comment #1

cjKennedy says ...

Even pre-Internet, that would be considered a slow breaking story.

comment #2

Edward says ...

I've been reading this BS since the opening week. DK sucks, because the Bat-Voice is soooo ... whatever.

comment #3

BurmaShave says ...

I admit towards the end when Ledger, Eckhart and Bale were all growling, it was a little bit much. It's not just a growl though, it's a lisp too, and it's a novel and logical decision. It really makes his Batman strange and different. So sick of the stentorian superhero voice. Obviously Robert Downey Jr.'s conversational tone is the best superhero voice of the summer.

Bale's Batman performance is consistently underrated. Especially in BEGINS.

comment #4

BNick says ...

I presume uses that voice to intimidate criminals and also so he's not recognized.

That makes sense until you consider that he used the voice when talking to Fox at the end of the film, when it was just the two of them and Fox knew full well who he was.

comment #5

redmond says ...

If you're a fan of Kevin Conroy's Batman, the voice change was just one of the nice homages to The Animated Series. One of my favorite scenes in TDK is when Bale (as Bruce Wayne) finds some tied up cops and switches to his Batman voice. Just a cool little moment since I grew up with TAS.

But, I agree, why bring this up now? And after 3 weekends of #1 Box Office.

comment #6

High Chaparral says ...

Yes, the most ridiculous think about the man in a rubber bat costume, complete with ears, is his voice.

comment #7

mutinyco says ...

This movie has so many plot holes Mohammed Atta could fly through them and survive...

comment #8

Scott Mendelson says ...

I'm all for Wayne changing his voice as Batman (I love the bit in the pilot for Batman: TAS when Batman, in costume, switches to his Bruce Wayne voice to take a phone call), but the issue is the quality of the voice he chooses. The voice in Batman Begins was a little shocking, mainly because no actor had made that choice (to scream with fury) in a prior Batman project. Still, it was effective and only slightly goofy in certain spots ("It's not who I am inside, but what I doooooooooo that defines me" comes to mind). Had Bale just stuck with that voice this time, it wouldn't have been nearly as silly. It's not a deal breaker, but it does lessen the effectiveness of several dramatic scenes (especially towards the end).

comment #9

sumo-pop says ...

Yeah, it really hurt the movie with the general public.

comment #10

mitchtaylor says ...

The problem is that it sounds like it's digitally fucked with, to the point that it's super-laughable. He sounds like he's in his own private echo chamber. And, OHMYGOD! I just realized that this shitty, shitty piece of the film is symbolism for Wayne's torment and now it's good instead!

Fuck his voice. It sucks. Period.

comment #11

Scott Mendelson says ...

Sorry to post again so soon, but the article in question contains yet another example of giving Frank Miller full credit for everything good about Batman in the last forty years.

"The animated series are notable because they drew on the DC Comics of Batman as envisioned by Frank Miller, whose work heavily informs "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight." (Bale and Nolan were unavailable to comment for this story.)"

Not really. If you watch the show, it takes bits and pieces from every era of Batman, but it feels to most resemble the tone of the 1970s Batman comics. Batman was a dark, driven adventurer with genuine issues, but he was not a sociopathic nutcase. He was able to maintain relationships with friends and quasi-family. The villains were murderous and somewhat three-dimensional, often sympathetic, but never so overburdened by psychosis that it overwhelmed the story telling. Ironically, this was the era that Batman Forever seemed to try to emulate, with mixed success (aside from Jones's terrible portrayal of Harvey Dent). But Timm/Burnett/Dini beat them to it by a full three years.

I bring this up because, despite what writers seem to keep saying, Batman comics were dark, introspective, and violent again by 1969, a full seventeen years before Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Yes, it was a groundbreaking piece of social satire, but crediting Miller with single-handedly saving Batman from the camp of the 1950s and 1960s is a slap in the face to Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and all of the other writers that did so much good, truly groundbreaking work in the 1970s and 1980s.

comment #12

Geoff says ...

I think some people still don't realize that it's an electronic device he's using. They briefly show him installing it in Batman Begins.

comment #13

tophertilson says ...

Even Keaton changed his voice when switching from Bruce to Batman. It just wasn't quite so...extreme.

comment #14

GeeseOPlenty says ...

As I just said on my own site, one of my problems is that Bats uses the voice even in front of people who know who he is. I kept expecting Rachel and Lucius to say "Knock it off, Bruce, we get it."

comment #15

115thDreamer says ...

