The Dark Knight

Release Date: July 18, 2008
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldman, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy
Directed by: Christopher Nolan

People want to see it!"

That was Stan Lee's ebullient response when I had the chance to ask him, at a comic book convention in 2007, about the modern rush of superhero victories at the box office. It's a sentiment uniformly applicable to Spider-Man and Ghost Rider alike, but Batman creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger would surely disagree. The late Kane described the original vision for Gotham City's hooded guarded as "dark," "brooding," and "Dracula-like," not the terms generally applicable to jubilant spectacles like Superman. With Batman Begins and now The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan's tightly assembled Batman dramas apply that initial outlook to correct the wrongs of Joel Schumacher's dopey bat-nipple revelries from the late '90s.

To that end, Nolan's productions work in much the same way that Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns created a metropolitan horror show, although The Dark Knight puts more concerted effort into grounding the character in reality. Nolan's strong suits are maniacal schemers and moody character-driven intrigue, both of which make The Dark Knight a sleek (if, at close to three hours, somewhat distended) detective story. The action, however, mostly fails to attain the same caliber of engagement. One more flipped car or exploding building, and Nolan could cut together another sequel. Fortunately, there's IMAX, the ideal format for The Dark Knight — some scenes were filmed with the medium in mind.

The gargantuan IMAX screen might appear to contradict Batman's intentionally murky presence, but at times it heightens the subtleties of the menacing atmosphere. Basic aerial shots swooping through the skyscrapers create the invigorating sensation of falling through urban landscapes. That visceral appeal fits the setting: The city itself is an uncontainable monster, where gangsters dictate the law and only Batman dares to rebuff their pervasive corruption.

In Batman Begins, he found his only accomplice in the company of timid Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman). The community grows in The Dark Knight, with the arrival of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Gotham's newly minted district attorney and one of the first truly sincere guys Batman has met; the town gets an emboldened (but short-lived) Holy Trinity of protectors. As Batman alter-ego Bruce Wayne, Christian Bale delivers passionate monologues about fixing the broken judicial system, and the script (co-written by Nolan and his brother Jonathan) lets Wayne see promise in Dent's upright activism — enough to believe that Batman might have a shot at early retirement. Fancy chance at that, of course, but Eckhart's golden boy performance makes you believe in his ill-fated ambition, even though the character's predetermined fate of morphing into the conniving Two-Face means tragedy lurks in the shadows along with the rest of the plot. (Two-Face is a delectably gross miracle of make-up and CGI, but how does he talk so clearly with half his head burnt off?)

These actors bring more realism to The Dark Knight than any other element, especially the most obvious one. Much has been made about the late Heath Ledger's frightening turn as the mysterious Joker, and it is truly impressive to watch this scar-faced psychopath with the knife-chiseled grin face down conventional criminals and hardened cops alike with cackling glee. But Bale and Eckhart centralize the movie's thematic concerns, causing the Joker's outrageousness to stand out. The rest of the cast just hit their marks: Michael Caine, as devout butler Alfred, inspires Wayne with incessant nuggets of wisdom; weapons designer Fox (Morgan Freeman) helps the hero with a handy bit of high-falutin wiretapping technology; Maggie Gyllenhaal (replacing the apparently detained Katie Holmes) portrays Wayne's former flame Rachel by grinning and grimacing on cue. She's the sole female presence in a movie that doesn't know what to do with her until it puts her in distress.

Nolan has crafted a conventional caper, but an elusive one. Whispery understatement allows The Dark Knight to seem like the landmark achievement it never becomes. This explains Warner Bros.' ingenious viral marketing scheme and the subsequent viewer frenzy. Spider-Man was huge, too, but still simply showcased a geeky guy in latex. By contrast, The Dark Knight is big, but it also feels important. An overextended climax prevents me from validating that feeling, but there's no denying the bold intellectualism of the script. "I don't get political points for being an idealist," complains Gordon, whose jaded conclusion isn't all that different from a know-nothing bad guy witnessing the Joker's queer antics and sighing, "Criminals in this town used to believe in things."

