153 Minutes
Warner Brothers
PG-13
SRP: $35.95

Feature: A

One of the several problems with 80′s and 90′s is that they resembled the era of Batman comics of the 1960′s, a swash-buckling tycoon fighting colorful characters. The embarrassing television show was surely still a stinging influence. But anyone who’s read Batman in the last twenty to thirty years knows it has not been written like that since those times, and it may be one of the grittiest of superhero comics. Today he is a compulsive and paranoid man, relentless in ridding evil in Gotham City. The man never takes a night off, even the X-Men had issues where they just took a break, well Batman’s never done that since I’ve been reading comics and when Batman Begins was released in 2005, it was the first time we could say that if Batman actually existed in our world, this is how it would go down. Director Christopher Nolan buries the roots of Dark Knight in the real world once again, a dark and brutal environment where people live in fear and despair, constantly conscious of terror, corruption underneath a bearing cloud of dimming hope. Someone as extreme as Batman could only excel in a setting like this.

If you haven’t seen the film already, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has begun to put a stranglehold on the the crime in Gotham until the Joker (Heath Ledger) shows up, stealing money from the mob and crime syndicate in Gotham. The unpredictable and loose cannon that’s Joker, offers his services to kill Batman in return he gets half of their money. What they don’t know is that this maniac isn’t motivated by lining his pockets with the green, but would rather prove the point that everyone can be corrupted even the best of men.

Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Gotham’s public attorney is being ushered into the town as their “white knight” to rid the city of its scum, the legal way. Involved with Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhall), Wayne’s main squeeze in Batman Begins, Dent stands in the way of Bruce’s happiness, but is also the champion of a better Gotham. Wayne lends his support to Dent with the hopes of being able to shelve the cape and cowl for good, but the Joker has other plans. With the help of Alfred (Sir Michael Caine), Sgt. James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Lucious Fox (Morgan Freeman) Batman takes on the Joker and ultimately what Dent will become.

Ledger’s performance is a first rate show stopper playing the Joker; a car without brakes, never knowing where and what he’s going to do. He never turns down the volume, even for a second and dominates the screen whenever he appears. The broken cackle, the smeared facepaint, and the extreme method acting. It’s sure to end the legacy of clowns and children’s parties for good. The way that the character arcs of Wayne, Dent, and Dawes play out is a thing of beauty and the Joker is the catalyst for it all. He’s not only impulsive but explosive. He acts, and everyone reacts. Assisted by the wonderful Hans Zimmer and James Howard Newton score, his presence is always felt and gets underneath your skin.

Not to be lost in the Joker hoopla, is the real story of the Dark Knight: is the rise and fall of Harvey Dent. If a man as good as him can be torn down to his darkest inner being, then what are we all capable of? Are we all susceptible to resisting that side of us when under the worst of circumstances? The promotion teasers and pre-production campaign began with Dent and ended with preserving his legacy. Wayne, Dawes, and even Gordon offered mere support and while Joker was the driving force, Dent’s story held it all together and loses it all. Tragic and pessimistic, the title of the film is a fitting way to describe the present global climate as well as the tone set by Nolan and crew.

Time will tell if this is Nolan’s final Batman film, when a film makes nearly a billion dollars globally, more will surely come with or without him. I’m not ashamed to say I’m greedy to want to see one more Nolan film, because of what he’s accomplished with Batman Begins and Dark Knight. He’s the type of director who wants to make a statement or explore something deeper with a Batman film, and it’s my pure speculation that there was indeed a third film planned, and it was to feature the Joker again, especially with his final demise unknown. But instead of thinking of what might happen or what might have been, what Nolan and Ledger have left film and comic book fans alike, something truly sinister and beautiful.

Presentation: C-

As far as creativity goes, the total package of the Dark Knight’s pretty underwhelming. The packaging consists of A foiled/cardboard slipcase fits over the basic blu-holder with a swing hinge that holds two of the three discs. Funny Joker scribbles decorate the back cover text and you’d expect to see that echoed in the menus. Nope. The menus are an absolute stinker. Nothing animated, no loading screen, no music, not even a screensaver. Based on where you buy it packaging can vary depending on how much more you want to pay for it. Mine was packaged with a plastic bust of Batman’s cowl, but I’ve seen others packaged with a Batpod, or a Joker Henchmen bust.

