the dark knight review

yes neil and i contributed to the single day box office record of $66.4 million on opening day. we both loved batman begins and were waiting to see this even before heath ledger died. so i popped some kettle corn and we bagged some gas station goodies and stashed it all in my not so little purse and we were set. a perfect date night. so how was the movie?


• christian bale. can bruce wayne get any hotter than this? besides being simply gorgeous, he totally makes you believe that he is the real bruce wayne. (will the real bruce wayne please stand up? that would be christian bale.) i watched the making of the movie and they said that bale stayed in character even when he wasn't on the screen. he insisted that his chair read "bruce wayne" and not christian bale. i guess the guy's is a little obsessive, but hey, it paid off. neil really likes michael keaton as batman/bruce wayne, i agree he was good, but bale was great.
• heath ledger. no, i'm not on the he died so let's all praise him bandwagon (no disrespect intended). i think ledger was great in a few other movies (the patriot, a knight's tale, the four feathers) but he really out did himself in the dark knight. he put a freaky yet playful edge to the joker that really brought his inner demons alive. yeah yeah jack nicholson was a good joker, but again, ledger was great.
• i liked the soft humor with alfred. we all love alfred, don't we?
• the added drama with harvey dent was good. the whole struggle with the real hero of gotham. added a different vulnerablitiy to batman.
• for some reason i just loved the fact that the creepy guy from lost, who shows up everywhere, even shows up as the gotham city mayor. he added a certain creepy edge to the mayor, i didn't trust him primarily because he is the creepy guy from lost. but it did show me that he isn't just wearing eyeliner to get into the lost character. the guy seriously wears this stuff all the time.
• LOVED the batman motorcycle. especially when it rebounded and did a flip-a-roo type thing off the building wall. nice.
• i liked the "you're not the only one who loves her" triangle with batman/bruce, rachel, and harvey. reminded me of x-men (wolverine, jean, and cyclops - can i just say right here that i LOVED the x-men series?).
• lots of good action packed scenes.
• kept in harmony with batman begins.


• disregarding the fact that i liked the action packed scenes, holy cow, there were a lot of them. can i say maybe too much?
• like batman returns, this series has a certain dark side to it. it was especially evident in the dark knight. (to me the previous batmans were more fun, these are more dark and serious).
• along the "darkness" line, the clown masks really, truly, freaked the crap right out of me. did not like the clown masks.
• didn't like the break away from katie holmes. not a huge fan of hers, but what, is she too good now to play rachel dawes cause she's married to tom cruise? i don't know the circumstances, but i was disappointed in their new choice of maggie gyllenhaal. she just isn't fun to watch for me. acting, ok she did pretty good, but not someone i picture with the studly bruce wayne.
• i thought this movie was never going to end. i knew ahead of time it was 2.5 hours, but wow, it felt more like 4. there were a few good places i thought they should've ended the movie, but kind of reminiscent of the modern superman remake, it just kept going and going...my butt was literally sore.

despite my list of not so great, i enjoyed the movie. i wouldn't go see it again in the theater (my butt would not be happy), but i'm sure neil will want to add it to our superhero collection of dvd's.