Why So Serious?

Ok, lets hear it for possibly the most amazing movie ever made. My blog is turning into a movie-review blog, but since there are no good movies on the horizon until fall, this may be the last for a while. WARNING: If you haven't seen the movie yet, don't continue reading this. There will be spoilers, and trust me, you do NOT want this movie spoiled. There are so many surprise twists and turns to keep you on your toes and make you NEED to go see it again in order to get the full perspective on what happened.

Ok, SOME people may think that a comic book movie is just a goofy story about people with superpowers who dress up and save people from bad people with similar powers. Most comic movies of the past have been little more than that. See Tim Burton's Batman movies, the old Superman movies, and various attempts at other superhero movies for examples. Recently we have seen a bit more depth to our comic book movies. X-Men looks at people who are different trying to fit into a world that doesn't understand them. Spider Man faces his great power = great responsibility dilemma. I really appreciated this, and I have really enjoyed the recent wave of good, great, and the occasionally outstanding movies. I thought the upcoming Avengers movie would be the comic book movie to end all comic book movies. After seeing The Dark Knight, boy was I ever wrong. The Dark Knight basically made every other superhero movie ever made look like whimsical garbage for kids to watch in their underwear with a bowl of captain crunch on Saturday mornings. I was expecting an awesome film. I wasn't expecting a movie with as much wieght and depth as Lord of the Rings, my previous favorite of all time.

So I giggled like a baby during the opening scene that introduced the Joker (if you didn't get to see this movie in IMAX, you didn't get to see this movie at all). The dialogue was perfect. Before the movie, I attributed a large portion of the hype about Heath Ledger's acting job to the fact that the guy is dead, and of course you can't rip on a dead guy. No, he really is "that good". He made Jack Nicholson's Joker look like a lovable circus clown. He is sick, twisted, demented, wrong, evil, disturbed, and psychotic like Joker should be. The scene at the end when Batman throws him off of a roof and Joker is actually laughing hysterically as he falls will live in my mind as one of the greatest moments in cinematic history.

I missed some things in the middle section of the movie because of the Commissioner Gordon thing. I knew he wouldn't really be dead, there was no way. If he were really dead they would have made it a bigger deal, like they did with Rachel later on. But I missed some good stuff while I was thinking about that and horrified that they might actually ruin the whole franchise by making him die like that. That said, all my misgivings about Gordon from the first movie are gone. Commissioner Gordon is the awesome, commanding, dominating presence that he is supposed to be. Previous Batman movies have given him a cornball role, like he's some kind of helpless guy that can't do anything without Batman. Not anymore.

My only complaint is Maggie Gyllenhall. I hate her. I know I'm a minority member here, but I missed Katie. Not to say I loved her in the first movie, but I didn't think she was that bad, certainly far better than Maggie Gyllenhall, who can't act worth crap. The scene where Rachel is killed though, and Dent becomes deformed, was another movie scene that will be forever imprinted in my mind. Perfect. Tears were literally running down my face.

For those of you wondering, Harvey Dent IS dead, but Two-Face is not. I wasn't sure at first if he would be dead or not, because its kind of left open, but now I am certain: Two Face will be in the next Batman movie. As true to the comics as this franchise is staying, Two Face will become the mob boss that he is in the comics. They held the funeral in the end for Harvey Dent because they didn't want the public to know what he had become, and lose hope. But Two Face is still alive. Aaron Eckhart was not as strikingly deserving of an oscar as Ledger, but his portrayal was still out-of-this-world, better than I expected.

I consider the performances of Michael Caine as Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox to be the icing on the cake that was this movie. They were more involved in this movie than the first one, and even more endearing, if that is even possible. Michael Caine was just brilliant.

And finally, Christian Bale warmed up to his role as Bruce Wayne/Batman. He was great in the first movie, but I think he was a little more natural this time around. He was more smooth, and I really felt that he IS Bruce Wayne.

To wrap things up, I was a whole mess of emotions all through this movie. Joy, terror, amusement, shock, confusion, amazement, sadness, depression, and hope were just a few of the things I felt during this brilliantly written and directed masterpiece. I can't wait to go and see it again (on a normal-size screen) and pick up all the things that I missed the first time, and just absorb it all. Aside from some truly disturbing scenes, this is a movie I could watch over and over again and never ever get tired of. I cannot say enough about how much I loved this film.