In 2009 the 81st Academy Awards awarded Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture as it took down The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Milk, Frost/Nixon and The Reader. 2008 in films were pretty all over the place with some big hit blockbuster films like Mamma Mia and Iron Man to big letdowns like The Happening and The Love Guru. However the greatest film of that year and possibly of all time wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture or even Best Director. In fact it was only nominated for 8 awards that night and none of them were for the Big Five (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Screenplay). Instead it was nominated for Best Cinematography, Best Sound Editing and pretty much the awards that not many people cared for, except one, Best Supporting Actor. On that night the late great Heath Ledger was awarded Best Supporting Actor for his role as the Joker in The Dark Knight. You are probably wondering why I’m starting this review with talking about the 81st Academy Awards if this is pretty much a review for The Dark Knight. Well I can’t make my case for what I am about to say and write without mentioning how The Dark Knight was snubbed for multiple awards. Was it because it was a comic book movie or was it because it was a blockbuster film? I still question this even today on why the film was never nominated for Best Picture because if you think about it after all these years all 5 films that were nominated for Best Picture are pretty much forgotten about and yet The Dark Knight continues to be praised and be remembered. Why is that? Well I am here to tell you why, but before I do why not do what the title says and talk about “Why the Dark Knight Is the Greatest Comic Book Movie of All Time”.
*SPOILER WARNING AHEAD
It’s a pretty well known film I know, but in all fairness it’s my favorite film of all time and without a doubt the one film I love to talk about the most from the cinematography, the character developments for most of the characters to The Joker, especially the Joker. This was the film I wanted to review for the website first before I decided oh let me take my time with it and process my thoughts and instead talk about a horrible Disney film that came out in 2020, if you haven’t seen it yet scroll down the site after reading this, I promise you it’s worth the read. Anyway, I wanted to be able to say whatever I want to say for this review and not forget anything so I thought about it for a while and finally I thought it was time to review this film. Now unlike most of these films that I reviewed I didn’t re-watch The Dark Knight because I have seen it so many times that I can watch the entire film in my mind without seeing it on the screen. Like I said it’s my favorite piece of cinema and I try and watch the film whenever it’s on or at least 2 – 3 times a year. Alright enough talk, let’s get serious.
The Dark Knight would be nothing without the man behind the scenes, the producer, writer and director Christopher Nolan. If I could be honest out of all the films in Nolan’s library, this one is his centerpiece, his magnum opus, his best in show, because without The Dark Knight not many people would think of Nolan as a seriously good director. Memento gave us our introduction to the man but it’s the Dark Knight that made him a household name and plus without the success of this film, films like Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk and Tenet would had been just blockbuster films and not Oscar nominated films that film lovers would fall in love with and this film started that, this trilogy started that, it started Nolan’s rise. Now while I can go on and on about Nolan, were here for The Dark Knight and this film was put together with one of the best casts in all of film history. The film stars Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Heath Ledger (The Joker), Gary Oldman (James Gordon), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes), Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox), Michael Caine (Alfred Pennyworth), with also some of the best small roles including Nestor Carbonell (Mayor of Gotham Anthony Garcia), Eric Roberts (Sam Maroni), Michael Jai White (Gambol), William Fichtner (Gotham National Bank manager) and so much more. This movie cast is small but my god is it top notch perfection. Before I even get to the review for this film I need to talk about the men in charge of the music, the ones making the original scores, because without them this film would not be perfect and Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard I can’t thank you enough because holy shit the scores in this film is mind blowing. I usually only give Hans the full attention because he is the bigger name. I mean the man legit did the music for The Lion King, The Prince of Egypt, Gladiator, Inception, I can go on and on but I got to give some credit to James Newton Howard as he did a really great job with mixing in his music with Zimmer’s. Now this film as a whole embodies 2020, a year where the world went to chaos when a pandemic hit and then social injustice and then the election, like seriously I thought the film Joker embodied 2020 but no The Dark Knight does as the film is about chaos and how a man brings corruption into civilization but at the same time be so loved. I can’t believe I used The Joker as an example of 2020 and Donald Trump but I mean hey it works and it’s the honest truth. One thing that I do like in this film is that it can feel like a slow burning film but the way it develops our film is perfect. It doesn’t want to rush right into the Joker’s evil plans; so let’s re-introduce us to Batman and introduce us to Harvey Dent, let’s have some great dialogue between our main character and the future 2nd villain of the film (Spoiler alert lol). When it comes to comic book movies we kind of go right into the action and get introduced to the main character, the superhero of the film and then if the film gets a sequel they are the main attraction. However all of that changed after this film. Take a good look at the MCU how in The Avengers films the villain was introduced first. We got a re-introduction to Loki and had some action but we then had 15 minutes of showing us our main heroes, but Loki was the star attraction. The same can be said with Thanos in Infinity War, hell in the whole MCU. When Avengers came out we had a small cameo from Thanos but we knew once he had his time in the spotlight he would take control of the film and Infinity War proved that to us. And you know what this now brings us to how the Dark Knight introduces us the first time to the film’s main star, its main attraction.
