It's certainly tied with WALL*E for best flick I saw in a theater this year so far...but then all I have seen is those two, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and Hellboy 2.

Hmmm... Or Phillip Seymour Hoffman...

Hoffman! YES!!

On another note:
This series desperately needs a female presence who can be taken seriously. Nolan runs a risk of becoming the Michael Mann of superhero films.

SDG wrote:
: Given the apparent death of Jim Gordon in this film, that might not be entirely out of the question.

Yes -- and that earlier plot element was somewhat rushed, and lacked a "teaser", similar to what this new plot element would lack. However, I do think pulling that trick TWICE in the same film would be a bit of a problem.

: P.S. Re. the Bale thing... good grief.

Given that we know nothing of the incident, it is impossible to say who would be at greater fault here: the one Bale for allegedly doing whatever he is alleged to have done, or the other Bales for calling in the cops on a family member. (I have seen family members call the cops on other family members, and I do not for one second assume that the person who makes the call is always in the right, or the saner person involved.) I do find Jeffrey Wells's points intriguing, though, that it didn't appear to be a matter of great urgency to anyone involved (the cops let Christian go to the London premiere, the other Bales eventually filed a report in some other part of the country, etc.).

Overstreet wrote:
: Hoffman! YES!!

Too American. All the villains so far have been Irish (Cillian Murphy, Liam Neeson), Japanese (Ken Watanabe), English (Tom Wilkinson) or Australian (Heath Ledger). Well, I guess Aaron Eckhart is American, but he's a hero for most of this film, so ...

: This series desperately needs a female presence who can be taken seriously. Nolan runs a risk of becoming the Michael Mann of superhero films.

Or the Francis Ford Coppola. The women in the Godfather films weren't particularly strong or serious, Diane Keaton and Talia Shire notwithstanding (actually, Shire does get kind of serious in The Godfather Part III, but Keaton is little more than a stern and/or earnest moralizer similar to Rachel Dawes).

I think they pretty much HAVE to bring Catwoman into the picture next time, if only because she's a "plausible", "realistic" villain (unlike, say, Poison Ivy, who wouldn't fit very well into the Nolanverse), and because they need a strong female character as you indicated. Plus, it could be an interesting way to explore Batman's flirtation with the dark side, having him flirt with an actual villain (instead of being mentored by a villain in the first film and taunted by a "you complete me" villain in the second).

This made me rethink the worthiness of the Penguin as a villain.

Oh my word, do we have a hit on our hands.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, The Dark Knight isn't the first film to clear $150 million in a single weekend. Spider-Man 3 did that just last year.

But Spider-Man 3 -- which had a bigger first Saturday than The Dark Knight did -- made only $10.3 million on its first Monday. Whereas The Dark Knight made $24.5 million yesterday. More details here.

Granted, that's only the fourth-best Monday of all time. But the top three Mondays -- held by Spider-Man 2, Indiana Jones 4 and Pirates of the Caribbean 3 -- were all holidays (the day after July 4 in the first film's case, Memorial Day in the other two films' cases). Whereas yesterday was ... what, exactly?

Wow... That puts it, according to that chart, at $182 million. According to IMDB, Batman Begins ended with a $205 million domestic gross. The Dark Knight is going to easily surpass that... Quite possibly within it's first 7 days of release.

I'm not sure at what point they decided to kill her character off, but apparently Katie Holmes was offered the role, with a $1 Million pay raise over the first film.


If you want to see some ill-concieved Batman humor that actually fits very nicely into where the character is headed at the end of this film, you should read Frank Miller and Jim Lee's All Star Batman & Robin, The Boy Wonder. Basically, it is set within Miller's own Batman universe(which begins with Year One, and continues through The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again) and Miller's premise is that Batman's relentless war on crime, coupled with his complete isolation from society, has turned him into a deranged maniac who cripples criminals and wages war with the police. Robin is the balancing force that eventually brings him back to a stable sanity. The characterization of Batman in this book is so over-the-top that I still can't tell if it is an intentional parody of Miller's own work(and the awful work that derived from it), or an unintentional parody by an out of touch writer.



