman's gadgets or training which help him prevail over the Joker, but rather his commitment to his goal that does.
I need to see the movie again and I am planning on going at least once more while the movie is in theaters, although it may be the kind of movie I end up seeing a bunch more times in theaters, and that's not something I've done with a movie in a long, long time. The movie was quite long at two and a half hours, and it was really packed with many characters and storylines and I feel like it probably needs repeat viewings to be adequately digested. The movie has really stayed with me over the last couple days since I saw it, and it was very enjoyable to watch, which considering how high my hopes were for it to me says a lot about how good it is. I don't know if the movie is for everyone, but it is currently sitting as the #1 most highly rated movie of all time on IMDB (by a considerable margin), although I expect that to fall back somewhat the longer its out and the more people see it; and it did get a 95% on the Tomatometer, so it does seem to be overwhelmingly well received (especially in combination with the huge box office totals). If you haven't seen it, by all means check it out, although be sure you watch Batman Begins first, as this is a true sequel to that movie, and much of what went on in that movie plays into what happens in this movie.