so i finally saw it a couple of days ago. hailed as one of the finest action movies of all time, and a fitting epitaph for heath ledger's career... how come no one noticed it sucks?

okay. action scenes are ridiculous. shot too close up so you can't see what's happening, batman's basically invincible so there's no real suspense, and he can drive at 250 miles an hour through rush hour traffic without consequence. he can fall five stories without getting hurt. the beauty of the original batman was that he didn't actually HAVE any superpowers but here he seems to have all of them, without explanation.

okay, and the joker... motivation, please? everyone he ever works with, he betrays and kills, so why would anyone work with him? he wires an entire hospital to explode for no particular reason and burns up a pile of money... so where does HIS money come from? does he want world domination? or does he want riches? obviously he wants neither. his monologue with harvey dent about bringing chaos and showing people it's a waste of time to make plans is sorta interesting but i was still not clear on why he wanted to bomb an entire hospital, or do that ridiculous thing with the ferries. heath ledger was great in brokeback mountain and i'm a huge michelle williams fan but people talk about this as, oh, this is heath's last role! it's a moving tribute! but i didn't get much out of it. he tried hard with what he had to work with but with such a poorly sketched out character it sorta seemed like all he was left with was licking his lips and not making jokes. which, as he is the "joker," seems to kinda miss the point on a basic level. ledger will be remembered as a great actor but it will be for brokeback, not for this weak sauce.

and so the joker says someone has to kill the mayor or else he's going to blow up the hospital... and then all the sudden there's all these people trying to murder the mayor? all these people willing to go to death row just because some crazy dude said he was gonna blow up a hospital? plus it happens in like four seconds. joker makes an announcement on t.v. and the next thing you know there are people lined up all up and down the street trying to attack the guy's motorcade. that was so unrealistic it took me a little while to figure out that that's what they were trying to convince us had happened. total nonsense.

plus, it's supposed to be all serious and puts in all this tragic stuff, like making gary oldman's character choose which of his family will die and making batman choose between what's her face and harvey dent... and it's cool to put in some of that horrible sophie's choice stuff in a movie if you make the characters well developed and the writing's good, but because the movie didn't earn it it felt gratuitous, like it was just brutalizing the viewer with overly sad and gut-wrenching BS. plus, i'm no bra-burner but it always makes me a little queasy when the female love interest dies solely in order to motivate the male leads.

only thing i liked were the copycats in the beginning. it's interesting about drawn out franchises like this, they usually start out serious and get campy as they run out of steam (look at godzilla, or at the original run of superman movies in the 70s and 80s) but this started out as pretty much THE campy t.v. series in the 60s and now is trying to get serious. i think it worked for batman begins, which was a pretty great movie, but this was just all fizzle for me.

fyoo. i feel better. i wouldn't feel driven to rant on like this, it's just that it's got 94% on rotten tomatoes and with all the hype, it never occurred to me it would be anything other than a masterpiece and it was mediocre at best, and no one else i know is pointing this out.

You made baby Jesus cry. :\'(

My rebuttal will show up sometime today.

I totally agree with you on this one Tia.  Over hyped and over rated ...... That's what happens when you sacrifice plot for effect driven action!!

.... and baby Jesus wasn't crying in Australia!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one! I went to see it and I was bored.

  I thought The Dark Knight sucked, as well.  I watched it at a friend's house and I kept looking at my watch.  I said, "WTF, is this a three freakin' hour movie?!"

  I dunno, it just left me wanting.  I figured it was just a pretty complex movie - it was difficult to keep track of all the characters and what they were doing and how they were related to one another and why I was expected to care.  I realize the story was being set-up but dang, it really got bogged down with "city hall" politics...

  I just wanted to see the Joker act crazy and kill people...

so i finally saw it a couple of days ago. hailed as one of the finest action movies of all time, and a fitting epitaph for heath ledger's career... how come no one noticed it sucks?

Well, like all movies, it COULD have been better :D  It's still no Shawshank, y'know.



okay. action scenes are ridiculous. shot too close up so you can't see what's happening, batman's basically invincible so there's no real suspense, and he can drive at 250 miles an hour through rush hour traffic without consequence. he can fall five stories without getting hurt. the beauty of the original batman was that he didn't actually HAVE any superpowers but here he seems to have all of them, without explanation.

The original Batman didn't have a bulletproof suit or superpowered hydraulic gun-bending appendage thingies, but if you follow Batman throughout the years, he had to adapt to changing times...until the late 80s, before Tim Burton's movie, Batman could still take stab and bullet wounds.  Also, during his fights with the dogs and the Joker, he definitely got wounded.  So he isn't invincible.  And as you can tell from watching the movie, he's not flying like Superman and he's not spewing laser beams out of his eyes (that's a sonar) so everything Batman does is grounded in reality, albeit a tad embellished. 

