Joker messes up a good Two-Face story.
long time Batman comics reader, into action flicks
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AUG
10
2008
The Dark Knight is as confusing and convoluted as Batman Begins was straightforward. In Batman Begins, the plot is easy to follow and well written. Even with the introduction of brand new characters like Lucius Fox and rarely seen ones like Ra's Al Ghul, the alternate universe-like telling of how Bruce Wayne developed Batman is compelling and draws you in even if you are a comic book purist sitting there saying "this isn't like the comic books".
The Dark Knight on the other hand, is almost as twisted and dark as one of the Joker's bad dreams. I'm not a big fan of lengthy exposition scenes, but this movie could have used just a little bit of one. You don't know where you are half the time. Gotham City looks very different from Batman Begins. Almost like a different city altogether. Wayne Manor is still gone, I think. Unless the bunker-like room Batman keeps his stuff in is in the basement. They don't show any hint of Wayne rebuilding the manor "brick by brick" like they talked about in Batman Begins.
They replace Rachel Dawes' actress with a girl who only vaguely looks like the one from Batman Begins and who acts totally differently. Fortunatly, Alfred, Lutenant Gordon and Lucius Fox are still there and as good as they were in the last movie, to give the film some continuity. Christian Bale is back too though his Bruce Wayne and Batman seem to have become even more depressed and on the verge than in Begins.
We're introduced to Harvey Dent, the new District Attorney who is played very well by Aaron Echart. He's a very interesting character as he's all smiles and charming on the outside for the press and public yet at the same time, he's almost ruthless in his pursuit of criminals and getting a conviction. They do a good job showing this dicotomy and Dent's election campaign. They totally mess up his change into Two-Face though. It seems that movie writers are almost incapable or maybe refuse to actually follow the original plots of the comic books they keep making movies out of. The only similarity is that the mob is involved.
Once he finally becomes Two Face, the movie is almost over.
The mob as villians are not as well defined in this movie compared to Begins. In Batman Begins, we had Falcone who made a really good bad guy and had some cool scenes with Bruce Wayne and Batman. In this movie, the mob is reduced to a little group of guys who hide out from the Batman and plot in little dark rooms. They come to rely on a crazy guy in whiteface with greenish hair and his thugs in clown masks to do their dirty work for them.
This weird little guy is supposed to be the Joker, but he bares very little resemblance to any Joker I've seen in previous movies, cartoons and even some of the darker, more realistic Batman comic book stories. He's disheveled and grimy before he even gets hit by Batman once. He looks like he's already gone a few rounds with Batman before the movie even starts. He's already the Joker at the start of the film and his origin is as hazy as the vision of a Scarecrow victim. (Speaking of the Scarecrow, he makes an unexplained cameo in this movie too as the possible leader of a bunch of Batman copycats who are kinda funny).
If that bit about the Scarecrow seems to have come out of left field, it was meant to as that's how he shows up in the film: there for a few frames and then gone with no influcence on the overall plot. Heath Ledger goes way off the deep end playing the Joker and steals almost every scene he's in. His over the top performace of turning the Joker into an anarchistic nut job reminds me a bit of Jim Carrey's turn as the Riddler. We never really find out why the Joker is helping the mob as he doesn't seem to be part of them in this alternative universe.
As long as a two and a half hour movie is, it wasn't long enough to straighten out all the tangled loose ends that are introduced at the start of the film. They try to do so but it doesn't work. The mess they wind up with reminds me of Spiderman 3: it has it's brilliant moments, but it tries to do too many things at the same time, leaving the audience confused. Just like Spiderman 3 would have been better if it had been two movies: one about Spiderman and Sandman and another about Spiderman and Venom, so does The Dark Knight. It should have been two movies too: one about Batman and the Joker and one about Batman and Two-Face. If the mob had been written in as well as it was in Batman Begins, they would have been enough of a bad guy at the start for Batman to deal with as Harvey Dent descends into Two-Face. As it is, we get a less than half-baked story about both villians twisted into one confusing mess.
I liked The Dark Knight enough to get it on DVD later, but then I'm an incurable Batman fan who even has the debacles that were the sequels to Batman and Batman Forever on DVD too. If you can't get enough of Batman on the big screen, see Dark Knight in theaters. If you are not a huge fan, wait for the DVD. There was way too much hype about Ledger's performance as the Joker. You couldn't even tell it was him. It could have been someone else under all the makeup and weird voice. I thought Aaron Echart did a better job with Two-Face given what he had to work with.
The Pros list reminds me of one more thing. As much as I liked Begins, I thought the music was weak. They didn't come up with a new theme for Batman that is memorable and it's barely recognizable among the other music of the score. Dark Knight's music is no improvement. Bring back the Danny Elfman theme for Batman.
The Dark Knight is recommended by dukethepcdr
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