The opening scene in this film is pure perfection. I mean it opens with no dialogue, just background music of the “Why So Serious” score. Then we get into the action and were introduced to the men who are going to rob Gotham’s National Bank and at the same time we get this amazing dialogue of them talking about The Joker and it adds in the tension of how insane Joker is to how much fear he can bring. Great dialogue mixed with this amazing score and you got yourself a very great opening scene, but oh no were not done yet. Forget what I said about going into the action and let’s give a sneak preview of the action and literally have gunshots from the bank robbers to the bank’s manager literally shooting at the robbers with a shotgun. William Fichtner needs more credit in this film as this small role is probably his best yet. Anyway Fichtner gets shot and we go back into our bank robbing scene. One by one the Joker’s goons are taking each other out and then we get the best line in the film. So Fichtner is still alive and says this: “Honor, Respect. What do you believe in!” And then we get the greatest line and reveal ever. Our final goon says “I believe whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you….*pause, takes the mask off and it is revealed that he was Joker all along* Stranger”. OH MY GOD! What an incredible opening scene that first talks about our main villain, shows us a percentage of action that this film will have and the reveal and pre-introduction to Joker is pure impactful to the film as a whole but also fucking perfection in just around 5 minutes. Take my freaking money I am so invested into this film at this point. When I was younger I was like this is a lit scene but once I became older and wiser and took film classes in college I paid attention to detail and this scene needs full attention to detail as from beginning to the end of this scene this perfect opening doesn’t need to reveal Joker in this way but I mean how else do you show how chaotic and insane this man is without this scene. There is no other way to reveal and give us our first introduction to The Joker as this scene embodies where this film is going and how far it will take us and trust me it is taking us far. Now give Fichtner better roles from this role alone as I want more of this from him in his future films.
Now I keep saying pre-introduction because technically while Joker himself is in this scene, we technically aren’t introduced to him until the final minute of the scene. In fact after the opening scene Joker takes the back seat and isn’t in the film or mentioned at all for a while. As I mentioned earlier this film is a slow burn as the film introduces us to Harvey Dent, a man who wants to put away all the chaos in Gotham. We are also being re-introduced to both Bruce Wayne and Batman in case we forgot who the main character of this film is, which we shouldn’t since he is the titled character. In fact hey why not let’s have some fun dialogue between Bruce, his ex-girlfriend and family friend Rachel Dawes and her new boyfriend who she works for Harvey Dent and we then get another great line from Harvey Dent: “You either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain”. This line plays beautifully with his character development but more on Harvey Dent later. Then we return to our schedule program and get our real introduction to The Joker. The scene where all the mob bosses in Gotham meet up and Joker joins in on the fun unannounced is one of the best ways to introduce us to The Joker. His goons might of told us what the Joker is about and the reveal might of shown us The Joker but we get to see and learn more about the character in this scene alone and it tells us how insane and chaotic he is but also how clever he is with stealing from the mob to creating a plot to killing Batman. Plus that make a pencil disappear moment is by far one of the coolest and funniest parts of the entire scene and movie. But again it shows how chaotic the character of The Joker is. A simple making a pencil disappear act shows how no one should fuck with him because he will put that pencil through your eye and kill you before you have the chance to get your hands on him or say anything, he is that menacing and it is this simple trick and idea that makes his full character and schemes so big. There is a reason why Batman’s greatest villain is Joker because they are opposites of each other, kind of a ying and yang. Batman wants to bring justice and vengeance into Gotham and keep it a safe place while Joker wants the city to run amuck and go into chaos. No villain gets into the mindset of Batman like Joker does and this movie truly defines that logic.
