I thought two face looked great. Count me in as Cat Woman being in the next one (sigh). Whats up with this vigilante, blame everything on Batman thing, is that from the Comics? If so what era? I remember Azrael or whatever being the bad Batman. Meh, whatever... DC, not my thing.
awesome movie. Not gonna really dive too deep but it definitely lived up to the hype. Saw some great movie goers in capes.
Question. Where is Batgirl in Gordon's family? I thought to myself, "maybe Nolan is going to change it up and make one of the boys Robin" ?.
I know.. I know. I was just wondering, because one of the boys played a significant role in this movie and from what I recall, Gordon has a daughter.
One of the main reasons I think the Joker worked so well is they didn't trivialize him and make him too cartoonish. He was a hardcore sociopathic freak with a bloodlust all too real and that made him all the more creepy. Nolan managed to really delve deep into Bruce Wayne's psyche in this one. In a great trilogy, Act 2 has to be the best movie. It has to set up the Finale, and I think it did just that and then some. I don't know if any of you saw the special they did on The History Channel, but it brought up some interesting points about the social ramifications of being Batman, what he represents to society, etc, etc. To me this movie was about the struggle within the self. Heaths Ledger's Joker is maybe the best antagonist of all time because he is not only physically frightening, but psychologically intimidating as well. Spoiler The scene with Harvey Dent and the Joker in the hospital is so well done. In that minute the Joker manages to direct Dent's wrath and remorse into rage against those who brought it upon him. He is truly an evil genius. In the end Batman makes the right decision, because self-preservation is not an option when you have a great responsibility.
Batgirl in most of Batmans lore is generally Barbara Gordon. These movies have no room for sidekicks, just wouldn't work for the style Nolan employs
What I thought was best about the Joker, besides Ledger's overall performance, was that Spoiler Nolan kept the film 'realistic' (as possible) even with a villain like that. There wasn't just a wacky scheme and Batman saves the day. I like the first Batman, but there wasn't just something like 'Joker has a parade with a float full of Joker gas'. This was so much more than that. Overall very dark and very tense. Some slower parts in the beginning act, but it more than makes up for it as it gets rolling. I also really liked that I was surprised by some of the events of the movie, which doesn't happen to often these days. Great film. I don't really know how they top this one though. Or what to do for another villain. (It's a real shame we won't see Ledger's Joker again.) Maybe a Nolan version of Freeze? Something to wash the taste of the last one out? Closer to B:TAS Mr. Freeze? Don't know.
It's going to be a hell of a feat to follow this one up. I also was getting some Jim Gordon Jr - Robin vibes, but agree that Robin would be extremely difficult to insert without losing this gritty realism and dark slant. If they do bring back Joker, I hope it's kept as minimal as Scarecrow was. Maybe have much more impact and influence on the third movie, but with severely limited face time. Ledger blew Nicholson out of the water with this. Next villains? Geez. They're obviously mining the ones that best translate into "real world" types. Avoid silly customes wherever possible (no all-green suit littered with question marks). Penguin would work, especially if he's the more modern arms-dealing kingpin type. Joker must have been a key figure in #3 originally. The other thing Nolan's been doing is using the villain is a way of showing us who Batman is. Ras Al Ghul was used in that way in the first, both Dent and Joker used like that in this one. Scarecrow was peripheral, and the movie wouldn't have been as good has he been the only villain. Penguin's a good villain, but he's not much of a character to put up against Wayne, outside of the money vs greed aspect. He'd be a peripheral guy. Catwoman would have to be retooled, I think. I don't see Nolan going with the outfit and whip look. Who knows. It will be interesting to see what they do. They've earned my trust for sure. Evan
Nolan already said Penguin not gonna happen said he is not realistic a character enough for him. IMO look for riddler or maybe even deadshot, i think deadshot can be the anti batman (always uses a gun) and can be realistic and dark. But Nolan probably done after this he is going to finish ontop and wont even try and follow it up, its hard for me to say but i think thats the case.
Either Poison Ivy or Catwoman would make sense to me. They are more realistic in the comic books and have similar character styles as Batman in the fact that they try to live two lives and are conflicted with each. The only problem is they were ruined in some of the past movies (The last Batman and of course the terrible Catwoman movie).
Two-Face can't be dead, was he? I always felt like he was going to come back for the third not as the main character but as a surprise saying "hey batman, you never did have what it takes to finish someone off" But as someone mentioned before I believe in the other tdk thread, I wouldn't mind Jonny Depp as the Joker, I think he's one of the few to really pull of something close if not better than Ledger.
I didn't think he was dead. Was that ceremony at the end to commemorate his "heroism and death," or was it just honoring him? It probably doesn't matter either way, but my wife and I were discussing that. Either way, when he became Two Face, I fully expected to see him in the next film.
So is Fox (Morgan Freeman) no longer employed under Batman/Wayne? I was under the impression that when Fox entered his name into the computer, that it was the code to terminate that sonar system and, therefore, he would continue to work for Batman.
Two questions: 1. Was anyone else thinking that the Joker had pulled a double cross and that the two ships were actually holding their own detonators? The way he kept playing everyone off each other, e.g. giving the three thugs one broken pool stick in their tryout for the one 'open' position, I figured that he would've likely made it so that the first boat to flinch would actually blow themselves up. 2. Did anyone else see some ironic parallels to the Bush administration? I don't want to pull this into the D&D, but the whole 'staying the course despite what everyone may think of you' was hard to not compare to the war in Iraq and Bush's concern with his legacy as his term ends as well as the whole 'we can't give in to madmen'... I thought the line "People are only as good as the world allows them to be," was particularly brilliant. I think your comment says more about your own faith than it does about his speech. Faith is not necessarily religious, you can have faith in your government, your wife, our glorious GM Daryl Morey, etc. Batman says: "Sometimes, truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded." In everyday terms, truth is what we can be absolutely certain of, e.g. I have two hands, the sky is blue, etc. They are things that we can't plausibly deny. Faith is a matter of belief and in some sense applies to everything we can't be certain of. In the case of the movie, the rule of law and the human capacity for morality/empathy were threatened, almost destroyed. The Joker exposed the social order we take for granted as 'true' as really dependent on a set of conditions that can be easily changed. There are a plethora of historical examples of this, the LA riots, the Nazi regime, and so on are all examples of how 'good people' will do horrible things under different conditions. What Batman's monologue shows is the incredible effort and often brutal violence that's necessary to maintain those social conditions. Which raised another interesting post 9/11 parallel, particularly with the cell-phone radar system. His speech is saying that while a world of law and order may not be the one 'true' world, but people have faith in that world, and it deserves to be rewarded...
I would had been INTERESTING when the big black convict guy on one boat threw out the detonator ... and then on the other boat the white guy grab the dentonator and blew up their own boat (while thinking it would had blew up the other boat)
[cliche] heath's performance was awesome.[/cliche] It was simply beyond compliment. Before I saw it, I figured I would be thinking 'wow he's dead so that makes his sinister creepiness feel more real because of the mortality aspect', but my experience wasn't really like that. He was convincingly evil, maliciously smug, and of course insane, and when all rolled together with his practical criminal mindset, albeit through convoluted motives, his outcome was something more than sinister: it was real. His performance was so strong that I wasn't even really thinking about the fact that he's dead in real life (well maybe some). It almost seemed natural that sinking that deep into insanity would take you down with it. Even if Heath was alive, I'd say he would still have a pretty good shot at an oscar. Heath's Joker Recipe: 1 part Hannibal Lecter 1 part Willy Wonka (Johnny Depp) 1 part Alex DeLarge (Malcolm McDowell) 1 part Anton Chigurh
