I just saw it and almost walked out. I was expecting a great movie, a great performance by the Joker. It was disappointing, certainly does not live up to the hype. It was hard to follow and LONG and SLOW. The story was all over the place. Yeah, the Joker was good but I would expect that, I just didn’t see anything that really memorable about Heath Ledger’s performance or that we haven’t seen before in a Clock Work Orange or in Jack Nicholson Shining, both of which had better performances.
Then there were the contrasts – The Joker was gritty, something out of a slasher or gangster movie but everybody else comic bookish (particularly Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Dent). There was no focused plot. The editing was horrible. There were many scenes that are hard to follow with the camera changing quickly with no
resolution of the prior scene. Climactic moments were anti-climactic – like how exactly DID they catch the joker the first time after the truck chase? I saw Commissioner Gordon touch the Joker in the neck and all of a sudden the Joker was in Jail. Other points of the plot just didn’t makes sense — like why could they not have rescued both Harvey Dent and the girlfriend at the same time?
I was disappointed with the special effects, and expected more – Die hard had better chase scenes. What WAS the point of spending $18 for 2 to see this on a big screen??
The humor was non-existent – which in my opinion is essential in these kinds of movies. Except for the weird attempts at clock-work orange type of humor that the joker made everyone once in a while (which the audience sporadically laughed at in an obligatory fashion as if they all read the reviews and KNEW that Heath Ledger is SOOOOO wicked and Batman is SUCH a loser and we need to make everyone known around us know that..)
In my opinion a 4/10 movie. The whole thing is just hype about Heath Ledger. He really wasn’t even on screen that much, or at least not long enough to really give you a sense of dominating the move. He never made you that scared of him and the ending was anti-climactic.
For context, I’m old enough to call comic books just that and not “graphic novels” and grew up with all the Stan Lee classics and was a collector. I love the new Marvel movies, Spiderman, Iron Man, X-Men, etc. They do justice to the series. I was never much of a DC person but did like Superman and Batman had potential. But it seems that with this movie we are entering the dark confusion of the new souless Goth generation that appreciates a superhero only because they can show how great the villain is.
My guess and hope is after the Emo kids get through with it the rest of us will roll our eyes and the hype and box office returns will quickly die. Hopefully this is NOT where superhero movies are going. The overall feeling I was left with at the end of the move was of a dark, barely memorable morass.