I think writers are just looking for new angles at this point - you can only write so much about Ledger. They need a new story, so they think "hey, what's with the voice?" and off they go. On a surface-level, it's pretty obvious - he's disguising his voice so that people don't recognize it as Bruce Wayne's voice - he's well-known about town, after all. As for the reason why he would use the voice around people who know Batman's secret identity, well, that gets interesting. Perhaps he's not even doing it consciously....maybe deep down, he absolutely NEEDS to separate Bruce Wayne from Batman in every way, especially around people who know him. Maybe to keep himself sane, he needs to believe that Bruce could never do the things Batman does (and vice versa), so in addition to the obvious move of creating a suit/mask to achieve a separate persona/identity, he goes a step further and creates a voice to go with it. If he was knocking people around and heard his own voice in his ear, it might be too much to bear. Of course, maybe I'm assigning too much depth to a movie where the hero dresses up like a bat - hard to say.

comment #16

arch451 says ...

As Geoff already pointed out, Batman's mask contains a device to disguise his voice. So it makes sense that it sounds digital and it makes sense that it sounds like that even when he is talking to Lucius.

comment #17

shermy says ...

I'm not a fan of that cheesy voice, either. It's a little too much like a geek trying to make his voice sound cool as he talks about a superhero.

It's a good idea, but the execution is just silly. I'm also not sure how much suspicion it throws off Bruce Wayne- the richest guy in town. Maybe toning down the expensive gadgets would be more logical than worrying about the voice?

A spoof of Bale's voice has been making the rounds for a while now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2yv8aT0UFc

comment #18

Ogami Itto says ...

Yes, it was a groundbreaking piece of social satire, but crediting Miller with single-handedly saving Batman from the camp of the 1950s and 1960s is a slap in the face to Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and all of the other writers that did so much good, truly groundbreaking work in the 1970s and 1980s.

It's good to hear someone acknowledge the excellent work of these writers and artists once in awhile. I'm sick of Frank Miller getting all the credit (actually at this point I'm just sick of Frank Miller).

comment #19

BurmaShave says ...

mutiny is there some reason you've been hell bent on saying such awful things today? Atta/flight jokes, not cool man.

comment #20

mutinyco says ...

Been sick. Blowing off steam.

The movie's narrative is a real mess though.

comment #21

EOTW says ...

The film is pretty f'n great as is, but it could use anohter 20 minutes or so to unravel some of that ending. The last half hours feels awfuly rushed, but it becomes less so with repeated views (only seen it twice).

comment #22

Brian R says ...

Batman uses that voice in the comics. It's mentioned in the books the film references (Long Halloween, Dark Vicroty, etc...).

As someone said, he uses it to disguise himself and intimidate his enemies. Keaton used it, even Kilmer to an extent.

Get over it.

comment #23

Brian R says ...

Dark Victory, I should say,

And, no, there is no ironic reference to Bette in said book.

comment #24

mutinyco says ...

This movie makes Transformers feel like a documentary by comparison.

comment #25

Brian R says ...

Is that Bay's swift, verisimilitudenous cutting or the lack of giant robots in Nolan'sfilm?

comment #26

mutinyco says ...

It's the lack of plot logic.

comment #27

Brian R says ...

And Transfomers is full of that.

I found very little to complain about plot wise. Maniac sets out to destroy eoither one of two heroes and almost succeeds indoing them both.

Nope, not much for me there. I'll see it again soon. If I have a problem then I shall bow down before ye.

comment #28

mutinyco says ...

Virtually every sequence is built upon gaps of logic, plot holes, characters knowing/predicting things they never could've known, as well as general physical impossibilities.

Ledger was great.

But the narrative reminded me of the footage of the old Tacoma Narrows bridge wobbling and collapsing in the breeze.

comment #29

dre says ...

This is so so stupid

comment #30

BurmaShave says ...

mutiny can you give an example? I'm actually curious because I thought it was pretty tight but I'm obviously not a professional.

comment #31

mutinyco says ...

Um...

I should preface that I only saw it once. Late at night. As it is now. But these were a few things that occurred to me...

1) When Joker crashes Dent's fundraiser. That scene ended with Batman and Rachel on the car down below. Then it cut right ahead to the next day, next scenario. But...Joker was still up at the party. What'd he do hobnob? Politely excuse himself?

