Theater Report: The Dark Knight

July 20, 2008
Ayala Center Cinema 1
8:00 PM
Attendance: 98% of capacity

Previews:

Just in time, so didn't catch any trailer.

Story:

If Batman Begins explored the origins of the caped crusader, this one explored, through dialogues, the story of The Joker. As The Joker's character is unfolded before us, the deeper story of Bruce Wayne and Batman was also exposed. And together with this exposition, and with the help of Harvey Dent's and Rachel Dawes's stories, the deeper story of Gotham City as a community is being exposed before our eyes.

Thoughts:

I'm not a fan of the Batman comics, or any other comic superheroes for that matter, though I watched the cartoon series. But in terms of comicbook superhero movies, this is without a doubt a cut above the rest. Of course, the fact that Batman has no superpowers naturally lent itself to this kind of deeper and more human exploration, but so does Iron Man and yet I have to say that this movie more than the Iron Man, just like its predecessor (Batman Begins), made the characters as human as they could possibly be without ignoring the medium from which the movie was adapted from. The high tech gadgets are still there, the tank of a bat mobile is still there, and yet if at the end of the movie you looked back at what you've just seen you'd realized that all those things were secondary to the story of Batman, of The Joker, of Harvey Dent, of James Gordon, and of Gotham City itself. Even if you're not a fan of the comic books, you'd still care for Bruce/Batman because underneath the armor of a bat suit, this guy, the Batman, is shown to be not unlike the non-costumed good guys like Harvey Dent and James Gordon, or even the villain The Joker, just another human being with weaknesses, unable to shake his past from how he behaves at the present, and not totally in control of the things that are happening around him. I believed Spider-Man 2 started this trend of making superheroes more human. And it's refreshing to see these movies raking in lots of money in the box office. It meant we can expect more superhero movies like this get made with in-depth exploration of characters.

Would I see it again? No, but only because the twists and turns in the movie wouldn't have the same effect having already seen how the story went. But if I have companion, I would go see this again in a heartbeat. Would I recommend it to my friends? Yes. It's definitely worth the ticket price that I didn't pay to see it. On a side note, I'm not proud that a girl treated me to a Batman movie, but she insisted.