Ledger does indeed deserve posthumous kudos, but the decision to make Dent's transformation into Two-Face part of the Joker's grand scheme denigrates the terrifying potential of Eckhart's disfigured malefactor. In Jeph Loeb's The Long Halloween series from the Batman comic books (an aesthetic inspiration for the film), Two-Face leads the evil "freaks" of the city, including the Joker, to take down the regular mob sorts. Here, he's just a pathetic evildoer driven by revenge in the final act. The Joker, on the hand, behaves with precisely the calculated anarchy of the comics. He emerged there as the only dynamic villain to truly enjoy grappling with Batman while conveying an eerie understanding of him.

Peter Travers' overly ecstatic review of the movie in Rolling Stone quotes the fake-serious "You complete me" line the Joker drops as demonstrative of the pair's unlikely kinship, but that's just a throwaway gag. It's the Joker's apparent disdain for the establishment that the madman sees echoed in Batman's harsh brand of vigilance. "Don't talk like one of them; you're not!" he yelps when the caped do-gooder decries the Joker's misconduct. He sees cops as "schemers trying to control their little world," and holds fast to the conviction that no rules are the only rules worth following.

The Joker's ultimate evil comes from his ability to make others function on his level of insanity. The climax of the film nearly gets that right, but it halts with a weirdly cheery climax, a spirited "kumbaya" moment that implies the Joker could be foiled by objective morality. No way. In The Killing Joke, Alan Moore and Brian Bolland's concise 1988 comic that has been reported as the inspiration for Ledger's wild-eyed interpretation of the character, the Joker essentially demonstrates how he remains innately undefeated even in captivity. In the final frames, he forces us to see an aspect of Batman that no fancy camera tricks could possibly convey, and Nolan lacks the audacity to probe: The Joker tells a joke, and Batman can't stop laughing.

— Eric Kohn

Exclusive: Matthew Goode on 'Brideshead' and 'Watchmen'

The star of 'Brideshead Revisited' discusses going toe-to-toe with Emma Thompson and reveals some very juicy 'Watchmen' details.

Matthew Goode gets up and strides over to the window and opens it. It is one of those oppressively hot and humid summer afternoons in New York City, and the warm air rushes in, diluting the cool of the air-conditioned room. He searches his jeans pockets and then the room for a lighter he has misplaced somewhere, but his train of thought remains unbroken and he continues to talk in a deep English-accented baritone. The timbre of his posh voice is that of a much older man and seems a little at odds with his tall lean, rangy figure clad in t-shirt and black woolen skater-boy cap. Leaning out the window, he lights up and takes a drag.
"It's hard to read!" he exclaims in reference to the Watchmen graphic novels by Alan Moore. Goode stars as superhero Ozymandias (a.k.a. Adrian Veidt) in the big screen adaptation of the series directed by 300's Zack Snyder. Even though it's not slated to open until March 2009, comic book fans are rabid for any details about the film, and luckily Goode is happy to oblige.
Perhaps even more taxing to read is Evelyn Waugh's classic pre-World War II novel about the decline of the British aristocracy, Brideshead Revisited. This was required reading for Goode's role as middle-class Charles Ryder, the narrator who is seduced not only by his Oxford friend Sebastian Flyte (Perfume's Ben Whishaw) but also by his opulent lifestyle and the grandeur of his ancestral home, Brideshead.

Here the star of Woody Allen's Match Point and the hunk in Chasing Liberty deconstructs his character's motivations in Brideshead Revisited and discusses the pressures of going toe-to-toe with Oscar-winner Emma Thompson. Goode also lets slip some juicy Watchmen details about Adrian Veidt's Nazi past (seriously!) and talks about bulking up to play Veidt's alter ego, Ozymandias.

In Brideshead Revisited, you worked with Michael Gambon and Emma Thompson, two tremendous actors, legends of British cinema. While Emma Thompson has only five scenes in Brideshead, I think, you were in most of them. Did you feel like you need to step up your game in some way?
Absolutely! It is quite fearful. I had Michael whom I had looked up to and was one the reasons that made me decide that finally [acting] was an avenue worth pursuing... Particularly for me, I don't have any friends in the industry and [I said to myself], "Wow, I have done all right. I am at an extraordinary level now." Which I never thought I would be and maybe this will be the only time [that I am]. It is what you get from Woody Allen. It is a self-confidence... that you are doing the right things and making interesting choices. I always feel incredibly intellectually inferior so this is a nightmare, really, sitting down and talking about why the film is thematically rich. I always think, "Oh God!" [hands clasped to the top of his bowed head]. Talking through how these scenes are going to work with someone like Emma, they come into the room with all this canon of work and you say to yourself, "Fucking hell! I have got to really step up. And I don't even know what that means." And that is all dispelled the moment they walk in. You don't see them as normal people [but] they are so down to earth. Emma is just so much fun! And I suspect that she doesn't suffer fools gladly. I think they know what they walk into a room with, and it is as uncomfortable for them as anybody else. So there is almost an effort to be more normal. Those dinners that we had with Emma, spending time with someone in their own environment is [like in Charles in Brideshead]; you are let into a different world and you get to see them be "normal." Once you start cracking jokes and making those kind of people laugh, they become friends quite quickly.

