ZL's Blog

We were all anticipating this movie since the minute we saw Gordon hand out a Joker card to our Dark Knight. Mostly all of us got online and started gossiping about the release of this movie as soon as we left the theaters from watching Batman Begins. It was a great movie and we couldn't wait to see what Nolan had in store for the next sequel. Well, finally my friends, that time has come.



We all shit our pants on July 18th, 2008. We couldn't believe it! Another masterpiece! It was 100 times better than The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and any other masterpiece put together (except Titanic, that wasn't a masterpiece just some soap in movie form). And like last time, we all got on the internet and bragged about how we saw it on it's opening day and we started talking about the sequel. Would they replace the Joker? Would Catwoman be introduced? What about Robin? Will Johnny Depp play the Riddler? Is Nolan even thinking about a sequel? Argh!

I mean, is he really thinking about a sequel? He already has this amazing masterpiece right? Wrong. As much as I love this movie, it's not quite the masterpiece we all thought it was. Better than it's predecessor, but if we didn't have the amazing hype we had before it's Theatrical Release, we would have noticed a lot of things wrong with this movie.

If you're like me and you need to have this movie as soon as possible then you're probably one of those people that decided to download one of the leaked versions of the movie. I'm sure some of you got the DVD version and are bragging about it at the moment, but really, that release sucks. The quality is horrible and probably doesn't even work on a DVD player, that's why I went with something bigger. The HD versions were leaked about a week ago and I got my hands on one of them. So yes, I'm bragging about me getting The Dark Knight in glorious HD. Suck on that bitches.

Whether you got this illegally or not (impossible, it's not Dec. 9 yet) you'll notice that this movie is ridiculously long. It is really long though? Of course not, it runs for about 145 minutes (that's 2 hours and 25 minutes for some of you) and it's nothing compared to great movies like Pulp Fiction or The Godfather, but why does this movie feel so ridiculously long? I can't honestly answer that though, but I'm thinking it's because there's a lot of *bleep*ing talking. Seriously, I thought that what prequels were for.

But to go around this unnoticed, Nolan used his secret weapon, The Joker. But even this amazing masterpiece has it's own flaws. The main one being that the great actor died. So there goes the secret weapon for the possible sequel to this. Let's not go there for now, let's explore this movie a little.



Unlike most Superhero sequels this one is different. It doesn't start off all boring recapping what happened in the last movie. I mean, who wants to see that shit? If the movie deserves a sequel, chances are it's that great and everyone remembers it the first one. And who else would be dumb enough to watch the sequel without watching its predecessor? So Nolan knowing this he skipped all that boring stuff and brought us pure action at the beginning to hook us under his masterpiece spell.

We see a bank robbery and in minutes we see the evil villain doing his work. This guy is crazy, he's immoral, violent. We love it. It's what any comic crazed person could dream of, a real life version of the Joker. This bastard cares nothing in this world but pure chaos.

After that, we get boring scenes here and there. The only thing that makes up for it are the Joker's amazing screen time. Which is weird, because we get good scenes here, and then we get boring scenes, then we get action again, and we're back to boring. Is this movie teasing us? I thought I already had a girlfriend for that.

But what's worse of this movie is this character here. Try to guess who it is.



No, that's not ET. That's Rachel Dawes played by Maggie Gyllenhaal. Seriously, I don't know what happened, did they run out of makeup each day when they put it all over Ledger's face? They must have had some left overs. Seriously. In theaters I saw nothing wrong with her face, maybe it was because I'm blind and can't see too much details from far away or maybe my expectations were met and I was blinded on those scenes. Who knows, but when you finally get this thing for you to pause and zoom in on your own, you find out that this video was telling the truth. Thank god they kill her off in the end (Oops I gave the plot twist away).

Eventually into the amazingness of the movie you finally get to the part where they capture the Joker (Damn!). Don't worry, he gets away but here's the interesting part. They try to identify him. They tried to match finger prints, probably took some of his hair for DNA matches, everything. They even check his clothes for logos to see if they can find out where he bought them and interrogate those sellers. They do all that, but they don't think about taking his make-up off? Seriously, in the comics you can't do that because his face is literally white, doesn't matter how he got that, but it's not *bleep*ing make-up. In the movie version though, you get people saying how he wears make-up and what not to scare people of just because he's crazy. They even give you a scene and a slight shot of him not wearing make up!



Something tells me Gordan should have never became the Commissioner and therefore gives us another plot hole. I think I would have been a better Commissioner.



Let's try to ignore that small mistake though. As I mentioned earlier, the problem with this movie is that it's really long and the only reason it's like that is because of how slow pacing it is. Everyone is talking trying to explain what's going on like if we can't put the puzzle together, in the end you realize this movie is literally two in one. First you have the Joker terrorizing everyone to scare them, to make them go crazy, just for the hell of it. Then at the same time you have Harvey Dent trying to be the White Knight of Gotham. So, the Joker first tries to kill Harvey Dent, but after failing he decides to do something much more. This is where it brings us to part two of the movie, turning Gotham's White Knight to something evil like the Joker.

Knowing this, you should be aware that the first half is action packed, while the second half isn't quite there. It does have some good scenes like the Hospital explosion and such, but it's nothing compared to the first half like the chasing scene. What's worse is that Harvey's second half didn't have enough time to develop. This freak just goes on a killing spree over the death of his supposed girlfriend. Talk about being pussy whooped. Bruce Wayne didn't have that problem, so what's up with Dent?

Unfortunately Nolan had some mental problems after the death of Ledger and he didn't know what to do with Two-Face. He couldn't compare to the Joker and he knew he was too pussy whooped to promise a sequel. He did what any emo boy would have done when his beloved girlfriend broke up with him, he killed him.



I'd love to go on about how The Dark Knight's flaws, but I don't want to ruin this great masterpiece for you. Maybe while you watch this movie you'll be able to find out why Nolan decided to kill half of his cast on-screen or off-screen, doesn't matter (Surprised Batman didn't die). Even though this movie has its slight flaws you gotta admit that it had you at the edge of your seat even though the characters talked a lot. The Joker is enough for you to watch this movie, and what's best is that you don't even have to watch Batman Begins to understand this movie.

That being said, I give this movie an 9 out of 10. Better than it's predecessor, but not quite there.