July 23, 2008

The obligatory Dark Knight post

There are spoilers in this!

Last night I took advantage of Barb and Ella being up in New Wilmington and saw "The Dark Knight". A few random thoughts:

  • There were far more people than I expected at a 10:10 PM show -- probably ~80+.
  • The actual movie didn't start until 10:30, 20 minutes after the posted time. Shameful.
  • Cost: $9.50. Not a typo -- fifty cents short of a sawbuck. Shocking. Apparently I've been spoiled by (a) rarely going to movies, and (b) when going to movies hitting the matinee. IIRC Tuesdays at the Destinta are half-price, I'll have to remember that next time. (I was at South Hills Village.)
  • The start of the movie seemed weirdly... flat. And WTF was the Scarecrow doing there in a throwaway? Dumb. Fortunately that didn't last.
  • Despite what I heard about Heath Ledger's performance I didn't expect much. Something about his voice just didn't seem to fit. I was wrong. He wasn't over-the-edge loony toons (like Robin Williams or something), but chaos in human skin. And his voice fit just fine, though his constant tongue flicking reminded me of the Mad-Eye Moody impostor in the fourth Harry Potter.
  • I liked that they had Bruce Wayne doing more technical stuff -- one CSI-ish sequence to reconstruct a bullet fragment, another magical reprogramming-all-cellphones-in-Gotham reveal. It's a difficult thing to impart (remember Michael Keaton just sitting in front of a big screen, 'analyzing'?) but still important to the character.
  • The way they used the character of Harvey Dent/Two-Face was absolutely great. I loved the minging of the different ideas of heroism, although the "I'm through being {superhero}" happened in the second Spider-Man movie too, didn't it?
  • I didn't like Maggie Gyllenhaal's performance. Someone on twitter mentioned that she stole the life out of every scene she was in. I wouldn't go that far, but it was not good. Something about her made me think she was bored, and I kept oddly focusing on that lip-valley underneath her nose and her triangular face.
  • That they killed both Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent was surprising, although it's sad Aaron Eckhart won't be back -- he's one of my favorite actors.
  • Overall: excellent, better than any superhero movie I've seen in a long time, possibly ever.
Next: Upgrading to Hardy
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