Let the Feast of Fools Begin
Troy was able to get tickets to an advanced screening of The Dark Knight, and he was kind enough to take me. I’ve been waiting for this movie for a long time, as many of you well know. I’m going to do my best to give you a review without spoilers.
Heath Ledger was amazing. I couldn’t even see Ledger through the makeup, he was so absorbed in the role. He was absolutely chilling in the way the Joker is supposed to be. I’m glad they don’t really give us a look at the origin of the Joker (More correctly, they give us several different origins to drive the point home that his “multiple choice” past doesn’t really matter.)
Aaron Eckhart absolutely defined Harvey Dent. He’s an amazing actor, and he pulled off both sides of the role perfectly. I’d say he was, possibly, even more impressive than Ledger’s performance as the Joker. I was surprised at how much they did with this character. I think he may have had as much screen time as Batman himself.
Christian Bale, for once, didn’t really impress me. Batman was actually the weak point of the film. He really seems to have lost the drive from the first movie. Of course, he’s still passionate about what he’s doing, but somehow it’s different this time. Bale’s Batman voice is kind of embarrassing, to be honest. I think it must be the difficulty of faking an American accent coupled with the difficulty of trying to mask his own voice and sound menacing. He pulls off Bruce Wayne perfectly, but his Batman still needs work. I feel he did a better job in the first movie.
The movie was definitely long. It seemed like two movies, really: On one hand, you have a movie about Batman fighting the Joker, and on the other hand you have a movie about Harvey Dent fighting the Joker. It was worth time spent watching it, but I did feel a little exhausted afterward.
This movie had a few weak points. In addition to the ones listed above, I also found some of the Bat-gadgetry to go a bit beyond my realm of believability. Also, the Scarecrow is only in the movie for about five minutes, with maybe only about five lines. I understand this movie is about Harvey and the Joker, but I would have liked to see a little more of Cillian Murphy’s amazing performance. Hopefully he’ll make a good come-back in the third movie, assuming there is one.
I’m not going to tell you to see this movie. If you were even remotely interesting in this movie, you’re going to see it. If you weren’t interested at all, I doubt there’s anything I can say to change your mind.
“All it takes is one bad day to reduce the sanest man alive to lunacy. That’s how far the world is from where I am. Just one bad day. You had a bad day once. Am I right? You had a bad day and everything changed”





















