Batman: The Dark Knight

By Sam Banack
K, let’s get this over with before everyone dies in suspense… Heath Ledger is ACTUALLY awesome in the DARK KNIGHT. It’s definitely creepy, and a little sad to watch him in the film and know he is gone, especially when he talks about living life in the now, and creating something that can live forever....

Now that I have dealt with the obvious let me just say that THE DARK KNIGHT also had a sense of deja vu, for anyone in the audience over 20, and under 50. Even though I knew that Batman was a comic, and a tv serial, and a cartoon, long before it made its way to the big screen, for its first go-round in the 90s.... there was still something odd about watching a joker that wasn’t Jack Nicholson, and a two-face that wasn’t Tommy Lee Jones.

The new generation is sleek and sexy, gritty and edgy, rawer and, well, pretty great. Where The Evil Villain of the 90s was carnivalesque, masks worn obviously with makeup and colour and spandex and the rest, the masks worn in these films, the cloaks of the villain are more psychological, more born from the real, and deeper delving than anything we have seen from this franchise before. And it is the exact thing this series needed to refresh itself, and legitimize the return of characters audiences had been shown less than two decades ago.

The only thing I am gonna say was better about the old days was the bombshells…. I mean, the last generation offered its audiences Nicole Kidman (before botox), Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, Drew Barrymore, Debi Mazar… Next to these women, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes look like the boy next door, and a lot more olive oil than Jessica Rabbit (to fall back on the cartoon analogy). But something tells me that this has a lot more to do with geeks in focus groups saying they find intelligence sexy, and a lot less to do with the loss of sex appeal because, lets face it, Christian Bale is the best-looking man to don the bat suit since…. well… since ever. It is a little creepy how much his Bruce Wayne resembles his American Psycho, but I will let it slide.

All in all I don’t have to say much to urge you to go see this film, most of you are halfway out the door already. I mean:
a. Its batman, come one......
b. Heather Ledger, from beyond the grave......
c. Stunning visuals, in Imax, if you want them
d. Cool cars, cool script, cool boys, cool clothes, cool gadgets, cool city (cities, actually, part of the film is set in Hong Kong!)
e. ....Christian Bale..... topless....

And if you’re not, what are you waiting for!?!?