In the same way that Brideshead is a sprawling novel or 11-part TV series, Watchmen is based on a 12-issue graphic novel.
I saw the trailer the other day, and I am now very excited about it. I was quite insular because I do a lot of scenes without the other actors, and also I made my life difficult by... giving Adrian Veidt a sort of personal and private [world] on top of the fact that he has this alter ego as well. What is his past? Was he possibly born in Germany, given that was his name? So we decided to go there.

So you have been developing with director Zack Snyder pieces that might fill in the gaps of his past? You know there is a rabid fan base that will be analyzing every single aspect.
I know, which has got me very scared now. But I thought, "Why did he give his wealth away?" Particularly with all the stuff that is under the hood with Hollis Mason [Night Owl] saying, "Yeah, we were Nazis back then." I thought that, actually considering [Adrian's] moral ambiguity, might it not be interesting [if] he gave his parent's wealth away — as I say, no one is going to know this [for sure] — because they were Nazis, as well as wanting to start again and build himself up? So we thought, "Okay. Wouldn't it be interesting, therefore, if he did move to America and in his public scenes he has got a clear-cut American accent but actually with the Watchmen he is allowed to be himself, so he has a slightly North American-Germanic accent which, when he gets slightly more stressed throughout the film, gets a little bit stronger?"

His story or plotline is complicated and I was wondering if we are supposed to pinpoint him as a bastard or a savior or as someone who has sold out. There are so many interpretations.
Well, I think, again it is those gray areas and the fact that you see Rorschach in the beginning as a hero and... we see [Ozymandias] as a sellout at the beginning... that is his kind of a masterstroke in a way. And it is the kind of practicality in a similar way as Charles [Ryder in Brideshead] using [his] paintings to get what is necessary. People think he is a [bleep], but he is not in it for the glory. He is in it absolutely to save the world because it is about to go off. He has the practicality of going, "Okay, I will kill 15 million people to save billions." But it is not for his own personal glory. It is just to get it done. It is obviously awful what he does, but if he hadn't done it, what would have happened?

Zack Snyder has said that he chose younger actors, even though a lot of older Hollywood actors had been hankering for parts in Watchmen, because it is easier to age younger actors.
Yes! I know. It also makes it cheaper so you can spend more on the film and less on us.

Did that mean that you had spent a lot of time in make-up and having prosthetics applied? Well, luckily my character is meant to be in incredibly good nick [shape] anyway, so having a thirty-year-old play a 40-year-old is not so out of the realms of possibility, whereas Jeff Dean Morgan [Edward Blake/The Comedian] had to go through three eras: his 20s, and then his 40s, and he ends up being up 60-odd so he had some agonizing prosthetic work done. He would be in the [make-up] chair for eight hours and would have watched however many episodes of whatever he was watching on his DVD player and be exhausted before he had even started the day.

Adrian Veidt is supposed to be the pinnacle of human physical ability...
Suspend your disbelief, I know. [glancing down at his thin frame]

I gather that the costume is a bit like the Clooney Batman costume, complete with nipples and muscles. Does that mean that you had to do any working out, or was the muscle part of the costume?
As opposed to where I am now, my thin as piss look, I put on [weight]. I had a two day break between Brideshead and Watchmen: I finished in Morocco on the 19th of August and on the 21st I was in Vancouver starting rehearsal... In that first month I put on eating beef and chicken breasts. And I thought that, although it is nice to be in good nick and I lost a bit of weight around the face just from working out and it was nice to have those slightly Germanic, angular things going on, it wasn't so necessary... Actually, when you look at Christian Bale and anyone else [who portrays a superhero] and they are wearing a normal suit, you realize, "Well, actually, you are not that big!" It does most of the work for you, I suppose.