I will agree that the action scenes could have been done with less epilepsy, but I think what was trying to be conveyed is that Batman operates with blazing speed and ferocity and when he fights, he generates a lot of confusion within his enemies, ergo the close-up camera angles...


okay, and the joker... motivation, please? everyone he ever works with, he betrays and kills, so why would anyone work with him? he wires an entire hospital to explode for no particular reason and burns up a pile of money... so where does HIS money come from? does he want world domination? or does he want riches? obviously he wants neither. his monologue with harvey dent about bringing chaos and showing people it's a waste of time to make plans is sorta interesting but i was still not clear on why he wanted to bomb an entire hospital, or do that ridiculous thing with the ferries. heath ledger was great in brokeback mountain and i'm a huge michelle williams fan but people talk about this as, oh, this is heath's last role! it's a moving tribute! but i didn't get much out of it. he tried hard with what he had to work with but with such a poorly sketched out character it sorta seemed like all he was left with was licking his lips and not making jokes. which, as he is the "joker," seems to kinda miss the point on a basic level. ledger will be remembered as a great actor but it will be for brokeback, not for this weak sauce.


The Joker doesn't have motivation, that's the whole point.  He basically exists as the antithesis of Batman...he maims and kills and brings chaos indiscriminately, which is why he offed all his homies in the first scene and doublecrossed the mob towards the end of the movie, and why he busted loonies out of Arkham in order to perpetrate his crimes because he knows the criminally insane also share his lack of scruples.  Based on the Joker mythos, Heath Ledger did an excellent job portraying the Joker, way better than the Jack Nicholson Joker.  The Joker is just a name to describe his outward appearance, it has nothing to do with making you laugh, because the Joker is a murderous immoral fiend and that's nothing to laugh about...or is it?  Why so serious?  :P


and so the joker says someone has to kill the mayor or else he's going to blow up the hospital... and then all the sudden there's all these people trying to murder the mayor? all these people willing to go to death row just because some crazy dude said he was gonna blow up a hospital? plus it happens in like four seconds. joker makes an announcement on t.v. and the next thing you know there are people lined up all up and down the street trying to attack the guy's motorcade. that was so unrealistic it took me a little while to figure out that that's what they were trying to convince us had happened. total nonsense.

It wasn't the mayor, because the mayor wasn't one of the Joker's targets at that point.  The Joker had already tried to assassinate the mayor during Commissioner Gordon's "memorial".  What he was trying to do was to kill the Wayne Enterprises crony who was threatening to reveal who Batman really was.  By threatening a hospital full of sick people it was part of his social experiment to see how low so-called "good" people would go.  And that was why he killed off Harvey Dent's girlfriend, to bring down Gotham's white knight.  I guess they should've set the movie in Detroit or St. Louis instead of Chicago though, because I don't think Chicagoans are quite that crazy :D :D


plus, it's supposed to be all serious and puts in all this tragic stuff, like making gary oldman's character choose which of his family will die and making batman choose between what's her face and harvey dent... and it's cool to put in some of that horrible sophie's choice stuff in a movie if you make the characters well developed and the writing's good, but because the movie didn't earn it it felt gratuitous, like it was just brutalizing the viewer with overly sad and gut-wrenching BS. plus, i'm no bra-burner but it always makes me a little queasy when the female love interest dies solely in order to motivate the male leads.


Rachel Dawes' character was crappy in the first place and mostly because of Katie Holmes in the first movie (I <3 Maggie Gyllenhaal) so I think it was just a really convenient excuse to off the character :D  Then in the next installment they could bring in Catwoman (and not the gawd awful Halle Berry one either).  BTW, RIP Eartha Kitt :(

To me, the plot was convoluted but the dialogue was able to explain in simple terms why certain plot elements existed, which untangled most of it.  I did have to look up some stuff on IMDb and wikipedia afterwards just to be sure but for the most part understood what was going on. 


only thing i liked were the copycats in the beginning. it's interesting about drawn out franchises like this, they usually start out serious and get campy as they run out of steam (look at godzilla, or at the original run of superman movies in the 70s and 80s) but this started out as pretty much THE campy t.v. series in the 60s and now is trying to get serious. i think it worked for batman begins, which was a pretty great movie, but this was just all fizzle for me.

fyoo. i feel better. i wouldn't feel driven to rant on like this, it's just that it's got 94% on rotten tomatoes and with all the hype, it never occurred to me it would be anything other than a masterpiece and it was mediocre at best, and no one else i know is pointing this out.


