All the marketing and trailers for Warner Brother’s summer blockbuster “The Dark Knight” up to this point have been extremely grim and austere. And yet another trailer has surfaced on the web that portrays the movie in an ever darker light than previous (if that was possible) and boatloads of hype have already been poured into this thing from the comics nerd crowd, insisting that it is going to be the best piece of cinema since Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane.”
Ostensibly, this is what the fans always wanted. For years people have been craving a grittier version of the old Batman story, something that can capture the dark undertones of the original comics: a solemn, bleak and tenebrous version of the Batman story ala Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight,” “Year One,” and similar variation on the twisted Batman mien like Alan Moore’s “Killing Joke,” “The Long Halloween,” etc. But if the film does turn out to be like the trailers suggest, will it be too much for the average summer moviegoer to take? Especially given the extra gloomy tone surely to be inferred by Heath Ledger’s death and his sure-to-be shocking performance?
Definitely a mood distinctly different from the Clooney, O’Donnell awkward bromance (thank god Christopher Nolan ignored that weak excuse for a superhero movie).
The only flaw in this assumption is that this is all based off a handful of trailers released with essentially the same scenes played over in slightly different order. Gotham is scary, Joker is batshit crazy (pardon the pun), Christian Bale is an emotionally distant badass and Harvey Dent is a choad. Footage in this new eeries trailer features scary clown-masked men running amok, more dialogue from Dent (Aaron Eckhart; including some sulfuric acid meets Dent’s face action) and we hear Heath Ledger not in just a high-pitched, crazy shriek but one with a deeper growl and a hint of true bitter madness.
Are the Batman fans going to receive a movie that is too dark and moody for their own good? Should they have been careful for what they wished for? And could Warner Brothers have made a mistake by giving to much creative control to Christopher Nolan by allowing him to deviate from the proven formula of the modern superhero movie and gone to noir for the casual viewer (See: Tim Burton’s Batman)? Or it is possible the teaser’s are a ruse and this thing is all Disney-fied. Even ‘Batman Begins’ could of been darker for our taste. Bring it on, we say.
Written by Spencer Martin.