The Dark Knight (2008)

[Meant to post this earlier, but the Internet was sucking ass, so I forgot. Till now.]

Bought tickets half an hour before showtime, WITH very good seats, by the way. (Actually, any seat that does not belong to the first five rows from the front is quite good for me. Although, I strive to get seats from the third row from the back up.).

*spoilers*

The mob's panicking like mad, since Batman came on the scene, like, in Batman Begins, so they reluctantly LET (I say 'let' because they didn't really have a choice anyway) The Joker use his own psychotic style in dealing with Batman. Throw in a scarred and seriously pissed off DA (his girlfriend died during the course of the film) and you have the movie.

The Joker didn't die; he was arrested. I think the people making the movie wanted to bring Heath Ledger back for the following movie (if any), but his sudden death early this year pretty much puts that in the dump. Maybe they'll get a replacement. I sure hope not; Ledger was surprisingly good as The Joker, more towards the demented and ruthless version in the comic books rather than Jack Nicholson's rather whimsical take on it. Not like Nicholson wasn't good, but between Jokers, Ledger's could seriously own Nicholson's ass.

As carried away as I was in the major, major hype for the movie (most of the hype being on Ledger), I was also interested in seeing Harvey Dent, pre-Two-Face. Unlike in The Phantom Of The Opera, where the guy was supposed to be seriously ugly (but in fact, looked minorly burnt) Dent's Second-Face looked like it did in the old animated series (really, really messed up), which was fantastic, excepting the fact that it wasn't blue. My only gripe is that Two-Face died in this one; it would've been more fun to see him in the next one as well. Then he could team up with the rumoured Riddler, just like in Batman Forever.

Comparing this movie with the first, this one was definitely better in terms of being a super-hero movie. I know a lot of people loved the first one (probably because of the character development, yaddayaddayadda etc.) but I found it boring. The only bit I didn't see coming was Liam Neeson being Ken Watanabe. I loved every minute of The Dark Knight; I kept my hands in front of my eyes for some of the scenes with/involving The Joker ('cuz I'm a wuss that way), but action-wise, WAAAAYYY more than the first movie. Love the bit near the end when he's fighting the SWAT team and trying to protect the hostages who've been dressed up as The Joker's men. That whole sonar(?) thingy was awesome. I didn't expect Rachel Dawes to kick it, though.

I went to watch it with my mom, and she was complaining about Christian Bale's voice being all gruff and stuff when he's being Batman. I kept telling her it's 'cuz he wants to hide his voice, and she said, "Michael Keaton and Val Kilmer didn't have to hide their voice."

-_-"

["How about a magic trick?"]