I actually didn't feel that any of it was campy.  The movie was based on several well-reviewed Batman miniseries, including The Killing Joke and The Long Halloween, neither of which can really be described as "campy".  The nice thing is that in this movie franchise, none of the main supervillains are getting killed off, unlike in Burton's and Schumacher's movies.  The premise is that the Joker is evil, you are supposed to be terrified by his character, and Batman is awesome because he's not Superman.

I believe that you went into the movie expecting it to be the Godfather or Shawshank, and should have dispensed with the overanalyzing and taken it for what it was, a comic book movie.  On the other hand, it is a comic book movie done in an artful manner with an incredible attention to detail.  As a comic book fan, I liked the little things, like the Joker's unpredictability and Batman's interrogation scenes where he beat the holy hell out of the Joker and dropped the gangster off the balcony.  I also enjoyed the interplay between the Joker and Two-Face, when at first I was apprehensive that they were cramming Two-Face into the same movie and not saving him for the next one (note that Two-Face doesn't definitely "die" in this movie either!).

If nothing else, The Dark Knight was about 2109387453893489673 times better than that piece of crap Spider-Man 3 :P

   I dunno, it just left me wanting.  I figured it was just a pretty complex movie - it was difficult to keep track of all the characters and what they were doing and how they were related to one another and why I was expected to care.  I realize the story was being set-up but dang, it really got bogged down with "city hall" politics...

   I just wanted to see the Joker act crazy and kill people...


There were only a few characters that I thought of that could be "related" to one another...

Rachel Dawes is Harvey Dent's current fiance and Bruce Wayne/Batman's former squeeze...when she died, Batman lost his motivation for a fleeting moment and Harvey Dent lost his mind.

The Joker isn't related to anyone but just likes blowing crap up and causing havoc wherever he treads.  He takes advantage of many of the relationships throughout the movie in order to augment the chaos.

The former commissioner, the judge who tried the 26937 criminals, and Harvey Dent were targeted by the Joker in the first third of the movie after Batman brought in the Chinese accountant dude.

There were two cops, an old white dude and a Mexican chick, who kidnapped Dent and Dawes under orders by the Joker and possibly Sal Maroni, the mafia boss.  The old white dude was killed by Two-Face, but the Mexican chick was spared because she got a good coin toss.

Two-Face used the Mexican chick cop to kidnap Gordon's family in a fit of revenge, as Gordon did nothing to prevent Dawes from getting blown to smithereens.

That's about it.  Why so serious?

And the Joker killed or attempted to kill about 1000 people in the movie, but a lot of it was indirect through henchmen or shown off-screen because the movie is rated PG-13, after all...

What ^ said.  I'm too lazy to type out my own reply, so there you go. :D

As for the motives of the Joker, I'll take a line from the movie and quote (incorrectly, probably) Alfred: "Some people don't need a reason for what they do.  They just want to watch the world burn."

What ^ said.  I'm too lazy to type out my own reply, so there you go. :D

As for the motives of the Joker, I'll take a line from the movie and quote (incorrectly, probably) Alfred: "Some people don't need a reason for what they do.  They just want to watch the world burn."


Exactly.

I am SOOO not a Batman fan.  I went to the movie solely to see Heath Ledger because I had heard great things about his performance.  I really wasn't planning on enjoying the movie that much, and I certainly didn't expect to understand what was going on since the only other Batman movie I've see was the Jack Nicholson one when I was in 4th grade.  But I too, ended up loving it.  I thought it was really well done and brought up a lot of really interesting questions about what so called "good" people will do when it really comes down to it.   

Want to see a magic trick? ;D  For a page in a comic book it's great, but not for a whole movie.

Want to see a magic trick? ;D  For a page in a comic book it's great, but not for a whole movie.


I will agree in that they had to cram a lot of plot into a two-hour movie, but the fact that the audience never got a break made for quite an experience :o

Why so serious?

http://urubucervando.zip.net/images/joker2.jpg

That certainly throws my respect for the OP right out the window. I think she went to this expecting Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Rob Zombie's Halloween, The Shawshank Redemption, Lord of the Rings, Schindler's List, Lawrence or Arabia, Casablanca, 2001, Apocalypse Now, or Goodfellas... only to come out disappointed when she had no right.

