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The Dark Knight

By Michael Lundberg | June 3, 2007

Like any self respecting IT guy, I enjoy a good comic book movie. I’ve seen all of the Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Spawn, and most of the X-Men movies. I haven’t seen Ghost Rider or the Fantastic Four movies mostly because they look lame and poorly executed on the big screen. I have mixed emotions about those two franchises. I mean, the source material is ok, but honestly, how realistic can you make a flaming skulled motorcycle biker or a man made of rock (i.e. The Thing)?

I’ve always really liked the first two Batman movies by Tim Burton. I think Michael Keaton did an excellent job of portraying the first live-action, tormented Batman. Burton’s directing and the overall feel of the movie was dark and captured the look of a Detective Comics or Batman comic book. Granted, there’s a certain suspension of belief required to believe that a man dropped in acid can become the Joker, and that a man can even dress up as a bat to begin with, but I would assume that if you’re sitting in the theater, you didn’t come looking for a something more realistic like say, Titanic. The later Batman movies were entertaining, but horribly executed, and saw a return to the hokey Batman of the sixties.

But I digress. The Chris Nolan’s 2005 take on Batman, Batman Begins, sought to create a more realistic, grittier Batman stepping away from the comic book, surreal feel of Burton’s movies. Batman Begins was successful and the sequel, The Dark Knight, seeks to continue that, pairing Batman with the Joker. There has been much speculation on how Nolan will pull off a realistic Joker, but the movie allegedly draws heavily from the first Joker appearance (circa 1940) in Batman #1 and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke graphic novel. A couple of stills have been released and Heath Ledger looks no right frightening, even for the Joker. It will be interesting to see what else Nolan can come up with.

There’s also a viral marketing campaign going on. There have been reports of a comic store getting littered with Joker playing cards and there’s at least two websites (www.ibelieveinharveydent.com and www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com) promoting and defacing Harvey Dent, another character in the movie.

The Dark Knight is scheduled to hit theaters on July 18th, 2008, but I’d bet that we’ll see a teaser before the end of the year.

Official movie site: http://thedarkknight.warnerbros.com/

I’ve collected a few pictures, below. Is is just me, or does the last picture (the blurred one) look a little Cesar Romero-ish?


Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.





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Topics: Movies |

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