The film continues a year after Batman Begins and believe me, The Dark Knight is a lot better than its predecessor. I guess, like Batman Begins, The Dark Knight is a prequel to Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever and Batman & Robin because we still see that young Batman and Batman Begins is already a prequel anyway so seeing as The Dark Knight follows straight after, it is still a prequel, I feel. The Dark Knight overall felt more like a crime-gangster film than a film based on the Batman comic book series but despite that, the story felt so real throughout every single second. The film had its similarities with Michael Mann's Heat starring Robert De Niro and Al Pacino because of fugitives in a city causing riots and murders within where the police are trying everything they can to stop them.
Set within a year after the events of Batman Begins, Batman, Lieutenant James Gordon, and new district attorney Harvey Dent successfully begin to round up the criminals that plague Gotham City until a mysterious and sadistic criminal mastermind known only as the Joker appears in Gotham, creating a new wave of chaos. Batman's struggle against the Joker becomes deeply personal, forcing him to "confront everything he believes" and improve his technology to stop him. A love triangle develops between Bruce Wayne, Dent and Rachel Dawes.
The Batman franchise has always been recognized for its breathtaking ensemble cast! Even in Batman Forever and Batman & Robin the cast was pretty awesome, just that the films themselves weren't good. Anyway, Christian Bale was great as Bruce Wayne/Batman! We look more into who Batman really is and what he means to achieve and bring to the people of Gotham and we truly find out who Batman really is which is perhaps the main key factor of that character in this film. One thing that was a bit annoying about Batman is Christian Bale's incredibly annoying Batman voice! Sure, Batman has got to protect his identity but we need to at least completely understand what he is trying to say! As for Bruce, he is still in love with Rachel but because she is dating new District Attorney Harvey Dent, he is hopelessly waiting for her. Bruce's accomplice and mentor Alfred is once again portrayed by the great Sir Michael Caine and he was great once again. It'll be great to see Bale and Caine perform together again in The Dark Knight Rises coming up in summer 2012.
Now, the star of the show: Heath Ledger! I'm not going to go into that mumbo jumbo about how he died. However, his death certainly did have an impact on the film, not only because of production side of the project but also the fact that the film became a lot more hyped and, let's face it, if Heath hadn't died the film wouldn't have earned all the money that it got and maybe even Heath wouldn't have won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Heath's Joker and Jack Nicholson's Joker are more different than similar, not just some appearance features but in terms of personality. Heath's main inspiration for his Joker is Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange and Malcolm McDowell's performance as Alexander DeLarge. I have seen the film countless times and I still cannot believe that the Joker is Heath Ledger especially when all his films in the past haven't been anything like this! You know what the Joker does is wrong but you can't help but love his character and find his theory on life both quite scary and interesting. His performance as the Joker is one for the ages and I never thought Jack Nicholson's role would be surpassed but surprisingly, Heath did surpass that! Aaron Eckhart finally has his breakthrough in his career and delivers a fantastic performance as Harvey Dent and almost rises up to the top level of Heath Ledger's performance. Eckhart expressed Harvey as a good, brave man and leader brilliantly but also played Harvey as a broken-hearted, worn-down and out of control especially when he became known as Two-Face. Katie Holmes is replaced as Rachel Dawes by Maggie Gyllenhaal which was a right decision seeing as Holmes gave a weak performance as Rachel but I would've thought they would have found a better actress and maybe even a more attractive one. I am not saying that Maggie wasn't good in this film, she wasn't all what Rachel is out to be. Gary Oldman was very good as Lt. Jim Gordon and so was Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and also we saw a good mild appearance from Eric Roberts too.
After his successful reboot of the Batman franchise with Batman Begins and with other great films he has done in the past, Chris Nolan has now crafted together his best yet and even he thinks no film he will do will be better or, at least, harder to film than The Dark Knight. He is an underrated director when it comes to awards like Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and some of the other great directors were, also. I think perhaps Nolan and his brother went only slightly off tone with The Dark Knight by making it more their own version with their own story and making it more of a gangster/mafia film than it being based on the Batman DC comics yet somehow I do think it is the bestBatman film. Nolan has been widely known for writing his own screenplays and this is one of his finest writing achievements (although I preferred his screenplay in Inception).
Overall, The Dark Knight is an absolutely fantastic film that is perhaps a bit (to my taste) overrated and it does have one or two flaws but despite that, I still think it is a magnificent film that I think should have earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay. The ending was sublime and I really cannot wait how The Dark Knight Rises will turn out especially after howThe Dark Knight ended! All I know is that I loved The Dark Knight and I'm incredibly excited to see the final installment in Nolan's Batman trilogy.
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