The Dark Knight (2008)
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.
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57 films that influenced The Dark Knight
What critics say influenced The Dark Knight
His Joker draws power from the actual inspiration of the character in the silent classic “ The Man Who Laughs ” (1928).
Bob Kane has acknowledged that the Joker was inspired by Conrad Veidt’s character — a gentle-spirited loner with a carved-in smile — in the piercing 1928 silent “The Man Who Laughs.”
If The Long Halloween evoked The Untouchables (and The Godfather ), The Killing Joke sends Nolan the territory of Heat and The Departed , but with an arguably greater level of thematic sophistication than either of those highly regarded films.
This is not a Batman movie… this is a 2008 version of The Untouchables with The Batman as Elliot Ness, The Joker as Al Capone, much better toys, and, it seems, a topper.
You've probably heard the comparisons to The Empire Strikes Back and even Heat and The Untouchables and wondered if they could be true.
The most eagerly anticipated popcorn blockbuster of the summer is, in fact, one of the greatest crime epics ever made, taking its place beside such films as "The Godfather," "The Untouchables" and "Heat."
They’re all cogs in what might be, without the cowls and greasepaint, another episode of “Mission: Impossible”—not quite a superhero movie (Batman has no special powers, after all), but one about an extraordinary human crime-fighter.
Ledger said he found inspiration in Sid Vicious and the clown-faced thugs of A Clockwork Orange; costume designer Lindy Hemming pointed to pop-culture icons of distress Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Rotten.
If you detect a hint of Malcolm McDowell’s anarchic Alex from A Clockwork Orange , Andy Robinson’s Scorpio Killer from Dirty Harry , or possibly even Jack Lemmon’s manic, high-registered mutterings (albeit with an added layer of black eyeshadow), you’d be underestimating Ledger’s original, fearless talent.
Sure, there's a whiff of Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange in the performance, but Ledger has made this anarchic maniac a singular and supremely unhinged villain.
It's enough to see Ledger conjure up the anarchy of the Sex Pistols and A Clockwork Orange as he creates a Joker for the ages.
Taking place a year after the events of Batman Begins (2005), the film springs immediately into action with a split-second bank caper that pays homage to Stanley Kubrick's The Killing (1956), in which clown-masked robbers execute a similar plan.
The movie is peopled with opposites, doppelgangers and even doppelgang-bangers in the opening scene, (derived from Stanley Kubrick's The Killing) in which a group of men in evil clown make-up rob a bank filled with mob money and then start shooting each other.
If The Long Halloween evoked The Untouchables (and The Godfather ), The Killing Joke sends Nolan the territory of Heat and The Departed , but with an arguably greater level of thematic sophistication than either of those highly regarded films.
A drama about hard moral choices, "The Dark Knight" is "The Godfather" of superhero movies — or, at least, "The Departed."
The Dark Knight is a blast of cinematic respectability for an underestimated genre, no less than The Godfather and Stagecoach offered in their eras to previously pulp species.
All those comparisons to The Godfather and Heat are well earned.
The most eagerly anticipated popcorn blockbuster of the summer is, in fact, one of the greatest crime epics ever made, taking its place beside such films as "The Godfather," "The Untouchables" and "Heat."
Wally Pfister’s lighting of the scene as it opens only lit by the desk lamp in order to disguise Batman’s presence echoes Apocalypse Now.
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He's surprisingly passive in the early going, though what's really going on is that Christopher Nolan, the director, franchise-holder (he did "Batman Begins") and writer (along with brother Jonathan Nolan), is giving the Joker plenty of time to establish his bona fides.
Nolan has followed up on his gritty and successful Batman Begins with one of the best all-time sequels, and perhaps the most impressive mainstream entertainment experience since 2003's The Return of the King .
But "The Dark Knight," which improves upon the solemn authority Nolan and Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne brought to "Batman Begins," has an atmospheric shimmer all its own.
Given THE success of "Batman Begins" three years ago, adventurous, eclectic director Christopher Nolan could have gone anywhere and done anything with his next film.
Friday, in dark and unsettling shadings, more so than in his "Batman Begins" predecessor.
It's also, thankfully, a vast improvement over his self-serious origin story, 2005's "Batman Begins."
Somewhere between his first hit, the tricky backward teaser “Memento ,” and his most recent picture, the tricky dueling-magicians teaser “The Prestige ,” Christopher Nolan began gathering, like a lucky squirrel having stumbled upon a hoard of exquisite nuts, comparisons to Hitchcock.
Director Christopher Nolan, who cowrote this dense, dark story with brother Jonathan (whose short story was the basis for Nolan's "Memento"), has taken the comic book super hero movie onto another plateau with "The Dark Knight."
Like the amnesiac amateur detective who occupied the central role in Nolan's Möbius-strip sophomore feature, Memento, the Bruce Wayne of Dark Knight is increasingly gripped by an existential crisis, wondering whether he is the hero or the villain of his own story.
The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan (who first worked together on “ Memento ”) has more depth and poetry than we might have expected.
Though more linear than “Memento” and “The Prestige” (both also co-scripted by the Nolans), “The Dark Knight” pivots with similar ingenuity on a breathless series of twists and turns, culminating in a dramatic shift for Dent.
From his hellish vision of Gotham under siege to his morally conflicted heroes to Heath Ledger's unforgettable performance as the clown prince of crime, Nolan (Memento, The Prestige) has created a film that is as rich in text as it is in subtext, channeling cinema's bleakest and greatest crime films into a summer popcorn flick.
Following is Christopher Nolan‘s noir-tinged debut and, although the budget is infinitesimally smaller than The Dark Knight, what’s really startling about Following is how many themes it has in common with the movies that would come to define him.
Anyone who has watched Nolan develop from his homemade debut, "Following," through his initial American splash, "Memento," to his emergence as a director of blockbusters, can't help but revel in his mastery of epic scale, white-knuckle action and the blend of special effects and human-sized storytelling on display here.
(It makes sense, given the preoccupation with time in Nolan's first two films Following and Memento.)
Ledger’s performance recalls James Cagney’s unforgettable turn as Cody Jarrett in the 1949 noir classic “White Heat.”
The cinematic inheritances of The Dark Knight hardly end there—the ending owes more than a little to John Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and the overriding theme is remarkably similar.
Like The Searchers' Ethan Edwards and High Noon's Will Kane, he's left to ride off into the darkness, pondering the uncertain destiny of principled men in an unprincipled world—as are we.
He occasionally rolls his eyes and flips his tongue has he speaks, which reminded me -- appropriately enough -- of Jeff Goldblum's brilliantly manic performance in David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986).
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He can be playful, finding unexpected avenues into the character: "You complete me," he purrs to Batman, mockingly borrowing Tom Cruise's classic line from "Jerry Maguire" and dashing all possibilities for the Caped One's imminent retirement.
In his beautifully deranged state of chaos and anarchy, the Joker even utters the cheesy “Jerry Maguire” line “you complete me” to Batman and follows with: “You’re just a freak – like me.
Batman cultivates himself as a symbol of hope and justice, but also inspires mob retaliation and the appearance (shades of Magnum Force) of lookalike vigilantes more bloodthirsty than himself.
One of the biggest fears for the first half was that there was going to be this inevitable turn in to a pure “Magnum Force” rip off, and we almost did.