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.