2) How did Joker so easily get into Dent's hospital room? Security? Plus, he still had his make-up on. And how exactly did he rig the entire hospital with explosives -- a pretty busy building -- in the first place?

3) Joker's master plan at the end was to get one boat to blow up the other. Yet how could he ever have been able to know that when he threatened the city's tunnels/bridges they would ferry out 2 boats, one with criminals, one with civilians? And how could he ever have had the time, and how could nobody have noticed that he was getting the bombs/fuel onto those ferries? This is both illogical and a physical impossibility.

4) How does Batman seem to mysteriously vanish from open spaces without anybody noticing? Easy: The camera isn't pointed at him.

5) How does a bus back out of a hole in a building and wind up perfectly in line with other busses? And nobody notices either?

6) Sonar has nothing to do with eyesight. Sonar stands for: Sound Navigation and Ranging. Bats use their ears not they eyes.

comment #32

Richard_Stone says ...

7) As pointed by the Geezers: a) Joker breaks into Bruce's penthouse b) Dent to Rachel: - "Go to the safest place in town!" - "OK, I'll go to Bruce's penthouse!"

8) Gordon faking his own death. Was it planned or improvised on the spot? Did anyone help him or not? The movie offers no clue one way or the other.

9) No cops reply to the Joker's gunshots in the chase on Lower Wacker.

10) Dent's plan after he is taken in custody for claiming he is the Batman (a silly idea to begin with): go for a ride in a police truck on deserted roads so he will be attacked by the Joker and saved by Batman. It works!

11) - "Hey guy, we have to organize Commissioner Loeb's funeral. You know a safe spot where we could have the ceremony take place so the Joker won't act up on his threat to kill the mayor?"
-"Sure man, how about the middle of a city street with buildings with thousands of windows on either side?"

comment #33

Richard_Stone says ...

A comment on Mutinyco's first point: it could have been a cool little moment if they had showed the Joker exiting Bruce's party by stealing Bruce's helicopter.

comment #34

mutinyco says ...

12) Joker takes the interrogation cop hostage with a knife. After we've already seen all of his knives inventoried.

13) Dent shoots the driver of the car he's in, crashing the vehicle. How did he know he'd survive? Why wasn't he hurt? Why not just wait until the car parked?

comment #35

BurmaShave says ...

Most of those are fair points, and I would say at root here is the old williing suspension of disbelief. I was willing.

Except 13) I would say he definitely doesn't know, and doesn't care.

comment #36

mutinyco says ...

Except 13) I would say he definitely doesn't know, and doesn't care.

I was being facetious...

comment #37

Richard_Stone says ...

Mutinyco, I think the Joker uses a piece of broken glass to take the cop. The glass is broken when Batman throws the Joker into it.

comment #38

Ogami Itto says ...

More Dark Knight hating ...

From: LYING IN THE GUTTERS VOLUME 2 COLUMN 169

Brendon Connelly (of filmick.co.uk) says:

I’m not really in the mood for writing film reviews at the moment, and this one didn’t even get started until today, the day of publication, yet, simply put, I felt that I really should write it. You see, not only did I find The Dark Knight to fall somewhat short of its hyped up reputation, I recognized it for what it truly was -- an honest to goodness piece of trash. Junk. Bilge. Garbage. Drivel. Hogwash. Indeed, it’s not entirely unlike Batman Begins, just even more over-extended.

This is probably going to be read as a kill piece, so l might as well just go for it and make with the knife wounds in quick succession. Here is a heap of bullet points, each of them a serious fault in this godforsaken mess of a film -- but even in total only serving as an introduction to my criticisms. As I said, I don’t want to spend all day on this, I just think there needs to be some sense spoken about this ridiculous film. I’ll keep each flavour criticism to a single example.

The dialogue is excruciating, pretty much top to bottom. For one thing, it is laden with countless slabs of pointless exposition -- for example: a shot of a mobile phone inside a man’s skin is effectively titled by the line “It’s a mobile phone". And it keeps happening. This film spells out so many of it’s images it often feels more like an episode of Dick Barton than, say, a good Batman film (you know -- like the one from the 60s, or the two Burton made).

Great wedges of this dialogue are heaped into tiresome “refresher scenes" -- for example, the press conference -- in which the would-be subtext is spelled out for us, effectively rendered text. Sub, sure -- but not subtext. Just sub-par.

And the clichés in the dialogue and delivery were sometimes beyond insulting -- listen to the entire bank robbery sequence for a microcosm of how tin eared the Nolan brothers have proven to be.

