The Dark Knight — A Throwback Review
The realism of crime and justice in Gotham City in this sequel to Batman Begins is absolutely brilliant!!
It’s been 9 years since Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight blew our minds as he did in his other film Dunkirk. I was feeling pretty nostalgic about doing a review of my favorite comic book movie and therefore couldn’t resist doing so. Well, here we go!!
The Dark Knight’s plot is hands-down brilliant. After its previous film, Batman Begins, which was released in 2005, the Dark Knight’s blend of comic book mythology and reality of crime and justice is well executed.
The Joker, Batman’s arch-nemesis causes mayhem through his well-orchestrated but diabolical plans, Harvey Dent, Gotham’s new District Attorney tries to restore order by locking up mobsters and Batman/Bruce Wayne finds himself at crossroads between being the hero that Gotham needs and the one it deserves.
After the opening scene of the bank robbery led by the Joker, the movie goes on without seeing him for a while. For a maniac character like that, this gives the movie an almost continuous feel of suspense, in that the Joker’s heinous plans that have no motive,(although we know much later that his main target was Harvey Dent), could happen at any time. This also gives credit to Harvey Dent’s character transformation when he clashes with the Joker.
The plot of the movie is not only entertaining but also artistic in the sense that there’s a dash of realism, that makes the characters and events that happen in the movie easy to relate with real life, not just pure comic fiction. For example, the theme of philosophy of the characters motives, terrorism and justice.
And last but not least, the movie got most of its inspirations from Batman: The Long Halloween which is a brilliantly scripted comic.
In my opinion, the 3 core characters, Batman, the Joker and Harvey Dent are a symbolic blend of the movie’s plot. The Joker represents anarchy and the hurricane of destruction of the established order in Gotham, and what makes him scary is that he has no motive in what he does. He just does things for the fun of it.
Harvey Dent represents goodness and hope; an almost generic character who tries to fix Gotham together with Commissioner Gordon, from its damnation. This is before he clashes with the Joker, resulting to a character arc as the movie’s plot progresses.
Then we have the hero the Gotham deserves, Batman. The masked vigilante is in the middle of these two extreme characters; he works outside the law but achieves his goal of doing justice which is similar to what Harvey’s trying to do.
The Dark Knight has more practical effects than CGI. But the only part of the movie where CGI was significantly applied was on Harvey Dent’s half-scarred face. A visual effects company called Framestore was involved in generating 120 computer generated shots of Harvey Dent’s face. After this, the positions of bones, muscles and joints were rearranged, creating a darker and more dramatic Two-Face, therefore illustrating his evil transformation. Aaron Eckhart, who played Harvey ware markers on his face that functioned as motion captures for this half-scarred face.
My Verdict
A great film that’s both artistic and entertaining for a comic book movie that Christopher Nolan ambitiously crafted and will therefore leave you satisfied. It’s an absolute joy!!
Sources: Wikipedia.org, IGN