There is no denying that The Dark Knight is the greatest (and biggest) film of the year. The film is absolutely flawless and Oscar-worthy:

Wins
Best Actor -- Christian Bale
Best Actress -- Maggie Gyllenhall
Best Supporting Actor -- Heath Ledger
Best Director -- Christopher Nolan
Best Adapted Screenplay -- Christopher & Jonathan Nolan
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing
Best Cinematography
Best Picture

Nominations
Best Supporting Actor -- Michael Caine
Best Supporting Actor -- Aaron Echkart
Best Supporting Actor -- Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actor -- Anthony Michael Hall
Best Supporting Actor -- Gary Oldman
Best Supporting Actor -- Eric Roberts

This film IS NOT overrated. More like underrated if THIS many people hate it.  ::) >:( Somebody on this board has no taste in movies.

"She" is a "HE".

And I have to take up for Tia here.  Just because he doesn't like this movie does NOT mean he has no taste.  He has recommended several brilliant films to us, along with some more awesome campy films from the 60s.

That is all.

so i finally saw it a couple of days ago. hailed as one of the finest action movies of all time, and a fitting epitaph for heath ledger's career... how come no one noticed it sucks?

okay. action scenes are ridiculous. shot too close up so you can't see what's happening, batman's basically invincible so there's no real suspense, and he can drive at 250 miles an hour through rush hour traffic without consequence. he can fall five stories without getting hurt. the beauty of the original batman was that he didn't actually HAVE any superpowers but here he seems to have all of them, without explanation.

okay, and the joker... motivation, please? everyone he ever works with, he betrays and kills, so why would anyone work with him? he wires an entire hospital to explode for no particular reason and burns up a pile of money... so where does HIS money come from? does he want world domination? or does he want riches? obviously he wants neither. his monologue with harvey dent about bringing chaos and showing people it's a waste of time to make plans is sorta interesting but i was still not clear on why he wanted to bomb an entire hospital, or do that ridiculous thing with the ferries. heath ledger was great in brokeback mountain and i'm a huge michelle williams fan but people talk about this as, oh, this is heath's last role! it's a moving tribute! but i didn't get much out of it. he tried hard with what he had to work with but with such a poorly sketched out character it sorta seemed like all he was left with was licking his lips and not making jokes. which, as he is the "joker," seems to kinda miss the point on a basic level. ledger will be remembered as a great actor but it will be for brokeback, not for this weak sauce.

and so the joker says someone has to kill the mayor or else he's going to blow up the hospital... and then all the sudden there's all these people trying to murder the mayor? all these people willing to go to death row just because some crazy dude said he was gonna blow up a hospital? plus it happens in like four seconds. joker makes an announcement on t.v. and the next thing you know there are people lined up all up and down the street trying to attack the guy's motorcade. that was so unrealistic it took me a little while to figure out that that's what they were trying to convince us had happened. total nonsense.

plus, it's supposed to be all serious and puts in all this tragic stuff, like making gary oldman's character choose which of his family will die and making batman choose between what's her face and harvey dent... and it's cool to put in some of that horrible sophie's choice stuff in a movie if you make the characters well developed and the writing's good, but because the movie didn't earn it it felt gratuitous, like it was just brutalizing the viewer with overly sad and gut-wrenching BS. plus, i'm no bra-burner but it always makes me a little queasy when the female love interest dies solely in order to motivate the male leads.

only thing i liked were the copycats in the beginning. it's interesting about drawn out franchises like this, they usually start out serious and get campy as they run out of steam (look at godzilla, or at the original run of superman movies in the 70s and 80s) but this started out as pretty much THE campy t.v. series in the 60s and now is trying to get serious. i think it worked for batman begins, which was a pretty great movie, but this was just all fizzle for me.

fyoo. i feel better. i wouldn't feel driven to rant on like this, it's just that it's got 94% on rotten tomatoes and with all the hype, it never occurred to me it would be anything other than a masterpiece and it was mediocre at best, and no one else i know is pointing this out.


Do you just not like it because everyone does? That's the real reason you don't like it isn't it? Is this a rebellion?  http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/01/ak.gif

I give the movie a B and no I'm not even a huge fan of Batman.

As a Batfan, I'll give you my opinion on the Dark Knight. Overall, I liked Batman Begins a lot better. I think that was the best Batman movie. I'll have to say that the Dark Knight would be a close second, although the 1989 Batman was pretty good too. The thing that made the Dark Knight really good was Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. But like many have said the plot/story could have been better, as well as the dialogue. The Dark Knight is basically a typical sequel, and I felt the same way about it as with Batman Returns, Spiderman 2, X-Men 2, Fantastic Four 2, etc. It's normally because I get really into the first one, so the sequel won't live up to it.

I'm gonna weigh in when I get back to cali... just wanted to say

That movie TOTALLY ROCKED!

