The summer’s most anticipated blockbuster is finally here, and Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson must be feeling quite the cunts right now. The Dark Knight is a sensory overload so rich you’ll be shitting gold for a month. And Heath Ledger (God rest his soul) is as fucking brilliant as you hoped.
As Frank Miller fans know, TDK started life as a comic book following the vigilantish ventures of a more fucked-up Batman. This caper crusader kicked-off the goody two shoes, stuck two fingers up to the law and was more a Batbad-mother-fucker.
The yarn goes thus far – Gotham’s on the mend, the Mob’s running scared with its arse hanging out and triumvirate of Batman, DA Harvey Dent and Lt. Gordon rule the lands. With the city mopped clean of its scum and villainy, Bruce fancies knocking the nightshift on the head so he can spend his evening with his feet up reading GQ. Dent is well up for taking the role of city guardian, a white knight protector who needs no mask. In between these two perfect American Aryans stands assistant DA Rachel Dawes, and both look at her in a way that suggests a (removed for reasons of taste, Ed).
Then The Joker hits the city with all the power of Little Boy hitting Hiroshima. Heath Ledger has created a monster of almost supernatural malevolence, a tour-de-fucking-force of nihilistic nature. Green-haired, splattered with rotten white makeup and just plain rude to people, he’s like a twisted version Sesame St’s Oscar the Grouch that’s spent 10 years addicted to angel dust and spends his time stabbing passersby and hiding away, masturbating in his bin. He is so fucking powerful it’s like he’s sweating nitro-glycerine.
You can’t help but feel sorry for the rest of the cast. Taken outside of Ledger’s supernovic shine they all put in meaty enough performances. Bale handles the transmogrification from BatShite to BatKnight perfectly as his mind and methods sink further into madness. Eckhart plays Dent like an ivory violin as he edges ever closer to his own tragedy that gives birth to the twat-fuck Two-face. Gyllenhall, however, despite her uncanny resemblance to mid 80s Carrie Fisher, is just coasting here.
Director Chris Nolan has created something so cinematically ambitious that he has set new standards for big-budget movies. The city he has created shines like an emerald despite being drenched in human shit and misery. The sense of scale and vertigo – especially when watched at Imax – will have your stomach churning. There seems to be no obvious CGI as wagons explode, men fly and buildings fall. Whereas Indy IV looked like some super-advanced videogame, The Dark Knight looks like the world is coming to an end. It’s quite simply incredible, and Nolan is now the king of Hollywood.
The sole crease in the batcape is the ludicrously over-chaptered ending that’s heavy with repetitive and sickly diatribe. It starts to feel like the end of Return of the King where you’re looking at your watch murmuring "fuck me" every five minutes. But if you don’t mind pissing in a cup (make use of the dark) you’ll find it one of the most thrilling rollercoaster ride movies in recent years.
Cast your eyes below for just some of the visual treasers we were treated to prior The Dark Knight’s release:
