Batman

The Dark Knight is here! It is MADE of awesome. A very, very good movie, and well worth the ticket price, clocking in at 2.5 hours.

It was a little overhyped though. I mean, how is Heath Ledger's performance worthy of an Oscar? True, he did do a very good job, but Jack Nicholson did one just as good 20 years ago, also as the Joker. But maybe all the movies released this year were so crap that this is the performance of the year.

I have to say that Christopher Nolan, the director is really faithful to the comic. Batman really is this dark hero, willing to do anything short of murder to achieve victory in his one man war against crime. By the way, Batman only used guns in the really early comics, something like the 1950s or so, and even then it was only for a couple of issues. One really minor thing was the Joker's origins, which were not really covered in the movie. And makeup? The only makeup the Joker is supposed to wear is to make sure he looks normal. Oh well, that's just me nitpicking as usual.

This movie drew a lot of inspiration from Batman: Year One and also The Killing Joke. The symbiotic relationship between Batman and the Joker is well documented in the latter. Batman has admitted that their relationship is a fatal one, that he was willing to try to escape it, but it seems as if they never will. Although the Joker is mad, he is neither stupid nor impractical. There have been many run-of-the-mill crimes that he committed, though he leaves a calling card of some kind. One example from A Death in the Family is the Joker replacing medical supplies that he stole with his lethal laughing gas. He tends to go for the spectacular, to fulfil his own ego. Both Ledger's and Nicholson's Jokers were very good, in that they managed to bring out different sides of the Joker. While Nicholson's was more slapstick, Ledger's dark humour is a little more to my liking.

What about Batman himself? In this movie, because of the focus on the Joker, there is less development of the Bruce Wayne/Batman character. Another one of my pet peeves. Then again, how much more could be squeezed into a movie 2.5 hours long?