As a Batfan, I'll give you my opinion on the Dark Knight. Overall, I liked Batman Begins a lot better. I think that was the best Batman movie. I'll have to say that the Dark Knight would be a close second, although the 1989 Batman was pretty good too. The thing that made the Dark Knight really good was Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. But like many have said the plot/story could have been better, as well as the dialogue. The Dark Knight is basically a typical sequel, and I felt the same way about it as with Batman Returns, Spiderman 2, X-Men 2, Fantastic Four 2, etc. It's normally because I get really into the first one, so the sequel won't live up to it.


I actually thought that Batman Returns sucked because they started to cram multiple villains into one movie...but they also did that with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, although the latter two were done tastefully, methinks.  I liked Spidey 2 better than the other Spidey films, and X2 was better than the original in my opinion.  I thought the FF films sucked balls though. 

I think Batman Begins made us believe in Nolan as a Bat-Director, and The Dark Knight met all expectations for me at least.  Unfortunately I don't think it will get many nods at the Oscars but wouldn't be surprised whether it won the Best Picture or not...

Do you just not like it because everyone does? That's the real reason you don't like it isn't it? Is this a rebellion?  http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/01/ak.gif



I liked it and probably would have whether other people liked it or not :D

Why so serious?

http://urubucervando.zip.net/images/joker2.jpg

That certainly throws my respect for the OP right out the window. I think she went to this expecting Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Rob Zombie's Halloween, The Shawshank Redemption, Lord of the Rings, Schindler's List, Lawrence or Arabia, Casablanca, 2001, Apocalypse Now, or Goodfellas... only to come out disappointed when she had no right.

There is no denying that The Dark Knight is the greatest (and biggest) film of the year. The film is absolutely flawless and Oscar-worthy:

Wins
Best Actor -- Christian Bale
Best Actress -- Maggie Gyllenhall
Best Supporting Actor -- Heath Ledger
Best Director -- Christopher Nolan
Best Adapted Screenplay -- Christopher & Jonathan Nolan
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing
Best Cinematography
Best Picture

Nominations
Best Supporting Actor -- Michael Caine
Best Supporting Actor -- Aaron Echkart
Best Supporting Actor -- Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actor -- Anthony Michael Hall
Best Supporting Actor -- Gary Oldman
Best Supporting Actor -- Eric Roberts

This film IS NOT overrated. More like underrated if THIS many people hate it.  ::) >:( Somebody on this board has no taste in movies.
well yeah, except "lord of the rings" sucked too. the rest of those movies you list are pretty good. but man, there are definitely better movies from 2008 for oscar material than dark knight. dark knight might get some of the technical awards, best costume and best special effects and all that, but no way is it gonna beat coen brothers or ron howard/sean penn for the serious awards. there's just not enough "there there" in comparison with a real movie with real characters that's not fraught with implausibilities and outright plot holes.

heck, even as an action movie "ironman"'s got it all over dark knight. real characters with real motivation, great action scenes, actual suspense, vulnerable heroes, truly dastardly villains, and a good social message. these are all things dark knight lacked, in favor of sound and fury with no significance.  :P

i didn't know anthony michael hall was in it, though. i like him.

and what's christian bale gonna win best actor for? that weird raspy voice thing someone talked him into doing? heck, he couldnt even keep it up; whenever he's in the batman costume it sorta goes in and out, like a second-rate actor forgetting to do an accent. i love bale, they should have given him a necklace made entirely of oscars for his job in "the machinist," but i think he was working for the paycheck for this one. and again, as far as heath ledger was concerned all he seemed to do was lick his lips and swing his arms around. nothing against him, they just didn't bother to actually write a character for him. saying "oh, you don't need an explanation, he just wants to create chaos" is a copout. that's a scriptwriter who didn't want to take the trouble to put together a backstory. 20 years from now people will be talking about the machinist when they talk about bale, and they'll be talking about brokeback when they talk about ledger. this movie is seasonal fluff and and even as that, it wasn't very good. 20 years from now it will be mostly forgotten.

trust me, this one's a turkey. batman begins was vastly better.

edit: wait. rob zombie's "halloween"'s on par with citizen kane? am i reading that right?  ;D

I actually thought that Batman Returns sucked because they started to cram multiple villains into one movie...but they also did that with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, although the latter two were done tastefully, methinks.  I liked Spidey 2 better than the other Spidey films, and X2 was better than the original in my opinion.  I thought the FF films sucked balls though. 