Okay I need to talk about the elephant in the room, I have talked about the Joker scenes a lot and there is great reasoning to why I have. The Dark Knight might be about Batman vs. The Joker but this isn’t your ordinary Batman film, no sir this movie is Joker’s movie as he is taking the charge and he is the man who we truly care about. Yeah we are rooting for Batman to stop him but I mean we truly want to root for Joker and in most cases I really do. The best cinematic scenes in the film involve around Joker and have Joker in them as Joker makes this movie awesome and while the scenes without Joker are good scenes, they can never touch how intense and mind bending the scenes with Joker really are. Joker kind of makes this movie as his main plot, even though he is a man with no plan, is to defeat the Batman but not by killing him or beating him up, but psychologically and trying to get him to break his one rule, killing the bad guy. Joker might be psychotic and insane but he is very smart and sane at the same time. He has no motives either as he just wants to watch Gotham burn. But In order for Joker to get into Batman’s mind he needs to have his chaotic level over 9000, never thought I use a Dragon Ball Z reference for The Joker. From putting a very graphic video message of going after Batman to literally standing in the middle of the road just to see if Batman would hit him with his vehicle, Joker knows how to get under his skin and wants him to become something he is not and certainly not like James Gordon or Harvey Dent. Which brings me to The Interrogation Scene and yes it’s another Joker scene.
The Interrogation Scene is by far the best scene in the entire film. The lighting in the beginning of the scene is perfect as the room is dark only to be lit by the light on the table and a background light near the door of the room. The shadows on both Gordon’s and Joker’s face metaphors to the tension and suspense that leads up into the scene and the color grading, there isn’t much but just on Joker’s face alone you can see how dark the colors are but also how bright they come off in this one scene alone. There is a reason why this film is very dark and this scene proves it. Once Gordon leaves the room the light comes on and Batman comes in and the back and forth banter between both characters are phenomenal as the dialogue is pure beauty and the editing, the cinematography and the lighting captures this whole film perfectly as The Dark Knight is not your ordinary comic book movie, it’s a dark film led by a courageous billionaire who is a hero to a city but needs to take on a schizophrenic, mass murdering man who paints his face as a clown and defines what Gotham’s chaos is like. This scene perfectly tells that story and it does it in the most fashionable way. But this also shows how Joker tries to break Batman with reverse psychology. He wants Batman to break his one rule, he wants Batman to beat him to death because he doesn’t care about his own life, he cares to ruin others and if he has to die to do so then he will and he says it best himself: “I’m not a monster; I’m just ahead of the curve”. This cinematic scene should win an award for greatest cinematic scene in movie history because holy shit the suspense in this scene and the tension that builds up, plus were going to add in the amazing score from the beginning of the film into the middle when Batman is beating the living shit out of Joker and we watch Joker laughing, enjoying the pain, because he is getting under Batman’s skin, he is breaking him. My god I love this scene with all my heart. I need to talk about Harvey Dent now as he is important to this film and plot just as much as Joker is.