As they used to say, in comics, "only Bucky stays dead." Nevermind the fact that Bucky is not only alive and well(as of now), but is also one of the most exciting characters in current Marvel comics. Just remember that anything is possible. Maybe they spirited Dent away to Arkham in secret. Remember Eric Roberts earlier joked that a two story fall wasn't enough to kill someone. I wouldn't count out a return of Two-Face. Personally, I would prefer that they keep the Joker out of this franchise, at least as a direct presence. Maybe bring him back as a spectral figure, as in Grant Morrision's Arkham Asylum, or have him as an unseen infulence, as in the Joker Gangs that populated the Gotham City of Batman Beyond, even thought the Joker himself was assumed dead.

And I think that Poison Ivy could be made into a serious character quite easily. Imagine a bio-terrorist, perhaps with an ecological motivation not dissimilar to Uma Thruman's version from Batman & Robin. Only, you know, serious.

EDIT-Hid a spoiler. Sorry, I missed one.

Bobbin,

USE SPOILER TEXT!!

Sorry, missed one. Fixed now.

Bobbin, the paragraph that mentions Bucky still containts spoilers regarding Dent's fate.

Actually, with Rachel dead that does kind of leave Batman open to new romantic entanglements -- just the right thing for Catwoman. But I still just can't imagine it. The Joker, Scarecrow, RAG, and Two Face all have a certain earthiness that seems appropriate for Nolan's Gotham. Goyer has said that he might very will pick a more obscure villain. In Batman's case it's really The Joker and every one else.

Of course, they might use the third film already contracted to do JLA...

I think Catwoman could fit into Nolan's Bat-universe quite well, as long as he looks to Tourneur's Cat People for inspiration instead of a black leather catsuit. Not that there's anything wrong with a black leather catsuit, in and of itself.

As far as The Dark Knight goes, I thought it was a very solid and satisfying film. The film raised some big questions about complex moral issues, and the impact of them won't be fully seen until future films in the series. There's nothing else I can add about Heath Ledger's performance, it was incredible. Just enough off-kilter to keep the audience unsettled.

I thought the storylines for both the Joker and Two-Face were done well, and an appropriate amount of time was given to each of them to fit into the overall storyline of the film.

Hmm.



(Spoilers not just for The Dark Knight, but for The Bourne Supremacy.)

In how many other franchises does the main love interest die in the second film? Bourne, of course.

Sounds like a question for Captain Chattaway.

Okay, I saw this film Saturday night (late...late Saturday night) and plan to rewatch it in IMAX sometime soon.

I'm still frantically gathering thoughts, the first of which is generally, HOLY CRAP!.

I'll try to piece together some of what follows that so this makes sense.

I'm a huge, huge Batman fan. Always have been. And that being said, the four '80s-'90s Batman films disgusted me. Even Nicholson. I venture to say I hated him in that role. He just...wasn't the Joker. Not for anybody who grew up with my strain of the comics. So when they initially announced Ledger for the role of the Joker, I was relieved to think that finally, someone was going to portray this side of Batman's story properly.

The movie blew me away. I braced myself for something merely dark, for something I'd tolerate because it was Batman-related and not completely horrible. I avoided reviews (thought not spoilers, oddly enough-- I just didn't want to know what other people thought of the movie before I got to think about it; I'm sorry to everyone that reviews for a living or as a hobby). But I wasn't expecting the depth of story, the reality and richness of the characters. I forgot that I was watching Ledger, or Eckhart, or Bale, or even Caine. I still forget that it was Gary Oldman. I believed that they were their characters. Which brings me to note that I was not bothered, as I've heard some were, by Ledger's constant licking of his lips. The constant attention to the scars on his mouth seemed realistic-- like someone who still traces a scar from surgery, or toys with a piercing.

One of the big things I got out of the movie, though, was something sanshiro_sugata noted when we were leaving the theater: Batman's role as a Christ-figure. I even realized at church the following morning that Batman's moment of doubt, in which he asks for Alfred's advice and is simply told to "Endure," is rather like his own Gethsemane scene. In a way, it was rather encouraging and inspiring to begin making a lot of connections, even if they weren't intentional. From Gotham's rejection of the very one who was really doing the most to protect them, to Batman's own dedication to what he believes is right-- even when that is most challenged, even when he's reached the point where few would blame him if he gave up on that belief and killed just one person intentionally.

There was a lot I've already gotten out of this film, a lot that I'm still thinking about, and it's something I need to see again. But it's something I'm going to ask people to see, I'm going to keep talking about, not just because it's a good film-- but because there is so much potential here for conversation that goes beyond just petty details and superficial humor or action sequences.

