The Dark Knight

By far, still the best superhero movie ever made! I do side with the supposed film bros on this one, it’s just a masterpiece but most importantly a cultural landmark people are foolish to downplay! It revived the genre at the time plus set the temple for what everyone else was gonna do for the next 15 years, basically the Star Wars of the internet era and just a smash hit that I was very grateful to catch on the big screen for the first time! The dark knight transcends the traditional limitations of superhero adaptations, I think it’s incredible how self contained it is, you could walk into this movie all the background and context you need is just from knowing who Batman is and Nolan’s approach was let’s not make a Batman begins 2 but instead do my version of “ heat”  In some ways this is Nolan’s most straightforward bit of work, a lot of characters but a very efficient approach to storytelling!  I probably haven’t seen this for probably longer than the 5 year rewatch rule so this was defiantly due. It’s got way more humor than I remember and it’s radically dark for not even a 15 rated movie.  Structurally it’s so bold, there’s at least 6 or 7 different climaxes as each set piece that tops the previous, it’s really well constructed and well thought out with layers of complexity, a Script so well put together, balancing so many themes and Set pieces!  The joker is truly psychotic in this! Heaths performance is mesmeric, going beyond acting to be a work of art by itself! It’s almost irrelevant that this is a superhero film, his performances transcends a superhero film! It’s an hell of a performance. The joker score is fuckin amazing! The low notes just stirs something inside that’s just unsettling, they really use it to great effect,  I like how avoids the original story of the joker which I think is the master stroke of this film, it allows the film to function! Also The joker is a troll in this, a lot of the negative aspects of culture today is very seeped in like the joker esque mentality of wanting to watch the world burn! I think you can resonate and compare with a lot of current politics with this movie, also I think a lot of people wanted to be like the joker, that cool figure, careless and complete power! I do have issues, I think the film does do a lot of pushing, it pushes characters a bit beyond logic sometimes, the two climaxes that are kind of about the same thing, on one scale it’s very big but then the other it’s personal, the hand to hand combat is just not very good, it’s when he gets close to people I don’t think it’s very good but the sound design is bloody great!  Maggie Gyllenhaal is not that great in this, sometimes she’s really on it but for the vast majority she’s poor but if she’d of played Rachel in the first movie it might’ve worked better cause it’s like here’s a new actress that your just setting up to die, just hard to buy into it and Nolan has done this before with a few of his female characters and then some of the dialogue does stick out like a saw thumb but I cannot complain, I had a great time, it’s still a fucking fantastic movie visually as well like I couldn’t tell which parts were CG 16 years later, for its runtime too it moves so quickly like it is so fast paced cause it has to be as it’s telling 3 main stories at the same time.  Brilliant film!  Bravo