Harvey Dent is the District Attorney for Gotham, “The White Knight”, who wants to take down the criminal underworld of his city and bring some form of sanity into the city of Gotham. But Joker gets in his way and starts making his life a living hell. It starts to break Harvey, kind of like Batman but worse, Harvey doesn’t have one rule. Harvey’s face is burned from an explosion and his girlfriend Rachel is killed and half his face is now burnt off. This introduces us to Two-Face. Harvey Dent becomes this murderer with split personality and bent on revenge of the people who wronged him and that includes James Gordon and Batman. But it takes a quick hospital visit from Joker in disguise as a nurse to fully become Two-Face as prior to this he is not Harvey Dent anymore, he lost the woman he loved and his face is now disfigured, all he has left is his motives and even then he doesn’t believe in them anymore. When Joker comes to visit him in the hospital he awakens Two-Face, hands him the anarchy that he holds inside him and in time Harvey Dent gets his revenge by killing people that wronged him. Now in the film Harvey is only called Two-Face once as the viewer who have read the comics know who Two-Face is but for people unaware of the comics then this is their introduction to Two-Face but instead of using that name Nolan uses Harvey’s name in order to make him seem as a equal to Joker, with a twist. In my opinion Joker and Harvey at this point co-exist with one another and are ying and yang with one another as well. Dent wants to clean up Gotham, Joker wants to watch it burn. Joker however changes Dent; he cleans up Gotham by killing instead of doing it through court. They equal to each other now as Joker got what he wanted, he brought in chaos into Gotham and while he has yet to break Batman, he broke the White Knight and created a monster. Harvey Dent is now the 2nd antagonist in this film and the way his character develops is so great and you kind of feel bad for the poor guy but at the same time he isn’t the greatest person in the world, even before he became Two-Face. He was an asshole in a way; he just was good at hiding it, kind of like a split personality. Maybe he was Two Faced all along???
I feel like I spoiled too much and I mean while this film has been out for 12 years at this point, it’s best if I speed round the final act. Joker doesn’t want to kill Batman; he wants to break his spirit, something he has done to Harvey Dent and something he wants to do with the people of Gotham. He planted two bombs on two separate ships, one holding innocent people of Gotham, the other holding criminals of Gotham. They have the key to the other ships bomb and one turn of the key can blow that ship up. Both groups however don’t blow the other ship up and it shows that the people of Gotham and even the criminals don’t want chaos in their city anymore. Joker is defeated and Batman takes on Harvey Dent and in the end after he and James Gordon defeats him, he tells Gordon to blame him for the deaths of the people he killed. If it went out that Dent killed those people then it would look bad for Gotham and everyone in the city would go mad and Joker would get his way in bringing chaos into the city. Plus it will preserve Dent’s heroic image that people in Gotham looked up to. The film ends with Batman on the run from the police and Gordon destroying the Bat signal and speaks this final line: “He’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero, he’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight”. The perfect line to end a perfect movie.