Video: A+

Most of Dark Knight is shot in 2.40:1 ratio so there are black bars on the top and bottom. When the picture fills the widescreen, the aspect ratio changes to 1.78:1 signaling the change to the IMAX scenes which are largely establishing shots of Gotham (Chicago) and all of big action moments. It was difficult in the theater to see just which shots were filmed in IMAX but now you can see whenever there is a change in aspect ratio, that signals the change. The IMAX scenes have even more clarity because there’s so much more information on the negative since the film is huge compared to standard film stock. Tokyo at night is just stunning with clarity beyond belief. From the rooftops you can clearly see cars driving down below or in Gotham you can make out all of the individual windows of the sky scrapers and even the tops of heads from helicopter panning shots. This is the first time IMAX has been used in action sequences because of the physical difficulties in working with the large format, but they did make grand scenes larger than life, and the results are awesome in today’s home theaters.

Audio: A-

The 5.1 Dolby True-HDsoundtrack has a nice balance of resounding thuds and immersive sound. The dialogue though, especially Bale’s modulated gravel voice of Batman comes out clear and distinctive. Other blu-rays have much more to offer in terms of audio reference material, but the opening scene with Hans Zimmer’s score and the now famous chase scene on the lower roads of Chicago is sure to be a test chapter for many. Included is a English 5.1 Dolby Digital track, an English with Descriptive Narration, for the blind and hard of hearing which is just a surreal experience if you’ve never heard one before, and French, Spanish.

Special Features: B

Disc One

Most of what can be said about the features can be summed up in the Focus Points (1:04:00) vignettes that go behind the “epic” nature of various scenes like Shooting in Imax, the Bank Heist prologue, the Honk Kong building jump, the Batpod, the hospital explosion, the truck flip, and many others. Each of them last anywhere from a minute to over seven. I found the one I watched the most (four times to be exact) was the development of the score and most specifically Joker’s one-note theme music. Composter Hans Zimmer shows his creative process and complete access to his world. This one actually had video clips as well as many of these Focus Points are production stills with narration by Nolan, Zimmer, Conductor James Newton Howard, Visual Effects Supervisor Nick Davis, Richard King, Sound Set Designer, Paul Jennings, Stunt Coodinator and Christian Bale. Make sure to see how one of four mountable IMAX cameras in the world gets demolished in the sub Wacker chase scene. This feature can also be viewed in the old school branching method where when a visual prompt flashes, you can be taken to the special, but believe me, it’s much better in one complete sitting. After seeing how Universal integrates material like this into the film shows me this can be better (and be completely in HD) so while a lot of this is great material, there’s more creative ways to package it.

I’m happy to report that the BD-Live features are quite good considering much of what’s available in this online blu-ray feature has been to this point short of worth mentioning. In the media menu are several playable shorts. Two motion comics: The Shadow of Ra’s Al Ghul and the award-winning, Mad Love take the comics and animates the panels along with with voice actors. Each motion comic is split into 5-7 chapters. Two clips that looked to be on the Focus Points extras on disc one were saved for BD-Live. Harvey Dent’s Themecontinues the conversations with Zimmer and Newton Howard. The longest and most interest clip was the Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard Premiere Performance, which was the live performance of the Dark Knight theme complete with light display in front of the premiere audience. One special that was a waste was the sounds of the Batpod vignette; which can be seen on disc one.

Two interactive BD-Live features boasted on this disc are community screenings where you can schedule a time to meet up with your friends and family across the globe to watch the film together and chat through it. The other is the ability to record your own video and audio commentary (to make up for the absence of one by Christopher Nolan and others) which sounds at first to be pretty lame but having seen what some people have done, it looks to be a fun thing to do if you’ve got enough creativity. I saw one where a guy don’s a bat cowl and commentates on the scene where Batman confronts Joker in the “box” and the fan does it in character as if he’s Batman telling you what was going on in his head during that scene as if it was real. And for those who registered their disc early on, may have gotten the opportunity to watch the film with Christopher Nolan and ask him questions Thursday December 18th 2008. No word of any future interactive screenings.

Disc Two

Behind the Story HD are two very excellent featurettes that interview several familiar faces to comic readers, authors, and critics with clips of Batman art throughout the years. There are subtitles available in English for the Hearing Impaired as well as French and Spanish.

The first, Batman Tech (45:59) sees whether or not Batman’s gadgets and tools has real world applications or inspirations for example in the military. Everything from his costume, to the utility belt, to the Batmobile is dissected by curators of the CIA museums, scientists, professors, and field experts, Christopher Nolan, former editor/writer Len Wein, current DC editor-in-chief, Dan DiDio, Lois Gresh co-author of Science of Superheroes, producer Charles Roven, and even Arthur St. Antoine, editor-at-large of Motor Trend Magazine. There’s not a fatty part to this special and HD fans will get a kick out of the Batsuit section where base jumpers glide down the side of a mountain at high speed and a dangerous proximity to cliffs to show whether Batman could really decent into a city with just a suit.

