"The Dark Knight" Is 10 Years Old Today
One of my favorite movies ever and one of the objectively best of the last few decades, ‘The Dark Knight’ is a title that absolutely everybody knows unless they have been living under a rock. On the 10 year anniversary of its U.S. release, lets break down what makes this one of the GOATS.
The biggest takeaway will always be Heath Ledgers performance as the Joker. It was something we had never seen from him, or from comic book movies, up until that point. Ledger and Nolan took that usually campy character and transformed him into the super-intelligent psychopath we saw in the film. One of the scarier things about the Joker is that you want to label him a terrorist, but he has no political or financial motives. It’s like Alfred says, he just wants to watch the world burn. That uncompromising evil is perfectly conveyed by Ledger.
The directing was standout, with Christopher Nolan transforming the character of Batman completely with his guidance and screenwriting. Up until that point, Nolan had some solid to mediocre performances (‘Memento’ and ‘The Prestige’ respectively) and his first installment to the franchise was certainly good, but not close to this scale. He knocked this out of the park, giving us a combination of classic aspects featured in Batman (gadgets, action, sfx) with a very substantial, gritty, and almost realistic plot line. For example, you will never have to worry about a cold mutant freezing the whole world like in ‘Batman & Robin’. A bombing or shooting though? Very much in the realm of possibility, which is what lends to the movies credibility and fear.
(There’s an urban legend that Ledger improvised part of the scene above that sadly isn’t true)
The ethical and moral dilemmas he presented are also thought provoking, giving Batman and the City of Gotham extremely hard choices to make. Batman chooses selfishness in rescuing Rachel only to be fooled, and the citizens/convicts choose selflessness between saving themselves by killing the others. This leads into Batman making the selfless choice later, taking credit for Dent’s killing spree in order to preserve Dent’s infallibility and give hope back to the city.
Sound editing on a whole was also critical to the success of this movie, it even won an Oscar for it. The soundtrack is just as important in my opinion, however, because Hans Zimmer put together an incredible OST that lent perfectly to the movie. The Jokers droning and whining tones built up the suspense, and Batman’s theme is definitely one of the more iconic among comic book movies.
Lastly, I need to note about how ingrained this movie is to our cultural lexicon. After this movie came out, you could barely go a few steps without seeing or hearing a reference to it. “Max, what do you want for dinner?” “JUSTICE!” Stupid youtube shit like that was, and sometimes still is, rampant. It speaks to how popular it was, which was also instrumental in this movie helping legitimize comic book movies on a whole. If you think about 2008, you had ‘Iron Man’ that May, followed by this in July. They’re two of the top 10 comic book movies of all time, and they established a beach head of sorts for all the films, franchises, and multi-billion dollar universes that have followed.
It’s a tremendously impactful film, and we will talk a bit more about it on the pod tonight. My biggest wish is still that someone from DC would watch this trilogy before making any more films in the DCU(I know they don’t call it that but I don’t care).
Fucking puke, biggest McGuffin ever. Anyway don’t forget to subscribe to Lights, Camera, Pod, follow us on Twitter, follow us on Instagram and join in on the conversation on our Reddit. Also, we want to see what your movie ratings are for the year 2018 and new releases. Click the links at the bottom of this post to submit your rating for everything released so far this year.
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