What is the deal with The Dark Knight?

[Phoenix09215]

I have always liked Heath Ledger and thats probably waht made me go see it, because I'm not really in to Batman. But I'm glad I wetn because its a goood movie... Its not a masterclass epic or anything but its enjoyable and gets some great performances out of the actors!

 

[Jernau]

This opinion is probably cliché and not exactly original but I did find The Dark Knight to be really good, not just from a "wow, this is AWESOME!" point of view but just sometimes when I've watched it again (about three times in total so far) and just take a metaphorical step back and just thought: That bit there was fantastic, from a cinematography, acting and writing point of view.

I just loved the vibe of the whole film, it was dark and gritty without overstating it too much and the perfectly pitched joker was an on-screen treat the entire time. The film was superb and personally I loved the visual style of the whole thing and it gave me hope for super-hero films of years to come.

 

[Blind Sight]

I don't understand. I thought it was long, boring, anti-climatic, and I couldn't understand anyone. Maybe I'm just a 90 year old trapped in a 16 year old's body (I was fifteen when I saw it) but I don't see what all the rage is about in that movie.

You've answered your own question.

In fact, the answer is the same in almost EVERY SINGLE ONE of these "why does everyone say this is so great when I thought it sucked?" threads (and believe me, we get a lot of them). The implication I can't help but detect every time I see one of these threads is "why is everyone else wrong about this movie/game/whatever?" And if you're in the vocal minority of people who didn't like a critically acclaimed work, you should probably consider the following possibility: maybe YOU'RE the one with the problem, not everyone else? There's no "deal" with The Dark Knight- what's the deal with you?

In this case, you didn't like the film. Fair enough, not everyone can like everything, but this seems to be bugging you. However, rather than asking why everyone else likes a film you didn't like, shouldn't you be asking why you didn't like a film everyone else likes? Maybe there's something you missed.

THANK YOU o mystical voice of reason, your throaty calls have long been lost on the '*insert popular thing here* sucked' threads.

I loved the Dark Knight, thought the only problem with it was the pacing, there were a few slow moments but they always made up for it with an amazing scene afterwards.

 

[Cody211282]

It was good, but not nearly as good as most people made it out to be.

 

[Savagezion]

That's kinda funny as I just sat down to watch both of these movies the other day. Every few months I get an itch to watch Batman Begins and I can never resist watching the Dark Knight afterwards. I have seen Batman Begins described as "campy" and such in the thread. I would just say it requires less effort from the viewer to watch than the Dark Knight. Batman Begins is a light although well done piece of work. The movie was focused on Batman and Batman alone. There was only 1 story to follow. Scarecrow was toned down a bit to really register him more as a minor co-villain than the super-villain of the movie. He is a charactor that is right below the surface of the main charactor(s). But Begins really only had 1 main charactor. Maybe Gordon would be included here though.

The Dark Knight had 3-5. It was building on the groundwork Begins alrady laid. The first half was basically all for the Joker's charactor introduction, Harvey Dent's introduction, how the relationship between Bruce and Racheal had evolved, and a few other ways that the world had evolved from the first. It really was a true sequel. So the first half was introducing and tying all that together. The second half of the movie was where the movie reached its peak. It's where all that culminated into a series of chaotic scenarios that were also more action oriented.

Basically, in Begins they are showing you Batman. In Dark Knight, they are giving you much more. Each are better than each other in different ways. You can watch Batman Begins and follow it without having to pay it much attention. You have to pay attention to follow the Dark Knight. Begins is better in keeping it simple but still feel entirely interwoven. It is the epitomy of "less is more". The Dark Knight is more of a work of art through the depth of the writing. They brought in a LOT of focal points and charactor depth and managed to make it not feel overwhelming. It can be a slightly overplayed on some parts but this is not enough alone to destroy a movie and it doesn't completely overdo it.

"If nobody knows your identity, you can protect others without making any kind of sacrifice yourself, but still pretend you are being all noble."

I disagree about this statement in the movie. In fact, this exact idea was contested in the movie. First off, the entire underlying message of both movies is that Bruce has completely given in to his quest for vengeance. He has given up his whole identity and normal life to combat the corruption in Gotham. That his mask is actually Bruce, not Batman as they said at the end of the first. Second, he used the costume to entirely demonize Batman to the public. He acts like an arrogant heir as Bruce (genuis IMO) and demonized himself to the public otherwise. He sacrificed his identity and normal life to take lashings from the public to help. I would say he sacrificed quite a bit.

