The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

[flyonthewall2983]

He was also in Smokin' Aces and had that going for him there too.

[colinr0380]

The Treatment interview with Christopher Nolan.

[swo17]

Nestor Carbonell just always looks like he's wearing eyeliner. See: "Lost," "The Tick," "Suddenly Susan."

Wait, I haven't seen The Dark Knight yet. Did they replace the character of Batman with Batmanuel? Now that I would pay to see.

[flyonthewall2983]

If I can swerve this conversation a bit, can I just say how glad I am that every note of music in the film is score, and that the end credits weren't accompanied by some bland modern alt-rock song which would pollute the airwaves on the radio once you leave the theater? It seemed like for a good several years, every summer blockbuster had this going for (or more likely against) it. I could be wrong about this (I've ignored pretty much every mainstream radio station/MTV I can in the last few years), but it seems like it's died down considerably since Batman Begins.

[Anhedionisiac]

Spoiler

Well we DID see the coin land face up, er, the face without the scratch marks, he's alive. Plus that's so common in comic books, the villain falls off something, they seem dead, they're back the next issue. They invested too much time in building that character to not have him back in the third, it's that much more payoff.

Spoiler

Hnh. Whether or not Dent's dead is a question that makes or breaks whatever poignancy the whole last-act shebang can lay claim to.
It's majorly obvious in retrospect but when I saw the movie, I never even questioned his death since not only was I conditioned to believe this sequel the setup to the next, the origin of TwoFace, so to speak, with the following installment being the rise (I should note this preconception owes as much to the conventions of the genre as to several pre-release interviews and articles. And, if you want to split hairs, not only was there no blood but the fall seemed about as steep as the one Maroni survived to the detriment of his legs.)
Shortly thereafter, however, I realized his being dead makes more sense dramatically: otherwise, the Dark Knight would not claim the sins of the White.
The pariah status of the protagonist would be only temporary if Two-Face lived on hidden. What real weight would there be in the way the scarred half is gently drawn aside so as to let Harvey Dent die not the way he did?
(As for the lack of blood... there's a marked absence of it in the film. A good example is the interrogation scene. For all the hullabaloo surrounding the beatdown Joker suffers at the hand of Batman, he hardly even nosebleeds. Plus, I guess they didn't want to hammer the point down. Weird, I know, since they sure hammered everything else into oblivion).

[Binker]

The lack of blood is most likely just Nolan keeping his PG-13 rating.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

Dent had his eye closed (the only one that could close). In the movies, if a character suffers a violent blow and falls with their eyes closed, they are not dead. If their eyes are open, then they're dead. You can actually use this to predict whether or not someone's going to come leaping back into frame in a "boo!" moment.

[flyonthewall2983]

Spoiler

There were cops surrounding the building, which tells me there was no way Harvey could have gotten out if he was alive. Plus he didn't have a super-duper motorcycle at his disposal like Batman did. Then we see a brief shot of the memorial service. He's dead, or at least I hope he is.

[rs98762001]

Two Face as a villain was epically uninteresting. What motivation could he possibly have for returning in a sequel?

[Steven H]

Two Face as a villain was epically uninteresting. What motivation could he possibly have for returning in a sequel?

I agree. I wasn't even all that interested in the Harvey Dent character. I remember thinking about two thirds of the way through "why am I watching a Batman movie about lawyers?" Wow, another Dent and the Mayor scene. Can't have enough of that. Certainly more interesting than Bale doing his rich guy schmoozing or globe trotting, right?

[Tom Hagen]

Oh come on, it was hardly a legal thriller. It wasn't like we had scene after scene of Harvey Dent conducting discovery or taking depositions. The only courtroom scene in the whole movie involved Dent wrestling a handgun away from a witness and punching him out.

Dent was an extremely interesting character for me, especially because of his relationship with the law and legitimate police authority, and his corresponding position vis-a-vis Batman. Ledger's Joker -- the performance, the nihilism, the audience's eerie knowledge about Ledger's death -- made the film memorable. But the screenplay's treatment of the fall of Harvey Dent made the film truly great. With Dent's fall, Batman becomes a genuinely tragic figure in Gotham City, shades of Michael Corleone promising to make the family legitimate within ten years. That's far more interesting dramatic territory for me than the comparatively reductive "we psychologically need each other" relationship between Batman and the Joker.

