It was Batman

Last night Jordan and I finally saw ”The Dark Knight”, which despite being in its third weekend in theatres still packed in an audience to almost capacity. We were lined up for half an hour to get a seat, and we bought our tickets three hours in advance. If you look into the movie online you will see that it is breaking all sorts of records in terms of box office revenues. Largest opening weekend, largest initial midnight showing, fastest to 100 million; 200 million, etc. My real question is why?

Granted it is taking a lot of these records from Spiderman 3 which also wasn’t that great of a movie. I guess that marketing and anticipation for a sequel can really get a lot of people to fork out an inflated amount of money to see something regardless of whether they want to or not, simply out of some injected sense of obligation.

Don’t get me wrong, ”The Dark Knight” is a very good movie, but it wasn’t exceptional. It was paced a bit awkwardly and definitely felt too long at several different points. I found myself wishing it was over a couple of times. It was the first movie in the Batman franchise not to use the word “Batman” in the title. However, rest assured that it is still just a Batman movie. I have never been a big Batman fan at any point in my life, but I really did enjoy Christian Bale’s attempt in ”Batman Begins”. I found him to be a good Batman and the movie to tell a good story.

I will say that Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker was excellent. He really went somewhere dark with the character. You could really feel the edge of craziness that he possessed. It was so out of character from what I know about Heath that made it that much more stunning. I’m also a fan of Aaron Eckhart and his version of Harvey Dent was just what I would imagine it should have been.

I guess each person has their own tastes and desires, I generally don’t agree with the critics. This movie is definitely worth seeing in theatres, but perhaps at a matinee or some other time you can get in without spending a small fortune. Enjoy.