You're entitled to dislike the movie and all but I disagree with this line and the 911 one. Any action flick out there could be skewed to be anti-terrorist propaganda crap. Heroes in movies are bad asses that don't negotiate with terrorist, they rip em a new one.

 

[Dango]

You were 15 when you saw it. That's pretty much the problem.

EDIT: I didn't mean this as an insult to 15 year olds, necessarily. I'm not sure my 15 year old self would have liked it and I doubt many of my friends at 15 would.

I saw it when I was 13 and I thought it was amazing. And I've watched several times since then and have noticed several more subtle things that made me love it even more. I even watched it today on HBO in fact as an (about to turn) 15 year old and loved it more than ever.

 

[SonicWaffle]

Why so hostile against constructive criticism?

"You have limited imagination" is not constructive criticism. It is an insult. It is basically a smug way of saying 'My views are more important than yours'. I don't take kindly to that.

Why should a villain as they currently are in the comics be exactly how they are in a movie?

They don't need to be exactly like the are in the comics. The Joker was slightly less insane, Batman is not quite as smart, etc. However, they are still recognisable. If you're going to present a character who is nothing like the Riddler but still call him the Riddler, going to change a character to the point that he's unrecognisable, you might as well go all the way and make Batman a Venusian cop seeking justice for his crippled dog. When you fuck around too much with the source material, you end up with a movie like Constantine. Ever seen that? An object lesson in how not to do adaptation.

The fact that Riddler already knows means nothing when you're introducing him in a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT CONTINUITY. And just as I said when I repeated that post in another thread, these movies are about using the characters correctly. So it doesn't matter if that's not how Riddler "works", because he's going to "work" better in this version. The "riddle that everyone knows the answer to" philosophy doesn't need to apply anymore if he has a higher goal in mind. In the end, he's the Riddler in more than name alone as long as he uses riddles as a means to those goals.

Right. So by your logic, as long as the Joker laughs like a nutter, he could be a 50-foot tall Amazon who shot lasers from her nipples. After all, he only has that one defining characteristic - as long as he laughs and goes crazy, he's the Joker in more than name only.

But OK, let's run with this for a minute. The Riddler is an obsessive-compulsive who leaves riddles not because he wants to, but because he has to. He enjoys taunting Batman with warnings about his crimes or little clues, because he has a massive ego and (despite knowing that Batman will solve them) can't resist attempting to prove he's smarter than him. So, in your version of the Riddler, why does he leave clues?!. If he's some super genius with a lofty goal who is playing everyone from behind the scenes, how are the riddles going to fit in to this? They become redundant, and wouldn't fit with the tone of the movie.

Lastly, these movies are primarily action movies. The Riddler is a mental villain. He and Batman square off intellectually rather than physically, and watching Batman spend two hours trying to do a crossword isn't going to make for good cinema. This is why I suggested Killer Croc, or Bane - a villain Batman can fight, especially since the Nolan Batman isn't the genius super-detective presented by the comics.

Besides, anyone who's obsessed with proving their intellectual superiority can, if handled correctly, benefit from always succeeding. Although this opinion is born from the daunting image of such a person devolving into a big crybaby should they ever fail. So here's a nice compromise: he only fails once, in the climax, and only in a way that nobody would see coming.

Everyone would see it coming. He's the god damn Riddler! He would be defeated because he was stupid enough to leave hints, puzzles and clues everywhere! He is a totally self-defeating villain. Besides, the old "arrogant genius who fails in the last act and has a tantrum" storyline is done to death.

I would be all for speculating on a villain other than the Riddler, if he hadn't already been confirmed by viral marketing. (Or maybe that was a fan-made thing? I hadn't heard much of the picture after seeing it.)

I don't know. I'd only heard rumours about the Riddler, but if he is in the movie, it'll be certain that he won't be the only villain. The Riddler isn't enough of a threat to carry a movie by himself, especially being more cerebral in nature than many of Batman's foes. This is why he was partnered with Two Face when Jim Carrey played him in that godawful abomination of a movie.

 

[TimeLord]

The Dark Knight was awesome mainly because of the acting. I thought it was a generally brilliant film!

 

[Pegghead]

True, I wasn't a huge fan of it, though I think that mostly stems from the fact that I grew up with the Adam West image of Batman and the ENORMOUS hype surrounding the damn thing at the time which was mostly due to Heath Ledger's death.

