HE reader Evan Boucher has “more evidence that The Dark Knight may continue to do phenomenal box office this weekend,” he wrote this morning. “Your feeling of being exhausted at the end of it is understandable. It is a relentless assault on your senses at least in a physical standpoint. However, multiple people that I have spoken to have indicated that they loved the movie (‘awesome!’) but that in order to fully understand everything they’ll need to see it again — and soon.
“That’s a very unusual phenomenon. Let’s be honest and state that if you had to take a leak during this movie, you could go online in 3 minutes after the movie and find out what you may have missed through a streaming bootleg. If you didn’t understand why someone did something that they did (understandable given the complexity and the constant exploration of character motivations) you could find out by googling a plot synopsis. But those options won’t be good enough in this instance.
“I want to see The Dark Knight again in the theater, preferably in IMAX. And I’m almost betting that it will be better the second time, because I won’t be so worried that I will miss something. It was sooo good I don’t want to wait for the DVD (a Blu-ray release in early December, coupled with a price drop on Blu-ray players, will push the entire platform over the edge….just a prediction). It looked so good that online or bootleg copies couldn’t possibly replicate it.
“I want to see the truck flip over in IMAX, I want to see the pencil thing in IMAX, I want to see Ledger walk away from that hospital again in IMAX. I have a thousand productive things in my life I could be doing, but I am just trying to figure out a way to squeeze in three hours to see it again as soon as possible.”
“I am exaggerating probably, but I can’t remember the last movie I paid to see twice. I’m betting I’m not alone in that regard. If thats the case, between word of mouth from people who don’t trust critics and repeat action we could be seeing something exceptional as far as second-weekend TDK business is concerned.”