I agree that as a villain, Two Face can be relatively boring. A whole movie of Two Face doing his coin flip fatalism routine in Nolan's "serious" take on Batman would remind everyone of Anton Chigurh, and the film would suffer as a whole by comparison.

[rs98762001]

To qualify my above statement, I actually found the Harvey Dent character very interesting. It was only when he became Two Face that the whole thing became extremely predictable and dull.

[Darth Lavender]

ADMIN EDIT: spoilers throughout

Finally saw the movie myself, and all in all liked it.
I've been avoiding this thread the last week ago on the tiny chance of unintended spoilers, so hope I'm not rehashing what's been said...

About the Harvey Dent death scene; at the time, I just naturally assumed he survived (all that talk about him being the main villian for Batman 3) And, if that is a death scene, it's pathetic as all heck.
After a little thought, I suppose this probably was intended to leave open the possibility of a sequel (Eckart's contract does apparently stipulate the possibility of a second film, but that might be just as a flash-back or something) while also serving as an (in)sufficient closure to the Two-Face character if he's omitted from the sequel.
As a villian, I actually found the Joker to be a bit of a 'one trick pony' by the end. He doesn't actually wear out his welcome, but, by the end of Dark Knight, he was starting to remind me a little bit of Philip Seymour Hoffman in "Mission: Impossible III" Starts off as a thoroughly disturbing villian, but just by continuing to do the same thing throughout, ends up bordering on a joke by the end. Joker he didn't QUITE reach that level, but he would as lead villian in another movie (he definitely needs SOME kind of acknowledgement. Wether it means recasting Ledger, using some b-roll footage, or just using some Joker cards and dialogue)

But to Dent's death, about how he could survive; Nolan already set up the "surviving from a fall" thing with the mob-boss, so that's fine. If he does return, I'd see him as being discovered in some deep dark prison in Arkam, as Gordon & Batman's dirty little secret. Makes perfect sense (after all, they're obviously not going to kill him, and they can't very well leave him to run around being crazy) and works great dramatically (perhaps have 3's main villian discover and release him about half-way through the movie) (And, if he does return, it would be nice to see some natural development of the makeup. Maybe have the exposed eyeball slowly dry up or something without an eyelid to lubricate it (or even just acknowledge that by giving Two-Face a quirk of constantly applying eye-drops. Love the make-up design, but with this new, realistic, Batman and all his scientifically explained gadgets, it would be nice to have a little more detail on the difficulties of having an exposed skull (do you suppose there's affirmative action groups for that?))
I don't really see him just running away. Aside from the police perimeter, there's the obvious fact that Gordon and Batman still go through with the "blame Batman" plan. Which would be awfully pointless if the White Knight is still running around as a crazy, homicidal faceless person.
So, yeah, the the fact that they go through with the plan suggests he's either dead and buried or thoroughly and secretly kept under lock and key (maybe we'll even get a "Man in the Iron Mask" type situation)

As for the Dent's dead idea... It would have to be a stunningly pathetic moment in an otherwise excellent movie. A live Two-Face ends the film on a thoroughly unsatisfying, but acceptable, cliffhanger. A dead Two-Face means that after 2 hours of scenes which each feel like a Third Act, the ACTUAL climax is decidedly weak. Ra's Al Gul at least got a pretty thorough death in Batman Begins, while I hated the way Batman tried to justify killing him it at least left the main villian dead beyond a reasonable doubt (Although, rewatching the scene, I would still argue that (at least in the Batman universe) once the train crashes through the wall and starts skidding along the ground in that underground parking garage, it would have been easy enough for Ra's to just jump out through the same opening as Batman) Of course, the earlier Ra's (Ken Watanabe) got a death almost as pathetic as Dent, but that's because audiences knew Ra's would be the main villian and were supposed to expect Watanabe's return later in the movie. But, Two-Face's death has all kinds of things wrong with it. I understand the lack of blood, but how about having Batman or Gordon check for a pulse? Even when Gordon has his fake death, somebody at least checked his pulse. Combine the fact that we've already had one or two fake deaths in this series (if you count Neeson's Ra's as faked) and that the movie specifically set up the survival rate for falling from that height, Two-Face's death should have been as thorough as can be. Crushed by boulders or dropped in lava kind of thorough. If you've ever seen the last episode of X-Files they SPOILER bring back the Cigarette-Smoking Man then have him die (properly) at the end of the episode, and they actually do a thorough job of it (he get's blown up with a missile, but the skin being blown away and the skeleton crumbling is shown in some detail) Even if that's excessive for a Batman movie, my point about at least checking the guy's pulse remains.
Then, continuing why this is such a pathetic scene if Two Face really died, there's no attempt to address the issue of Batman having basically killed him. As with Ra's, I think it's fine for Batman to kill someone in these movies IF the movie actually addresses what a deviation this is from Batman's moral code. Begins gave us a lame bit of reasoning "I don't have to save you" but Two-Face's death didn't even address that.