Nolan doesn’t have the first idea how to film cinematic space. The action scenes are jumbled in the extreme and there’s any number of problems in even the dialogue sequences. Watch the interrogation room sequence with Big Ears and the clown -- hideous. Even worse is the dangling Joker scene, in which he’s been flipped the right way up. Thinking for a moment about the processes by which we read and interpret images on the screen, this sequence is so disconcerting for the mind of the viewer, and to no useful end, that I have no idea how or why Nolan and his cronies came up with it.

The whole IMAX scenes farrago is fuel for a dozen bullet points in itself but, suffice to say, Nolan is not up to the task of composing images in multiple aspect ratios simultaneously. Why this has gone unreported, I have no idea but I’ll kick in. Nolan pretends to have composed images in IMAX that work perfectly for the purpose of the shot needed at that moment -- and then, that a scope-shaped slice can be taken out and that will work just as well. More stupidly still, the image is to be recomposed again for the eventual Blu-Ray release. Masterful image composition is not about point-and-shoot, nor is it about making pretty pictures -- it is about balancing the elements of the frame to create the desired relationships between them and the most effective emotional or psychological effect on the viewer. If you reckon Nolan can do this thrice in a single shot set-up then you’re either incredibly gullible or don’t understand the issue in the slightest.

And that’s saying nothing of the sideshow gimmick of the IMAX version cutting to a different aspect ratio anyway. Not the choice of a filmmaker looking to immerse his audience in a hermetic and fully dimensional diegesis.

The plot makes little sense for most of the time, and no sense at all at several junctures. The Joker seems capable of accomplishing incredible feats in incredibly short spaces of time, for one thing -- though I can swing with that, to a degree - but there are any number of holes, Batman leaving a penthouse full of innocents with the Joker and his cronies being one particularly disturbing example.

The technology is somewhat reminiscent of CSI, from the bullet reconstruction to the city-wide Sonar scanner. And that is, I think, about the harshest damnation I can pour on any scene revolving around scientific principles without evoking Heroes.

The anti-Chinese drive is head-shakingly pathetic if not outright offensive (the mention of buying American in the courtroom scene pushes it beyond an incidental factor of the Hong Kong gangster plotline).

This film does not take place in any kind of universe where dressing up as a Bat and putting on a hilariously silly voice makes even a drop of sense (unless as an adolescent power fantasy, which for many viewers I suppose it is). Indeed, much of the film does not belong in the world Nolan seems desperate to ground it in, particularly the biological details of Two Face’s disfigurement. All of this could have seemed at home in a universe that played by these rules -- another lesson to be learnt from the Burton films.

The “tension inducing" soundtrack is crassly simplistic.

Essentially, what I’m saying is that The Dark Knight is, almost without exception, a series of incredibly bad filmmaking choices strung together over an unbearable running time. About as far from a masterpiece as I’ve seen in the cinemas in a couple of years at least. On the other hand, I think Gary Oldman was incredible and Eckhart, Ledger and just Gyllenhaal fine. I look forward to their next projects -- Ledger’s in particular -- with keen anticipation.

comment #39

Richard_Stone says ...

Ogami quoted:

"The whole IMAX scenes farrago is fuel for a dozen bullet points in itself but, suffice to say, Nolan is not up to the task of composing images in multiple aspect ratios simultaneously. Why this has gone unreported, I have no idea but I’ll kick in. Nolan pretends to have composed images in IMAX that work perfectly for the purpose of the shot needed at that moment -- and then, that a scope-shaped slice can be taken out and that will work just as well. More stupidly still, the image is to be recomposed again for the eventual Blu-Ray release. Masterful image composition is not about point-and-shoot, nor is it about making pretty pictures -- it is about balancing the elements of the frame to create the desired relationships between them and the most effective emotional or psychological effect on the viewer. If you reckon Nolan can do this thrice in a single shot set-up then you’re either incredibly gullible or don’t understand the issue in the slightest."

Agreed. The Imax sequence basically composes the content within a 2:35 box inside the I:33 frame and fills the rest of the frame with non-essential information. You can tell in a sequence where Michael Caine's head is framed in the vertical middle of the frame, his knees cropped at the bottom. One of the oddest image compositions I've seen in a major film.

