Marval Movie

"If I search and seek inside my mind, the deeper I look the more I find. Exists a spiritual duality of darkness and light. My soul mirrors the world, the day and night."
-Tim Vallie

With the success of Batman Begins the anticipation for the next Batman movie was higher than it has ever been, it was the make or break time for the franchise, to prove whether it was a fluke or if the franchise had real chops.  Christopher Nolan had huge pressure and he knew that he had to deliver.

I was once asked what makes a good sequel and I instantly thought of The Dark Knight.  So my answer was "It has to build off the strengths of the first movie, it has to expand the story and the characters and be bigger than before and maybe question the rules and morals set down in the first movie".  These are good guide lines for a movie to set while making a sequel and The Dark Knight is the definition of a good sequel, taking everything that made the first movie great and expanding and making those elements bigger and better and fixing all the other little problems that they got from the first movie.

The movie begins with a bank heist where we see masked robbers infiltrate a high security bank.  While they go about the robbery they speak of the man who put this plan together, "now I know why they call him the Joker".  The guards kill each-other off one by one until only two are left and the one that has remained silent is left standing. He gets ready to leave before the bank clerk says that he is scum and "what do you believe in?", to which he replies "I believe whatever doesn't kill you makes you...stranger" while he removes his mask to reveal that the whole time it was the Joker himself under the mask, with the make up on the inside as-well as out.  This stands out to me as one of the greatest reveals in movie history, in the first few minutes we already feel the threat and have a taste of what this villain is capable of.

Following this we see the media in speculation, and criminals on the run from Batman.  Gangsters are now bringing dogs with them for more protection and buying from unlikely sources.  Gangsters meet up in a parking lot because they don't like what drugs they've been supplied with (what do you expect when you buy from the Scarecrow).  We see a silhouette of the caped crusader but then we see another one (that's not right), then one fires a gun, (that's definitely not right).  No these are just copycats taking the law into their own hands, but they haven't had his pelatihan and they get taken down by the gangsters which leads to the real Batman having even more to deal with on-top of the Gangsters, the Scarecrow and the dogs.  Ultimately the Gangsters and the Scarecrow get taken down (once again the Scarecrow has been shamefully underused) and Batman gets off with a few bite marks from the dogs.

Later being that Wayne manor was destroyed in the last movie Bruce Wayne is living in a penthouse and his new base of operations is a warehouse bunker that doubles as his temporary Bat-cave.  Bruce comes to the conclusion that his Armour is weighing him down too much and he needs to be more quick and flexible. So we get our new Bat-suit for this movie. The last suit was a soldiers suit, this time its a fiberglass, metallic and nylon compound in over two-hundred separate pieces and it takes on more of the look of high tech sports equipment.  But the greatest breakthrough that this costume has above all other live action Bat-suits is that this time Batman can turn his neck, kind of a funny thing when you think about it but there has never been a live action Batman that can turn his head.

Katie Holmes was replaced by Maggie Gyllenhaul for the role of Rachel Dawes in this movie and it was probably for the best though I didn't feel that it made a huge difference. In this movie shes still a smart female character who fights for the side of good, only in this movie she is torn between two men that she both cares deeply for. The third piece of this awkward love triangle is Harvey Dent Gotham's new District attorney, its White Knight. Dent is played by Aaron Eckhart with a good looking face and a smile that you can trust and accompanied with his fathers lucky coin he makes his own luck with it always working out in his favor.

Grant Morrison's description of Heath Leger's Joker is the best "a punk-influenced agent of performance-art-inspired chaos". It is impossible to talk about The Dark Knight without talking about him. Both the casting and the design of the character took me by surprise. Why Heath Leger? why the messy make-up? and of course the tragedy of the actor dying at the far too young age of twenty eight, which added a lot of hype on his performance.  Heath Leger's Joker is something you have to see in action to really appreciate it. As appose to the showmanship performances like Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson, Leger delivers a truly frightening, twitchy performance that made this version of the Joker one of the greatest villains in all of movie history, all complete with scars across his face that give him a permanent smile and story of how he got them that vary each time to a point that I don't think he even knows how he got them.  He cares nothing about himself only about the chaos that he causes and spreads to others and he knows that if he can get Batman to kill him he will become even worse than he is. Heath Leger became the second posthumous to win and Academy Award, it was for best supporting actor and it was more than well deserved.

The dynamic between Batman and the Joker has lasted over seventy years for a reason, they are the perfect offset, Batman stands of order, Joker stands for chaos. It is one of the great rivalries of this century, it has lasted for nearly a hundred years and it will probably go on for another hundred. In The Dark Knight it is phrased perfectly by the Joker while dangling from a rooftop "this is what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object", The Joker will never stop and Batman will never give up.

In Batman Begins the main theme and obstacle that Batman had to tackle was fear, in this movie its chaos and who better than have it be personified by The Joker, probably his greatest villain of all. In the first movie Batman's morals and methods are set up but The Dark Knight gives us a challenge that have to have those morals and methods tested, how far can Batman go? what will he endure in his quest for "justice"?  The first movies ideas are taken and put through the blender from hell.

One of the main images used throughout the movie are the strategically placed use of windows.  In about six crucial scenes there are rather large windows placed in the rooms to show the thin fragile wall that is placed between the "good", "civilized" people and the madness and chaos that lies on the other side.  They are wisely placed in more upper class areas like offices and penthouses, places of order and high class wear society and and order are placed so high and are exactly where the Joker would want to blow up first. 

The separation of the two worlds of order and chaos comes crashing together when Harvey Dent and Rachel are captured and placed in two different warehouses filled with gas tanks detonated to explode. Batman thinks he's saving Rachel but the information was switched and he saves Dent. Rachel dies, in what sick twisted world does the love interest die in a super jagoan movie? only the one that has guts. Both Batman and Dent lose their love but Dents emotional scaring is also visible and a new man is born, a man of black and white, live or die...Two Face. The scared side is horrific but realistic, and armed with this delusional, mad method of justice he goes out to decide if fate will let the people that have wronged him live or die. Armed with only a coin and a simple handgun.

The Jokers big, but not final, plan is one that only the most deranged mind could come up with.  While promising to deal great damage to the city as well as its citizens this causes great panic and the citizens flee, two boats leave, one with innocent civilians the other with Gotham's worst psychos.  Bombs are then found at the base of each boat and each boat has the detonator for the others, if one doesn't blow up the other then they both blow up at midnight. This not only puts the people in a budbahasa position but brings them down to be killers.

Finally the ultimate joke comes to fruition, Gotham's White Knight brought down, corrupted and scared and had already killed over five people with the flip of a coin, clean on one side, scared and burned on the other. With Dent deciding the fate of Gordan's family with a flip of the coin. And the tragedy of it ending in Dents death. With their White Knight, hero dead and the villain still alive the situation is dire, if the citizens of Gotham learn what really happened with Dent they will loose hope, they need faith but probably don't deserve it so Batman has to take it, he shall be the fall guy for what has happened on this the most darkest of nights, a jagoan in a world of darkness.

With Batman on the run for crimes he didn't commit and with his love and Gotham's White Knight lost Batman has sunk down to his lowest point and would have to have to stay there until the day when he would be needed to rise again.