The Dark Knight

[Cartimandua]

My husband and I saw The Dark Knight last night. It was very well made and the acting was beyond superb.

I found it interesting in a psychologically disturbing way.


POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT:
Also, my husband and I walked away with different opinions of Dent's situation. He thought he was killed, and I thought I had seen evidence that he was still alive. Any opinions on this?

[DaShi]

Spoiler:

Dent becomes a villain in the franchise, so it's not likely that he was killed.

[Ben Kenobi]

He's Two-Face, so Taylor Dent is most definitely alive.

[Guynemer]

Just an amazing film. Absolutely amazing. Easily better than Batman Begins, which had been the highwater mark for comicbook films.

Spoiler:

Dent is definitely dead. The whole point of the end was that the Batman would take the fall for Dent's post-accident crimes, thus leaving Dent a paragon in the minds of Gothamites. If he lived, there'd be no hiding what he had done. Where this leaves us for villians in the third film is anyone's guess.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
He's Two-Face, so Taylor Dent is most definitely alive.

[Gatekeeper]

"The Dark Knight" was a solid film and, for a summer blockbuster, actually had a rather dense plot (that's a good thing, BTW).

A lot of folks, I predict, will be watching the movie a second time, just to get more of a sense of how the Joker, et al., accomplished what they did.

Gatekeeper

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by Guynemer

Spoiler:

Dent is definitely dead. The whole point of the end was that the Batman would take the fall for Dent's post-accident crimes, thus leaving Dent a paragon in the minds of Gothamites. If he lived, there'd be no hiding what he had done. Where this leaves us for villians in the third film is anyone's guess.

My two cents:

Spoiler:

In my personal opinion, the best they could for Batman 3's villains would be a version of the Riddler who tries to play off of the Joker's new methods, while at the same time being employed by the police to root out the Batman; and Talia al-Ghul (daughter of Ra's), tempting Batman by suggesting that the city that turned on him isn't worth saving, (especially after they employed villains to fight Batman) and offering herself to him as a kindred spirit, ally, and potential lover.

Batman would ultimately have to overcome the Riddler, resist Talia, defeat her pawns, and somehow redeem himself in the eyes of the city. I certainly don't envy Commissioner Gordon's new job.

[Wiglaf]

Pretty good movie though there were a lot of gay hookups at the theater I went to. Can someone tell me what's better than seeing Morgan Freeman in control of a preposterous cell phone sonar machine that sees through walls and hears every voice in an entire city, with triangulation capabilities on top of that? I just about jizzed in my batsuit when I saw that.

And of course Dent character made it out okay, he just ages a lot and turns gay and ugly. This explains Tommy Lee Jones as two face in that other crappy movie that this is a prequel to. Anyone who doesn't believe this or thinks this is a spoiler needs to remove head from ass. You should know that going in. BAM!

[DaShi]

Spoiler tags, Wiglaf. You'll ruin the excitement of Morgan Freeman's cellphone.

[Wiglaf]

SPOILTER TAGS? Get out of your hovel, I know you live in Taiwan and you probably are expecting my sympathy, what's your game, do you want me to wire you 20 cents so you can pay for some rice? DEAD MAN WALKING! I can see the mushroom cloud now, China is coming for you with warheads , you are like Harrison Ford in the latest Indiana Jones movie, but the refrigerator will not protect you this time. Perhaps you should get a real job and stop begging for money here.

[DaShi]

[Seedle]

I really liked it. However, I have a few quibbles. The major one is it didn't really feel like Batman's movie. It felt like the Joker's movie with a Harvey Dent sub-plot and Batman kind of shoved in. I mean, Batman had to be present for the story to work, but he' really kind of an ancillary character. He serves as motivation, but the movie seemed to be really about Joker and Dent. So whenever we went to the bat-garage/bat-penthouse/bat-hong-kong, it felt like the movie was getting side tracked, even though it's nominally about Batman. But maybe that's just because I liked Ledger's Joker (brilliant, by the way. Really sad he won't be able to reprise the role.) and Eckhart's Dent. Now, the Joker was written and played well enough to carry the movie, but I went in expecting a Batman story, and that's not what I saw.

I HATE Bale's Bat-voice. It just sounds like he has a cold. He should watch the animated series, I loved Kevin Conroy's Wayne/Batman voice.

That's pretty much all I can think of for the bad, but I reserve the right to remember more later.

The good: the Joker and his plans, very well acted, very well written.