The only sequence that fully uses the Imax frame as far as I could tell is the shot from the helicopter where Dent is in the police van, and you see the firetruck in flames ahead of the road. You see both at once in Imax, the van below, the firetruck on top, whereas the 35 mm pans up from one to the other. In the rest of the Imax sequences, you just see more buildings than in 35mm.

Why didn't they use the 1:85 ratio for the 35mm release? They could have used more of the original Imax frames and most theaters actually "matte" (right technical term?) their 1:85 screen to project in 2:35 anyways. 2:35 is overused in today's cinema and few directors use it well. Nolan and Pfister are no exceptions.

comment #40

Joshua Mooney says ...

Yeah, Bale's voice is lame and beyond annoying, and Nolan should have reigned him in. Big time. Amazing he didn't, or signed on to it or whatever he did. Idiot. Deluded, I guess. We know Nolan's not an idiot. But madness, because it keeps the movie from being a classic. Instead it's just very good. "Oh, gosh, is the voice that important in terms of the overall--?" Yeah, it IS! Wow! Fancy that. No explanations or rationalizations from you robot/clone/mouthpieces will suffice. It's a stupid mistake and it's there for all time.

ALL. TIME. DUMB.

comment #41

MPNeeb says ...

Kevin Conroy of the Animated Series and Michael Keaton do the Bat-voice the best.
Keaton was just raspy enough.

comment #42

Mr. Gittes says ...

12) Joker takes the interrogation cop hostage with a knife. After we've already seen all of his knives inventoried.

mutinyco: I believe the Joker holds the cop hostage with a shard of glass that came from the window in which he was slammed into by Batman.

1) When Joker crashes Dent's fundraiser. That scene ended with Batman and Rachel on the car down below. Then it cut right ahead to the next day, next scenario. But...Joker was still up at the party. What'd he do hobnob? Politely excuse himself?

I believe the scene was cut showing the Joker leave. How do I know this? Well, there was a still shot of the Joker riding with his guns presumably leaving the party.

comment #43

moorish says ...

"crediting Miller with single-handedly saving Batman from the camp of the 1950s and 1960s is a slap in the face to Neal Adams, Denny O'Neil, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers, and all of the other writers that did so much good, truly groundbreaking work in the 1970s and 1980s."

Very well said, Scott Mendelson.

As per Brendon Connelly's Film Ick review, the guy is always being contrarian.

I'd also take issue with the quoted article's assertion that Bale gets inspiration from Conroy. Conroy's Batman voice was excellent, but it wasn't raspy. It was just a deeper register of his Wayne voice. See the Batman: Gotham Knight animated DVD thing out now, he does the voice in that and it's a straight continuation of what he did on the animated series (even if the style(s) of animation are wildly different).

Bale is superb as Batman, in my opinion. But the voice is WAY over the top and Nolan should have reigned him in. Keaton pitched it right; a bit deep and growly but not sounding like he was hacking up a fur-ball.

comment #44

moorish says ...

I don't get people moaning about the Joker's exit from the party sequence: clearly he used throwing Gyllenhall out of the window as a distraction to make his escape. He ran away.

Did this really need spelling out? Did we need to SEE it? The damn movie was long enough already.

comment #45

mutinyco says ...

Anyhow, all said and done, I think the moviegoing public is under some kind of mass psychosis regarding this movie. To quote Greenspan, it's an "irrational exuberance."

It's not that good. It's the 6th movie in a series over 20 years (discounting the '60s), with 4 actors as the lead, 2 as Joker. None has ever grossed more than $260M domestic. There's no logical reason for this movie to be grossing twice that number. No reason for people to be seeing it 4-5 times.

There's an intangible at work here. Maybe Ledger affected it. Maybe people were ready to see terrorist imagery the way they weren't 3 years ago in War of the Worlds. I don't know.

But something is certainly peculiar about the frenzy...

comment #46

jesse says ...

I'd be happy to chalk these up to suspension of disbelief but I can also explain my suspension of disbelief at most points (and concede a few):

"1) When Joker crashes Dent's fundraiser. That scene ended with Batman and Rachel on the car down below. Then it cut right ahead to the next day, next scenario. But...Joker was still up at the party. What'd he do hobnob? Politely excuse himself?"

This is a fair question, but, like a lot of "plot holes," pretty easy to infer. He couldn't find Dent. So he left. The cops probably also showed up, hastening his departure. Half of the Joker's power is his ability to wriggle away.

"2) How did Joker so easily get into Dent's hospital room? Security? Plus, he still had his make-up on. And how exactly did he rig the entire hospital with explosives -- a pretty busy building -- in the first place?"