I think Batman Begins made us believe in Nolan as a Bat-Director, and The Dark Knight met all expectations for me at least.  Unfortunately I don't think it will get many nods at the Oscars but wouldn't be surprised whether it won the Best Picture or not...
batman begins rocked on so many levels but for me it was mainly scarecrow that made the whole movie work. that was one scary sonofabitch. if you want to make a serious action movie, you don't start with the hero. in my opinion, you start with the villain. if you've got a villain everybody hates with a passion who scares the bejesus out of you, you're gonna have the wind at your back writing the entire rest of the script.

i agree with you on fantastic four. i saw the first one and it wasn't even bad enough to be interesting. jessica alba in a leotard, that's what that entire movie amounted to for me.

i just saw hellboy II a few days ago and liked that. good villain, that little skinny albino fudgeer who'd been practicing swordplay for 2000 years. that works, you're scared to see hellboy go against him. and i wont say more lest i spoil but it offered everything i think a good action movie should, along with a lot of fertile and generous imagination and lots of WTF moments in a good way. dark knight did that goddamned gloomy goth aesthetic again. yes, yes, everything's black. how long did it take them to think THAT up? after sin city and the crow you'd have thought hollywood would move on from setting everything in Emo City but i guess they'll keep doing it until it consistently loses money.

okay, i'm just piling on now. i thought "mamma mia" sorta sucked too, for what it's worth.

Why so serious?

http://urubucervando.zip.net/images/joker2.jpg

That certainly throws my respect for the OP right out the window. I think she went to this expecting Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Rob Zombie's Halloween, The Shawshank Redemption, Lord of the Rings, Schindler's List, Lawrence or Arabia, Casablanca, 2001, Apocalypse Now, or Goodfellas... only to come out disappointed when she had no right.

There is no denying that The Dark Knight is the greatest (and biggest) film of the year. The film is absolutely flawless and Oscar-worthy:

Wins
Best Actor -- Christian Bale
Best Actress -- Maggie Gyllenhall
Best Supporting Actor -- Heath Ledger
Best Director -- Christopher Nolan
Best Adapted Screenplay -- Christopher & Jonathan Nolan
Best Costume Design
Best Makeup
Best Sound Mixing
Best Sound Editing
Best Cinematography
Best Picture

Nominations
Best Supporting Actor -- Michael Caine
Best Supporting Actor -- Aaron Echkart
Best Supporting Actor -- Morgan Freeman
Best Supporting Actor -- Anthony Michael Hall
Best Supporting Actor -- Gary Oldman
Best Supporting Actor -- Eric Roberts

This film IS NOT overrated. More like underrated if THIS many people hate it.  ::) >:( Somebody on this board has no taste in movies.
That's just b******s half of those people DEFINATLY do not even deserve an oscar mention when compared to other actors in other films that came out this year. Just because you love the film doesn't mean everyone else has too! Christian Bale best actor? get over it, I like him but that was never an oscar worthy performance.
I saw The Hulk in the same week as Dark Knight and thought it was way, WAY better.
That is my personal opinion and I know a lot of people disagree.

edit: wait. rob zombie's "halloween"'s on par with citizen kane? am i reading that right?  ;D


I have to say...I tried really hard to watch Citizen Kane like, a month ago.  I really really tried.  I got through about an hour of it, and I finally thought, "why am I wasting my time watching something that I am clearly not enjoying just because everyone thinks it is so great."

I hope you still love me.




okay, i'm just piling on now. i thought "mamma mia" sorta sucked too, for what it's worth.


And we just broke up.

There were only a few characters that I thought of that could be "related" to one another...

Rachel Dawes is Harvey Dent's current fiance and Bruce Wayne/Batman's former squeeze...when she died, Batman lost his motivation for a fleeting moment and Harvey Dent lost his mind.

The Joker isn't related to anyone but just likes blowing crap up and causing havoc wherever he treads.  He takes advantage of many of the relationships throughout the movie in order to augment the chaos.

The former commissioner, the judge who tried the 26937 criminals, and Harvey Dent were targeted by the Joker in the first third of the movie after Batman brought in the Chinese accountant dude.

There were two cops, an old white dude and a Mexican chick, who kidnapped Dent and Dawes under orders by the Joker and possibly Sal Maroni, the mafia boss.  The old white dude was killed by Two-Face, but the Mexican chick was spared because she got a good coin toss.

Two-Face used the Mexican chick cop to kidnap Gordon's family in a fit of revenge, as Gordon did nothing to prevent Dawes from getting blown to smithereens.

That's about it.  Why so serious?

And the Joker killed or attempted to kill about 1000 people in the movie, but a lot of it was indirect through henchmen or shown off-screen because the movie is rated PG-13, after all...


