clog

I wouldnt go out on a limb and call it as the best movie ever, and I definitely wont post my vote on IMDB for it ;). This seems to be more of an outpour of posthumous adulation for Heath Ledger. Personally i had a very unsatisfying feeling coming out of the movie. Heath Ledger was great no doubt, but you have to account for a couple of things -
1. Character development doesnt mean you make the movie jarring - The entire movie works in bits and pieces like any superhero film ately - You have three-four superhero/good guys battling a bunch of good+bad(2 face)/supervillains in various parts of the city ending in a showdown between superhero and supervillain. Neither was the experiment on the boat something to talk home about - I do not remember off the top of my head but this is something that has been used in earlier films as a plot - District 13 ( prolly a bad example but still),
Batman was terrible - so was Rachel, and Morgan Freeman once again sleepwalked through his know it all role that he always reprises (Ref -Shawshank Redemption/Bruce Almighty)
Two face was ok and the lieutenant - dont even get me started on him - wooden to the core.

You know what would have really rocked -
Heath Ledger as the Joker taking on Peter Parkerin Spiderman 1 and 2. Now that would have been awe inspiring.


And oh coming back to Heath Ledger - the money burning scene -pure trash -> notice how he throws off the knife in the middle of a dialogue, and the way he burns money with all his acolytes watching - you cannot do such a scene on the pretext that all of his henchmen were schizophrenics. They were schizophrenics but not hypnotized neurotics :)


And i agree on Heath Ledger getting an oscar for his role. But making this movie no. 1 on IMDB in a week - This is like India voting for Congress every time a dynasty member is assassinated.

Overall i still regret paying 250 bucks for the darned thing, perhaps it was the quality of the theater or the slanted viewing angle, but no the joker does not trouble me in my dreams..


On a side note -
Tip for indicating mayhem is on its way
1. Take innocent and useless character in the plot.
2. Put characters you need in the movie ahead, 10 feet from a car the Useless is getting into.
3. Slow motion "Nooooooo.." from the characters outside the car. Heartbeat sounds Useless is doing something in the car.
4. blow car
5. Repeat for next movie.

And if this movie is voted to be number 1 in IMDB, God save Democracy!

There are few things about votes and money.
- every year more people are there on the internet. so more people are expected to vote on a new highly publicized movie.
- usually the votes are not truly personal in nature. you always know what others have voted (the current stat), and so votes are heavily biased
- every year the prices of the tickets are higher. And every year the movie watching population grows bigger. The distribution becomes easier and bigger. Hence the money that a good well publicized movie grosses in first weekend keeps increasing year by year.

So its better to wait and watch and think about it in a few weeks time as to how good this movie was.

Certainly this movie was good. Though I had a different story line going around in my head.

I hadn't seen Batman Begins. I just happened to be inside the movie hall watching this movie. I wasn't even aware that a new Batman movie is coming up. I didn't even know that from Batman Begins onwards, its a new series altogether and has no connection with the old series.

This is what happened to me. I didn't know in the older series that the Batman was a billionaire. In this one I thought that Batman and Wayne are two different people. Their faces looked exactly the same, but Wayne was always in suite, while Batman was always either in casuals or in BatSuite. So for a long time I kept thinking that these two are different people and always wondering why I am not seeing the two of them together in any scene. Although by the end of the movie, I was assured that the two of them are the same.

@shashank

I may not vote this movie as the best movie ever, but I would definitely consider it for best superhero movie ever. I haven't seen all but have seen almost all released in last 10 years.

I have a different (not opposite/counter) take on the movie. I am hardly a judge of acting prowess and other constituents of a movie like screenplay and similar other things, they all mean the same (or nothing) to me :-)

However, the reason why I liked the movie was because of the characters, that’s primarily how I like or dislike movies. I liked the two main characters Batman and Joker to the core.

Joker's character was darker than any other seen. He was more menacing than most of the famous super-villains. What sets him apart, though, is his motive, his villainy has an almost saint like quality. The crimes he does are not the means to an end, that’s the end. There is a method to his madness and he even has a premise behind his crimes. Somewhere he says, when chips are down, all the civilized people won't be any better than him which may not be far from truth. As Alfred puts it succinctly, "some people just like watching the world burn"

Well, coming to the other main character, Batman, who is largely overshadowed in all the reviews because of Heath Ledger's performance. But I find this Batman even better than the one in Batman Begins. He is truly incorruptible and he again isn't doing things to be seen as a good guy or a savior. Rather, he chooses to victimize himself more than once because that was the right thing to do.

A couple of contrasts between the two characters:

Joker is fearless; you could hear him laughing while falling down the skyscraper. (In one of the comic sequences Ra's al Ghul's fear gas had no effect on Joker)
The core of Batman's personality is about fear and getting over it.

Joker isn't a sissy or greedy, his belief (almost saintly) in crime is as great as batman's loyalty to Gotham.
Batman believes in the goodness as the final end, he doesn't try to make sure the means are all righteous (a tinge of darkness perhaps?)

They are extremely fitting opponents and Joker admits that in the climax.

I was quite impressed by the way these characters came out in the movie and of course, I had the added advantage of not having seen District -13, so even the vessel experiment was an interesting piece for me :-).

Overall, I would even consider this for a re-watch some time later.

Finally a note on the money burning scene, I found it quite believable, because:

- First off, he is doing it, which alone is enough to convince people how crazy he is
- He doesn't think twice before slitting people's cheeks
- He doesn't fear death
- He had planted a cell-phone bomb inside a live human

If this happens in real life, each of those guys would have been scared to death. After all, for most of us, no amount of money is enough compensation for dying. On the contrary, Joker could die for any silly reason without regret. As always, mob behavior doesn't consider logic and planning when it comes to life and death. Otherwise it would be hard to explain why one person can shoot in the middle of a crowd and walk away with everyone else watching.

@Shailesh - I agree with your pov about voting, especially internet voting. No wonder Amitabh became the star of the millennium, thanks to the ever growing Indian internet using population.

Looking at the additional twist you had in your story, I bet you had more fun watching it than the rest of us :-)