Batman week Part 6

After the success of "Batman Begins," it would probably come as no surprise that Christopher Nolan was planning a sequel. In 2008, he did just that with, at the time, the Best Superhero film ever made, "The Dark Knight." I'll admit that when I saw the trailers to this, I thought it was going to be a horrible remake of the '89 Batman, so I disregarded ever seeing it. However, when I finally did see it, I was wrong. It was "much" better than the '89 Batman, and it was the perfect follow-up to "Batman Begins." I would even go far to say that I consider this film higher on my favorite films list than Tim Burton's "Batman." This is another one of my all time favorite comic book adaptations. A lot of sequels, which people have noticed are pretty common, either repeats the same storyline or they try some new type of story, which fails miserably. "The Dark Knight," which is a crime thriller, did not do either and told the next story, picking up where "Batman Begins" had left off. Nolan made this film after reading the Joker's comic debut in 1940, The Killing Joke, which is the 1988 graphic novel, and the 1996 series The Long Halloween, which retold Two-Face's origin.

It was nice to see the returning cast of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Morgan Freeman in their respective roles, and they did just as good as they did in Batman Begins, maybe even better. Katie Holmes did not reprise her role as Rachel Dawes, although she was signed on, but turned it down to star in "Mad Money." In March of 2007, the beautiful Maggie Gyllenhaal was in final talks and was casted as Rachel Dawes. Gyllenhaal has described her character as "a damsel in distress to an extent," but says "Nolan sought ways to empower her character." So, "Rachel's really clear about what's important to her and unwilling to compromise her morals, which made a nice change from the many conflicted characters whom she has previously portrayed." Gyllenhaal did just as a good job as Holmes did, a tough and intelligent role that could also be looked at as a role model. Also, you might recall when Rachel tells Bruce that she'll be with him once Batman is no longer around. There is, if I remember correctly, a scene that follows up with that.

Now comes the juicy part, the villains in this film. Cillian Murphy returns briefly in the beginning as Scarecrow, but is tossed aside for the main villain of this film that steals the show: The Joker, played by Heath Ledger. What can I say about this performance? Unlike Jack Nicholson, who plays the role in a very funny type of a way, Ledger played it the exact opposite. This is hands down, one of the scariest performances I have ever seen in a while. I was actually scared of him the entire time he was on screen because he had such a dastardly plan that you knew he was going to go far into taking over Gotham City. When he sits down with the robbers to devise a plan to kill Batman, he knows what he is saying to them and knows that's the only thing to do. In this film, they made him too invincible with interrogating the mob of criminals and escaping the police too easily, but he's still a tremendous performance.

Joker is the main villain that is seen all the time in Batman comics and the shows, so there is no doubt that Joker is everyone's favorite Batman villain. The hype to this film was a little exaggerated for a while. The news was covering on "The Dark Knight" for some time, but more specifically about the drug overdose which caused Ledger's unfortunate and sad passing. Nolan had originally planned that he would reprise Ledger as Joker in the next two or three sequels of his Batman films, but after he passed away, Nolan had to switch gears and find a new villain.

I believe that after Ledger passed away, the internet rumor called "The Joker Curse" had started, where people stated that whoever played the Joker had gone through some sort of problems, like psychological issues or some sort. I had believed that for a while, with everyone saying (if I remember correctly) that Cesar Romero had some psychological issues, Nicholson was in the hospital a week later after suffering a heart attack, Mark Hamill, who did the voice of Joker in the Animated Series, had trouble sleeping, and of course, Ledger's drug overdose. However, I think people were being too over panicked about this, so I brushed it aside after a while.

I got tired of the question (although I was asking this myself) on who the better Joker was, comparing Nicholson and Ledger. Both did an outstanding job in their own respective ways, and that's what made Ledger so great. He was an original Joker, not imitating any of the past actors who played Joker, and not laughing as often.