   Thank you for the breakdown.  Suck was a bit harsh - it's a very busy movie and I didn't keep a score card.  I plan to give the movie another viewing...

  Edited to add:  Like Tia, I'm disappointed with Jokes.  I understand chaos and meaningless mayhem are what he's about, but that motivation comes-off as a little too cheap.  He's not a tragic figure.  In order to respect the bad guys, I also need to care about them.  Maybe, to a small extent, identify with them...


batman begins rocked on so many levels but for me it was mainly scarecrow that made the whole movie work. that was one scary sonofabitch. if you want to make a serious action movie, you don't start with the hero. in my opinion, you start with the villain. if you've got a villain everybody hates with a passion who scares the bejesus out of you, you're gonna have the wind at your back writing the entire rest of the script.

i agree with you on fantastic four. i saw the first one and it wasn't even bad enough to be interesting. jessica alba in a leotard, that's what that entire movie amounted to for me.

i just saw hellboy II a few days ago and liked that. good villain, that little skinny albino fudger who'd been practicing swordplay for 2000 years. that works, you're scared to see hellboy go against him. and i wont say more lest i spoil but it offered everything i think a good action movie should, along with a lot of fertile and generous imagination and lots of WTF moments in a good way. dark knight did that goddamned gloomy goth aesthetic again. yes, yes, everything's black. how long did it take them to think THAT up? after sin city and the crow you'd have thought hollywood would move on from setting everything in Emo City but i guess they'll keep doing it until it consistently loses money.



   Heh.  He said Emo City...

  You've heard the old saying - "a movie is only as good as it's villain" (or something like that).  Scarecrow was a kick-ass baddie.  Watching the DVD, really I wanted to see more of him...   

I have to say...I tried really hard to watch Citizen Kane like, a month ago.  I really really tried.  I got through about an hour of it, and I finally thought, "why am I wasting my time watching something that I am clearly not enjoying just because everyone thinks it is so great."

I hope you still love me.


And we just broke up.
take it with a grain of salt, *ash*, i'm not allowed to like mamma mia because i am a boy.

i coulda sworn i saw john mccain in the audience, though. that was weird. :D

take it with a grain of salt, *ash*, i'm not allowed to like mamma mia because i am a boy.

i coulda sworn i saw john mccain in the audience, though. that was weird. :D


I do not accept that.

And you wish you saw John McCcain in the audience!

take it with a grain of salt, *ash*, i'm not allowed to like mamma mia because i am a boy.

i coulda sworn i saw john mccain in the audience, though. that was weird. :D

I do not accept that.

And you wish you saw John McCcain in the audience!


Hey....among my top movie choices are....Sound of Music, Anne of Green Gables (series) and Pollyanna. I saw McCain at ALL of them. ;D

Hey....among my top movie choices are....Sound of Music, Anne of Green Gables (series) and Pollyanna. I saw McCain at ALL of them. ;D


You know, I believe you.

Personally, I loved The Dark Knight.
Not because of it being Heath's final performance, but because his performance was amazing! (Although, I will always remember him for his performance in 10 Things I Hate About You.) Granted, they really didn't give him a back story in TDK, but his portrayal as a chaotic killer was genius. I think I am going to watch again tonight.

As far as there being better films this year, I will agree. Ironman was phenomenal, Changeling was apparently great too (and I don't care for Angelina Jolie), Indiana Jones - saw it and loved it, although their stunts we definitely over the top - too unbelievable, Hancock rocked my socks, Horton Hears A Who - great stuff for animation, Sex and the City - gotta love my Girls... I could go on.

But there were far worse movies than TDK this year! Journey to the Center of the Earth, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Cloverfield, Role Models, Burn After Reading <- don't even get me started on that one! Tried to watch it 2 nights ago with my mom! What a fiasco!! 8-P

Personally, I loved The Dark Knight.
Not because of it being Heath's final performance, but because his performance was amazing! (Although, I will always remember him for his performance in 10 Things I Hate About You.) Granted, they really didn't give him a back story in TDK, but his portrayal as a chaotic killer was genius. I think I am going to watch again tonight.

As far as there being better films this year, I will agree. Ironman was phenomenal, Changeling was apparently great too (and I don't care for Angelina Jolie), Indiana Jones - saw it and loved it, although their stunts we definitely over the top - too unbelievable, Hancock rocked my socks, Horton Hears A Who - great stuff for animation, Sex and the City - gotta love my Girls... I could go on.