Wow. I almost feel like I should thank someone. Everyone involved. Man.

Really? I don't see how Catwoman lacks the "earthiness" that you see in the other Nolan-verse villains. If anything, she's probably more realistic and grounded than either Scarecrow or Two Face. I say, that's the way to go. Penguin (as a simple gangster, owning the Iceberg Lounge, etc.) I guess is realistic, but just too goofy for these films. Catwoman has a tragic anti-hero arc to her, but then again, I'm talking comic book Catwoman, not Burton Catwoman.

And who dares to step into Pfeiffer's paws?

Who would you cast?

Overstreet wrote:
: (Spoilers not just for The Dark Knight, but for The Bourne Supremacy.)
: In how many other franchises does the main love interest die in the second film? Bourne, of course.

Oh. Hmmm.


Those are the first examples that come to mind, and none of them are really any good. But I'll probably be pondering this question for a while.

: And who dares to step into Pfeiffer's paws?

Keep in mind that Pfeiffer was stepping into Annette Bening's paws. Bening had the role -- Billy Crystal even made a joke of it when he introduced Bening at the Oscars in '90 or '91 -- but then Warren Beatty went and knocked her up, so someone else had to take the role. And that someone else turned out to be Pfeiffer. Rowrrr.

: Who would you cast?

I honestly don't know how we can answer those questions right now, given how singular Nolan's vision for the Batman franchise has been, and given the unique spin he has put on these characters. There have been a few different Catwomen over the years, depending on the writer and the medium, and since we don't know what Nolan would do with this particular character (would she be an ex-hooker, like the Catwoman envisioned by Frank Miller in Batman: Year One, the comic that inspired Batman Begins?), I don't think we'd really have a clue who would be "right" for the part.

livingeleven wrote:
: I avoided reviews (thought not spoilers, oddly enough-- I just didn't want to know what other people thought of the movie before I got to think about it; I'm sorry to everyone that reviews for a living or as a hobby).

Hey, as long as you read the reviews AFTER you saw the film, that's okay! Reviews that are only good BEFORE you see the film are really no good at all.

Halle Barry?

There isn't much in the way of talented blonde film actresses in the 24-32 age range out there, is there? Chloe Sevigny comes to mind but she doesn't seem right for the role at all. I really can't think of anyone I've been impressed with that meets those criteria offhand.


These paragraphs are a great example of how everyone goes to ridiculous lengths to try to interpret things through their own political viewpoint. I sense a kind of patheticness in this quest. It was the same in college... I noticed that whenever someone was really picky about music, everyone tried to get that person to approve of their own favorite bands... as if favorite bands and viewpoints need validation from some completely external and unrelated place before they're worth liking.

I can think of two things that stood out to me as being explicitly political in this film, and neither of them necessitates a neo-conservative view. The first was a dinner guest at the party uttering the phrase "We're not intimidated by thugs", if I remember it correctly. This stood out to me because it seemed to be an intentional echo of a Bush speech (immediately following 9/11 I believe*) where he stated: "We will hold our principles of human rights and human dignity and freedom of worship. We're not going to let anybody frighten us from our great love of freedom. The citizens will not be intimidated by thugs and assassins." (... to which I always mentally add "That's the government's job.") Add the revelation earlier in this thread that the line was spoken by a real-life senator and we have an explicitly politicized moment in the film, but how does it require a neoconservative interpretation?

The second thing that stood out was the strong (or was it?) anti-spying stance. Is Bruce Wayne at all like Bush here? He sees it as a necessary and temporary evil. My understanding is that Bush and neo-conservatives see it as necessary, but neither temporary nor evil.

There are references to terrorism, sure. Can't anyone make a film about terrorism without people thinking it's a treatise on politics these days? It's to the point where I almost expect people to tell me that Air Force One was about 9/11, despite coming out 4 years prior.


* (Edit: I looked up the speech and it was given in 2005 in response to some bombings in London.)

Oh, let's jump waay off the deep end: Tilda Swinton or maybe Jennifer Connelly.

One of the things I've enjoyed about these films has been the unconventional casting, except for Bale. Most of the other principals have been wonderful surprises, against type, too. IF Catwoman were the villain, I'm guessing they'd pick someone no one would hav guessed, and that it would turn out to be a wonderful choice.

Why does she have to be blonde? Two Face certainly isn't blonde, but Eckhart carried the role. (I would have cast someone like Eric Roberts, actually...)

