We have a culture that reflexively tears down the things it once loved. A villain whose goal - whose only destination - is disruption may speak even more to us now, in the age of Trump the showbiz fascist and Putin the warmonger with no endgame. Yet as perfect as Christian Bale was in the role, playing the now-debonair, now-raspy-voiced society-bachelor-turned-avenger, Nolan was smart enough to build the film around Heath Ledger’s extraordinary performance as the Joker, a character as real as he was terrifying - a leering sick-fuck clown, all stooped psychosis and oily green hair, licking his own scars, speaking in a voice pitched several notches beyond sarcasm as he devised ever more showy ways to send Gotham City hurtling into chaos.
#Batman dark knight movie#
It seemed about as elaborate and exciting as a comic-book movie could be.Ĭhristopher Nolan, staging it all with a foreboding big-canvas flair, made Batman the gothic nihilist antihero he always was in spirit - a vigilante steeped in rage, at the end of his bat tether. At the time, the film wasn’t just “dark” but resonantly dark.
It also had a snazziness - that big-wheel Batpod! - that just about popped off the screen. “The Dark Knight,” though, had an operatic grandeur fused with a creeping noir dread merged with a conspiratorial intricacy that added up to a true vision of the world. The films you might consider to be runners-up - “Spider-Man 2,” “Superman II,” “Guardians of the Galaxy” - are splendid entertainments, but none of them earn the G-word. For years I’ve said that “ The Dark Knight” is the one great comic-book movie.
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