The second featurette is the insightful and highbrow Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight (46:02) gathering professors of psychology, DC’s Batman editorial greats Paul Levitz, Denny O’Neil, Wein, and DiDio, Robin Rosenberg (the author of the Psychology of Superheroes) and Foresnic Specialists. In the 4 years of working at a comic book shop, I may be able to piece from several discussions enough to rival what’s discussed here in less than an hour. None of this is very groundbreaking if you’re a longtime reader but it’s a fascinating collection of real world experts and authors who attempt to get at the center of what Batman has come to be in the whole lexicon of superhero comics, a psychological look into a complex madman and the equally mad men and women he chases at night. Fear, consequence, self-regulation, and vigilanteism are all explored as the equation that makes up Batman as well as a parallel drawn to Theodore Roosevelt which I’ve personally never heard before. Batman’s rogue gallery is then diagnosed and compared to some of the most notable criminals of our day.

Six very well-produced shorts of the Gotham TV show, Gotham Tonight (46:41) can be viewed altogether as one clump or as separate episodes. These original webisodes were part of the online hype machine, a faux hybrid of the “CNN” and “Entertainment Tonight” of Gotham doing “investigative” and tabloid news. The first in particular, Election Night is pretty clever especially if you pay attention to the running ticker below. The other exposes are about Wayne, Dent, Gordon, and a who’s who of the Gotham baddies. Perhaps best eaten in small bites rather than the whole, Gotham Tonight is pretty amusing but is one the excessive side.

I don’t normally rave about Galleries but some of these are downright haunting. There are four to view, either in a timed slideshow that can be controlled, or one by one. The first is every Joker card designed by Phyllis Lehmer (9:44) 73 in all. The detail in these cards are really cool to look at as most of them don’t get to be seen at all or get such brief camera time. In the Concept Art (7:44) are 60 plus grisly mug shots of Joker’s Henchmen by Lindy Hemming and Drawn by Rob Bliss and tech drawings of Batman’s vostume, vehicles, and gadgets. The lesser interesting just because they’ve been seen so much are the Theatrical Posters and Billboards (1:36) and the Production Stills (11:52). One can “Play all” the three Trailers and six TV Spots (8:46) or view them separately. Each trailer reveals more and more but I never found them to be memorable because I always felt they showed too much of the Chicago street scene and the Joker who should have been shown as a big reveal in the final trailer. I actually enjoyed the six TV Spots even more than the trailers because they revealed less.

Disc Three

Just the Digital Video Dischere, good for laptops, PSPs, and portable media players and nothing else.

So there’s some very good, but for a film as magnanimous as this, I really expected much more. The utilization of BD-Live is as creative as I’ve seen, but I can’t help but feel that there should have been some type of tribute or something about Ledger’s performance, or look into how to portray the direction of Joker and Two-Face, the real stars of this film. Also absent is how Two-Face was done, c’mon WB, answer the elementary questions at least. The total package just felt incomplete and you can see on the BD-Live content that there is more that’s available, and blu-ray CAN hold much more than what we’re given so I know more can be done and I’m not happy I’ll have to wait for another time to see any of it.

Overall Shock Value: A-

The Dark Knight is going to move a lot of blu-rays and players this holiday season and I’m not one to step in the way of that. It’s a fabulous film flexing a lot of muscle in high def with a lip-smacking audio mix and a stunning transfer. It’s not as loaded with extras as one might think but double-dipping is inevitable and there’s no good reason to wait for that day to come. There’s nearly nothing mentioned about Ledger’s (nor Eckhart’s) performance and perhaps a reactionary post-Academy Awards “Collector’s Edition” could be in the future. The story of his last performance may still has more chapters left in it as of the date of this review. Who knows what accolades he’ll earn at the end of the year, if any, but it’s undeniable that Ledger gave one of the most, if not THE most memorable performance of 2008. We were left behind a memorable performance by an actor who was just beginning to catch the world’s attention. I highly recommend the Dark Knight, a deep psychological thriller hell-bent on giving viewers are harsh and cruel alternative to the typical comic book film; one where we can pause and let linger on not just the fight between good and evil but the darkness within each and every one of us and the resistance let it consume us whole.