It’s a rare thing when a sequel manages to top the original. The best examples I can think of where this has happened are with Terminator 2, and in other peoples’ opinions, The Godfather Part 2. What Christopher Nolan has done here is to take his own image of the infamous caped crusader, which he started in “Batman Begins,” and show us what a superhero movie can truly be.
Taking place not long after “Batman Begins,” there is a newly-appointed District Attorney, Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), who has vowed to clean up the city. Our hero, Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is, of course, still around fighting crime. A new criminal mastermind known as The Joker (Heath Ledger) has made his presence known through several bank robberies and murders. Batman must team up with the new D.A and Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) to stop The Joker from spreading anarchy throughout Gotham City.
After director Joel Schumacher nearly sent the whole Batman franchise down the toilet with the “decent” “Batman Forever” and the awful “Batman and Robin,” Christopher Nolan came along and added exactly what the franchise had been lacking all along: realism. I love Tim Burton’s original 1989 Batman and thought “Batman Returns” was decent, but the recurring problem in both of them was the setting. Burton’s Batman films both seemed like they were happening in some medieval city from the look of the architectural designs. Nolan’s first bit of revision for the franchise was something very simple: film Gotham City in a real city, in this case, Chicago.
I’ve got to hand it to the entire cast. They did an amazing job in bringing all of these characters to the screen. Christian Bale continues where he left off in “Begins” with his more realistic portrayal of Bruce Wayne and Batman. With Bale’s performance, we get the sense of a tortured soul, who’s fighting crime while also trying to deal with a love life. This aspect of the character never really came through before. Michael Keaton sort of showed this, though not very much and we were certainly not going to be able to get that impression with Val Kilmer or George Clooney.
Maggie Gylllenhaal was certainly an improvement over Katie Holmes for the character of Rachel Dawes, a character who knows the true identity of Batman, but must keep it a secret and at the same time is dating Harvey Dent because Bruce is too obsessed with his alter ego.
Aaron Eckhart must also be given credit for a great portrayal of Harvey Dent/Two Face. When I heard that he was first rumored for the part, I had just recently seen “Thank You For Smoking.” That was all the convincing I needed to know that he was the perfect man for the role. Also continuing their amazing roles are Sir Michael Caine as Alfred and Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon.
But let’s face it. The star of this movie is the late Heath Ledger as The Joker. You can certainly look forward to Ledger getting a posthumous Oscar nomination for this role, and hopefully, the Oscar itself. This would only be the second time in Oscar history that a posthumous acting Oscar has been awarded, with the first one going to Peter Finch for his outstanding performance in “Network.”
I was rather curious when I first heard that Heath Ledger had landed this role. The only previous films that I had seen with him in it were “A Knight’s Tale,” “The Brothers Grimm,” and “Brokeback Mountain.” While I didn’t really care for “Brokeback” or “Grimm,” I was incredibly surprised by his performance in “A Knight’s Tale,” so I really started looking forward to seeing Ledger take on The Joker. I had heard that Nolan chose him for the role becuase he was “fearless,” and that aspect comes through quite clear in his performance.
Heath Ledger plays The Joker as a psychopathic clown with no morals, no code, and no rules. Looking at Ledger’s previous performances and comparing it to this one, he completely loses himself in this character. There is not the slightest hint of Ledger when his character is on screen. If I didn’t know that it was Ledger, I never would have begun to guess that it was him and it’s not because of the amazing makeup, but because of his amazing skills as an actor.
The way he plays The Joker seems to be more true to the way the character was originally intended. Ledger was given a copy of Alan Moore’s graphic novel “The Killing Joke” as his only inspiration for the character. From reading that novel, we can certainly get a good sense of where Ledger was coming from when creating his version of the character. As the rest of the story goes, Ledger locked himself away in a hotel room for several weeks, working on the voice and personality of the character. What he came up with was absolutely brilliant: A whiny voice attached to a character whose only wish is to create anarchy.
I love Jack Nicholson’s portrayal of the Joker too, but it gets overshadowed by Ledger’s. Nicholson actually played the character as a joking clown and never really came off as menacing in any way. He even had the gun that shot out a little flag that said “bang.” What was also interesting when comparing the two films is that Burton’s decided to include the whole back story of how The Joker was created by falling into a vat of chemicals, while Nolan decided to completely leave off the back story. This creates an extra layer of mystery around the character and makes him even creepier.
The screenplay by Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan Nolan is absolutely amazing. It takes real genius to be able to weave together so many different storylines of so many different characters while giving them all enough time to develop. Somehow the Nolans have managed to pull this off. Each character has their important scenes allowing us to find out about them and actually care about them. But it also doesn’t overuse characters. Having villains as great as The Joker and Two Face could lead to a temptation to use those characters a lot, but the Nolans use them just enough and only when they are really needed.
“Batman Begins” was a great film as well, but the main problem I had with that film was the villain. Ra’s Al Ghul never came off as threatening at all, though Liam Neeson does what he can with the role. However, “Begins” was merely a starting point. Nolan uses it to not only establish Batman as a character, but also uses it to establish his own Batman universe. His Batman universe is much darker than we have ever seen it, with Batman being equally dark. This darkness of Nolan’s vision adds more to the realism that he created with his universe whereas, with the Schumacher films, Gotham had almost become a more playful, lighter place.
It’ll be interesting to see where a third film would go. I’ve heard recent rumors of Nolan working on some rough outlines, but he doesn’t really like much of what he’s come up with so far. It will be an incredibly tough job considering what happens at the end of this film coupled with the tragic loss of Heath Ledger. I have heard that they don’t plan to replace Ledger, which I think is for the best because it just wouldn’t be the same. I just don’t think anybody could match what he accomplished here. I think the Nolans’ best bet would be to move on to another villain or, if a certain someone didn’t truly die at the end of this film as there is strong reason to believe, they could always use them again. My only hope is that the Nolans take their time in writing the next story and if it is even half as good as this one was, then we can all prepare to be blown away yet again.
4/4 stars.