being far too tired to wear down the skeptic walls and anti-hype sentiments of forum flunkies, i’ll just say what i came to say.
‘the dark knight’ is hands down the most astonishing and meaningful comic-based movie ever; easily. not only does nolan achieve the level of realism comic book fans have been waiting for, he goes ahead and adds his own touch of thought provoking commentary as well, making this the first comic book movie i’ve ever walked away from feeling like i was actually intellectually challenged.
the key to this success is in the movie’s attention to realism. the acting and screenplay aim at the single focus of maintaining believability in all the characters. it is the deeply thought out psychology and backgrounds of each character, reflected in both the script and the performances (e.g. heath ledger), that allows the audience to finally say to themselves, “i understand why (s)he’s doing that”; a detail often ignored or poorly achieved in other comic book movies. nolan doesn’t rely on the suspension of disbelief to prop the somewhat whimsical and far-fetched characters found in the movie. every detail about them is crafted to be completely understandable in a real world sense. their stories have been rewritten and their characters re-imagined to do away with any detail too outlandish for us to swallow.
and this all leads into the most important element of this movie. all this realism is in place in order to support the fundamental concepts and ideas presented. the themes found in this movie are what really drive it out of the ballpark. using ultra-realism to support the plausible application of these themes is what nolan does best. they aren’t lofty concepts and abstracts only pertinent to ideal situations (lol-economics) but inspections of the human condition and reflections on concepts of social relevence. when you watch heath ledger’s performance as the joker and listen to all his dialogue, you will understand. now, these concepts are by no means sociological breakthroughs lauded by the academic community and they are also by no means the most profound concepts in the history of film, but in the context of a comic book movie, they are well above and beyond any attempts at substance found in all prior films of the genre.
and finally, i want to say that heath ledger gave us what we all expected from kevin spacey in ’superman returns’. he actually cared enough to do a good job and he deserves credit for everything he brought to this movie.
