Why so Serious?

Okay, saw The Dark Knight on Sunday, and you know I have to throw in my two cents, or else I'll explode much like Marlena in Cloverfield. Firstly, I mostly agree with Eric, who totally beat me in talking about this movie. So...I'll talk about other things.

Spoilers be here, so I'll do the fancy thing and change the color of the text, so you'd have to highlight them to read the spoilers. Cause I need to talk the twists and turns and gut-wrenching moments. Now, Heath Ledger really makes the movie. His Joker was pretty perfect. And I really love the message that the movie was trying to make, and the fact that the Joker was pretty secondary to the plot. Although he was set up as the primary villain, and had the most screen time (which was always awesome), he was mostly a plot device to get the real story rolling (which is mostly why the movie took so long to get going--it was like 2 movies squished together). Harvey Dent becoming Two-Face is the real focus of the story and it was pretty spectacular; mostly because we could completely understand his murderous rage because of his own disfigurement and being party to the traumatic death of the woman he (and Batman!) loved. The Joker pulled a number on him, and we feel truly bad for Dent. He was a real person, unlike the caricature that Tommy Lee Jones portrayed. And the makeup was truly, uh, icky, for lack of a better word. What were those, 5th degree burns? On one level, the Joker won. And, that's pretty cool. But on another, he lost spectacularly, and I think that was even cooler.

I'm referring to the scene with the river boats. The moment that the hardened criminal threw the detonator out of the window, so that the boatload of innocent people could be spared was pretty damn amazing to me. But, maybe I'm a sucker for moments when you realize humanity isn't as crappy as everyone thinks. It just gets me. For a movie that had so many unnecessary scenes, the emotional payoff of all the filmmakers' setup is pretty good.

Now, I'm concerned about the inevitable next movie. How can they not make a third part now with all the money being thrown at them right now? But, who can possibly top Heath Ledger as the Joker? What villain could possibly come close to that? The story as it is now is really interesting, and they set up a great plotline for the next movie, where Batman is concerned. Batman was always towing the line between good guy and bad guy, so it was nice to see a movie where Batman made too many wrong turns, and got much darker than normal--to set up the fact that he's taking the fall for a good man, whom Gotham needs as a symbol more than Batman. The next movie should be interesting. What villain could be brought in, though? Maybe they'll surprise me, but I don't see how they could possibly top that Joker, who is not only Batman's greatest foe, but was also played to perfection. I hope they do surprise me, though, because this interpretation of a comic book is pretty awesome, and I don't want to see it go out with a whimper.