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The Dark Knight

Sybrix

Member
With the movie theatres re-opening i got to see The Dark Knight again at the Cinema.

The movie is the most perfect superhero film ever made. To me this film legitimised comic book films in the world of Cinema.

I love the MCU and they did a fantastic job but none of them come near the brilliance of The Dark Knight





Will we ever see the like again?

Is it the best superhero film ever made?
 
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GamingKaiju

Member
“Some people just want to watch the world burn” is so poignant and applicable today’s world.

I do think Nolan’s Batman trilogy is probably the best of Batman we could ever see. Heath ledgers joker is iconic and just lures you in with his scenes, Christian Bale was a pretty good Batman even though I felt his Bruce Wayne side was weak but we didn’t get that much time with that side.

Oh and Ann Hathaway as Catwoman is pure sex I would lick her boots whilst purring.
 

bender

What time is it?
But Tank Girl is the finest comic book movie ever made!

I like the first two of Nolan's batman movies despite Bale's hammy Batman voice. 3rd movie was awful. For contemporaries, I'd not underestimate V for Vendetta or Sin City.
 
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Pagusas

Elden Member
Yeah, I think you are giving it too much credit OP, and not enough credit to Spiderman and Spider-Man 2. I think The Dark Knight is great, and in my top 5 comic book films, and my #2 Batman film. But it still has problems that I dont like. Still feel Bale is a weak Batman, still find the suit design bad, wish more had been done with Two Face, things like that. But still, a great film.
 

Sybrix

Member
Yeah, I think you are giving it too much credit OP, and not enough credit to Spiderman and Spider-Man 2. I think The Dark Knight is great, and in my top 5 comic book films, and my #2 Batman film. But it still has problems that I dont like. Still feel Bale is a weak Batman, still find the suit design bad, wish more had been done with Two Face, things like that. But still, a great film.

The Dark Knight was good but I would say Spider-Man legitimized comic book films in 2002 along with its sequel two years later.

Love Tobey Maguire Spidermans 1 and 2 (3 is just for a laugh)

The world that was created in the Dark Knight was an epic setting for a superhero film, the Joker as a character and the performance by Heath Ledger is one of the greatest villans ive ever seen and i think this is the main reason why the Dark Knight beats Spiderman.

I agree that Harvey Dent character could have been explored more, the actor who played him was perfect for that role and delivered dialogue so brilliantly
 

eddie4

Genuinely Generous
Love Tobey Maguire Spidermans
tenor.gif


on a serious note, Heath's Joker is still one of the best.
 
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Love Tobey Maguire Spidermans 1 and 2 (3 is just for a laugh)

The world that was created in the Dark Knight was an epic setting for a superhero film, the Joker as a character and the performance by Heath Ledger is one of the greatest villans ive ever seen and i think this is the main reason why the Dark Knight beats Spiderman.
I think there's a lot of potential for Matt Reeves' The Batman to be the next great superhero movie. Great writer/director and talented actors attached to it and it is a relatively unique take on the type of Batman we don't normally see in movies, focusing more on the detective angle of the titular character this time around. I'm pretty excited to see it anyway.
 
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W

Whataborman

Unconfirmed Member
Mostly agree. Those first two Batman's are probably my favorite work of his outside of Memento. Sorry Prestige fans. Dunkirk could have been great too, but it really fails to deliver the scale of the events.

I thought Dunkirk was incredibly boring, which is a tough feat to accomplish with a war movie.
 

bender

What time is it?
I thought Dunkirk was incredibly boring, which is a tough feat to accomplish with a war movie.

I think that's why the spliced the Tom Hardy sequences. It's hard to make waiting on a beach or driving boats exciting. It did a decent enough job with tension but the scale really betrays the civilian heroics of the actual events.
 
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Honestly shocked GAF thinks this movie is mid but you ain't wrong. Overrated movie that's good at best. If anyone has it in their top 10 films I'm not gonna take your opinions seriously.
 

Imotekh

Member
It's a great movie no doubt. The take I got from the last time I watched it was how insidious the Joker was even off screen. The ease with which he corrupts Gotham PD by going after their families, its really a weapon Batman couldn't deal with en masse.

Best Superhero flick though? Not sure, like others have said the early Spidermen movies really hit all the right notes. Besides, I sort of resent The Dark Knight for creating this audience of desperate admirers for the Joker as a "Bad Guy... with a Philosophy!" even though what he says is remarkably inconsistent.
 

Evangelion Unit-01

Master Chief
I prefer Begins but both are excellent.