He could've applied the make-up at any point, couldn't he? I'm assuming he rigged the hospital either well ahead of time, or did so during the extended mass panic his bomb threat induced. The latter pretty well explains the security breach. It's sort of a missing-the-trees-for-the-forest thing. The police have been told the Joker might blow a hospital where Dent is staying. So they become less focused on protecting Dent's hospital room.

"3) Joker's master plan at the end was to get one boat to blow up the other. Yet how could he ever have been able to know that when he threatened the city's tunnels/bridges they would ferry out 2 boats, one with criminals, one with civilians? And how could he ever have had the time, and how could nobody have noticed that he was getting the bombs/fuel onto those ferries? This is both illogical and a physical impossibility."

Well, to quibble semantically, the Joker doesn't really have a master plan. But I don't think it's that much of a stretch to assume that he's planted bombs on ferries, anticipating their use over tunnels and bridges. Half the point, it seems to me, is that these kinds of terrorist threats give further threats a lot more power. I'd also argue that his plan didn't really bank on the people on those ferries. He could've easily gone forward with two ferries' worth of people, even if one wasn't full of criminals.

That said, the fact that these ferries weren't checked is kind of lame.

"4) How does Batman seem to mysteriously vanish from open spaces without anybody noticing? Easy: The camera isn't pointed at him."

I hate to pull the "but it's like the comics" card out, but Batman's inexplicable vanishing has been used throughout the comics and the animated series. You're not supposed to be able to know how he does it. But I'd think "he trained with ninjas" would suffice.

"5) How does a bus back out of a hole in a building and wind up perfectly in line with other busses? And nobody notices either?"

This is a very good point. I noticed this even when that scene turned up before I Am Legend.

"6) Sonar has nothing to do with eyesight. Sonar stands for: Sound Navigation and Ranging. Bats use their ears not they eyes."

Do you really think the sonar analogy was a poor way of explaining what this cell-phone gizmo does, even if it's not exactly sonar?

"7) As pointed by the Geezers: a) Joker breaks into Bruce's penthouse b) Dent to Rachel: - "Go to the safest place in town!" - "OK, I'll go to Bruce's penthouse!"

I guess it didn't entirely occur to me that the Dent fundraiser was held in Wayne's penthouse; I guess I was thinking of it as being somewhere else in the Wayne Building. But you're probably right. However: Rachel knows it's safe because Bruce/freaking Batman is there, not because the walls are made of diamondium or something. She's not exactly going to say so to Dent, though, is she? Nor will she say "well, his penthouse isn't the single safest place, per se, but in a pinch he may or may not have many secret rooms and/or an underground fortress that he'd probably let me access for reasons I'd rather not go into." Also, it's not as if the Joker broke into Bruce Wayne's penthouse for the sport of doing so, and will be popping by every night since then. He did it because Dent was there, and during a party with a hundred-plus guests. I imagine security has beefed up since then.

"8) Gordon faking his own death. Was it planned or improvised on the spot? Did anyone help him or not? The movie offers no clue one way or the other."

I think Gordon was probably wearing a bulletproof vest, but his death was improvised by him and maybe a few others, in the commotion.

"9) No cops reply to the Joker's gunshots in the chase on Lower Wacker."

Fair enough, although the cops with the best vantage point (those in smaller cars, not carrying Dent) are taken out pretty quickly.

"10) Dent's plan after he is taken in custody for claiming he is the Batman (a silly idea to begin with): go for a ride in a police truck on deserted roads so he will be attacked by the Joker and saved by Batman. It works!"

Don't characters in the movie repeatedly point out that Dent does foolhardy but "brave" things pretty consistently? I don't think his willingness to be bait is out of character.

The funeral thing, OK, fine, but *you* try finding someplace in Gotham without tall-ass buildings!

For the Nolan criticisms: You know how screenwriting goes beyond writing dialogue? Directing goes beyond shot composition. All that Nolan does in this movie in terms of pacing, performances, mis en scene, etc., and you have people going "hey! Some of the IMAX shots MERELY HAVE MORE INFORMATION IN THE PICTURE!!!" The arrogance of this guy, making some of his shots tall enough to be cut off and still make sense!

Complaining about how a real filmmaker would never mix aspect ratios smacks of film-school BS.

comment #47

jesse says ...