Agreed. We tried to cast a Catwoman for these films last week with my brothers, and it was tough. I'm sure they will go with a completely unconventional casting choice.

Agreed again that she need not be blonde (Miller's Catwoman in Year One certainly isn't, in fact she looks almost Hispanic or Mediterranean to me).

And I also agree that they wouldn't go with her as a straight villain per se.

Anyway, good stuff. I've got a plane to Asia to catch. Hopefully I'll be able to chime in again by Friday.

I hadn't thought of Jennifer Connelly. Considering what she pulled off in Requiem For a Dream, she'd be great. She's beautiful and she has the acting chops. I was thinking of Selma Blair for the same reasons. It would have to be an actress who could pull off being seductive and at the same time show that she was traumatized by her past in keeping with what Peter called "the Nolanverse".

In a sort-of-similar vein...

- - -

The Dark Knight: A Better Class Of Criminal?
"This town deserves a better class of criminal," Heath Ledger announces as the Joker in the new Batman film, Dark Knight. The caped crusader, police captain Jim Gordon and district attorney Harvey Dent set out to stop the Joker. Much of the film is dedicated to exploring what kind of criminal and what kind of hero Gotham City deserves.
Everyone now knows that Batman is a kind of antihero, a "dark knight" who is allegedly a better hero than Gotham deserves but exactly the one it needs. But what about the Batman's alter-ero, billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne? Careful attention to the Dark Knight and its predecessor film, Batman Begins, seems to show that Wayne might be exactly the "better class of criminal" that the Joker describes. . . .
Wayne's criminality is exactly the sort readers of DealBreaker are all too familiar with. He seems to be a white-collar criminal, engaging in the kind of corporate crimes that attract our real-life two-faced prosecutors. He takes corporate resources to pursue his own interests, uses underhanded means to acquire a majority stake in Wayne Enterprises after encouraging an initial public offering, and intimidates a potential whistle-blower. . . .
John Carney, Dealbreaker, July 21

- - -

Also, check out this essay from the man who literally wrote the book on nihilism in popular culture:

- - -

Christopher Nolan’s Achievement: The Dark Knight
What makes Nolan’s latest film such a success is not, however, Ledger’s compelling presentation of evil, on which critics have focused their attention, but the way in which he uses that character to bring out the depth and complex goodness of the other characters in the film, including Batman. The title of the film is not The Joker but The Dark Knight. . . .
Beyond good and evil, The Joker is off the human scale. In preparation for the role, Ledger studied the voices of ventriloquist dummies aiming for a chilling effect in which the voice itself sounds “disembodied.” Ledger and Nolan looked at Francis Bacon paintings to try to capture the look of “human decay and corruption.” As in William Peter Blatty’s definitive depiction of demonic evil in The Exorcist, so too here—the demon’s target is us, to make us believe that we are “bestial, ugly, and not worthy of redemption.” . . .
The Joker espouses a nihilist philosophy concerning the arbitrariness of the code of morality in civilized society; it is but a thin veneer, a construct intended for our consolation. If you tear away at the surface, “civilized people will eat each other.” As The Joker puts it, “madness is like gravity; all it takes is a little push.” In a wonderfully comic take on a Nietzschean sentiment, he sums up his beliefs: “Whatever does not kill you makes you stranger.” His character also illustrates the parasitic status of evil and nihilism. A thoroughgoing nihilist could not muster the energy to destroy or create. As The Joker puts it at one point, he’s like the dog chasing a car; he has no idea what he would do if he caught it. . . .
If in certain prominent instances in this film, the hopes of the audience for these characters are dashed, the film does not succumb to The Joker’s vision. It is not nihilistic; it is instead about the lingering and seemingly ineradicable longing for justice and goodness that pervades the film. As Batman put it in the original film, “Gotham is not beyond redemption.” . . .
Thomas S. Hibbs, First Things, July 22

Peter, you beat me to posting the Hibbs piece at First Things. Great essay.

Slight tangent, but since we're discussing Hibbs, here's the latest from media critic Brent Bozell:

A Guide To The Movie Galaxy

In the groves of academe, studying popular culture is often the preserve of nutty left-wing professors performing exotic Marxist autopsies on the imperialist dynamics of Donald Duck comic books. Academic conservatives are teaching and writing about Homer the Greek poet, not the cartoon, which is important but oftentimes leaves their audience without a learned guide to analyze the themes of our modern culture.

