Why So Serious? Dark Knight raises massive cash

[Martok]

LittleGrizzly & Geoffrey S: Ironically, the hyper-intensive hype for The Dark Knight (especially in regard to Ledger's performance) caused me to be quite cynical towards the movie. I was actually *expecting* nothing more than perhaps a slightly above-average film. So for me, the whole experience turned out to be a very pleasant surprise, since I had greatly-lowered expectations.

Not that the The Dark Knight lives up to all the hype -- no movie could possibly measure up to the attention this one has received. But I honestly feel that it does deserve *most* of it, which is still a hell of a lot more than I was prepared to expect.

[Ferret]

I didn't even know about the film until I was at the cinema, planning on seeing hancock (which wasn't on for another 6 hours...). I liked it though, even if it was too long and had a very badly done false ending...

[Marshal Murat]

I thought it was a perfect thrill.

The movie was pretty good, and I can't complain too much. But I will complain.

1. It was two movies in one, for me. The sky-pull thing/Hong-Kong trip seemed to deserve a movie within itself.

2. The movie seemed to be a 'constant climax' (as a reviewer put it) where you have thrill+thrill+thrill+thrill combined into a non-stop action film. Good for the movie, sometimes bad.

3. There were some cliches. Joker popping out of the trash bag? No surprise. Bus rolling OUT of a bank and into a line of buses was surprising that it wasn't noticed.

[KarlXII]

Happy to provide

[Quirinus]

I have to agree somewhat with Geoffrey S (my God, at last someone who doesn't think the movie is awesome!), even though I wouldn't go quite as far. It was definitely a good film-- Heath Ledger's Joker alone is worth the price of admission. But it's also too long, and the turning of Harvey Dent deserves an entire movie, not ignominously sidelined into a sub-plot. The capture-Lau-from-Hong-Kong part was superfluous, and a little boring. Why can't we have more Joker in place of that? And the grim, gritty atmosphere that made Gotham almost a character of its own in Batman Begins is mostly absent here. Instead, Gotham is now some generic city.

Maggie Gyllenhall is excellent as Rachel, whenever I think of Rachel Dawes now, it will always be her, not Katie Holmes. But I feel that Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are seriously underused. Christian Baleis effective in his own scenes, but like Michael Keaton before him, he sorta fades into the background when the Joker comes on, which shouldn't happen. The Joker would have been a more accurate title.

One nice Batman scene, though, was the final confrontation is the Joker, that final monologue the Joker delivers upside-down. One could almost hear Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul intoning "Have you finally learned to do what is neccesary?" The movie is like that, some uber-cool scenes swamped by uninspiring ones, IMO. In a nutshell, demented performance by Ledger, but otherwise no part of the sequel matches the quality of the first by a long shot.

[Ferret]

I definately agree about Gotham becoming a generic city, there was none of the character like in the last film, it could have easily been a normal US city, though I suppose this may represent the fact that batman had scared a lot of criminals out of business, giving the city a chance to recover. Still the first one plus the joker would have been better