Oh, and a shorter comment regarding this post's original subject: the voice thing. I can understand the complaints. My problem was not so much the tone (though it is jarring compared to some other interpretations of the character) as the fact that the heavy, low rasp/growl means (apparently) that he has to take a breath way more often. Sometimes Bale has (or chooses?) to take some extra pauses in his dialogue as Batman, and that can sound a little silly. I won't say Shatner-esque but... you get the idea.

In a way, that makes it more human, as most people wouldn't be able to "do" a second voice all the time without a little strain (even with an electronic cloaking device assisting them). But it's not as excellent as Conroy's Wayne/Batman division (distinct but not to either's detriment)... but then, Conroy's a voice actor. That's all he has to worry about for his performance (and he did an amazing job throughout the series).

comment #48

mutinyco says ...

That sounds like a lot of bending over backwards, if you ask me. All those explanations.

There's a facet of quantum physics that states the more accurately you can gauge velocity, the less accurately you can gauge position -- and vice-versa. TDK is all about velocity. But if you stop to observe it's positions, it doesn't work so well.

Regarding the double aspect ratio compositions... Lots of directors compose for both 2.40 and 1.33 -- it's called Super-35. You shoot the full negative, then crop it for theatrical. One of the many reasons this format became preferred to traditional anamorphic (besides the giant lenses and light latitude) was because of home video -- directors and d.p.'s were tired of seeing their widescreen images cropped for pan-and-scan. By shooting full negative, they no longer had to worry about TV cropping -- they simply presented an un-cropped image. (Hence the Kubrick controversies...)

comment #49

jesse says ...

I'm not sure if I understand the distinction between asking all of those questions and answering them; why is one bending over backwards and the other not? The movie gave me enough to suspend my disbelief. I'd rather have a few plot ambiguities that can be answered if you think about it than something that is either over-explained or just plain stupid no matter how you slice it. Nolan's positioning is a lot sturdier than most movies that move at a similar velocity.

comment #50

mutinyco says ...

Well, there 2 things I could say to that...

Any movie that grosses $500M domestic -- far more than its peers -- is more open to examination. Just as a presidential candidate is going to be more highly scrutinized than say a senator.

The other thing is that most of TDK's peers would use stylization to cover their flaws -- much as the previous Batmans did. By establishing a false-looking environment people already accept it as non-reality. But Nolan's aesthetic was to set TDK in a realistic world, so to speak. Usually when directors do that (Being John Malkovich comes to mind), it's to create irony. But here, it just calls more attention to its flaws because it wants desperately to be taken more seriously than it should be.

comment #51

Richardson says ...

"Complaining about how a real filmmaker would never mix aspect ratios smacks of film-school BS."

I don't think that's what he said. I believe he said that a good filmmaker would never mix aspect ratios as a gimmick but leave the shots poorly composed as a result of it.

Anybody who watched 'Dr. Strangelove' in the '90's knows that a filmmaker can switch aspect ratios effectively.

comment #52

jesse says ...

When some people are defining "poorly composed" shots as "this is just like the regular shot, but taller," I think it's fair to say that an element of film-school BS is trickling into the assessment. Who ever could have guessed that the IMAX version of a movie might include some shots that resemble their 35mm versions, but somewhat larger?

I actually thought some of the but-taller moments were gorgeous, placing the characters even deeper into the realistic environments.

mutinyco, I'm not saying Dark Knight shouldn't be scrutinized (though I do find the almost-arguments you're making that the movie should explain itself more because it would go on to make a lot of money, and that the highest-grossing movies should be subject to the most scrutiny, sort of weird and amusing). But if you ask a bunch of nitpicky questions and get some reasonable if extrapolated nitpicky answers, it's not really fair play to say "well, mine were just logical questions, but your answers are bending over backward."

And, as mentioned, I think the TDK avoids going too far into fantastical territory, such that you can still give Nolan the credit for doing a serious, semi-realistic version. If the most out-there leaps you can find are "hey, real cops would've noticed this!" or "how did Batman disappear so fast?", I dunno, then I think you have the director to thank for your own nitpicks.

comment #53

frankbooth says ...

Nitpick at the bottom of a dead thread:

The Joker goads the cop into attempting to rough him up by going on about how many cops he's killed, how you get to know a person's true nature by using a blade on him, which ones were cowards, etc.

But when did he ever get the chance to slowly torture any cops? He shot several, sure. Or are we supposed to gather that this happened offcreen, between scenes?