Fortunately, there is Thomas Hibbs, a professor of ethics and culture at Baylor University — and a film critic for National Review Online. Earlier this year, the Spence Publishing folks in Dallas published a valuable and fascinating book by the professor called "Arts of Darkness: American Noir and the Quest for Redemption."

This thread doesn't seem to be generating much discussion, so here's Andrew Sarris:

Ledger’s Joker takes on the dimension of every terrorist in our most fearful imagination. He is something of a genius with high explosives and their electronic detonators. He always seems to be one step ahead of the authorities, and, on occasion, even Batman himself. By the time he has completely terrorized the people of Gotham City by blowing up half the metropolis, and ingeniously engineering the assassination of its mayor, the people are fleeing on ferries because the bridges and tunnels are too vulnerable to the Joker’s limitless terror stratagems. ...

Mr. Nolan seems to have fallen into a darker mood between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, less than three years later. Has the world changed that much for the worse in the interim? One is hard-pressed to answer that question in the negative, though it may seem strange for many that so much weight is being given to a movie about a comic-book superhero. Actually, the moral despair in The Dark Knight has moved me so strongly because Mr. Nolan and his collaborators have not gone out of their way to zap the zeitgeist in primitively Bush-bashing fashion as have so many contemporary fiction and nonfiction filmmakers with a chip on their left shoulders. The political issues in The Dark Knight remain local and municipal, not really global despite the aforementioned excursion to Hong Kong.

Yet at a time when all social systems are veering toward moral bankruptcy, I was struck by the way Gotham City is presented for the first time in Batman movie history as a city with global connections, and not merely as a self-contained abstraction of a city with its own hermetically sealed morality and innocence. ...

I previously have had my own auteurist doubts about Mr. Nolan’s work, even though he has been much honored for his stylistic innovations in Memento (2001) and The Prestige (2006). But after The Dark Knight, I may have to rethink my past reservations about Mr. Nolan’s place in the 21st-century cinema.

I was thinking something along similar lines. I felt that Batman explicitly becomes a Christ-figure in this film. He, literally, takes Harvey Dent's sins upon himself, and sacrifices himself as an act of redemption. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I think that there is even more to the parallel.

Consider this, and let me know if I'm reading too much into it, or if I'm reading it incorrectly. The police are like the Old Testament law. They come into play after the "sins" have already been committed, arresting those responsible for the crimes. Harvey Dent, as an idealistic DA, represents something like New Testament salvation, in which the problem of sin is addressed at its roots instead of merely being a punishment that takes place after the fact. The Joker, who I guess is the Devil, shows up to tempt Dent & Batman by asking them how far into the darkness they are willing to go in order to put a stop to his depravity. Every time they resist, he keeps upping the stakes, asking them to betray themselves in order to stop him. In the end, Dent is the weaker man, and he crosses far over to the other side, going beyond mere vigilantism to outright madness. The Joker seems to have won.

Except,

What do you think? Too much?

And does any of this play into some of the Batman comcis (like The Dark Knight Returns) that present him as someone who has bought into his own cult of personality.

Not to mention the fact that Dent figuratively lost his head and John the Baptist lost his literally.

‘Dark Knight’ may owe its bite to Nolan team’s English sensibility

I loved the film. Loved the ambiguities, the ferry, yes Heath Ledger, all that.

So this is a minor concern.

Jeff: OTOH, maybe the ambiguity that breaking the rules didn't necessarily provide the single decisive help is even more interesting and relevant.

I agree with this.

I'm just going back through the thread and wanted to comment on this...

Yesterday, The Dark Knight grossed another $20.9 million ... thus giving it the second-highest Tuesday of all time (behind only Transformers, which OPENED on a Tuesday), and thus making it the first movie to gross $200 million in FIVE DAYS (the previous record was held by Pirates of the Caribbean 2, Spider-Man 2 and Star Wars: Episode III, all of which crossed this line in EIGHT days). And didn't all those other films have the benefit of holiday weekends or something?

I think it's a given that this film will gross at least $400 million when all is said and done. Only five other films have done that in their initial release: Titanic (which is also the only film that has ever crossed the $500 million and $600 million lines), Shrek 2, Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and Spider-Man. (Star Wars and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial also crossed the $400 million line, but not until their 20th anniversaries, by which point they had been re-issued multiple times.)

