Thoughts of LoWriter

I Saw Batman before You Did!

Even though I didn't get to blog about it until now.

I'm lazy. I should be working. I have the day off and should be using it to proofread and clean and pack shit up that I'm not planning to use. I should be making my house look pretty for 10 and Dr. G who are coming out as soon as I get back from the East Coast. Instead, I'm listening to Liz Phair, enjoying the air conditioner, watching the sunlight bake the parking lot while poorly-paid highschool kids trim the hedges, and waiting anxiously for my next opportunity to see The Dark Knight again.

If you haven't seen it yet, you may want to wait to read this until later. I'm not aiming to put in any spoilers, but I don't know what constitutes a spoiler to everybody, so reader, beware.

First, I saw Batman on Wednesday at 7:30 at the IMAX because Danika is awesome. She's press, and when I'm with her, I'm with the press. :) Everybody in the long line stretching out the door glared daggers at us because they knew we were getting in, and they were probably weren't. I dig it. I need to work for the press.

The ads for this movie gave me chills; chills, I say. While it is true that it would have been hard to get chills since the theater was roughly three degrees hotter than it was outside (which was roughly the temperature in hell), I didn't exactly get chills from this flick.

It was a good show, don't get me wrong. I would say that it is equally as good as the first of this cycle, which was mind-blowing, in my opinion, so there you have it. Begins gave a dark delivery, but Knight made Begins look like a day on a yacht on the sunny side of the planet.

Brooding and dark, the movie begins by making you feel like Gotham is winning, leaves you feeling like it will never be cleaned up in the middle, and by the near end, you start to think that maybe Batman should have just let the bad guys raze the place in the last movie. It kept me on the edge of my seat, and at times it was even overwhelming. But it lacks the lighter moments of social life that the first one included, and I think it suffers a little because of this. (Perhaps this is because his social life isn't very lighthearted at this point.) I think you spend so much time amped up that the movie can't build the way it otherwise could (thus producing the aforementioned chills that I was hoping for). My guess is that most of these scenes fell to a cutting room floor somewhere in an attempt to make the movie short enough. I think it did do a good job of reproducing the fear and stress of a city living in the shadow of a terroristic serial killer. My stomach was in knots for most of the show.

The Joker is truly creepy. I have to be honest; I've never found the villians of the Batman universe to be very frightening. In particular, I never thought The Joker was a real threat. To me, he always seemed like a starter villian; you know, the kind you draw before you figure out exactly how evil villians can be. (To be fair, I only watched the cartoons and TV shows; I never read the comics.) But I have to say that Ledger delivers a villian I can believe in; he delivers a villian who needs a superhero to put a stop to his antics, and I appreciate this about the new Batman movies in general and about this Batman movie in particular. I think The Joker and Two Face have a particularly good scene together near the end that I just can't get out of my head.

Whether or not Ledger will get or be nominated for an Oscar remains to be seen, and since a recent article I read said that the rumors regarding this are mostly hype created in the blogosphere by people who are not actually in the know on such topics, I should probably keep my opinions to myself. However, I have never been known for being one to stay out of a good fight, so I'll throw in my own two cents. I think he ought to get a nod. I don't think he'll win, but he ought to get a nomination (and possibly he should win). Whether or not he will is better left to people who actually know about such things. I lean towards no because, at rock bottom, this is still a comic book movie, and they tend not to have a lot of pull among serious critics.

I am not a serious critic, so I can say that I thought Ledger was brilliant, that he was probably just coming into what would likely have been a long career of playing interesting and unique villians, that it is truly too bad that he can't see the amazing job he did. His character truly scared me, and that's aside from the parts that were eerily poignant. He created a Joker that is worthy of the title of arch nemesis.

I love, love, love Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel this time. Granted, she is one of my favorite actresses (and the role didn't have a ton of lines), but I thought she was so much better than Katie Holmes Crazy Pants in the role. Maybe I just don't like people named Katie.

Batman struggles as always with his role in society and whether or not he is doing the right thing, and as always, the public likes to tell him that he sucks because some of them are dying rather than all of them dying (as they would have at the end of the last movie if he had not saved the day).

On the whole, I would give this movie 4.5 to 5 stars. It probably never could have lived up to all the hype, but I wasn't disappointed. I just wasn't as blown away as I was hoping I possibly could be. I think it's amazing, and it has some truly deep, truly touching moments, without losing what we all go to Batman to see, which is, let's face it, the thrilling heroics.

Go see it. Now. I'll be here waiting for you when you get back, and we'll chat about more specifics in the comments.

Posted by LoWriter at July 18, 2008 02:50 PM