Tell us about Veidt's love of all things Ancient Egyptian.
It is based on Rameses II. [Veidt] takes this year off and has a vision when he swallows a ball of hash, and suddenly it is all about Alexander and his conquering of the world and all that sort of stuff. I should better read it up again before I go to Comic-Con. Karnak [Veidt's Antarctic fortress] is where all the artifacts are. Also, he has his one outfit. He has a sphinx-like thing and, like, a pyramid.

Have you seen your action figure yet?
I saw it on set. Because [Adrian Veidt] is a bit of a sellout, it is one of the things that people have been buying. It was there from the beginning in one of the first scenes we shot. I was like, "Fucking hell!" It was actually weird. They did such a good job of it. It looks like [me], as opposed to most of the time when it doesn't really.

In Brideshead, what was it like to play someone who was basically just an observer and reactor to the other characters and events in the film? And yet you must have felt pressured to carry the film as you are in the vast majority of scenes...
First of all, it gets exhausting because it is six days a week, 17 hours a day, and that can be quite tiring but fulfilling. I struggled a little at the beginning with Charles because he is so vocal as he is the narrator in the book. So you have all that taken away and so when I first read it, I thought, "What is my way in?" I don't really like all the reactionary bullshit. I don't generally talk about what I do for my homework because that is my stuff so it doesn't really need to be spoken about, but I think he seemed very cold. But I think that [changes] once he has been thrown out by the Marchmain family and he is left to get on with his own devices. He is still trying to find out who he is and what he wants to do in life. There is so much sympathy that goes with Sebastian whereas actually he is a petulant drunk, really. Obviously he is dealing with all that shit [with his family], but he still throws out the most important person in his life. People forget that Charles does go back to try and get Sebastian. He honors what he says. Sebastian says that he is not going back so you can't drag him. I think that is one of the reasons [Charles] feels so much guilt at the end. My way [into] Charles was [through his childhood]. There is so much about those formative years that shape your personality. He has no mother, no one to look up to, no friends. I just thought he must be one of the loneliest people. At least Sebastian had a family. At least he had Julia. But Charles has no one! And no love in his life. I think that people don't necessarily get that. Or they do, but I certainly didn't get that at the beginning.

So did you interpret him as someone flattered by Sebastian, enamored of Julia, or simply driven by ambition to take possession of both of them and Brideshead?
I think it was about loneliness. I think he was put in a slightly awkward spot. He [thought], "I have found someone so extraordinary and charming, although I also like the fact he isn't so necessarily charming and there is a petulance to him." But he is the only person that Charles has. I like the fact that the integrity of the novel is upheld in those ambiguities because you still don't want to demonstrate stuff to the audience. You want them to be asking these questions at the end. If you are not from that society, it is difficult when you are in the middle. We all want to better ourselves in the situation we come from, so if you get shown that world, why any one of us would [turn away from it]? Although saying that, the world shown is not all fine and dandy. It is not. Everyone seems pretty fucking miserable in that world, are not real and not particularly nice. So he is fighting a slightly losing battle. I never saw him as this huge social climber. It is not quite as black and white as that.

At one point, Julia says to Charles, "According to you, I am worth two pictures. What does Charles Ryder really want?" Did he want too much? Did he covet too much? Was it greed?
Well, he made a mistake [by marrying] Celia — that was a really ambitious thing to do. He married her and she is Boy Mulcaster's sister and we know what he is like! So, we know that that was a big mistake, and [in the book] she was having affairs and possibly had a child with somebody else because he doesn't seem to want to go back and be with his children. So, I think that maybe [the first child was his] and then she had somebody else's. But that is, again, a gray area. When you don't understand the complexities of love or have never [experienced] it yourself, it is the idea of possessing her [that attracted him]. I don't think he was ever fully in love with her. I think that is what is wrapped up with the guilt at the end and the loneliness and possible conversion to Catholicism. So at least he has someone. So, yes, greed, in a sense, but it is not really about monetary value. I always thought that he is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't with the selling of the paintings [in exchange for Julia]. It is a very male practical thing to do. And if anybody, she is the rude one: she's outside the door listening in — although [laughs] that is slightly facetious, obviously. But it is the only thing he has got. It is the only thing he has to offer.

By Karl Rozemeyer