Eagle One said the other day that he was surprised that I hadn’t written about The Dark Knight. The main reason was that I couldn’t think of anything that hadn’t already been written a billion times by other people on the net. Basically there’s so much hyperbole out there that it almost takes away from just how good this movie was.
If you wondered, yes I loved it. I loved just about every second of it. It skyrocketed into my all-time Top 10 the second I walked out of the theater. It’s really that good, and you probably know that by now because just about everyone in the country has seen it by now.
I think the reason that I liked it as much as I did is that in a lot of ways it mirrors my all-time favorite movie, which is also a sequel — The Empire Strikes Back. In both movies our heroes are thrown into the worst possible scenarios and they don’t come through unscathed. Prices are paid. Bad things happen.
And that certainly is the case here. Bad things happen because The Joker makes them happen. He puts nearly every character of importance through the ringer. Only Alfred and Luscious Fox aren’t targeted directly it seems.
Heath Ledger’s Joker is as good as advertised. Like I said, there’s been so much hyperbole about his performance, but it’s all so deserved. I never once saw Heath Ledger on the screen. I only saw a maniac known as The Joker who will inspire a generation of clown-hating teens for certain. He’s creepy, maniacal, off-kilter, savage and darkly funny. Cesar Romero’s Joker was a goofball. Jack Nicholson’s was over-the-top, and pretty much Jack being Jack. Ledger’s Joker is what the character is supposed to be, demented and scary and also very calculating.
So often we look forward to a flick and are horribly let down (hello Phantom Menace). This lived up to all my inner-hype and went beyond it. I’ve seen it twice already, and want more.
The views and opinions in the Enterprise blogs are those of the author and are not neccessarily shared by Falmouth Publishing.
