Just got back from the Preview of the Preview (roomie works as theater)

and guys, all I have to say is

This movie is intense like a roller coaster.

Can't wait to discuss it with you kids.
Also, Ledger was at least 20x better than Jack.
And I loved Jack.

I'm hearing that too. The radio DJ I listen to every morning went to see the premiere yesterday and he talked about it all freakin' morning. Said it was the movie of the decade.

I've bought tickets for this Saturday. Looking forward to it.

I'm seeing it at midnight alongside 40 some odd people from school. Gonna be frikkin awesome.

I saw it last night. I feel at this point I need to see it again, and I'm really interested in what others have to say about it. As it stands now, though, Ledger was amazing, I don't think anything is going to change my mind on that, ever. However, movie of the decade? I'm quite dubious on that one.

Gonna go see it tomorrow with my parents, I do believe. Can't wait for it.

It was fantastic. It had the same tone as comics such as The Long Halloween, in that it was equally complex and made up of a bunch of different parts rather than a lead up to one fight (like in Burton's movie w/ the Joker). This made it much more interesting. Ledger's introduction was awesome. The pencil trick was the funniest thing ever, and Batman going to China and grabbing that guy was awesome. All in all...totally awesome.

It was good but not great.

Batman was easily the weakest charcter in the film often comming across as wooden however the rest of the cast makes up for that with strong perfomances from the actors who played the Joker, Harvey Dent & Commisioner Gordon.

There were a few weak points in the movie I though the part where Batman goes to unmask was poorly done for example and the movie is far to obsessed with destruction & action beats at points rushing through scenes to get to action. I couldn't help but crack Blues Brother's jokes when batman is very randomly driving through a mall and blowing stuff up.

There is a lot of little things I could nitpick in the movie such as Alfred and Bruce talking pretty openly about his "evening activities" with some workers 10 feet behind them but admitedly despite these being head banging moments they really don't detract from the movie that much.

The movie is good though some parts in the middle were weak & the ending could have been stronger. I felt like someone walked in the movie and said "We've only got ten minutes left start wrapping it up people" 'cause a lot of the final moments is weak or compaired to earlier scenes with Joker's rise to power weak. Particularly the closing narration made we wonder when the narrator had time in the movie to sign up for bad poetry classes. Oh and Gotham cops are very, very, very STUPID BTW!

Despite all this you'll probably be so wraped up in Ledger's Joker that you won't careabout a lot of things that bothed me as I'm far more critical the most people are.

Best Batman movie of them all. Definitely the Empire of superhero movies. It was like watching Seven, except with Batman. And an excellent "new" Joker. And action.

I only have a few gripes about this movie. There are more but these are the spoiler-free ones...

1. Batman overusing the "I'm so badass" voice.
2. The new Rachel Dawes. Ewww. But I guess she does look like a professional. :P
3. Joker did a lot more vicious killing than was shown on camera. I demand a director's cut that's rated R not PG-13.

Don't worry Nick, I was kind of disappointed too. That ending was really tacked-on. I can't help but wonder that it wasn't the original ending? I felt let down that they never let the Joker laugh echo. It's one of the creepiest things about the Joker, and esp. in his last scene on camera, that it was cut off, I felt a big let down there. About half way through the movie, I felt myself being taken out of it; without getting specificity spoilerific, I felt the plot never quite gelled. There seemed to be a lot extraneous stuff that ended up taking up time and nothing else.

I really like Bale, and his Bruce Wayne is good, but god, he has GOT to do something about his Batman voice; it was distractingly bad. And I'm not a big Aaron Eckhart fan to begin with, and his Dent really didn't win me over. I don't think I've seen an actor actually capture the slight menace/melancholy that exists in Dent and makes Two-Face the rather tragic character he is in his better written incarnations. It's a rough character to play. That said, the design/effect of Two-Face was stunning. I gasped a little.

Oldman is perfect as Jim Gordon. And he really comes into the character here. I was nearly as transfixed by him as by Ledger.

A caveat: I've always been bored to tears by Batman's interactions with "normal" woman. So I could have done without Dawes altogether.

I really wish they'd make an R-rated Batman, too. But I know it'll never happen

Nick: I like that you were cracking the Blues Brothers jokes, considering the setting :D

And yeah, Ledger's Joker was amazing, but I think that makes it worse for me when movies are just...this...close. You know?

