The Dark Knight

[usuallyhats]

Went to see The Dark Knight yesterday evening. Overall I'd give it 3.5/5, it was good, but did it really have to be seventeen hours long? I don't mind slow, I like slow when it means time given over to character development and worldbuilding and all that good stuff, but this rather dragged. I spent a lot of the last hour or so (from the scene with the Joker and Batman in the cell onwards) fidgetiing, checking my watch and almost falling asleep (to be fair here, it had been a long day and the cinema was very very warm). Which was a shame. Partly it was that I really like Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne but not so much as Batman (he is a bit too "HI I AM SRS COMIC BOOK CHARACTER W/SRS VOICE"), and the last half was pretty Bruce Wayne light. The film never entirely hooked me, I don't think. And the last action sequence, in the warehouse: although the way it was shot was good for showing how crazy-confusing that fight was, not so much fun to watch.

The other major problem I had was with the female characters. the_smut_fairy pointed out that just the trailer for the new Mummy film passed the Bechdel test whereas the whole film of The Dark Knight didn't. The only scene we could think of where two women talk to each other is the one where Ramirez is on the phone to Mrs Gordon, and even there, she's only speaking to her because Dent is forcing her to. (It's implied that both Rachel and Mrs Gordon know Ramirez well enough to trust her, but we never actually see them interacting.) I don't think the Bechdel test is a hard and fast rule, but it's a good starting point, and I think that it really demonstrates how isolated all the women in the film are - they're the exception in their worlds. It was quite interesting to look at the gender balance of the extras, too: the scenes of Distressed Citizenry skewed towards the women, though if anyone had any lines it was generally a man. The party scene was fairly evenly split between older men and beautiful young women (sigh). But in any scene with "active" extras - police, crims 'n' thugs, ferry drivers - they were largely or even exclusively male. Depressing.

Also, as livii pointed out, how great would all the scenes with Gordon's son have been if they were with his daughter instead? I'm fairly ignorant in the comics department, and even I know she's going to grow up to be Batgirl.

Oh, and the Two-Face makeup was pretty rubs. I know we're suspending disbelief and all, but come on. My first reaction was "why is he suddenly half-Terminator?"

Better things, in no particular order:

- I love the relationship between Alfred and Bruce. Snarky affection is pretty much my favourite thing to watch, ever, and both Michael Caine and Christian Bale were great. "I'm going to tell them it was your idea."

- Heath Ledger was fantastic, yes.

- ERIC ROBERTS SQUEE. No, seriously. I have all this affection for him cos he's everyone's least favourite Master, and then he was really good in Heroes. And he was great here too! (though I was a bit twitchy about how all the minor villains seemed to be black or asian or Italian-American etc.) And Anthony Michael Hall! Seeing him made me grin a lot. Also, Holtz from Angel! *is happy geek*

- The scenes with Harvey Dent and Bruce Wayne just sizzled. I did think they were going to jump each other a few times too. "I believe in Harvey Dent," indeed.

- That last bit, when the mobile phone sonar thing shuts down, was good too. They were really taking the opportunity that making a Batman film affords them to play with ideas of ends and means and things. Also the contrast between Harvey and Batman, Harvey being one thing or the other, good or bad, Bruce treading carefully between the two, seeing how far you can do bad things for good ends with becoming evil yourself, with Fox and Alfred to help balance him.

- The Gotham yellow pages on Harvey's desk! Hurray for little details.

- *click* *explode* *click* *explode* *click* *explode* *click* *confused look* *click* *click* *click* *explode* HEE.

- I laughed muchly at the "it's a social experiment!" line. There were lots of little comedy bits that I liked, especially "should I go to the hospital?" OH BRUCE.

- It possibly says something rather worrying about my mental state that when the prisoner was talking about his stomach ache and "shiny shiny lights" I was going "clearly he has a bomb in him, fools! Slice him open and hoick it out, or just, y'know, RUN!"

- The bit with the fake Batman was v. effective, as I was going "Batman can't just gun people down like that! That's wrong!" And lo, it was.

- ETA: the Gordon fakeout was good, I really thought he was dead and was delighted when he wasn't. :)

With better editing and some more thought into the female characters, that could have been superb. As it was, it was just pretty good.