And just to put this in perspective:

Batman Begins grossed only $205.3 million three years ago, total. The Dark Knight almost certainly passed that figure sometime this morning.

Also, Tim Burton's Batman -- the first film to make $100 million in ten days, as I recall -- grossed $251.2 million in 1989, which, at the time, was enough to make it the #5 film of all time (behind E.T., Star Wars, Return of the Jedi and Jaws), and which, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, translates to $433.1 million in today's dollars. Think The Dark Knight can pass that?

According to artist Colleen Doran, who counts Miller as a friend, he told her that it is very much parody and a mockery of his style and the general grim and gritty route Batman traveled after works like the Dark Knight Returns.

I guess this happens in DK3? How does that square with DK2, which follows a trajectory?

I hated that story, and hated Miller for writing it. Does he turn it around in DK3?

Returning briefly to the question of the next movie's villain, I'm surprised no one seems to have mentioned the bit of foreshadowing The Dark Knight gives us when Bruce asks Fox if his new suit is dog-proof and Fox responds that it depends on what kind of dog, but at least it's cat-proof.

This movie hit me with the force of a falling skyscraper, and I left the theater at 2:30 last Sunday a.m. stunned and giddy. It demands rewatching (so I can shift the blame for my reaction from tiredness), but I thought that this was as close to a "perfect" movie as I'd seen all year. Definitely set new standards of complexity and art for costumed hero flicks.

I'd be happy if Nolan and team left this as the last in the series, but I know that won't happen. So, I second the brilliant suggestion of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin. Also, Summer Glau might possibly work as Catwoman.

Good catch--not sure if it' a true teaser, but it's something.

I think Austin Powers started this trend.

Bobbin, where are you from? I do this exact same thing with nearly every film I watch. Of course, the Christ-figure analogy only extends so far, and at times it becomes a exhausting exercise, but I love to see the grace and action of my Lord and Savior in film. Your post definitely stretches the analogy, but it is refreshing, so I applaud it.

I think that eternity is written in human hearts... not just Christian hearts, but all hearts. So if a film has any kind of a true "hero," that hero will mirror Christ to some extent, whether the artist intended that or not. (And whether he will admit it or not.)

Ego, failures, rough edges, bad habits... all fictional hero figures also demonstrate their humanity. And in doing so, they reveal an artist's inability to full understand the mystery of Christ. Our experience limits us to limited and fractured portrayals of perfection.

But I'm more interested in looking at what heroes show us about Christ, and how human beings are capable of being like him, than I am in allegorizing or declaring one character The Christ Figure. That oversimplifies the movie for me, in a way. In the best stories, we see glimpses of Christ in several characters... sometimes even in the villain (during a lapse in wickedness).

I am excited about the conclusion of this film, and all that it implies about the necessity of a person who will shoulder the consequences of others' sins... a person who will be hunted and accused and persecuted. That's an unusual manifestation of Christ-likeness. But I also see Christ in Dent's passion for the crime-wracked city, in Lucius's conscience, in Rachel's care for broken and conflicted men...

I don't see him in the Joker, except insofar as the Joker's intelligence and cleverness is a gift with great potential... but alas, how he's squandered it.

Ecclesiastes 3:11 in the NIV

11 He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

Not sure what you mean, "where I'm from?" Short bio, I have a degree in media arts and art history, work on computer graphics and full dome(planetarium) film production, and love thinking about movies and faith. I co-host a podcast and blog about Christian movies at www.supercandid.net



It's not really DK3, since Miller has said that it takes place a year or two after Batman: Year One. The wikipedia entry is pretty comprehensive. It is, IMO, awful, but I can sort of see what Miller is going for. At least with DK2 I thought he still had enough great ideas(Atom trapped in a frozen petri dish) that kept it entertaining, and I appreciated the continuation and expansion of the epic scope of DK1. Just wait though, Frank Miller has another upcoming Batman book, again in the same continuity, that features Batman fighting Al Qaeda.



Exactly! I appreciated that the film didn't stoop to the obvious visual references that other films (ie. Braveheart) use when they evoke a Christ-figure. Instead of physically positioning Batman as Christ, the filmmakers have him take on some of Christ's spiritual characteristics. And I also agree that this might not be a intentional symbolic reference, and it might just be my tendency to see Christ wherever I see goodness in people.

I guess I thought she was blonde for some reason, but now that I think about it one of the cat-women in the Adam West Batman series was dark haired.