But there were far worse movies than TDK this year! Journey to the Center of the Earth, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Cloverfield, Role Models, Burn After Reading <- don't even get me started on that one! Tried to watch it 2 nights ago with my mom! What a fiasco!! 8-P


So...it is more...Burn before Viewing?

So...it is more...Burn before Viewing?


Definitely! 8)

Definitely! 8)


Well...I'm definitely NOT going to see that movie because Tam said so....and I ALWAYS do as Tam directs advises. ::)

Well...I'm definitely NOT going to see that movie because Tam said so....and I ALWAYS do as Tam directs advises. ::)

;D

Seriously though, I have no clue as to why the critics gave it the rave reviews they did. ???
Might just be me, but I couldn't stand it.

;D

Seriously though, I have no clue as to why the critics gave it the rave reviews they did. ???
Might just be me, but I couldn't stand it.




I think it was definitely overrated but think its worth seeing for no other reason than Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker.

I think it was definitely overrated but think its worth seeing for no other reason than Heath Ledger's performance of the Joker.


Err..I think Tam was referring to another movie with that post!  ;)

But there were far worse movies than TDK this year! Journey to the Center of the Earth, Step Brothers, Pineapple Express, Cloverfield, Role Models, Burn After Reading <- don't even get me started on that one! Tried to watch it 2 nights ago with my mom! What a fiasco!! 8-P


and The Day the Earth STood Still don't forget that...it SUCKED!



I really loved Dark Knight and can't wait to buy it on Blu Ray  I did kind of hate Maggie Gyllenhaal in it tho...so she gets my vote.

Maggie Gyllenhaal > Katie Holmes :D

Maggie Gyllenhaal > Katie Holmes :D


well yeah.....but it was still a bad role... I think maybe they wrote it for Katie Holmes and didn't "beef it up" when they got Maggie...leaving her to flounder in a bad part.

well yeah.....but it was still a bad role... I think maybe they wrote it for Katie Holmes and didn't "beef it up" when they got Maggie...leaving her to flounder in a bad part.



It's because she was a fake character, there was never a Rachel Dawes in the comics :P

It's because she was a fake character, there was never a Rachel Dawes in the comics :P






yeah well besides Catwoman...did Batman ever have a woman in the comics? oh yeah that's right he had Robin  ;D

well yeah.....but it was still a bad role... I think maybe they wrote it for Katie Holmes and didn't "beef it up" when they got Maggie...leaving her to flounder in a bad part.

there was something damsel-in-distress-esque about the whole role.

one of the best things about the frank miller comic is that batman has a female robin, great character, vaguely tweaky stuff too (you know, like, way to endanger little girls, batman! what a hero!).

http://www.ibiblio.org/phil/fnordchan/comics/dark-knight-returns.jpg

It's because she was a fake character, there was never a Rachel Dawes in the comics :P





Seriously?
I thought there was?
Perhaps I listened to rumors - but I thought she turned out to be Catwoman?
And Gordon's daughter turns out to be BatGirl?

Seriously?
I thought there was?
Perhaps I listened to rumors - but I thought she turned out to be Catwoman?
And Gordon's daughter turns out to be BatGirl?



Barbara Gordon is Batgirl

          & 

Selina Kyle is Catwoman

Seriously?
I thought there was?
Perhaps I listened to rumors - but I thought she turned out to be Catwoman?
And Gordon's daughter turns out to be BatGirl?


Tam is semi-correct.

Rachel Dawes was a purely invented character to drive Batman's humanity in Batman Begins.  

Catwoman = Selina Kyle.

Barbara Gordon was an actual daughter in some realities and a niece and/or adopted daughter in other realities, but she was the original Batgirl.  She got shot by the Joker and is now the Oracle, and unless I'm wrong (haven't followed the Batman continuity in comics in more than two years) there is a new Batgirl.

The female Robin only appeared in Frank Miller's alternate reality series "The Dark Knight Returns".

What Snoz sed.

What Snoz sed.


for a minute there I thought I was invisible.  ;D

Selina Kyle is Catwoman


Tam is semi-correct.

Rachel Dawes was a purely invented character to drive Batman's humanity in Batman Begins.  

Catwoman = Selina Kyle.



Right - I knew Catwoman was Selina Kyle - but I thought that was one of her 9 lives/names. Like Rachel dies thus leaving her with 8 lives, the next to be that of Selina Kyle...

Guess not huh? ;D

Nah, Catwoman has always been Selina Kyle.  I think Batman also had some random ladies to keep up his front as a billionaire playboy, and every now and then you see Vicky Vale, but his main squeeze is the Catwoman.

I am s-stupid. :D

Nah, it just means you're not as nerdy as me :-[