What Rori said : D but great film, I was imitating Batman's voice all the way home... My only complaint:

Jalford, remove these tags again, and get forum banned.

If this movie is (1)rated R, and (2)doesn't have Batman but has everyone else... I think it'd be a pretty good movie, heheh. Oldman is really good, and his character really likeable.

Yeah Ledger was real good, and the role really ate at him. I don't think it was media hype; you can see it when he's on camera. Ppl who has had uncontrolled downward spirals in their lives, have commented that during a certain moment when Ledger's on camera, they can feel exactly how much he was crashing. Well, that's how good the performance was.

Hee hee! I was thinking the exact same thing in that scene.



Yeah I felt it was a bit too long--there was a point/scene where it could have ended and I would have been fine, but then it kept on going and I just wanted to get out of there.

But Heath Ledger was spot-on with The Joker. He was everything I feel The Joker should be: menacing, chaotic, and twisted. The constant licking of the lips was great. It was like a nervous habit he developed as a kid when his lips were slashed--you could tell he deeply studied that character. Bravo, Mr. Ledger, bravo... Sorry Jack, you've just moved down a peg.

....Now, I know because of the amazing amount of revenue this movie is making, they will be making another sequel. ....And I propose the Batman: Knightfall story arc. Bane needs a serious overhaul after Joel Schumacher dumbed him down in Batman & Robin, and it would be really neat to see a movie adaptation of Jean-Paul Valley/Azrael, who takes up Bruce Wayne's mantle as Batman after Bane paralyzes him. It would be a great story to see on film, and if done right, would really separate itself from the other Batman movies.

SPOILERS BELOW....





































..... Seriously dude, spoiler tags.




I think they just wanted to get him out of the way. Though, I agree that they could have chosen a better way.



I don't think Ledger deserves an Oscar because he's dead. I think he deserves an Oscar because he fucking kicked ass as the Joker


I agree that it was weird, but it was absolutely not stapled on. They were building up to it all throughout the film. Did you completely miss all those complaints about how the cops seemed more concerned with protecting a vigilante than the citizens. You know, the main complaint that Gotham threw at the police department?

^ See that? that was a spoiler tag.

i saw it friday night, and i was blown away. I mean loved that movie. the movie experience was less than great, because i told my friends we should get there early (they being my ride, and this being the most hyped movie of the year) i said about a half hour so we could get good seats (we bought our tickets at 9 am), but NOOOOOO, the bastards said everybody would be in line so we should be fine. We ended up in the front row where i had to all but lie down in my chair so see anything, by the end of the movie my boxers were so far up my ass it might as well have been a thong. Bastards....

But yeah movie was great!

My only true complaint was that fact that this movie (much like casino royale)had about 12 different places where it could've ended but didn't. I can live with it though.

Somethings i would've liked to see was a stronger role of batman, i mean you guys are right, underneath the acting and just plain playwriting of the movie, batman became more of a platform rather than the building, if you know what i mean.


but again these are things i can live with

Im kind of hoping for the next movie they'll start getting into the more sci-fi characters batman, just because im curious to see if they can pull it off without making it seem horribly cheesey. I wanna see Clayface!!! I'd rather not see Mr. Freeze for awhile, i mean after schwarchenagers (i tried) performance in batman forever or whatever it was...geeuuuh...im just not ready yet. Maybe Poison Ivy or a decent Catwoman, that'd be pretty cool and the relationship with either would help bring batman to the center of the story.

I saw it today and I didn't leave the theater dissapointed, and that's good enough for me. I wouldn't give it a 10/10 but maybe a 8/10.

I agree that the slightly long-winded scenes at the beginning and the extra action scenes could've been replaced with more Joker air time. XD He was always a lot of fun when he came on screen. At least I can give Nolan credit for not making all the action scenes a big cgi nightmare.



About the only other problem I had with it was the ending was a bit...derr, anti-climactic. Overall though the problems weren't enough to make the movie just mediocre to me, and I can be very critical about movies. I think it'd be even more enjoyable the second time around too.

So it's great. Had they fixed up a couple of things it would've been brilliant.
I would also love an uncut version on DVD, I can tell there were a couple of things that could've been even more violent that they had to dumb down for the PG-13 rating.

this was the best movie ever

I can die slightly more happy now.

Although I do have to gripe about the easily forgettable ending. Seriously, I had to look up on wikipedia to remember what it was supposed to be.

