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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The Dark Knight

karapetkov said:
The movie is currently on N:1 in the IMDB Top 250 movies... decapitating The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. [probably temporarily].

This could mean one of two things:

1. The movie is really extraordinary.

or

2. IMDB is a nice and affordable place to advertise.
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You forgot #3: The users of the IMDB largely skew towards the "young males with limited knowledge of film history" demographic.

Also hype.

That said, The Dark Knight was a really good movie. But #1 of all time? Hardly. The IMDB is a pretty lousy place to get even remotely reliable film ratings. Almost as bad as Rotten Tomatoes.
 
JasonMurphy said:
You forgot #3: The users of the IMDB largely skew towards the "young males with limited knowledge of film history" demographic.

Also hype.

That said, The Dark Knight was a really good movie. But #1 of all time? Hardly. The IMDB is a pretty lousy place to get even remotely reliable film ratings. Almost as bad as Rotten Tomatoes.
Click to expand...


M-hm. So what good sites are there for film ratings?
 
karapetkov said:
M-hm. So what good sites are there for film ratings?
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Well it IS kind of a grim scene out there... :sarcasm:

I meant for my last post to be tongue in cheek, though in all seriousness, I wouldn't really trust RT to tell me whether or not a film is actually any good. Just how much popular appeal it has. Which is often a totally different thing. (Though of course, not always, which is why those sites occasionally work).

IMDB is certainly somewhat better, but the top 250 rankings are pretty ludicrous, all things considered. And it's largely a result of the site's demographics. At this point, for example, about 2/3 of the votes for The Dark Knight have been made by 18-29 year old males. Hardly balanced.

If I don't know much about a given movie and am actually interested in knowing whether a movie's worth seeing or not (which for me is the main reason for ratings), I'm more likely to look at a handful of critics whose opinions I know and trust (or at least know them enough to know when not to trust them), and get a sense that way. For me, some of those critics would be Jim Hoberman, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Manohla Dargis, Kent Jones, Dennis Lim, Amy Taubin etc. I don't know that I agree with any of them all the time, and some of them occasionally go off the deep end, but knowing their tastes, I can almost always get a handle on whether a movie will be worth watching or not.

Anyway, probably a longer answer than you wanted, but hey, you asked, and this is the internet. :)
 
JasonMurphy said:
Anyway, probably a longer answer than you wanted, but hey, you asked, and this is the internet. :)
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Not at all.

I have noticed that the majority of all IMDB voters are males, and probably - a big part are in the same group - 18-29.

Seems that girls have better things to do. :)
 
It's been awhile since I have come out of the movie theatre so excited. I didn't have much high hopes since alot of "blockbuster" comic book movies don't get me going as much these days.. spiderman..hulk..xmen...bleh
but this one..man I simply loved it. I want to go see it again.
 
Just saw it again this morning; it was even BETTER second time around. This time I got to actually sit in the middle of the theater, so the experience itself was perfect. I really can't get over this movie. It's just an experience you don't get very often; who knows when the next time we'll be able to see it in IMAX, or anything close. When this film comes out on BR, it will be like watching a DVD of a regular 35mm film lol. Need Redray 4k Dark Knight!
 
Aside from the Joker and the music, the Dark Knight wasn't much. Unfortunately, I think it killed the box office because of the hype surrounding Ledger's untimely death and his stellar performance. (Although, I didn't find his Joker to be maniacal enough. He didn't scare me.)

Perhaps I expected too much.

Nothing compares to Burton's Batman though.

In regards to other posts, DK is a movie. Shawshank's a film. Perhaps one of the greatest - IMO.
 
Psh... Nolan slapped Burton in the face with this film. He wiped any memories of Jack Nicholson away as well..
 
Shawn Booth said:
Nothing compares to Burton's Batman though.

In regards to other posts, DK is a movie. Shawshank's a film. Perhaps one of the greatest - IMO.
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You're right; Burton's Batman and Nolan's are completely different. In fact, Burton's version has very little accuracy to the true Batman story, which pretty much makes it more of a "Burton film" than a "Batman film". Nolan's vision follows a lot closer to the darker series of the '80s.


And what is the difference between a film and a movie? They both have Morgan Freeman...that should count for something :)
 
karapetkov said:
I find this very hard to believe. :devil:
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After what Jack Said about Heath when told that Heath had died I lost a lot of respect for Jack. For those that didn't see or read about it Jack basically just laughed and said he told him so! Supposedly he was quite upset that he wasn't consulted or even offered the role and seemed bitter. Maybe he's upset he's only getting offered over the hill roles such as The Bucket List.
And yes it's true, Heaths Joker kicked Jack's ass hard!
 
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92581365

Click on the Listen Now link near the top of this article. It's a really good interview with Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan. Bale also talks about Heath's way of playing the Joker and how it affected him at 15:30 too. It's a really good listen.
 