 

[Gabanuka]

Three words. Heath. Ledgers. Joker

And I was only 13 when saw it. It all made perfect sense to me, maybe its just my love of comic books.

 

[rabbitambulance]

Yes. The movie has a lot of good things to it (acting, action, casting, best Joker ever etc.) but the plot is something that should have been attacked with vigorous amounts of pruning shears to make it actually good and not, erm, nonsensical.

 

[Your once and future Fanboy]

I know this is unrelated but I can wait 'til Nolan makes a batman movie that follows the events of Knightfall.
If you dont know about knightfall, then you shouldn't be posting on a forum about batman!

Btw i loved both Begins and the Dark knight, Both are great movies, but Dark knight blew me away. A good way to watch these movies are to avoid any hype like the plague, then watch them,.

Unfortunately, like Avatar, the hype was pretty much unavoidable for Dark Knight.

I completely agree that the Knightfall narrative could make an awesome movie. I really, really like it when Batman comes up against obviously superior foes, like Bane and Shiva, because they force him to reveal his humanity. When Batman is punching out yet ANOTHER faceless grunt and strutting invincibly about, the tension is kind of gone.

That's a big part of why at least half of Gotham Knight is complete rubbish.

Yeah Gotham Night was crap, But the new Under the Red Hood was awesome, It made Jason Todd (the second Robin) into an actual bad ass, witch is pretty hard. and Jensen Ackles (of Supernatural fame) was a pretty good voice actor for the Red Hood character.
I say: Check it out

 

[Samurai Goomba]

I know this is unrelated but I can wait 'til Nolan makes a batman movie that follows the events of Knightfall.
If you dont know about knightfall, then you shouldn't be posting on a forum about batman!

Btw i loved both Begins and the Dark knight, Both are great movies, but Dark knight blew me away. A good way to watch these movies are to avoid any hype like the plague, then watch them,.

Unfortunately, like Avatar, the hype was pretty much unavoidable for Dark Knight.

I completely agree that the Knightfall narrative could make an awesome movie. I really, really like it when Batman comes up against obviously superior foes, like Bane and Shiva, because they force him to reveal his humanity. When Batman is punching out yet ANOTHER faceless grunt and strutting invincibly about, the tension is kind of gone.

That's a big part of why at least half of Gotham Knight is complete rubbish.

Yeah Gotham Night was crap, But the new Under the Red Hood was awesome, It made Jason Todd (the second Robin) into an actual bad ass, witch is pretty hard. and Jensen Ackles (of Supernatural fame) was a pretty good voice actor for the Red Hood character.
I say: Check it out

Cool, I think I will. I've always liked Jason Todd. Then again, I've always liked The Punisher. Maybe I'm just fond of heroes who don't perpetuate a system of prison overcrowding and continually returning serial villains.

I mean, come on, Batman, at least take The Joker to a prison he HASN'T already broken out of.

Yes. The movie has a lot of good things to it (acting, action, casting, best Joker ever etc.) but the plot is something that should have been attacked with vigorous amounts of pruning shears to make it actually good and not, erm, nonsensical.

Yeah, I think that really is the biggest problem here. I'm not denying The Dark Knight had good qualities, but there's at least one entire Joker choice that's completely extraneous (Mark Kermode backs me up on this one), and a couple of other scenes go on too long (china subplot) with little payoff or benefit to the overarching narrative. It feels like the whole film needed to be tighter.

And speaking as somebody who loves dark movies, from Se7en to Watchmen and on, The Dark Knight doesn't really feel that dark. It's dark in the sense that a Tim Burton movie is dark-in the shallowest, most obvious way. Yeah, it says some things about the nature of heroism, etc etc, but it shouts them loudly and repeatedly, explicitly stating its message rather than suggesting, hinting or leading us to it. The Fly has a lot to say about humanity, but it doesn't bellow it in your ear.

I dunno, I still like some things about Dark Knight, but on my most recent re-watching I've realized I'm developing an intense dislike of it and now I'm trying to figure out why. And no, it's not because I don't "get" the movie, or it's too awesome for me, or any other crap argument like that. I saw it, I "got" it, now I'm finding that after all that and enjoying my first couple viewings, I suddenly don't like it anymore. As I said, I think multiple viewings remove the novelty and force me to examine it purely as a film, which reveals a whole host of small and medium-sized problems.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

"If nobody knows your identity, you can protect others without making any kind of sacrifice yourself, but still pretend you are being all noble."