Further thoughts after reading more of this thread;
I actually thought the closing monologue was fine and quite ambiguous. It seems to be saying that the 'place' for Batman is as, technically, an enemy of the people, even if he's acting for their own good (and even if his actions are successful) With all the political comparisons, it seems the big issue re: Batman's actions versus almost any 'totalitarian' Political Leader, is that people vote for political leaders (even Hitler, although there was a lot of manipulation, etc. going on, too) Up to a point, society is supporting Batman (police not taking his apprehension seriously, etc.) but then, at the end, society is doing all they can to stop Batman. IF Batman's actions are wrong (and, I think, that remains a very palpable 'IF' in this movie, as it should) then they are solely his actions after that ending, done wether society wants his help or not.
That, thematically speaking, I think was an excellent ending. Nolan has played around with the issues of society giving their freedoms away for 152 minutes, and done a darn interesting job of it. Then, it's time to move on to other subjects and now Batman is, intrigingly, like the Joker in being entirely subject to his own moral code.

[HugoDeVries]

After what seemed like an endless wait, a whole week! Just got back in from a UK IMAX screening and as a life time Bat fan, with display cabinets of Bato’billia and endless boxes of comics to prove it, i can say i heartily loved the film, with just one BUT!

Nolan, for both his Bat movies, deserves infinite respect and credit for playing up the book aspect of the source material rather than the comic element, for taking comic books seriously and treating the years upon years of stunning writing and visuals within them as not something merely to be ignored after swiping the brand characters but as a resource to be mined. Through the film there was numerous elements, details and nods lifted straight from the comicbooks, from the clever playing with expectations (you think Dent gets scarred in the court room!), straight lifts (Joker naming his victims in advance, Batman creating a surveillance computer to track people) and homage’s (Joker beating a hero with a crowbar, he’s more successful next time!) but most of all the depth of the character. The Batman comics are always at there strongest when they deal with psychological and moral complexity, hell just look at the motives of the hero! And this is possibly the most thoughtful summer blockbuster ever, aside from the superb truck sequence this was almost a movie where the action sequences slowed things down! It was the characters and the concepts that really swung the thing into life, so many great talking scenes for so many characters and not even just the ‘name’ ones, the cop and the joker was just great. But even in silent moments the characters shone through, my two favourite moments of the the film where short silent bits, the Joker walking away from the hospital (ok lots of bangs i know) and Alfred burning the letter, everything about these characters, there depth, feelings and thoughts was conveyed in an instant.

In the conveying of all these elements the other key praise Nolan deserves is for bringing together and for driving one of the best cast and best acted ‘blockbuster’ films ever. Wisely hiring actors rather than stars (urgh!) and then getting the best out of them there seems not a role that is not superbly performed. So much so that it is almost unfair to single out anyone performance, it’s a pity there is not an ensemble Oscar. Yes Heath Ledgers Joker is brilliant and could easily dazzle others off the screen, but then that is the showy role, yet look how good the people around him become in response. Both Caine and Oldman steal every scene they are in, watching Gordon first talking to the Joker in that cell made me wish it was a three-way chat scene that followed, hell even Eric Roberts deserves a nod!