Brian Langeman said:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=92581365

Click on the Listen Now link near the top of this article. It's a really good interview with Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan. Bale also talks about Heath's way of playing the Joker and how it affected him at 15:30 too. It's a really good listen.
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Wow. Thanks for posting this. After listening to this though, I realized my initial theory was completely wrong. Guess I was over-analyzing. Heh.

It's strange to hear Christian Bale in interviews. He does an American accent so convincing.
 
*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*

*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*spoilers*

GET THEE GONE FROM THIS POST IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE!!! IMMEDIATELY!!! SPOILERS ABOUND!!!


--------------------------


OK so I know the above is redundant because, doing the math on the published box office, every human being on the planet has now seen this movie 3.7 times per head. And I'm also behind the times cuz this thread's been quiet for a while but hey - I gotta talk to somebody and you guys are the only ones in my vicinity speaking da english.

Three things: I'm a Nolan fan. I'm a Batman fan. I liked the film.

And here's the BUT - I didn't like it as much as I wanted to (yes it's subjective - but I'm not trying to tell you what to think of the movie and it's fun to talk about ). Batman Begins blew me away, I watched it a couple of weeks before DK's release and none of the magic had faded.

This one? Juuuuust a little fiddly. I'm fine with the emotional elements of the movie, but just couldn't find a Third Act (watch the previous movie - it has one of the clearest shifting of gears into the third act I can think of, after the fire at Wayne manor). WHERE IS MY MASSIVE FIGHT WITH THE JOKER? WHERE IS IT? Three dogs!? Three dogs was the Joker's trump card (pun oh-so-very-much intended)? Hmmm. And the other two situations (the boat, the hostage switch) seemed way too removed from the Joker and dynamically canceled each other out a bit for me as they're both going off at the same time (and the amount of people I've spoken to who say "Uh, I probably would have blown up the prisoners"). They were build up - and then there were three dogs. And this is at the end of lots of fiddly little set pieces all the way through the movie that have very complicated (and not always legible) cause-and-effect.

The chase with the truck? YES, MAN. THAT was what I bought my ticket for. Make no mistake - the smarts of the movie are a massive draw, but ... it's Batman. Ninja-styley-oh-so-wealthy-lots-of-tech-toys Batman.

Here's another idea : half of the Batman is an animal/warrior/vigilante whilst the other half is a detective. So the problem for this second Detective half is - how do you foil the plans of two enemies that make no plan? One subscribes to chaos, the other to chance. Great, good thematic choice on a writing level - and you can see how it stings Bruce as he tries to figure it out because it is against his code to let the warrior kill. And then - well, they make plans. And he figures them out using the weird ass mobile phone Big Brother-y thing (and yes, I was thinking Patriot Act). And the warrior has no worthy physical adversary because the Joker doesn't work that way. He works with dogs. Three of them.

Hope this doesn't read as bitching - I did enjoy the fillum. But it's seems like I missed out on a really good ride (LOTS of people LOVE it) and I'm trying to figure out why.

Maybe it was too smart (yes folks, I get it) and I was looking for something a little dumber. At least at the end bit.

Pfff. Three dogs. Pfff.
 
Well, various people were calling it the 'greatest comic book movie of all time.' So, my expectations were pretty high.

I just didn't feel much for Bale and his constant growling. I think the audience was distanced from Bale, intentionally, and that it wasn't such a good idea. It's more like watching other people play a video game, than a film where you identify with the hero.

It suffered from sequel thinking, that we already care so much about Batman, that it wasn't that necessary to re-identify with him. He should have had a better opening, to draw us in. The opening sequence was just gratuitous violence, with the purpose of setting up the philosophical conundrum. But, it didn't work to get us on Batman's side per se.

I felt the whole film was more an intellectual battle, with ridiculously overdone violence, than an emotional ride. I didn't even care much that Maggie Gillenhal ended up where she did. I was not hooked by the characters.

So, I liked Iron Man more. I liked Spiderman more. I even liked Superman more!

Heath Ledger definitely showed up Jack. That movie was abysmal.
 
mail4joeg said:
But, it didn't work to get us on Batman's side per se.
Click to expand...

I guess the question is...are we really supposed to be on Batman's side for this whole movie?

We are for some parts...but I think part of what makes the Joker's character so incredibly effective is that he is the one that connects with us for a greater part of the movie.

warning: HERE BE SPOILERS




It is my opinion that one of the defining points of the performance in terms of audience involvement is when the Joker is in the hospital room with Harvey. It isn't what you might think, however- what I consider the turning point is when he removes the surgical mask and says "Hi".

At that point, each of the seven times I've seen the movie, almost the entire theater laughs.

It is wholly inappropriate for us to be laughing. This is a deranged psychopath terrorist who has just murdered a main character and is turning another one against 'good'. But the fact is that the Joker has been building us up on his side much faster and more consistently than Batman. And we, the 'good' audience, are now savoring every second of the Joker's violence, insanity, and psychological terror.

It is always at this point of the movie that I laugh and a few seconds later realize that it is wrong for me to be doing so from the standpoint of the morals Batman represents, and the moral standards we like to think we live by.

Just my opinion...and I'm just a movie goer.
 
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