Surely you are going to see The Dark Knight this weekend. Even if you already saw it at a preview screening last night/this morning, you’re probably geeky enough to be planning on seeing it again before Monday morning comes along. After all, Warner Bros. has dispersed a record amount of prints to a record amount of screens and the pundits are predicting a record box office gross for the weekend (never mind the fact that fellow new releases Mamma Mia! and Space Chimps and other still-strong blockbusters Hellboy II, Hancock and Wall-E will be supposedly be assisting in this matter). It’s almost being forced to be a monumental event. So, yeah, you’re totally going. You probably even already bought tickets, since Fandango reports that advance tickets for TDK have been the fastest sell since Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (while writing this I received a new Fandango press release claiming they’re selling 10 TDK tickets per second today).
Wait, what? You say you’re skipping out on TDK this weekend? Not possible. Whatever your lame excuse, I have a rebuttal:
10. You Didn’t See Batman Begins - This should be a decent enough reason not to see TDK, except that apparently it’s not really necessary to see the previous installment. I’ve seen TDK called better than BB, I’ve seen it called The Godfather Part II of superhero movies and I’ve seen it called the Empire Strikes Back of the franchise. But more importantly, I’m pretty sure I read somewhere (or maybe I dreamed it) that TDK should be where Christopher Nolan’s take on the series begins. So just retrospectively consider BB a prequel.
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Maybe you’re somebody who has no qualms when hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on a movie that amounts to a couple great chase scenes and a rock ‘em, sock ‘em fight with the hero’s girlfriend tied to some time-sensitive death contraption. But I always feel teased. Like I just got back from a date where my interest was exploited for a free meal. The Dark Knight is a diamond in a mound of cubic-zirconia gemstones, two and a half hours of blockbuster at it’s finest, a movie worth the price of a concert ticket.
Please, allow me to clear my head of my immediate reactions: The Dark Knight is the shit! It is so awesome I can not stare into the light of its awesomeness without seeing spots. Better than I hoped–and I was hoping for a lot–there were even points where I sat looking at the screen thinking, “Can Christopher Nolan (writer/director) possibly sustain my amazement any further?” The answer: Yeppers, and with a choke-on-its-way-down ending. I’ll shut off the blathering even though I want to keep going.
Christopher Nolan does what I wanted Jon Favreau to do with Iron Man. Kick ass and kick more ass while always staying a step ahead of me (Heath Ledger as The Joker is as mystifying and sensual as Hannibal Lecter). Then–so I don’t feel he just took my money for a couple great chase scenes–he knocks me in the head. When I walked out of the theater I couldn’t balance out the world. I laid awake in bed rethinking the Iraq war based on something a guy in a bat costume said, and that’s when I knew I’d gotten my money’s worth. …Read more
