Cosmo Digital

The Good: Batman versus the Joker, updated for the modern day. Need I say more?

The Bad: Very long, some parts felt rushed.


The Dark Knight is one of the most hyped movies of this summer, or of any summer. Suprisingly, the movie nearly lives up to the anticipation, spurred on by Heath Ledger's death in January.

Heath Ledger does an excellent job, so much so that he is unrecognizable as Heath Ledger. I have heard that Ledger has already been nominated for 47 separate Oscars as a result of this performance. And it was a good Joker. When I first heard about the movie and saw the few "leaked" images of the new Joker, I was admittedly rather wary.

One of the very few things that irked me about this movie was Batman's voice. For the vast majority of the movie Christian Bale is out of the costume, but when he is in the Batman togs he speaks in an extremely raspy, deep voice. I realize that this is to show the audience that Bruce Wayne is making an attempt to disguise his voice as Batman, but his voice simply grated on my nerves. Luckily Batman didn't speak very much, preferring instead to use his arsenal of toys to fight and blow stuff up.

And blow stuff up he did. The Dark Knight clearly had a much higher visual effects budget than its predecessor, and it shows through in the spectacular action scenes. While I approved of most of these, some of the effects felt a bit gimmicky. High up on the list is the new Bat-cycle. I knew it was coming, as many of the preview pictures showed Batman flying through the city on this contraption. And its introduction into the movie (being an escape pod for the destroyed Bat-Tank) was clever and well done. It just feels like the director felt like the Bat-Tank could be made even more awesome, and thought a crazy motorcycle with machine guns fit the bill. To me it feels less like a legitimate plot device and more of an excuse to show Batman blowing stuff up.

I also did not like the improved Batcave. It is not a cave anymore. I could not tell if Batman's new white room was located in the actual Batcave, or in the basement of his new penthouse. I do not know if the visual effects crew ran out of money before getting to the Batcave part, or if the director just wanted to showcase Batman's interior decorating skills, but they managed to transform an awesome cave into a plain room.

Return to Reviews