I disagree about this statement in the movie. In fact, this exact idea was contested in the movie. First off, the entire underlying message of both movies is that Bruce has completely given in to his quest for vengeance. He has given up his whole identity and normal life to combat the corruption in Gotham. That his mask is actually Bruce, not Batman as they said at the end of the first. Second, he used the costume to entirely demonize Batman to the public. He acts like an arrogant heir as Bruce (genuis IMO) and demonized himself to the public otherwise. He sacrificed his identity and normal life to take lashings from the public to help. I would say he sacrificed quite a bit.

You may be right that Batman is the "real" Bruce, but that only proves he is a sociopath and idiot, that he is so tied to a single costume that he couldn't don a different one once the current one became less useful to him. Considering Batman's refusal to kill is well-known, I think it highly likely evildoers would consider this news about him killing (probably heard on TV) to be fake/a trick. Let us not forget ANOTHER trick Batman pulled with Gordon, a trick which would be revealed to all when Gordon returned to work. Besides, how does it hurt CRIMINALS if Dent is out of the picture? Wouldn't they assume Batman has become a criminal now, IF they even believed the news? That doesn't help Batman any.

If Batman was a professional, like Frank Castle or even Robin (Red X), he'd understand that costuming should help with what you need to do, not hinder it. If the Batman suit is no longer as useful since everyone hates him (and he uses police cooperation ALL THE TIME), he should ditch it for a different suit and pretend he's somebody else. Gordon might figure it out, but he'd play along.

You're entitled to dislike the movie and all but I disagree with this line and the 911 one. Any action flick out there could be skewed to be anti-terrorist propaganda crap. Heroes in movies are bad asses that don't negotiate with terrorist, they rip em a new one.

-Joker uses bombs. The Joker typically used lots of funny gadgets, now he uses standard 24-style bombs.
-Joker makes threatening videos and shows himself killing hostages and making demands.
-Joker tells Gotham, "Do what I want, or I will kill people."

That is the definition of terrorism. The movie repeatedly says stuff like, "Don't give in to terrorism." I'm paraphrasing, but pretty sure terrorism gets an actual mention or two in that context.

Also, heroes in movies often negotiate with terrorists. So you're wrong on that count. Maybe you meant superheroes, but we aren't talking about Superheroes. Well, not unless we're talking about the crappy Gotham Knight anime or the awesome Batman Beyond.

 

[Blindswordmaster]

Dear God, you have a differing opinion. Quick get a priest, he needs an exorcism!
In all seriousness though, where's that fucking holy water?!
I really liked the Dark Knight, I thought the acting was great, the directing was superb, and I really enjoyed the more mental Batman, as I always thought Batman was more cerebral than other superheros. But not everyone has to like the same thing. Though I don't agree with your opinion, I'll defend to the death your right to have it.

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

You were 15 when you saw it. That's pretty much the problem.

EDIT: I didn't mean this as an insult to 15 year olds, necessarily. I'm not sure my 15 year old self would have liked it and I doubt many of my friends at 15 would.

I loved The Dark Knight and I am 15...

 

[Julianking93]

*gasp* You don't like a movie that's popular??? How dare you!!!

OT, who the fuck cares? You didn't like it. Big deal. Lots of people liked it for whatever reason. Good script/Good acting/Joker.

That stuff didn't appeal to you in the context of the movie and you were bored.

That's it.

 

[Housebroken Lunatic]

Heath Ledger as The Joker pretty much does it for the film, because it was an awesome piece of acting on his part. The rest of the film however is kind of dull and boring, and Christian Bale is just downright ridiculous as batman.

So thanks to to Heath Ledger I still find the movie watchable, but in general it is kind of dull and uninteresting...

 

[TPiddy]

I don't know if DiCaprio could pull the role off or not. I'm just stating what the argument was from the other thread. Ledger wasn't well received when he was announced as Joker and I can only imagine that DiCaprio wouldn't be well received if he was announced as Riddler. I'd MUCH rather see Robin Williams play the part as a jaded older man who's extremely intelligent and very dark. He's done that before, in Insomnia, and it could work in the style I suggested in my second post very well without the silliness normally associated with Riddler.

Seconded... Or John Malkovich .

Brings me back to the Chris Evans as Captain America hate thread.