Slim and I saw the new Batman movie at the "local" IMAX — $12.50/ticket, plus $4 in gas. It was a good comic-book movie, and a decent enough summer-blockbuster movie, but I don't understand the inordinate fuss being made about it, to the point that "The Dark Knight" has supplanted "The Godfather" as
the #1 rated movie of all time on IMDB.
(Spoilers be here.)
Ok, we'll grant that Heath Ledger is very good as the Joker, and puts Nicholson's take to shame. (I haven't seen anyone note that the Joker's knifework is ironically reminiscent of Nicholson's fate in Chinatown.) I like that the backstory is taken for granted, and that the Joker has fun making up new backstories throughout the movie. I like that the Joker is acknowledged to be irrational, which solves why his crimes are irrational without retconning. It's a frightening comic book villain, filling the screen with a Tarantino-esque menace in a way that the cartoon villains in Iron Man or Spider-Man did not. Indeed, it's the scariest movie villain since... well, since November and Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh.
And that's the thing. There's a lot that's good here, but nothing groundbreaking, and a lot that is just passable. Threads of the plot just disappear. (A big to-do is made when Eric Roberts's character betrays the Joker's location to police, who get ready to storm the meeting he's holding with other mob bosses—and nothing comes of it.) Twice Batman falls from great heights, lands on his back, and walks away from the force—as does a victim who lands on him. Someone else falls four floors and dies. A bad guy, unbelted in the back seat, kills a driver, causing an automobile to crash and flip. The killer shows up a few scenes later unharmed; we never learn what happened to his fellow passenger. Bruce Wayne taps into the entire cell-phone network with a ludicrous sonar device. Two Joker schemes require ludicrously impeccable timing and coincidences to work.
In terms of the aesthetics, Nolan's Gotham is very plainly Chicago in every shot. I love Chicago, but its recognizable landmarks take one out of the illusion and the result doesn't live up to the magic of Burton's Gotham or even the Gotham of Batman Begins. (A scene talking about the Joker's terrorist threat on "bridges and tunnels" of Gotham is followed by a wince-inducing shot of police searching the tiny little bridges off of Wacker over the Chicago River--they clearly left Chicago to film a ferry sequence, why not film a real bridge?) Most of the action sequences are filmed in a blur of quick cuts making it impossible to follow (or really care) what's going on; so much for the elaborate choreography showing off Christian Bale's training. The Batmobile is still an ugly Bat-tank that probably causes more damage to innocents than it prevents. Bale is forced to talk in a monotonic rasp when wearing the cowl, and the dialogue is goofy.
Fun movie; enjoyable movie; yes. All-time great movie? No. Not even clear to me that it surpasses The Incredibles, X2, Spider-Man, or Robo-Cop as a superhero movie.
Separately, it's not clear to me that the IMAX was worth the extra effort (big commute plus 30 minutes of standing in line--and we were pretty far in the back of the line) and the loss of trailers. Any additional wow from the six-story screen was offset by the big distracting piece of dust on an uncleaned lens.
