The Dark Knight: 1st Review

[Augusto86]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

I thought Bale was fine. I never thought too much about the batman voice. Doesn't he just do it to disguise his real voice? I'm not so sure how else he would go about it, and Bale has some major voice skills. You should here him switch between his American and English accent.

Yeah, I think the point is that people aren't like - hey, you sound kinda like that Wayne dude.

I know all about Bale's voice skills - see, when I showed Equilibrium to my g/f she fell in love with Bale and we ended up watching basically all his movies: American Psycho, Machinist, 3:10, Prestige, Metroland, hell even Empire of the Sun.

Still gotta see Rescue Dawn though.

What's weird about Bale is his total physical shifts; he did the Machinist, looking like this:

Wrapped that, and went STRAIGHT to Batman and came out looking like this:

Scary ****.

 

[Brad]

I don't think Maggie Gyllenhaal is unattractive.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by Augusto86

Yeah, I think the point is that people aren't like - hey, you sound kinda like that Wayne dude.

I know all about Bale's voice skills - see, when I showed Equilibrium to my g/f she fell in love with Bale and we ended up watching basically all his movies: American Psycho, Machinist, 3:10, Prestige, Metroland, hell even Empire of the Sun.

Still gotta see Rescue Dawn though.

What's weird about Bale is his total physical shifts; he did the Machinist, looking like this:

Wrapped that, and went STRAIGHT to Batman and came out looking like this:

Scary ****.

There's no doubt that he earns his money. That was a scary transformation.

 

[limping_decorum]

All the money Bruce Wayne has and he is taking pictures with what looks like a ****** little point and shoot camera in China.

No 30+MP Hasselblad?

 

[xchen]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

There's no doubt that he earns his money. That was a scary transformation.

I don't see how he can make such huge gains like this so fast being a vegetarian. ~120 going all the way to 260 is an insane change.

However, He did weigh a little more the 120 by the end of shooting The Machinist because they shot it in reverse since you gain weight faster than you lose weight. They did the same weight for Rescue Dawn in which he once again lost an insane amount of weight.

 

[style from the heartland]

Loved it. IMAX sunday necessitated mid-week drive to cinema last week, just to get matinee tix. Made friends and family happy though to get to see it.

IMAX screen, sat in bottom quarter of theater. Indeed, a couple action scenes were too quick to follow. Not as bad as first Nolan movie on regular screen. Recommended on IMAX, primarily due to Hong Kog/Chicago scenes (moreso than the 18-wheeler stunt).

Anyone have inside info into next Bale-movie? I know "Harvey Dent" is dead. But do we all believe in our heart of hearts that Two Face is the next feature-villain? Clearly Joker will not be recast anytime soon because of the Ledger tragedy.

 

[oneblood]

Originally Posted by Brad

I don't think Maggie Gyllenhaal is unattractive.

I don't think Maggie Gyllenhaal is not unattractive.

 

[bryce330]

Originally Posted by RFX45

I agree, to some extent. 300 was a good action film but people claiming it to be better than Gladiator are out fo their minds. The two comic book differs though. 300 doesn't really have substance, it is more about visual appealling cinema and brutal action sequences and that is it. Watchmen has depth and the story will speak for itself.

I am just curious, but have you read Watchmen? It is one of the best, if not the best, graphic novel ever written. Snyder will look into doing this movie the same way he did 300, a page for page interpretation. With it being visually appealling due to Snyder and great writing by Alan Moore, it is one of the comic book films that has a chance to beat TDK.

I don't think 300 was a great movie, or even a very good one, but it is based upon one of the most amazing and stirring true stories of all time - to say it doesn't have a story or substance is pretty ridiculous.

I haven't read the Watchmen comic book and have no idea what it is even about, but the trailer looked awful - the movie looks like it will be a total nerdfest.

 

[bryce330]

I've never liked Aaron Eckhart for some reason - I guess I always thought of him as one of those guys like Hugh Grant who plays the same character in every movie, in Eckhart's case usually a cocky overgrown frat boy - but his performance in this was a revelation for me. Ledger was great of course, but it's a shame that the hype surrounding his performance and death will overshadow Eckhart's equally terrific performance. The only negatives for me were Bale's 'Batman' voice, Maggie Gyllenhall (both her looks and her performance), and the implausibility of much of the story. I thought Batman Begins was mostly plausible, which is part of which I enjoyed it so much after the wild fantasy of the last few Batman movies. SPOILER ALERT There were a lot of things in TDK that were hard to believe - BM being able to get a 3-D map of the entire city using cell phones, the faked assassination of a major character, a witness pulling a gun on a prosecutor in open court (and the prosecutor nonchalantly grabbing the gun away), and the capabilities of the Joker, who despite presumably acting alone was somehow able to plant about 50 bombs in a hospital as well as plant bombs in two huge passenger ferries with only a few minutes' notice.

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by bryce330

I've never liked Aaron Eckhart for some reason - I guess I always thought of him as one of those guys like Hugh Grant who plays the same character in every movie, in Eckhart's case usually a cocky overgrown frat boy - but his performance in this was a revelation for me. Ledger was great of course, but it's a shame that the hype surrounding his performance and death will overshadow Eckhart's equally terrific performance.

The only negatives for me were Bale's 'Batman' voice, Maggie Gyllenhall (both her looks and her performance), and the implausibility of much of the story. I thought Batman Begins was mostly plausible, which is part of which I enjoyed it so much after the wild fantasy of the last few Batman movies.

SPOILER ALERT

There were a lot of things in TDK that were hard to believe - BM being able to get a 3-D map of the entire city using cell phones, the faked assassination of a major character, a witness pulling a gun on a prosecutor in open court (and the prosecutor nonchalantly grabbing the gun away), and the capabilities of the Joker, who despite presumably acting alone was somehow able to plant about 50 bombs in a hospital as well as plant bombs in two huge passenger ferries with only a few minutes' notice.

Ya, the whole cell phone sonar thing was pretty gay. I wish movie writers would clue in to the fact that people like toys in these kinds of movies, so long as they aren't completely unrealistic. Still, the movie was good enough that this didn't hurt it too much.

 

[RJman]

BTW, does Nestor Carbonell always look like he's wearing eyeliner?

 

[Brad]

Originally Posted by RJman

BTW, does Nestor Carbonell always look like he's wearing eyeliner?

There must be something in the water here, but I thought the exact same thing during the movie.

 

[RJman]

Originally Posted by Brad

There must be something in the water here, but I thought the exact same thing during the movie.
I'm glad he's getting work after "Suddenly Susan".

 

[Brian278]

+1 on Gyllenhall being poor casting. My friend and I talked about this for a week leading up to the film's release, and we came up with like 30 better choices.

At its most basic, she's not hot enough. I think she's a decent actress. But she doesn't make me empathize with Batman for wanting to nail her. And I didn't care if she died. This is kind of a central point of the film, that she's suppozed to be this prize...and she's just not that desireable.

 

[Brad]

Surely, I'll get scolded for this, but I don't think Katie Holmes is any hotter than Maggie. Neither is hot, but neither is brutal.