Nolan’s trilogy redefined what a superhero movie could be. Unfortunately after the MCU got the crossover/shared universe ball rolling DC chose to emulate that model. It worked for Marvel but not for DC. Avengers was certainly another big moment For comic films but I think there is really something to be said about smaller, self contained stories. Hopefully The Batman is good and DC can pivot away from having to force everything to connect.
 
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Nothing can touch Nolan's Batman films.

It's comical to think anything else in the comic book movie adaptation canon would top The Dark Knight.

Read about the history of the film.and how influential it was to the entire film industry. It literally drove the Academy to make Best Picture nominations up to 9 nominees because of the Dark Knight getting snubbed for Best Picture.

You can say you don't personally see the greatness of the film but to say it's objectively mediocre/overrated/mid is a terrible and misinformed opinion to have.

#TenetOutNowInCinemas
 
My wife finds bales lips really annoying in it but still our favourite superhero movie, the tension portrayed throughout it is great. Maybe not as “comicbooky” as some would like but as a film it’s an epic experience especially at the cinema! The action scenes are great, getting so bored with the MCU so much crap happening on screen I dunno what’s going on.
 
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notseqi

Member
I love the MCU and they did a fantastic job but none of them come near the brilliance of The Dark Knight
Now that you said that... agree 100%. The movie is brilliant and touches on stuff the MCU can't do, gritty & dark doesn't seem possible for them.
 

cormack12

Gold Member
I prefer Begins but both are excellent.

Bro 🤜🤛

Exactly how I feel. TDK is good but I felt it was slightly overlong and would have benfitted from a tighter edit. Also the boat thing was drawn out and too elaborate just for the theme which was basically beaten into you. Still love the trilogy as a whole, but I felt they got progressively worse, but not signficantly and only because Begins set such a high watermark.
 

Hulk_Smash

Banned
Yeah, I think you are giving it too much credit OP, and not enough credit to Spiderman and Spider-Man 2. I think The Dark Knight is great, and in my top 5 comic book films, and my #2 Batman film. But it still has problems that I dont like. Still feel Bale is a weak Batman, still find the suit design bad, wish more had been done with Two Face, things like that. But still, a great film.

X-MEN am cry.
 

Super Mario

Banned
Begins is super underrated. Don't forget, that movie is 15 years old. What superhero movie still holds up that well? It told the perfect story of how a hero came to be.

The Dark Knight was the best. Ledger's Joker rewrote villanry that day. More often then not, sequels have a hard time telling a compelling story, let alone a better one. Harvey Dent was the biggest miss. Instead of going with the route of losing a hero, it would have been far more satisfying to watch him continue to be the villain and carry on the Joker legacy.

Rises grew on me. After Joker, I couldn't see a villain that held the same candle. Bane was really well done though. "Catwoman" was also better than expected. The plot was silly though.
 

Tesseract

Banned
Didnt nolan say jokers only contribution in tdkr would have been to replace scarecrow as the judge in the scene where they try gordon and his buddies to death? Bane was still the original plan im sure
i have to think he's such a force that the scene would've forked the movie down a more chaotic path

there's no way he would've been relegated to cameo
 
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Gp1

Member
Imho Nolan Batman trilogy still miles ahead of anything the MCU produced, ever the weaker entry (Rises).

I rewatch the entire trilogy from time to time just to reassure that.
 

SuperGooey

Member
I think The Dark Knight is a very sloppy movie. The best way I'd describe it is a smart movie for dumb people. Let me explain:

As far as sloppy, the action scenes are very poorly directed and edited to the point where I'm think Nolan filmed without storyboarding ahead of time. Specifically the batmobile/batpod chase; though, I'd say Nolan is good at building up anticipation and making the stakes clear, which can make these awkward action sequences still enjoyable.

In general, the script is pretty weird. There is that filler opening story with Batman going to Hong Kong that goes nowhere, and doesn't make any sense. We have scenes that just end with no resolution that are never brought up again, like Joker at the party after Batman saved Rachel... so, did Joker just leave after that? In general, Joker feels invisible because of plot convenience, like how he escapes the really stupid bank heist in the beginning or how he blows Gotham PD, and is cartoonishly the only one standing after. That's not to forget how poorly written deus ex machines make the resolution super easy for Batman where he uses the magic super computer to pinpoint Joker's exact location because writing a scene where Batman does detective work would require someone who isn't fucking Goyer to write. And speaking Goyer...