That opens up a lot of new possibilities. Connelly is the most beautiful woman in Hollywood, but I don't think she'd fit the role very well. Rebecca Romijn would be a pretty natural choice, but she's not very well known for her acting. Edit: Uma Thurman and Milla Jovovich would both be good.

My guess is that they'll come up with 30 actresses and decide that none of them are good for the role. Then they'll just cast Cate Blanchett.

And my joking suggestion as to who should play the Joker in the next movie: Katie Holmes.

As I said before, I think Batman taking the blame for Dent/ Two Face's crimes really works for the story since Dent had stepped up to turn himself in to the police as Batman. But what is the film saying about truth? In Gordon's closing speech he says something to the effect of "Sometimes the truth isn't good enough." and "Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.". Is the film saying that sometimes the truth is too awful for people to know? Doesn't the public in Gotham have a right to know what Dent became and who really killed those people? Am I just mistaking facts for truth? Again, I still think this was a brilliant film and the ending moved me. It was a much needed ray of light in a really dark film. But these are the questions I've been wrestling with since then.

The film now has the 12th-highest Wednesday of all time ... and of the 11 films that beat it, 10 are films that OPENED on Wednesday. (The one exception is Transformers, which opened on a Tuesday.) The Dark Knight, by comparison, was on its 6th day of release, not its 1st or 2nd.

Overstreet wrote:
: I am excited about the conclusion of this film, and all that it implies about the necessity of a person who will shoulder the consequences of others' sins... a person who will be hunted and accused and persecuted. That's an unusual manifestation of Christ-likeness.

Perhaps. But what do you make of Brett's suggestion that the ending of this film shows Batman helping to perpetuate a lie because he assumes that he, and only he, can handle an inconvenient truth which the common man would NOT be able to handle? What do you make of Brett's suggestion that, if Batman continues down this path, he will become in truth the villain that he is now only pretending to be?

Backrow Baptist wrote:
: As I said before, I think Batman taking the blame for Dent/ Two Face's crimes really works for the story since Dent had stepped up to turn himself in to the police as Batman. But what is the film saying about truth?

Exactly. And just as Batman's decision has its mirror image in Dent's decision, on one level, it also has a mirror image in a decision that Alfred makes, to hide the truth and to let someone believe a lie because it is the lie, rather than the truth, that might keep them motivated.

: But these are the questions I've been wrestling with since then.

FWIW, the reason I don't mind these elements is because I think the film WANTS us to wrestle with them.

I pretty much agree with Brett. While there are glimpses of Christ in Bruce Wayne's choices, there are also glimpses of profound confusion. Batman is being designed and imagined here as a clumsy answer to a universal longing. Having rejected Christ, the world keeps trying to imagine a savior who will... essentially *be* Christ. And it never really works.

I think that's why superheroes end up resembling Christ... usually poorly. I don't think they start with the question, "How can we make him a Christ figure?" They probably aren't thinking of Christ at all, but rummaging around for available materials that they can compress into something that will fill that "God-shaped hole" in the world.

I can't believe that I'm actually jumping back into A&F, especially on such an already weighted thread, but I think that any discussion about the meanings in this or any film is best served by hearing what the screenwriters had to say. To that end I listen to the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast (you can, of course, subscribe to it via iTunes). The interviewer, Jeff Goldsmith, spoke recently with Jonathan Nolan about the film - at this point it is the first entry on the webpage. It is rather enlightening about the themes and issues that the filmmakers desired to convey, and their take on the various characters. It is also FULL of spoilers.

What Bush and Batman Have in Common
By ANDREW KLAVAN
The Wall Street Journal

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

And like W, Batman understands that there is no moral equivalence between a free society -- in which people sometimes make the wrong choices -- and a criminal sect bent on destruction. The former must be cherished even in its moments of folly; the latter must be hounded to the gates of Hell.

"The Dark Knight," then, is a conservative movie about the war on terror. And like another such film, last year's "300," "The Dark Knight" is making a fortune depicting the values and necessities that the Bush administration cannot seem to articulate for beans. ...

The answers to these questions seem to me to be embedded in the story of "The Dark Knight" itself: Doing what's right is hard, and speaking the truth is dangerous. Many have been abhorred for it, some killed, one crucified.

I'll give him credit for two uses of "seem[s] to me" in the same article. It's a cop-out of sorts, but best to qualify such bold statements than pretend their objective matters.