The Dark Knight – My Thoughts

If you thought “oh, this is just another one of those summer block buster comic book movies” you’re right, but you are also very wrong because this movie is so much more.

This movie is not only about Batman fighting crime like an immature little boy scout, thinking that only he can help set the world straight because only he has good values and morals in a disturbingly corrupt city. This movie is deep and thought provoking. It does not deal with absolutes, there is no absolute evil nor is there absolute good. It deals with ambiguous moral values and psychology.

The Dark Knight has our main character questioning himself as Bruce Wayne, but it also makes him question himself and his role as Batman, and what kind of a role or impact does he really make in the society he lives in. This is such an interesting character because he is three different persona’s, really. Two of those are masks hiding something he can not tell others about. There is “Bruce Wayne The Billionaire Playboy” that would take the cast of a Russian opera half way round the world just for the hell of it, to piss off his friends. There is, of course, “Bruce Wayne as Batman”, a character that stands for good, but “he is not a hero, he is the symbol Gotham needs right now”. This is interesting as Batman becomes the subject of a vicious hunt, they want his blood be he innocent or not. He is a symbol that gives Gotham what Gotham needs when Gotham needs it. And finally there is the real Bruce Wayne, an innocent human being so hurt and scarred by his tragic experiences as a little boy that he chooses to live a life in solitude only to hide behind masks, and the only one to ever really see Bruce, and know Bruce as his real self is the ever so loyal butler Alfred. (Alfred is a mentor in the classical sense, he gives advice when needed, he is there for support when needed, he tells Bruce about his own experiences and makes them into a metaphor for what is going on in Bruce’s life as private or as Batman.)

The villain, The Joker, he is just plain crazy. He embodies anarchy, evil, chaos, he is a cold blooded killer and does what he does because it’s fun. To me, this version of The Joker, played by Heath Ledger, has more soul, depth, life and attitude than the same character played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 version of Batman. Heath Ledger blows Jack Nicholson out of the water. Never have I seen such a captivating performance for some one playing a “movie bad guy”. I sat there in the dark and enjoyed it so much that I was actually sad I will never get to see Ledger in action again. This is one actor I will surely miss.

The good that becomes bad, Harvey “Two Face” Dent. He is Gotham City’s new District Attorney, and the city’s “white knight in shining armour”. He is on the brink of solving all Gotham’s crime in one sweep. However, to prove a point The Joker has planned an event in where he would take Gotham’s new hero and twist him around and make him evil, so that he could show Batman how everyone really is corruptible. I do wish, though, that they could have given this character Dent a little more depth and character development, and show his turning evil a little better. In my opinion this was very bland, and I did not really care about him or what happened to him like I suppose they would have wanted me to.

The very first thing I noticed when the film started was the quality of the overall production, it was in a word excellent. Of course there’s action. It’s excellent. Enough is said about that.

Don’t be a dumb, ignorant fool. Go see this movie even though it is a Batman movie, because it is so much more than just Batman. I give it four stars out of five. Just awesome!

Trailer for The Dark Knight

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