But now the BUT, there was one weak link, one flaw, one mishandling of the years of source material and character. Sadly that link was Two Face, NOT Harvey Dent, NOT Aaron Eckhart but Two Face. Unlike previous posters here i would have the disagree Two Face is a MAJOR Bat villain possibly even more so than the Joker. Yes some writers have just dealt with him as the number 2 obsessed coin flipping villain but at his best (Faces, Dark Knight returns, both Sale/Loeb stories etc) he represents what good bat villains do well, psychological conflict. In the comics Batman really has three Big Villians, Ras Al Ghul and the Joker represent polar extremes of Batmans world, order and chaos, a man with a perfect world vision and the extreme lengths to achieve it and the other a man of total darkness and chaos. Two Face however represents these conflicts within one man, the same conflicts batman has, except Dent is willing to give into either side of his, human, nature, justice or criminality his only control over them is not a moral or physical one but a mere flip of a coin. He is Batman’s friends and his enemy, he has seen what both sides in the war for Gotham wish to achieve and has decided to join both.

Yet the movie makes him a almost a throwaway villain, rather as expected setting him up for the third film, Dent versuses the mobs and the cops, Two Face as judge and Jury to the whole of Gotham, the Joker tried to show Batman the chaos in the world, this time Two face would show him the consequence and guilt. Instead he just shoots a few people and gets pushed of a building, the big ideas getting skimmed over rather than explored.

That just left me with a twinge of disappoint, but considering most summer movies leave me a gut wrenching twist of vomit and hate, it’s a pretty minor complaint for a pretty great movie!

One final worry though is what next!, Batmans major threats have been used his other foes straying more into the colourful COMIC book territory, criminals rather than mind game playing city threatening super foes and temptation should be resisted for either a recasting or a mimicking of certain popular role, the next villain should be played very differently, a cold calculating Riddler perhaps, or a Freudian Bat fetishizing Hugo Strange, just remember you don’t want to be the guy who follows the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show!

[kaujot]

I've always enjoyed the Condimentian and the Pack Rat from the Animated Series as villains. Yes, they were brainwashed by the Joker, but still.

(though his reason for brainwashing them was stupid )

[Steven H]

Dent was an extremely interesting character for me, especially because of his relationship with the law and legitimate police authority, and his corresponding position vis-a-vis Batman. Ledger's Joker -- the performance, the nihilism, the audience's eerie knowledge about Ledger's death -- made the film memorable. But the screenplay's treatment of the fall of Harvey Dent made the film truly great. With Dent's fall, Batman becomes a genuinely tragic figure in Gotham City, shades of Michael Corleone promising to make the family legitimate within ten years. That's far more interesting dramatic territory for me than the comparatively reductive "we psychologically need each other" relationship between Batman and the Joker.

I mostly agree and admit I was being a bit flip. Dent's transformation just seemed so unbelievable to me. At that point I felt "cheated" in a way, because in building up such a serious minded character, the flaw seemed boring in comparison (and retroactively made my remembrance of his earlier scenes less interesting.)

As far as the psychologically important aspects of the film, I think everyone was just playing the straight man to the Joker, and the film would've worked on that level with or without the "two face" character (which, essentially, was a far more cliched version of the "we need each other relationship" that Batman and the Joker had.) I guess what I'm trying to say is I thought the whole thing was contrived, but at least had fun during the Joker/Batman parts. Oh well.

[flyonthewall2983]

Oh come on, it was hardly a legal thriller. It wasn't like we had scene after scene of Harvey Dent conducting discovery or taking depositions. The only courtroom scene in the whole movie involved Dent wrestling a handgun away from a witness and punching him out.

Dent was an extremely interesting character for me, especially because of his relationship with the law and legitimate police authority, and his corresponding position vis-a-vis Batman. Ledger's Joker -- the performance, the nihilism, the audience's eerie knowledge about Ledger's death -- made the film memorable. But the screenplay's treatment of the fall of Harvey Dent made the film truly great. With Dent's fall, Batman becomes a genuinely tragic figure in Gotham City, shades of Michael Corleone promising to make the family legitimate within ten years. That's far more interesting dramatic territory for me than the comparatively reductive "we psychologically need each other" relationship between Batman and the Joker.

I agree that as a villain, Two Face can be relatively boring. A whole movie of Two Face doing his coin flip fatalism routine in Nolan's "serious" take on Batman would remind everyone of Anton Chigurh, and the film would suffer as a whole by comparison.

Good to see that I'm not the only one of the opinion that Aaron's performance was stud throughout.

Spoiler

The thing that really became of interest is that in the end, Harvey's vendetta against the injustice against him is in fact parallel to Bruce's initial primal need for justice against those responsible for the death of his parents in the first movie. That is something you don't see in these kinds of films at all, a villain with a valid motive for his actions in the face of the cards he is dealt.

