Posts Tagged ‘batman’

Warner Brothers announced today that The Dark Knight, which can only be described as a complete and utter success, will be re-released to theaters on January 23, 2009, with the dual intent of cashing in just a little more on the Batman franchise and reminding Oscar voters just how damn good this movie really is.

Of course, The Dark Knight hits DVD this Tuesday, December 9th, which means that it should be in the living rooms of nearly everyone by the time January rolls around.

The question: with the DVD available, how many people will return to theaters? I am undecided, but it sure would be cool to see this movie for a fourth time in theaters. At the same time, that $10 ticket may scare me away.

Will you go see The Dark Knight in theaters again?

Unfortunately, The Dark Knight is not going to get the chance it deserves come next year’s Oscars. Apparently, according to Variety, the executive committee of the Academy Awards has ruled that the score for the A-rated Batman film is ineligible for competition because… it has too many composers.

To me, this seems like just the latest odd rule to be revealed by the Oscars over the last several years. Who cares how many composers a score has? Shouldn’t the determination be made about the final product, not the number of people who contributed? The Dark Knight has a pretty amazing score when you think about it (recall the low rumbling that develops as Harvey Dent is taken by police escort through the streets of Gotham), and it’s a shame it won’t be up for a nomination (assuming it were to be nominated). Warner Brothers must be in a tizzy.

Way to go, Academy. Way to go.

Going into last week, I had a very strategic, three-touch plan to seeing The Dark Knight. I would see it opening night, at midnight, with all the freaks and geeks. I would then see it a few days later with my parents. I would then see it a third time on IMAX, as I’ve never seen a “real” movie on IMAX before.

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In anticipation of The Dark Knight this Thursday, I rented the direct-to-DVD movie Batman: Gotham Knights, which hit stores this last Tuesday. Thankfully, I used my Netflix account, because the movie certainly wasn’t worth the money.

Batman: Gotham Knights is meant to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, so I assumed there would be something about the Joker, so on and so forth. Hell, I thought there’d at least be a plot.

Instead, this Batman movie is six stories pieced together to create a feature-length, 75-minute action-drama. The first story, about a group of kids who all see Batman from a different perspective (one sees him as a shadow monster, another as an invincible robot, so on and so forth), is completely inane. Actually, it’s downright terrible, and does nothing to move the film along.

The other stories aren’t nearly as terrible, as they delve more into some known but little-used villains such as Killer Croc and Deadshot (oh, and Scarecrow, but after Batman Begins I wouldn’t call him “little-used” anymore). Still, short stories aren’t very exciting as it’s impossible to get into the stories with any emotional committment, and then there’s the fact that this movie is meant to bridge the gap between the two Christopher Nolan movies – yet it doesn’t. Maybe I should never have expected much, but I did.

Oh, and just for a record, I am a fan of the original Batman cartoon, so I’m not anti-cartoon. In fact, the visuals are pretty impressive, as the artwork used in the film are much more advanced than anything I used to watch on TV back in the day. The visuals are the only saving grace.

Batman: Gotham Knights has potential and some of its stories are better than others, but its lack of a single story or connection to the films make it a throwaway film.

77 hours. 77 hours until the lights will fade, the previews will begin, and the theater will roar as The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger and all, rolls onto the screen. Anticipation is high… in fact, amazingly high. In order to subdue my hype, however, I went searching for bad reviews, and, of course, went straight over to RottenTomatoes.

The reviews did not help in crushing my hopes. The movie only has an 88% fresh rating based on 20 reviews, and the snippets from the bad reviews include:

This movie is grim and jammed together. The narrative isn’t shaped coherently to bring out contrasts and build toward a satisfying climax. The Dark Knight is constant climax; it’s always in a frenzy, and it goes on forever. -David Denby, New Yorker

Why do comic-book movies want to be serious literature? That’s the problem with this movie the same way it was with 2006’s “Superman Returns.” Instead of being exciting pop-culture entertainment that forces the viewer to take it seriously, the movie takes itself too seriously – and misses the fun in the process. – Marshall Fine, Star Magazine

But then the novelty wears off and the lack of imagination, visual and otherwise, turns into a drag. The Dark Knight is noisy, jumbled, and sadistic. Even its most wondrous vision—Batman’s plunges from skyscrapers, bat-wings snapping open as he glides through the night like a human kite—can’t keep the movie airborne. There’s an anvil attached to that cape. – David Edelstein, New York Magazine

Actually, those are all of the rotten reviews thus far, and the first two don’t strike much confidence in me. Denby’s review is scathing, to say the least, but he loses me when he bashes Bale, Batman Begins and everything else I know I’ll like. I can’t pre-judge someone else’s movie review until I see The Dark Knight myself, but when someone hates a movie for being “perverse” and sounds like they hated the first one, too, credibility goes right out the window. After all, Batman Begins is the best comic book movie made, and so it’s unlikely I’m going to agree with him here.

