Trailer:
www.thedarkknightmovie.com
People: Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman.
Director: Christopher Nolan, written by Jonathon Nolan
When my pal Lewis told me Inception was cooler than The Dark Knight 'cos it was directed by Christopher Nolan, I was convinced there and then to watch Inception. hahax! And boy, am I still watching re-runs. I just can't get enough of epic-ness.
With that, I went back to Dark Knight and realised I hadn't done a review on it. Released in the summer of 2008, man, I should have waited a little more for the behind the scenes DVD to come out. I'm hooked on all stuff Nolan now, it's like he wanted his fans to become idiots by ensuring that he did his movies to the utmost chim-ness so we had to watch and re-watch them to understand anything in it.
I mean take a look at The Prestige. It was absolutely deliberate! Simple and nice, intense plotline. Easy to follow through, right? Wrong. Nolan had everything chopped and shuffled here and there so not many scene were in sequence and I had to watch it 3 times to get it; 3 times staring at a 2-hour movie; 3 times Hugh Jackman takes forever to die (don't get me wrong, the 1st time was riveting and dramatic it set me on tenterhooks).
it's the bleeding same with Memento isn't it? The poor man has an already smouldered mind and has no recollection of anything every 7 minutes, but that doesn't mean we have to be subject to the same device. My mind was only newly developed and matured, but then I watched it, the poor man's life flashing in our eyes backwards, and I could only feel utter sympathy 'cos my mind was starting to go on reverse itself. I worried i would horrendously end up like him. God, please no.
Now we fly to Inception. I like that this time, there are not as many flashbacks as he liked to, and that none of that ruined the story. In fact the story was close to perfect that I screamed at the blank screen at the end. Aside from these laudable portions, I re-watched the DVD out of greed for the epic-ness, and I realise his new ploy in this movie, to make the audience blur out from the moment they sit in their comfy theatre chairs, chewing on popcorn and enjoying the aircon, is to start the movie 2 levels into dream share. That got a quarter of unsuspecting people lost. To further confuse ppl, the very ploy was to have most of the characters speak in whispers and mumbles so we only barely catch them. Theories and logic on how dreams and creation and the inception job work are lost to the untrained ear. That got the half of the remainder of the theatre ppl. By the time they got to the 3rd level of dream during the job, they realise they were just cheated of their money by Nolan and the cinema.
Ok Dark Knight is a very typical hero vs villian story in the comics. But the theme of the hero turning the villian is very prominent, making the idea of human effort to make the world better all in vain. This episode is sad 'cos Harvey didn't deserve that end. btw, his face was marked with dots to track the burnt side of his face to make the CGI eroded skin tissues. I wondered how they created a model on his face with so many holes... Their ad campaign is so cool I just regret I didn't read the newspapers during the sec 4 exams in sec sch. The ad campaign was an election style campaigning for Harvey for Mayor
friendsofharvey.org. Too bad i think they had it in Singapore too but i missed it. Just like I discovered LOTR only after my exams tt year GAH!