And if they do acknowledge in the next film that Harvey is dead, a Rachel-as-Catwoman (assuming of course, that Chris can find a way around her "death" in the movie as well) scenario seems all the more likely. Her basic axe to grind is that Batman/Bruce killed the man that she really loved and agreed to marry him in their final moment together.

[rwaits]

According to IMDB users The Dark Knight is the #1 greatest film of all time.

[kaujot]

Pointed out earlier.

[exte]

According to IMDB users The Dark Knight is the #1 greatest film of all time.

What is remarkable is how many people have voted that way already; not a week after its release it had over 125,000 votes... That's saying a lot, actually.

347,115 The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
297,236 Pulp Fiction (1994)
297,139 The Godfather (1972)
296,163 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
281,121 The Matrix (1999)
266,204 Fight Club (1999)
265,254 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
249,263 Star Wars (1977)
245,324 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
219,253 American Beauty (1999)
208,545 Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
207,324 Forrest Gump (1994)
201,279 The Usual Suspects (1995)
200,407 Gladiator (2000)
200,127 Saving Private Ryan (1998)
197,551 Schindler's List (1993)
195,826 Se7en (1995)
193,458 Memento (2000)
187,278 Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
184,665 Batman Begins (2005)
182,530 The Sixth Sense (1999)
180,906 Braveheart (1995)
179,240 The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
179,141 Sin City (2005)
175,375 Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
174,213 The Departed (2006)
169,394 The Godfather: Part II (1974)
165,764 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
163,918 Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
162,538 Goodfellas (1990)
161,988 Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983)
154,436 American History X (1998)
153,292 Reservoir Dogs (1992)
152,351 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
149,808 V for Vendetta (2005)
149,559 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
148,392 Donnie Darko (2001)
146,180 The Dark Knight (2008)

Considering the last film to garner this much praise with this many votes was The Departed, and that won Best Picture... Now Dark Knight is only 30k votes away from that figure, and it's only the second weekend.

[flyonthewall2983]

I've been a member there going on 6 years now, and kept a good gauge of the top 250 over the years. I don't think there ever has been a movie that was released that went straight to #1, right off the bat. That is what impresses me the most. Love imdb or hate it, that is something to be in awe of.

Speaking of which, it hit another milestone this weekend. Incredible.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

I think the only thing to be in awe of in the case of this film is that there seem to be people willing to give their lives in defense of it. The fact that its #1 on imdb is no surprise to me; the buzz around this has been building since the release of the first film. Ledger's death cemented the deal (I'm not knocking his performance, mind you...), creating this aura of something forbidden for the fans to eat up (the fact that some people said his performing the Joker was the cause of his depression was a laughably tasteless marketing ploy). This series also sets itself up to be something more than just a run-of-the-mill superhero bang-em-up; it believes in its own mythology.

The fact that some idiot fanboys decide to create multiple accounts just to give the film a 10 rating is no surprise.

I liked the film, mainly for Ledger's performance and the nuanced cinematography. However, the film's portentous tone lets viewers think they are watching something more than they are; its a bit deceptive. This supposedly realistic film is full of iconic posturing, comic book cliches (gee, is the Joker really gonna drop her?) and flimsy storytelling (did we really need to go to china, considering how little that part actually plays in the second half of the story). The rambling storytelling is laziness on the part of the Nolans; its not like Cassavetes directed this thing.

Greatest film ever. Gimme a break.

[exte]

lives...no surprise...cemented...aura ...forbidden...laughably tasteless...mythology.

...some idiot...multiple accounts...no surprise.

...nuanced...portentous...deceptive. ..supposedly...iconic posturing...flimsy storytelling...rambling.

Why so serious?

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

why not?

[exte]

I will say this: there is something to be said for event films. I've never gone to the movies with my father. Many times with my mom, but not with my dad. The only time I was ever asked or it ever came up was with Titanic. By that point it had made number one of all time, 11 Oscars, the whole ballyhoo. The hype was at it's zenith, sixteen number one weekends in a row, etc.... And he asked. And I hesitated. Titanic? With my father? Well, there went that. And to this day I have yet to go out to the movies with the man. And I'm an aspiring filmmaker...

So whatever it may be, I kind of do marvel at what we're witnessing here on some levels. And if he asks me again to go see this, there won't be any hesitation this time.