Forget the great things you’ve heard about The Dark Knight. No matter how lavish the praise or how determined the hyperbole, it’s all understatement. The Dark Knight is I suppose the greatest superhero movie ever made, but it’s so far beyond the limited men in tights genre that attempting to compare it with movies like Spider-Man, Superman, or even Batman Begins is almost laughable.
Director Christopher Nolan’s film trumps everything and everyone, including himself. It’s not just the best superhero movie ever made, it’s one of the best movies ever to show up in a theater.
More than a film about a man in a mask trying to stop the bad guy or save the innocent, it’s the story of a city and its people trapped between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Gotham City is at the center of everything while two men, each mad in their own way, fight to control the hearts and minds of its populace.
The Joker (Heath Ledger) bursts onto the scene, and correctly pronounces himself the living embodiment of chaos. This is a man who cares for nothing and wants nothing, except to watch the world crumble around him. Nolan wastes no time explaining Joker’s origin, he is a force of nature and as such has always existed. Faced with pure chaos given form, the people of Gotham turn to selfish terror, and the Joker laughs gleefully as we watch them dance to his tune.
Opposing him is Batman (Christian Bale), embodying the pursuit of single-minded justice and, hoping for the best in mankind, he seeks to inspire them to something better through living symbols like Gotham’s new District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), or top cop Lt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman). In the end it doesn’t matter whether Batman captures Joker or Joker takes out Batman. What matters is which of them wins the battle for Gotham City’s soul.The genius of Heath Ledger’s performance as Joker is that in a way, you’ll almost find yourself rooting for him to win. Let him burn it down, if only so we can see how he’ll make it happen. Ledger’s Joker is easily the best on screen villain since Star Trek II’s Khan, a performance unlike anything else you’ve seen. He is at once funny and terrifying.
He’ll make you laugh at all the wrong moments, and then cringe in unspeakable terror at all the others. His peals of laughter bounce through the film, echoing long after the credits roll and leaving Joker’s mark not just on this movie, but on cinema. He’s an instant icon. The Oscar buzz for what Ledger has done is not premature.
He drives the entire movie with his performance, embodying something so out of control and his own way so true, that the whirlwind of his mere presence destroys all comers. - Read more, The Dark Knight IMAX Review
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The Dark Knight’ Smashes 8 Box Office Records
Sorry Spidey, but the Caped Crusader is the new king of the box office.
“The Dark Knight” opened with record-breaking numbers this weekend, taking in an astounding $158.3 million from Friday - Sunday, knocking “Spider-Man 3″ from atop the box office record books.
In 2007, the third installment in the Spider-Man franchise opened with $151 million.
But that wasn’t the only record “The Dark Knight” claimed in its opening weekend. In fact, a total of eight records now belong to Batman and friends.
The film, starring Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger, also posted the biggest single day ever at the box office, taking in a whopping $67 million on Friday alone - another record previously held by “Spider-Man 3.”
Here is a complete breakdown of the eight box office records “The Dark Knight” now holds after its opening weekend:
- Largest number of opening theaters with 4,366 (Previous record: “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” opened in 4,362 theaters in 2007).
- Biggest midnight preview gross with $18.4 million in 3,040 theaters (Previous record: “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” and its $16.9 million in 2,915 theaters in 2005).
- Biggest IMAX midnight previews, setting a new record with $640,000 (included in the $18.4 million preview number).
- Biggest single-day gross in box-office history with $67.8 million (Previous record: bests the $59,841,919 set by “Spider-Man 3″ in 2007).
-Biggest opening weekend gross in box office history with $158.3 million (Previous record: beats the $151,116 million set by “Spider-Man 3″ in 2007).
-Biggest opening weekend gross for an IMAX release in box office history with $6,214,061 million in 94 theaters with $66,107 per theater. (Previous record: $4.7 million set by “Spider-Man 3″ in 2007.)
- Biggest opening weekend of 2008 with $158.3 million (Previous record: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with $101.1 million from May 23-25, 2008)
- Biggest July opening ever (Previous record: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with $135,634,554 on July 7, 2006).
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The Dark Knight Cast and Director Remember Heath Ledger
There was a method to his madness.
Never before has an acting performance in a comic book superhero-derived film inspired such an advance avalanche of popular, critical and inside-Industry acclaim as Heath Ledger’s turn as The Joker in The Dark Knight.
Though only 28 when he took on the role, Ledger was already ranked among the upper echelon of film actors after receiving an Academy Award nomination for 2005’s Brokeback Mountain. But as word of his fierce and uniquely inspired performance began to filter through Hollywood and fandom, there was a growing buzz that the actor might just be poised to do something other Oscar-caliber thespians in cape-and-tights cinema – Marlon Brando, Jack Nicholson, Ian McKellen and Halle Berry among them – have yet to achieve: earning the industry’s most coveted honor for a three-dimensional interpretation of a character first rendered in the two-dimensional pages of the comics.
Ledger’s shocking, unexpected death from an overdose of prescription drugs in January only increased the mystique surrounding his portrayal of The Joker – his last fully complete performance - inspiring everything from a mournful interest to morbid curiosity, especially given the character’s more dark, deadly overtones.
Once advance audiences finally took in the full force of the actor’s chilling, mesmerizing spin on the screen in what may be the most serious, intense and artistic interpretation of a comic book icon to date, the praise reached a fever pitch, suggesting that, sentiment aside, Ledger’s a near-lock for a posthumous Oscar nomination.
Of course, no one had a better vantage point to gain insight on his performance and especially his personal character underneath the clown makeup than the film’s director, Christopher Nolan, and Ledger’s fellow “Dark Knight” actors – Christian Bale, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Aaron Eckhart among them.. They shared their thoughts with ComingSoon.net/Superhero Hype! on the actor, the Oscar, the man, and truth as to whether or not, as some have speculated, there may have also been a madness to his method. - Read more, In Memoriam: Heath Ledger
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