The dialogue is fucking terrible. It's exactly what you get from Goyer and Nolan. This ties into why I think this is a "smart movie for dumb people." First of all, it's super fake sounding when every scene is punctuated with obvious "this goes in the trailer" lines, but what is worse it what leads up to them-- awkward dialogue that TELLS the audience the exact themes of the movie incase they don't understand. The most obvious is "you die a hero" line which just feels awkwardly placed into the scene, but it's not as bad as the speech Gordon gives to his kid at the end. Fans will defend it as saying "Gordon is speaking to the audience", and that's obvious, the point is the dialogue is bad and so on the nose for the VERY OBVIOUS THEMES OF THE FILM--on top of that that doesn't work in the universe of the movie because the dumb kid Gordon's telling this to wouldn't understand any of it. No one talks that way to a child.

But the one exchange of dialogue that stands out as the worst and most hilarious is the one that leads up to another "trailer line" that is "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stranger." The line itself isn't bad and sounds like a very Joker thing to say, but the lead up just incapsulates how dumb the dialogue in this movie is. The bankteller who is on the ground after being shot awkwardly starts speaking to Joker saying the lines "Criminals in this city use to believe in something--honor, respect! What do you BELIEVE IN?" See how stupid this dialogue is? But this is a Goyer script for dummies, so what is being sad doesn't matter. All that matters is that it sets Joker up for a movie line that will go in the trailer. That's the dialogue in TDK in a nutshell.

There are so many more problems I have with this movie: Aaron Ackhart is a terrible actor, and his Two-Face is comical. Bale, while a great actor, is distracting as Batman thanks to his voice which, again, comes off as comical. In addition to that, Batman is a lot dumber in TDK compared to BB. I'm not sure why they set him up as a ninja if they weren't going to bring any of that back--would have been very helpful, especially at the end of TDK.


These are all problems I think always existed with the movie, but now it's aged over 10 years, and it shows. What was Nolan's version of "grounded" in 2008, isn't now. Given how this film is even less stylized than Begins, a lot of the more cartoony stuff (and especially all the plot conveniences) really stand out as bad. Joker plays by Tim Burton Batman movie rules, not the "grounded" Nolan rules, and I don't think it works at all. Needless to say, I think TDK is a bit overrated. Hahaha! It's better than Rises, though, which carried over all of TDK's problems and amplified them to the point where it is the worst solo Batman movie, imo.

Nothing can touch Nolan's Batman films.

It's comical to think anything else in the comic book movie adaptation canon would top The Dark Knight.

Read about the history of the film.and how influential it was to the entire film industry. It literally drove the Academy to make Best Picture nominations up to 9 nominees because of the Dark Knight getting snubbed for Best Picture.

You can say you don't personally see the greatness of the film but to say it's objectively mediocre/overrated/mid is a terrible and misinformed opinion to have.

#TenetOutNowInCinemas
Independence Day was also a watershed movie; doesn't mean it's above criticism. Or good.
 

Ememee

Member
To me, it’s still the best superhero movie. The best at combining the superhero mythos with cinema. It’s probably set to get overtaken soon (movies like Logan, IW/Endgame, have pushed the genre in their own ways) but to me it’s still the bar.

I’ll never forget getting to see the film a week early on IMAX from one of those MySpace deals. The scope of it, Heaths performance, the pacing and story, especially going in spoiler-free, is still one of the best cinematic experiences I’ve ever had.
 
Heath Ledger's Joker is to me the greatest character acting performance of all time. The movie is a bit bloated for mine though
 
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I thought it was mediocre, it felt like a crime/thriller movie with a guy who dresses like a bat.

Batman Returns remains the most stylistic, visually interesting and most fun/fucked up comic book movie to date IMO.

InB4 "it wasn't about Batman!", what makes the Batverse interesting was always Batman's villains not Bruce himself.
 

Hinedorf

Banned
I personally think Batman Begins is the most true to form Batman movie as it explores his origin in a way we've never seen in any other movie.

Also the biggest problem with the Dark Knight is that it's not a batman movie it's a Joker movie from start to finish. There's virtually no character depth to Batman it's all done through the machinations of the movies driving force Ledger. Whats the difference between Dark Knight and every other Batman movie? An Oscar-worthy villain.
 

desertdroog

Member
The third film could have been even more amazing if Heath hadn't died. A creative tragedy.
Weird, my co-worker and I were just having this conversation at lunch today. It is the worst movie of the three and the worst movie of Nolan's work.

Which isn't bad, because it is still better than most Superhero flicks and Nolan's worst is better than most. It is definitely hampered by the loss of Heath Ledger, and if the script wasn't Batman specific, but a suspense thriller in a near future(at the time) movie, it would still be good.

I am just really critical of Batman the character and the third movie made it look like Batman was phoned in.
 

Bolivar687

Banned
I think The Dark Knight is a very sloppy movie. The best way I'd describe it is a smart movie for dumb people. Let me explain:

As far as sloppy, the action scenes are very poorly directed and edited to the point where I'm think Nolan filmed without storyboarding ahead of time. Specifically the batmobile/batpod chase; though, I'd say Nolan is good at building up anticipation and making the stakes clear, which can make these awkward action sequences still enjoyable.