When you hear Joker tell his different stories as to why he got his scars to one of the mobsters and Rachel, we don't know his back-story and if he's telling the truth. I wouldn't be surprised if Nolan got that idea from the Animated Series’ episode, "Mad Love," which happens to be my personal favorite out of all of them. You have to love the Joker line, "Why so serious?"

The Batman and Joker scenes are just perfect. When you see the two of them together in a scene, you want to see what they do. The interrogation scene, the fight at the party, the car chase, and the end fight, it's all just perfect scenes well-put together.

Sal Maroni, played by Eric Roberts, is the one who takes over Falcone's job, which is another criminal Gordon is after in this one. Bob Hoskins and the man who brought you "The Sopranos" and did the memorable role as Tony Soprano in the sitcom, James Gandolfini, auditioned for this role.

Now the final villain is Harvey Dent aka Two Face, played by Aaron Eckhart, who did a better job than Tommy Lee Jones in "Batman Forever" by a mile. Before Eckhart was casted, Liev Schreiber, Josh Lucas, and Ryan Phillippe wanted to play Harvey Dent, Mark Ruffalo auditioned, and Hugh Jackman was also considered. Nolan chose Eckhart because of "his "extraordinary" ability as an actor, his embodiment of "that kind of chiseled, American hero quality" projected by Robert Redford and his sub textual "edge." Eckhart was also interested in good guys turning evil." We all know that Two-Face is a crime boss, but Nolan put him down as a twisted vigilante because he's Batman's counterpart. Eckhart said that, "[He] is still true to himself. He's a crime fighter; he's not killing good people. He's not a bad guy, not purely." Eckhart thought of Two-Face as Robert Kennedy, as an "idealistic, held a grudge and took on the Mob." He had his hair lightened and styled to make him appear more dashing. Nolan told Eckhart to not make Dent's Two-Face persona "jokey with slurping sounds or ticks."

I especially liked the line that Dent said to Bruce, "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." In Dent's case, would you say the latter is the one he did? Because thinking now, I think that he lived long enough to see himself become the villain. Unfortunately, I do have to complain: didn't Nolan rush in making Dent into Two-Face? He's literally Two-Face for maybe the last half-hour of the movie, and then he dies. They should have made him turn into Two-Face, and left it as a cliffhanger for the third movie. Oh well, but he played the split-personality of Two-Face perfectly.

It was especially a strong thing for Dent to say that he was Batman so that he could cover up Bruce. After Batman interrogates Joker and goes after Dent while the others go after Rachel, she dies, and Dent becomes Two-Face after getting half of his face burned with the acid explosion. Joker comes to him in the hospital, and turns Gotham's "White Knight" by bringing him from the higher level to the same level as the Joker. That shows you how powerful of a villain the Joker can be.

The action scenes are much better in this one than in "Batman Begins." Although I liked the action in that one, this one cleaned it up with no more of that up close shaky camera movement. Not only did this involve more vehicles and explosions, but "the hand-to-hand combat were photographed and edited in a more coherent manner" which is a statement from James Rolfe's review that I agree with. When the Tumbler exploded, I didn't mind, but the Bat-Pod looked really neat, and a much better vehicle for Batman.

There are two scenes in this film that I believe pay tribute to the '89 Batman, which you might know the ones I'm mentioning.

People would probably also complain that "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" really have a lot of pretentious, brooding dialogue that they don't care for and are annoyed of, but I didn't pay attention to that.

Gordon is believed to be dead for a while, but comes back and is promoted to Commissioner after Joker kills Gillian B. Leob, played by Colin McFarlane.

Nolan worked with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, on the screenplay, and gave the idea of the Joker's first two appearances from the first issue of Batman in 1940. Nolan also wanted to make this film show more of Batman's detective side, which is a side that wasn't fully developed in "Batman Begins."

With Ledger dead, people were going around talking that possibly Johnny Depp would play the Riddler, Phillip Seymour Hoffman would play the Penguin, and I believe they were talking about putting Catwoman in there as well. But who would be the next villain in the series? And will this one get better, or will be the worst of them all? Tune in next episode! Same Bat Time! Same Bat Channel!