I have to say it after writing all that down, watching the clips I talked about again and reading the entire script of the film, I fallen in a deep love with his movie. I mean I loved it before all this but I think I will marry this film if it was a person. Look I talked a lot about Joker, but I mean this is Joker’s movie, not Batman’s. Heath Ledger brought this character to life and in the end killed himself because of it, not physically but mentally. Ledger passed away accidentally after he overdosed from medications and this role took a lot out of this man mentally. It’s a very sad story to even talk about so I won’t but this role made a legacy for this man. He won so many awards for this role, including the Academy Award, but it’s the fact that he was the only person nominated out of the cast is why this movie is Joker’s movie. Without Joker this movie would be different. Dent can’t become Two-Face without the chaos and anarchy from Joker, Batman spirit can’t break without the diabolical/evil Joker getting under his skin. Joker made this movie what it was and I can’t believe that Ledger created this character in his way, it’s phenomenal. But most of all, this film changed the way comic book movies are looked at. They are seen as blockbuster films still, but in more than one occasion a comic book film was nominated for big movie awards. I’m going to stick with the Academy Awards as it’s the biggest honor and award for film. Before this film they were nominated for editing, score, cinematography, the smaller awards, however look into the future. Ledger was nominated for best Supporting Actor and won. In 2015 a comic book animated adaptation of Big Hero 6 was nominated for Best Animated Feature and won. In 2018, Logan was nominated for Adapted Screenplay and even though it lost it was still with big Hollywood films. In 2019, Black Panther was nominated for Best Picture, it didn’t win but it became the first ever comic book film to be nominated for that prestigious award. Also in 2019 Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was nominated for Best Animated Feature and won. Finally in 2020 Joker gained the most nominations in comic book history with 11 nominations. From Screenplay, to Best Director to Best Picture, this film broke records for comic book films and while it only won 2, one it did win was Best Actor as Joaquin Phoenix became the second actor to win an award playing the role of the Clown Prince of Crime, Joker. There have been other comic book films that have been nominated in the Academy Awards but for smaller awards, but just remember this, The Dark Knight helped change the game for comic book films and how film critics and people that bring these awards together and pick the winners see these films. They’re no longer summer blockbusters making millions to billions of dollars; they are cinematic masterpieces that can hang with the big boys of Hollywood.
To this day I question why the Academy snubbed The Dark Knight for the big 5 awards. The Screenplay for this film is phenomenal; I legit read the entire thing before writing this. Best Actor and Actress were under the radar so I get that one, but then there is the big 2. Christopher Nolan should have been nominated for Best Director hands down. This man legit created a story from a comic book and did what the DC Universe tried to do from 2014 – 2017. He made a dark film of a beloved comic book character and made it dark, made it gritty, made it a feature cinematic film that wasn’t just for comic book fans but film fans. Nolan created a film where the bad guy still won even though he lost. Nolan created a film that to this day is talked about highly and this brings me to Best Picture. The Dark Knight hands down, without a question, should have been nominated and won Best Picture. Look I didn’t see all the films nominated for Best Picture but I can tell you right now none of them are mentioned or talked about as highly as The Dark Knight is when it comes to filmmaking, cinematography, characters, great writing, lighting and shadows, camera work, acting, the list goes on and on. The fact that a comic film is purely more cinematic than a film about an Indian in a game show, a biopic of Richard Nixon and David Frost, a film about a man aging backwards, a biopic about a gay man who is elected to public office in California or a film based on a German novel kind of shows that it deserves more love than what it got from the Academy and is the true winner of Best Picture of the 81st Academy Awards. Now I’m not saying this because it’s my favorite film of all time, I’m saying it because it’s truth. On IMDB, The Dark Knight is ranked 4th with a 9.0/10 stars. It stands behind 3 cinematic classics, The Shawnshank Redemption and Godfather Part I and II. Funny part is none of those films that were nominated are in the Top 10, 50, 100, 200 or 250. You know what The Dark Knight Trilogy is and more importantly The Dark Knight has a higher Rotten Tomatoes score than all 5 of those films. Go look it up yourself I promise you this, but Dark Knight has 94% on RT and Roger Ebert gave it a perfect 4 out of 4 stars. The Dark Knight without a doubt is the greatest comic book movie of all time and you can argue with me with this and I will read you the entire screenplay on my phone, show you the cinematic scenes and clips from the movie, show you how high it is ranked everywhere and how it changed everything for comic book films. One day when a comic book movie does win the Best Picture just remember that the true winner years prior was snubbed and is the main reason why it even got the chance to be nominated in that category. And you can take that to the bank. I made my case and hopefully I can make you see the same thing I see with this film. The Dark Knight isn’t just the greatest comic book film of all time; it is one of the most perfect films of all time and deserves all the praise it gets, all the love it continues to gain and it is my favorite movie of all time. A perfect comic book movie is a cinematic masterpiece and The Dark Knight is that cinematic masterpiece.
Final Review: 5 out of 5 Stars, 100% out of 100.
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