Call It, and Raised It

After the release of Iron Man and Incredible Hulk consequently, Marvel Studios were riding high. The new Hulk movie managed to restart the franchise after Ang Lee's failed attempt in 2003, and Iron Man was gaining critical praise left, right centre as well as commercial success with Robert Downey Jr brilliant portrayal of Tony Stark. They also put out the plan to create the Avengers movie, with cleverly put cameos in the two movies.

Rivals at DC/WB needed an answer. After Superman Returns failed in the box office and their JLA project is languishing in development hell, they need to come up with something. And oh boy do they have the perfect response in The Dark Knight.

The sequel to 2005 Batman Begins managed to do what few movies can, being better than the original. Begins is already praised for its realistic and dark portrayal of the comic book characters, but this movie just take it to another level. It's gaining massive positive reviews from the critics, and at the time this review is written, has broke 8 box office records, including the biggest income from the opening weekend, breaking previous record that was held by Spider-Man 3.

I should admit though, that after Kevin Smith's comment that this is the Godfather 2 of comic book movies my expectation went so high that I feel that I'm going to be disappointed when I finally saw it. Rest assured, that not only it met my expectation, but also succeed it.

The movie itself is action packed, but it never got dumbed down into a typical action movie. The story is worthy of a great crime saga, and the characters development was fantastic.



Batman and Gordon effort to clean up Gotham from organized crime received a huge boost with the emergence of the new hot shot District Attorney, Harvey Dent. Dent's hard stance in prosecuting criminals proved to be more successful than Batman vigilante ways, and it gives Bruce Wayne a glimmer of hope that one day he can finally hang up his cowl and lead a normal life.

Meanwhile, the mobsters are getting desperate with all this, and in this desperation they turned to their last hope, a guy who claims that he can killed Batman for a price, The Joker. However, the Joker wasn't really interested in reward or money, all he care about is chaos. Like what Alfred Pennyworth (Michael Caine) said to Wayne when the latter is trying to figure out The Joker, "Some people just like to see the world burn". And Joker pretty much got what he wanted. Chaos. Utter chaos.



That's pretty much as far as I can go without spoiling it. Rest assured that that two paragraphs is just scratching the surface.

Chris and Jonah Nolan together with David Goyer managed to wrote a story get each major character development perfectly, and the actors didn't disappoint. Bale's Batman and Wayne growth as a hero and a person, Aaron Eckhart brilliant performance in Dent portraying the rise and fall that created Two-Face, and Gary Oldman again shine in Jim Gordon's struggle to do the right thing. All was given enough arc and background stories. And much has been said about Heath Ledger final complete role, and let me tell you this. All the hype was justified. He was THAT good. His Joker is scary as hell, but you'll find yourself laughing at his jokes and felt shit afterwards, because you know you shouldn't be laughing. If let say 20 years from now, they're gonna make another Batman movie with the Joker in it, people will say "Can he play it as good as Ledger?" about the actor whose gonna play him.

To say that this is a great comic book movies is doing a bit disservice to the movie. Sometimes a movie is just so damn good it doesn't matter what genre it is.