In general, the script is pretty weird. There is that filler opening story with Batman going to Hong Kong that goes nowhere, and doesn't make any sense. We have scenes that just end with no resolution that are never brought up again, like Joker at the party after Batman saved Rachel... so, did Joker just leave after that? In general, Joker feels invisible because of plot convenience, like how he escapes the really stupid bank heist in the beginning or how he blows Gotham PD, and is cartoonishly the only one standing after. That's not to forget how poorly written deus ex machines make the resolution super easy for Batman where he uses the magic super computer to pinpoint Joker's exact location because writing a scene where Batman does detective work would require someone who isn't fucking Goyer to write. And speaking Goyer...

The dialogue is fucking terrible. It's exactly what you get from Goyer and Nolan. This ties into why I think this is a "smart movie for dumb people." First of all, it's super fake sounding when every scene is punctuated with obvious "this goes in the trailer" lines, but what is worse it what leads up to them-- awkward dialogue that TELLS the audience the exact themes of the movie incase they don't understand. The most obvious is "you die a hero" line which just feels awkwardly placed into the scene, but it's not as bad as the speech Gordon gives to his kid at the end. Fans will defend it as saying "Gordon is speaking to the audience", and that's obvious, the point is the dialogue is bad and so on the nose for the VERY OBVIOUS THEMES OF THE FILM--on top of that that doesn't work in the universe of the movie because the dumb kid Gordon's telling this to wouldn't understand any of it. No one talks that way to a child.

But the one exchange of dialogue that stands out as the worst and most hilarious is the one that leads up to another "trailer line" that is "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stranger." The line itself isn't bad and sounds like a very Joker thing to say, but the lead up just incapsulates how dumb the dialogue in this movie is. The bankteller who is on the ground after being shot awkwardly starts speaking to Joker saying the lines "Criminals in this city use to believe in something--honor, respect! What do you BELIEVE IN?" See how stupid this dialogue is? But this is a Goyer script for dummies, so what is being sad doesn't matter. All that matters is that it sets Joker up for a movie line that will go in the trailer. That's the dialogue in TDK in a nutshell.

There are so many more problems I have with this movie: Aaron Ackhart is a terrible actor, and his Two-Face is comical. Bale, while a great actor, is distracting as Batman thanks to his voice which, again, comes off as comical. In addition to that, Batman is a lot dumber in TDK compared to BB. I'm not sure why they set him up as a ninja if they weren't going to bring any of that back--would have been very helpful, especially at the end of TDK.


These are all problems I think always existed with the movie, but now it's aged over 10 years, and it shows. What was Nolan's version of "grounded" in 2008, isn't now. Given how this film is even less stylized than Begins, a lot of the more cartoony stuff (and especially all the plot conveniences) really stand out as bad. Joker plays by Tim Burton Batman movie rules, not the "grounded" Nolan rules, and I don't think it works at all. Needless to say, I think TDK is a bit overrated. Hahaha! It's better than Rises, though, which carried over all of TDK's problems and amplified them to the point where it is the worst solo Batman movie, imo.


Independence Day was also a watershed movie; doesn't mean it's above criticism. Or good.

👆 I love a lot of this post.

I think the Dark Knight is in the upper tier of comic book movies, but Nolan's trilogy does not break into what I would consider the esteemed circle of comic book films. Since Alfred has to periodically explain to the audience what is going on, these movies are only entertainment and can never be art. TDK is also very derivative of Michael Mann's Heat, which Nolan is very transparent about. TDK was designed to look and make you feel just like that movie did. Also, the action scenes in Batman Begins have such brief shots that it really cements that Nolan is not a good action director, or at least he wasn't then.

I recently rewatched the Burton films and I have such a newfound respect for the way they invented this original kind of movie completely out of nowhere, to which much of Nolan's films are indebted. When Batman confronts the Penguin for the first time, it makes you wish there were 8 movies of these guys squaring off against eachother.

I also don't think anything can top this:

SvVy.gif
 

Elcid

Banned
With the movie theatres re-opening i got to see The Dark Knight again at the Cinema.

The movie is the most perfect superhero film ever made. To me this film legitimised comic book films in the world of Cinema.

I love the MCU and they did a fantastic job but none of them come near the brilliance of The Dark Knight





Will we ever see the like again?

Is it the best superhero film ever made?

As much as I like this movie, I actually think the original Batman with MIchael Keaton aged better. Rewatching the Nolan movies in HD just makes them look kind of meh and there are a LOT of glaring plotholes.
 
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