Spoiler:

The boat sequence. "I can kill people, I can do what you should of done 10 minutes ago." *throws detonator out window* Loved it. Although I did think that the civilian would flip the switch his boat would blow 'cause the Joker lied. I was wrong.

As for Dent:

Spoiler:

I think he is alive. Although a surface reading of the ending would suggest he is dead, there are a few "outs" for his return. These are that the coin came up heads (I know, it also is showing that the kid would have lived) and the fact that Gordon had a funeral too, and we know how dead he is. My thought is that the funeral was for the public, but Dent is alive and locked up somewhere, and not happy about it.

As for Villians:

Spoiler:

Did they introduce Talia in the first movie? I haven't seen it. But Catwoman fulfills pretty much the same "bring to justice or bring to bed?" role as Talia, and is familiar to audiences, so Catwoman is much more likely to show up than Talia. But yeah, Talia, Catwoman, and a well-done Riddler are the most viable candidates. Mr. Freeze,Poison Ivy, Killer Croc, et al, are a little cartoony (but they did do Scarecrow in the first movie, so who knows?). Of course, if Dent is alive, Two-Face could show up as well. Penguin maybe, though he's kinda boring, physically he's bizarre, but mentally he's just another criminal. Maybe they could do something with Penguin coming to Gotham as a legitimate upper-class guy, and Batman has to figure out/ prove he's also the new crime boss in Gotham. I don't think any other members of Batman's rogues gallery are famous enough to make it, though once again, they did use Scarecrow and Ra's in the first movie. So who knows? I sure don't.

[Niptium]

It was the best movie I've seen in years, hands down...

I was confused too as to :

the situation with Dent. They are playing the Dent posthumus hero card but that doesn't mean Two-Face is actually dead although it seems. Killing off Two Face so early in that trilogy would be an error - besides Batman usually doesn't kill vilains.

For the next one, the persistent rumor is about the inclusion of Catwoman which would be the greatest thing since we haven't had female vilains as of now. Difficult thing to do is surpass Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman which to mostly everyone was the best Batman vilain of the first 4 movies, beating Danny Devito and Jack Nicholson interpretations. I like the Scarecrow though, he should be brought back, that's a cool possibility and you could throw the Riddler in that lot to. What I like about the Batman Returns Catwoman character is that she was more vilain that anti-hero - which is too much the trend we've seen recently in the latest iterations of Catwoman (The Batman, Birds of Prey)...

[Guynemer]

Okay, if we're gonna ditch the spoiler tags, let's go.

I can see why people would think Dent might be alive. After all, the Eric Roberts character mentioned that a fall from a certain height wouldn't be deadly (right before the Batman broke his legs). The final coin was heads. Eckhart was masterful, and of all of the well-known villians in Batman history, it'd be hard to come up with a better villian in a potential third film than Harvey. Most anyone else would be lame and/or too cartoony or supernatural.

But, as I said before, crazy or not, it wouldn't be Dent's style to hide his identity, imprisoned or no. The film made patently obvious how deeply corruption runs in Gotham, so unless Gordon is keeping Dent prisoner personally in his own freakin' dungeon, the news is gonna get out. Plus, he's still one of the most recognizable people in Gotham, in spite of his scars. It would stretch credulity even more so than usual in the context of this franchise for Dent to be alive. The whole point of the conclusion was that, in the minds of Gotham, Dent would remain the White Knight, that his crimes would never be known, that they would be attributed to the Batman, so that Gotham could retain hope. If he survives and is the big bad guy in a potential third film, that pretty much destroys the whole conclusion of this film.

Honestly, I hope there isn't another movie, because I can't see any way it could possibly top or equal this one. In fact, that was the only problem I had with this movie--it pretty much ruined me for any future Batman film. One can only wonder what the third might have been like if this one was only the Joker and the origin of Harvey Two-Face, and the next was all Harvey.

I suppose there is a very, very outside chance that a third film could complete, but only if it completely reimagined of the other members of the Rogue's Gallery. An OCD Riddler, locked up in Arkham, helping the Batman parse clues about some other villian like in The Silence of the Lambs, for instance.

[Zkribbler]

I liked it, but I wasn't blown away like most people. I would have like to have seen the movie cut in half. There was nearly enough for two movies there...160 minutes.

Did anyone else notice that Joker sounds exactly like Al Franken?

I had a hard time hearing some of the dialogue. It was drowned out by the music. Was that bad sound editing in the movie, or did I just go to a threater which has a really lousy sound system.