Well you knew it was coming.
The fanboys and True believers take on the blockbuster hit of the summer,
The Dark Knight.
Before I start my blog on this subject I want to comment on a blog that is on another very popular website, sounds like 'yoo-hoo'. I assume this author actually gets paid for his work there, which is even more appalling. The blog was written by Dave Rogers and is on the parenting portion of the blogs. The guy starts the blog with "It's not a comic book movie" Hey Dave! YES IT IS!
He then goes on to say it's not "the zap-pow camp of Adam West's TV portrayal and sanitized DC comics that filled our childhood." His childhood? Adam West is the only connection he has to Batman? This guy has no business writing a blog about Batman and even less on if Kids should go see it since he's obviously out of touch of what kids know of Batman.
Check out Part 2 of this blog in my DADS blog on Thursday. I'll interview Austin and Sydney after they see the movie on Wednesday night. Now on to the blog....
For weeks at work, I got the comments and the questions, "Hey! You excited for Batman? Hey did you see New Era is making Super Hero hats? Hey! Does this look infected to you?
Yes, I was very excited to see The Dark Knight
Super Hero hats...cool. Not sure I need one, I'm more of a Miami Ink wearing guy, but hey that's cool.
And um, I don't know but I'm pretty sure you shouldn't poke it like that.
So all this talk about The Dark Knight, about Heath Ledger, and about the amount of money the movie brought in, what did I think? It was good. It was really good. Was it great? I saw someone on TV say it was the greatest movie they've ever seen. I don't know about that.
Now this isn't blasphemy. I'm saying, I enjoyed the movie, I'm going to see it again tomorrow night and take my two younger kids Austin(8) and Sydney(11) I wanted to see it once without them to see if they could handle the content of the film. And considering Austin went and saw Live Free or Die Hard with me, I think he'll be fine for this one.
The only issue I have with taking the kids is that it's a little long. Heck my wife was getting fidgety in the movie. That's really my only complaint on the film, is the length. To me the story involving the birth of the "Two-Face" character should have been carried over to a sequel. We should have gotten to see him in the film for a bit, but lead up to the fact that he would be the bad guy in the NEXT film. It was a good 30-40 minutes of movie that wasn't needed and did not contribute to the overall story. In fact it was short changed because it was such a small portion of it.
On to the late Heath Ledger, before the film was released everyone was comparing him to Jack Nicholson, now you don't even hear Jack's name mentioned. Why? Because Jack, as great as he is, didn't play a very menacing Joker. The talk of Oscar and the greatness of Ledger in this role is the other thing being thrown around in the tabloids, but does anyone know WHY he was good?
Sure you can say he was scary; but Michael Myers is scary and he doesn't utter a word or deserve an Oscar. Heath wasn't just scary as the Joker, for us true fans we saw the very first true representation of what the Joker should be. He's not the fun goofball Caesar Romero, and he wasn't the crime boss played by Jack Nicholson. The only other person besides Ledger to captivate the scariness and true Joker is Mark Hamill, and that is in animated form. Ledger portrayed him with a real inner madness that leaked out. He was crazy, but he certainly didn't like anyone else telling him that. He didn't think of himself as crazy he thinks of himself as dedicated, maybe fanatical, but not crazy. The best thing about this movie is seeing how as I've always said that Batman and Joker are two sides of the same coin. You see this in the interrogation room scene, which is fantastic, and the speech in which Joker gives and the performance that really gives Ledge his Oscar nod.
So the special effects were great, the acting was great, and the story of Batman vs. Joker was fantastic, it had enough Super heroism, adventure and scariness to make it a truly exciting film. If only they could have held off on the Two Face story we would have had an amazing film with a great lead in to the next one. Now what villain will take on the caped crusader next time? No idea.
Stay tuned same bat blog, same bat website!