If you guys didn't like the ending or felt that it was tacked on, then you missed the point of the entire movie. No wonder you felt Batman was a weak character in this movie. You didn't understand the importance of his character arc.

Next time watch it with this in mind: The main character of this movie isn't Batman, or Bruce, or Joker, or Harvey. It's Gotham City.

I know just what you mean. Sometimes I can enjoy a so-so movie more then a near great one just because I can say "well its just a b-movie".




SPOILERS BELOW.....




























Agreed.



I think it is to early to do Knightfall & I don't think Bane would be a good follow up to the Joker. Although they did give a good set up for it in that they want Batman to retire. I'd like to see them skip forward a few years and introduce Nightwing &/or Jason Todd in the next movie. I've always wanted a well done version of Jason Todd's death done on the big screen because that is such a defining moment for Batman (Even though the story was absolute CRAP what people have written about its effect on batman has been great.), plus then they would have the option of doing Hush later on.

I don't think their is a very clear choice for the next movie the way the first one was loosely based on Year One & this one was VERY loosely based on Long Halloween. In theory Dark Victory would be next but that story was just so awful it is best left forgotten.



Good Point!



KoS I fully got the point, I understand the importance of his character, I get what the movie was trying to do and I've still concluded it was tacked on and not very well done. It was really just stealing from the idea of The Killing Joke that "all it takes is one bad day" and undermining(SP) it. Particularly if you've read Long Halloween you'll know how weak this ending was compaired to what it could have been. I'm not saying it had to be just like LH, but since they based a lot of the movie around it that would have made sense. Further a character arc can be important to a story and still be a poorly done part of the story/arc.

I was very satisfied with the movie. I'm relieved they didn't do the same approach as the first movie, where they skipped all over the timeline and kept me guessing what time it was. That makes this movie way better than the first one, to me.

Joker was a little bit more mumbly and repressed than I was accustomed to, but I learned that I need to let go of people like Jack Nicholson and Mark Hammill and just let there be a new Joker. And Ledger did a pretty good job, so it wasn't hard.

I definitely like Ledger's Joker better than Nicholson's. Nicholson was just being himself in Tim Burton's movie. Plus, I like more realistic movies better... TDK and its Joker are both more realistic than the Tim Burton incarnation. Burton's take is more of a dark cartoonish fantasy.

Batman doesn't LET people die. He's only human. Even Superman can only save so many people at a time!

I saw it and tought it was awesome, flawless? No. Entertaining as hell? Yes.

Personally i despised the earlier franchise. I felt it couldn't decide whether it wanted to be the brooding dark knight or the sixties TV show. S it tried to be both and failed to be either.

I mean come on Michael Keaton as Batman? And I do think Nicholson was just clowning, The Joker is a dangerous man capable of mass murder, Nicholson danced to a shitty Prince tune.

Ledger was trancendant, truly beserk in a frightening way, kind of like the first time you saw Psycho.

As an afterthought, Christian Bale and Cristopher Nolan have both been quoted as saying they finds it insulting to Heath's memory to imply that the role "ate him up" or whatever. Thay maintain that Heath was just fine during filming and as most non method actors do, was able to turn it off when the cameras stopped rolling.

I know its a compelling fiction to embrace, that he went mad playing the Joker, but since none of us were there, I'm inclined to believe Bale and Nolan when they say he was not tortured by his role on and off set.

Hm, hm, hmm. It seems like a lot of people liked it.
I on the other hand... It's not that I think it's a bad movie, but I don't think it was good. Don't get me wrong, it had everything it was supposed to have, I ought to have liked it. But it just never got me interested.
And no interest = no disbelief to suspend = cool things not being cool (aka nulled rule of cool).
Notice how I cannot say what I think was wrong with it? It's because I honestly don't know. There was a lot of minor things I probably wouldn't have noticed if I'd liked it.
Even the funny bits didn't make me laugh. And I knew in the deepest parts of me that it.was.funny.dammit!

And it's not like I know much about Batman, so I can't explain it with that.
I think I must be flawed. I'll not even point out the bits that I found icky, because it's not worth wasting all you good people's time with.

Sysli, I was exactly that same way, only with Ironman. I guess I can say I enjoyed it, but everyone else thought it was the greatest movie this year, or something. And I don't know much about Ironman, so that could be the reason why.