The Dark Knight Sucks

At times when Lieutenant Gordon, played by Gary Oldman, was talking, he could barely be heard due to being drowned out by the music score.  Music in movies at times can be great, especially when it enhances the story-telling and helps drive an emotion home.  There are instances in TDK where the score is so overwhelming [...]

Filed under: Editing/Sound Tags: batman, batman begins, Chris Nolan, Christopher Nolan, Gary Oldman, James Gordon, Lieutenant Gordon, music score, the dark knight | 9 Comments »

In “Batman Begins”, Christian Bale is shown to be skillful and powerful enough to hold his own against multiple dangerous opponents, including skilled ninja-types.  Although the fight scenes could have been more clear in BB, they were still engaging and entertaining.  So how come in “The Dark Knight” all it takes to bring Batman down [...]

Filed under: Writing/Direction Tags: batman begins, Christian Bale, hounds, Montgomery Burns, rottweiler, rottweilers, the dark knight, Waylon Smithers | 10 Comments »

Clearly the goal of the movie was to be realistic and therefore have storylines and themes that could be plausible in reality.  Nevermind that it’s a movie based on a comic book character and doesn’t need to qualify itself that way to be entertaining, it’s clear that’s what the intention is and if that’s the [...]

Filed under: Story/Plot Problems Tags: batman, batman begins, boats, Chris Nolan, Christopher Nolan, Deevo, Devo, explosives, ferries, Next Friday, the dark knight, Tiny Lister, trigger | 18 Comments »

The Joker has fully-healed scars on the sides of his face and has a slurry/smacky voice, clearly meant to show that his voice is at least partly affected by his disfigurement.  Yet Harvey Dent has half his face melted off with huge gaping holes where his mouth is, is allegedly in extreme pain, hasn’t fully [...]

Filed under: Subpar Acting, Writing/Direction Tags: burned, Harvey Dent, melted, Two-Face, voice | 15 Comments »

Bruce wayne is temporarily living in a penthouse in Chicago (I mean Gotham) and the penthouse has huge windows overlooking the city, with endless buildings around him.  He chooses at one moment to sit in his batsuit, minus mask, facing 2 windows where any one of thousands of people in nearby buildings could decide to look out [...]

Filed under: Editing/Sound, Makeup/Custume, Writing/Direction Tags: alfred, batman, costume, makeup, penthouse | 27 Comments »

Harvey & Rachel get kidnapped.  Harvey is shown kidnapping Gordon’s family, Harvey is shown kidnapping Joker’s henchman.  So clearly when secondary characters are kidnapped it’s important to show their kidnappings.  However, apparently, when major characters are kidnapped, it’s not important to show it because the audience is supposed to presume that The Joker is omnipotent, all-powerful, and kidnaps [...]

Filed under: Editing/Sound, Writing/Direction Tags: editing issues, kidnap, kidnapping, The Joker | 20 Comments »

Most movies require you to suspend at least SOME amount of disbelief, otherwise we could never enjoy ourselves watching a piece of fiction.  However, the basis of the new Batman franchise, starting with “Batman Begins” is an attempt to ground the Batman lore into reality.  REAL reality.  Yes, a guy dressed as a bat who fights [...]

Filed under: Story/Plot Problems Tags: batman, cell phone, iphone, sonar | 39 Comments »

The sloppy editing starts to get unnerving.  Perhaps the reason for it is that the original cut went well past 3 hours, or perhaps some scenes needed editing to avoid an “R” rating, but nonetheless the result was a number of places in the movie which suffered from poor or mis-timed editing.
Here’s one:
The Joker crashes [...]

Filed under: Editing/Sound Tags: editing, scenes | 73 Comments »

Just about all the fight scenes with Batman in them were too confusing, dark, and too closely shot.  This was one of the only drawbacks of the first film, but seemed to get significantly worse in TDK.  Stuff like this works in horror or suspense files like Alien, but for action movies they are crap.  [...]

Filed under: Writing/Direction Tags: fight scenes | 6 Comments »

Tim Burton’s Gotham from his first Batman movie was epic.  None too realistic, but so immersing and cinematic that it filled the role. It was literally one of the characters.  I recall some commentary about how the set design was planned and one of the designers stated, I believe, that they considered what New York [...]

Filed under: Writing/Direction Tags: chicago, gotham, gotham city | 16 Comments »