Fine, who still gives the movie 2.5 stars, complains that the movie isn’t fun enough, and points out that comic book movies shouldn’t take themselves too seriously. That’s fine, but one gets the sense he doesn’t like realistic comic book movies, and again, we have a severe difference of opinion. I feel most comic book franchises, from Spider-Man to X-Men, would be best served by being grittier and adult-oriented.

The Dark Knight movie review by Edelstein is the most sobering, as he seems the most unbiased by Christopher Nolan’s approach. If I were to end up being disappointed by The Dark Knight, his review is what I’d write. He complains there’s too much dialogue and that the movie is too smart for its own good; could Nolan have gotten too caught up in the drama of it all that he forgot to make an exciting action movie? I doubt it, but we shall see.

More dampening are the fresh movie reviews that fall short of calling the movie a classic; they liked it but didn’t love it. I didn’t go on to read the movie reviews beyond the snippets in RottenTomatoes, but if The Dark Knight isn’t everything I wanted and more, it will probably fall in line with these reviews. After all, if you hype a movie up so much, you’re bound to be disappointed.

Of course, most of the Dark Knight movie reviews rave about the film; some call it a masterpiece; others a classic. At the very least, they say it’s an excellent film. Damn. My hype has not gone away.

The Dark Knight is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Fandango is reporting that so many midnight showings have sold out that theaters are having to add 3am and 6am showings (although I just went and bought tickets for a midnight showing at the best theater in town without any problem). More importantly, though, employers should expect a worker shortage on Friday, July 18th, or at least a lack in productivity among their employees.

After all, a Fandango survey of 3,000 customers (presumably 3,000 of their customers that like to pay their high fees over and over again) revealed that a whopping 37% of people are planning to go see the new Batman film late Thursday night, and that 38% plan to take some or all of Friday off to recupurate.

You can read more at my original employee productivity post.

I’ll provide my opinions on this one and the several other movie trailers that have been released in recent days later this week, but here’s the third, all-new movie trailer for the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight returns:

The movie trailer really doesn’t show much new footage, but things are presented in a different way. They are taking great care to slowly tune each marketing piece that comes to audiences, as this movie trailer is even better than the last. The music fades out in a couple weird spots, and I wish they would end the trailer with more of a money shot, but that’s just being picky.

I haven’t seen many blogs discussing this, so I thought I’d raise the question: Could Heath Ledger win an Oscar for his portrayal of The Joker in the upcoming Batman movie The Dark Knight? At the very least, could he receive an Oscar nomination?

The thought is unlikely – after all, action movies – especially action movies based on comic books featuring a man dressed up in a rubber bat suit – are hardly critical fodder for nominations of any sort outside of a few technical awards such as editing and visual effects. Jack Nicholson didn’t receive any major awards, or nominations, for his portrayal of Batman’s arch nemesis – and yet he was praised for his performance and is, at least for a few more months, still considered to have the best comic book villain performance ever.

But… is Academy Award recognition, whether it be through a win or a nomination, that unreasonably for the late Heath Ledger, who died earlier this week from an apparent drug overdose? Let’s look at the possibilities:

• Heath Ledger already has an Oscar nomination for his excellent performance in Brokeback Mountain. Repeat nominees often have a better chance.
• Heath Ledger was a good looking guy, and in his upcoming role, he plays a disfigured psychopath. Oscar voters love good-looking people who make themselves ugly (though this tend to applies more to women than men).
• The Dark Knight is a comic book movie, yes, but of all of the comic book movies that could have had a chance at award nominations, Oscar or otherwise, Batman Begins is the most serious, dramatically significant, character-driven film of them all. Expectations are that The Dark Knight is going to have the same brooding, dark approach to it that the previous film had.
• The Dark Knight is directed for Christopher Nolan, who so far has yet to direct a bad movie. Popular, critically favored directors can help elevate a film and its actors.
• The buzz around Heath Ledger’s performance, even before his death, was and is huge. Snippets of his performance that have been seen in trailers and clips have been downright terrifying.
• It looks like Heath Ledger has transformed himself into the villain of villains, and will do what no other actor has done: to overshadow Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of The Joker.
• Some people are blaming Heath Ledger’s death on his devotion and submersion into his role as The Joker; the actor was apparently only sleeping a couple hours a night because The Joker was so disturbing and evil. It is possible that Ledger overdosed on sleeping pills. Essentially, it is possible that Heath Ledger “died” as a result of playing The Joker.
• Heath Ledger is dead. Let’s face it – the emotional vote is in his favor.

To push on my last point a little more, madbeast.com says there are six actors to be nominated for acting Oscars posthumously:

• Jeanne Eagels received a Best Actress nomination months after dying of a Heroin overdose.
• James Dean received two nominations after his fatal car crash.
• Spencer Tracy received his ninth Best Actor nomination after dying.
• Peter Finch died of a heart attack some say was a result of an exhaustive effort to win the Oscar for Network. After WINNING THE AWARD, his costar and fellow nominee William Holden said, “If the son of a bitch
  hadn’t died, I could have won my second Oscar.” Hmm…
• Ralph Richardson died five months before his Tarzan movie was released; he was subsequently nominated.
• Massimo Troisi died a day after completing Il Postino; he received nominations for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

So, again, we realize that a Batman film is an unlikely place to find an Oscar-winning performance in any way or form, but actors have been nominated posthumously before. The Dark Knight comes out in the summer, not a very good time to showcase an actor’s capabilities for Oscar voters, but the film will be hitting DVD sometime before Christmas, and it will hit big. Every voter will see the movie, and every voter will be reminded of Heath Ledger’s death.

Until that day, who knows, but it’s certainly an interesting prospect. What do you think?

Some may take offense to the fact that I may appear more concerned about the next Batman movie than Heath Ledger, but that is not my intent with this article. Heath Ledger’s death was shocking and a little depressing, considering that he was a great and underrated actor who, I believe, was on the verge of breaking through to becoming a huge star. But if you are a Batman fan, you must admit that seconds after learning of Heath Ledger’s death, you thought of the upcoming movie The Dark Knight and how it will be affected by the situation.

The good news is that assuming to IMDB, The Dark Knight (2008), directed by Christopher Nolan, is in post-production, which, with exception to a major film fire (knock on wood, Ledger’s scenes should all be complete. Of course, there always chances of needed reshoots or additional scenes to be filmed, but I don’t see Nolan as someone who often does stuff like this – and I don’t see the WB tampering with the director’s vision. I have looked around on the Internet for other articles about this topic, but have yet to find anything too substantial. Most are just re-iterating the news story, which you can read here. The basics are that Ledger fell victim to drug abuse and either accidentally overdosed or killed himself (since he was found surrounded by pills), which is a fuzzy line anyway.

Will The Dark Knight be pushed back at all, my boss asked. Highly unlikely. The Dark Knight is WB’s tentpole release of the summer, and buzz is high. Also, with the film’s release several months away, there is really no emotional obligation to put things on hold. Even if The Dark Knight were to open this Friday, I doubt the WB would push back the release.

Some fans are concerned that the ending of The Dark Knight will be changed. I don’t know what fans have heard, but there seems to be some assumptions that The Joker lives at the end (based on the fact that Ledger allegedly had signed on for a sequel). The worries surround the thought that The Joker may escape at the end, and thus the WB would be forced to deal with a situation where they would have to tie up loose ends. To this, I say these worries are unfounded: more than likely, The Joker will survive (didn’t they learn their lesson with Tim Burton’s Batman?) but will be incarcerated. The other option, if he doesn’t get killed, is that he escapes, though I find this a bit unlikely since The Dark Knight is probably Nolan’s last Batman film – and who would want to end a comic book film with the villain “winning” unless you plan to wrap up the story later on? And even if The Joker does escape, who cares? You can just drop the storyline for the next film or, heaven forbid, get yet another actor to play the creepy Batman foe.

Anyway, unless I hear otherwise, I will assume that all of Heath Ledger’s scenes have been filmed and that the movie will be released on time (presumably with a “In memory of Heath Ledger” at the beginning or end). Of course, with Ledger’s life cut short at age 28, that means we’ve been denied a good fifty or sixty years of quality acting. While some people shrugged Ledger off as a pretty face, remember that he turned in an Oscar-worthy performance in Brokeback Mountain, was great in I’m Not There, and was poised to break out in The Dark Knight. After all, how many actors get so much positive buzz just from a movie trailer?

Check out the sweet new international poster for The Dark Knight:

Here’s some behind-the-scenes footage from the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight (2008). It doesn’t show much, but you get to see the Batmobile in action plus a few explosions…