Batman : The Dark Knight Blog

One sequel, 101 names, and countless impatient fanboys.
by Jeff Giles | January 16, 2008
It’s been awhile since we ran a story about The Dark Knight, we know — but as proof that we’ve repented of our Bat-deficient ways, here’s a doozy of an item!

IESB, running with a report from BadTaste.it, has posted what is being described as the “complete character list” from the Batman Begins sequel. Attributed to “a very reliable source,” the list contains over 100 names — none of which will be divulged here, natch — and although it isn’t the spoiler-est of spoiler-type posts, it’s still a fun, unexpected treat.

You know what to do, Bat-fans…get to clickin’, and read up on who you can expect to see when The Dark Knight debuts on July 18!
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Phelim O’Neill
Friday December 21, 2007
The Guardian
If you go to see Will Smith starring in the big-budget adaptation of Richard Matheson’s influential apocalyptic vampire novel, I Am Legend, at an Imax cinema, you’ll see some spectacular scenes - but perhaps not the ones you were expecting. You’ll see an armed robber tear off his mask to reveal an even scarier visage: his whitened cheeks bearing scars cut from the corners of his mouth, with a crude, red smear of lipstick. This terrifying apparition, taking up all of the colossal Imax screen, marks moviegoers’ introduction to the Joker, as played by Heath Ledger.

If you’ve read I Am Legend or seen the previous movie adaptations (The Last Man On Earth and The Omega Man), then you’ll recall that Batman’s nemesis has thus far been conspicuous by his absence. That’s still the case, sadly, but Warners has tagged on to the programme seven minutes of its new Batman movie, The Dark Knight (six minutes being the introduction to the Joker, with the rest made up from snippets of key sequences), way ahead of the movie’s July 2008 opening date.

This experiment marks the convergence of two trends in film marketing. Firstly, the practice of delivering exclusive footage with another film. You may recall the fuss when George Lucas’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace trailer hit cinemas. In the US, for many weeks, you could only view it in theatres playing the Denzel Washington thriller, The Siege. Washington’s pre-9/11 piece of scaremongering had nothing in common with Lucas’s space opera - yet screenings were packed with Star Wars fans who had paid admission simply to catch the two-minute trailer before leaving en masse as the main feature unreeled.

The Phantom Menace trailer leads us to the second of the new marketing schemes. Trailers are traditionally, by and large, as misleading and dishonest as they can legally be: they cut together the best shots of a film without giving anything close to a true representation of what it is about. So now, usually on the internet, it’s becoming common to release a few minutes, often from the movie’s opening, to give the audience a proper taste of what to expect. This has worked exceedingly well for films with impressive opening sequences that seemed almost tailor-made to stand alone and leave viewers wanting more, such as the remake of Dawn of the Dead or Joss Whedon’s feature version of his cancelled TV show Firefly, Serenity. Perhaps that was always the intent.

It was definitely the intent this time: director Christopher Nolan was clearly looking for the big bang of the Imax trailer effect when he made The Dark Knight. Four of the film’s big action scenes were filmed in the format, a first for a blockbuster. The air was sucked out of the room by a collective gasp from those attending the preview in London recently as Gotham city appeared in razor sharp detail on a 20-metre screen.

So what has the Dark Knight footage done for the buzz about its parent film? Apart from anything else, it has silenced any doubts viewers might have had about the controversial casting of Ledger as the Joker. It may not sound particularly vital, but the core fan groups of genre - and particularly comic book-adapted movies - are incredibly vocal on the internet and can be merciless on a perceived casting mistake or thematic alteration from source material long before cameras have even stopped rolling. The effect such criticism has is palpable: the studios have run scared since the demolition job aintitcool.com did on Batman & Robin in 1997. And one happy side effect for Will Smith? It may just give I Am Legend the extra push he needs to survive a box office apocalypse

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By Shawn Adler, with additional reporting by Brian Jacks and Josh Horowitz
‘I thought the Joker was still serving hard time,’ Adam West says playfully of character now being played by Heath Ledger.

The makeup. The walk. The cockeyed posture and bubbling psychosis: For legions of Batman fans across the globe, Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in “The Dark Knight” is no laughing matter. So why are so many people smiling?

“I love it,” “Hellboy” director Guillermo del Toro gushed to MTV News. “Every time I see more of Heath Ledger’s Joker, I like it more. That’s a good sign because if something is going the wrong way, the more you see about it, the less you ingratiate yourself with it.”

Del Toro isn’t alone. Just days after the first extended “Dark Knight” trailer leaked online, fans and critics alike are singing the praises of Ledger’s portrayal, which many are already calling a pitch-perfect dramatization of Batman’s greatest nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime.

It’s a difficult role for any actor to pull off, say fans, a delicate balancing act that straddles the line between crazy and crazy-scary. That Ledger appears to pull it off so effortlessly is nothing less than a testament to director Chris Nolan’s vision, “Batman: The Animated Series” producer and writer Paul Dini insisted.

“Heath Ledger’s Joker seems perfectly suited to the dark Gotham City created by Christopher Nolan,” Dini asserted. “He seems more street than any other version of the Joker, with his clownish visage recalling hastily applied graffiti paint rather than chemically dyed skin.”

Dini is legendary among Batman aficionados for his work on the Emmy Award-winning “Batman: The Animated Series.” The show’s more famous canonical influences include an adopted redesign of Mr. Freeze (as well as a new back story for the super-villain) and the introduction of the Joker’s demented sidekick, Harley Quinn — but it was his work with the Joker himself that often earned Dini the loudest praise. His version of the character (voiced by Mark Hamill) could turn on a dime, from twisted psychopath to demented prankster — always ready with a laugh or a gag for his enemies.

Dini sees very little of that schizophrenia in Ledger’s performance, a quality that he believes makes the character that much more terrifying.

“His attitude is mordant and sardonic as opposed to manic,” Dini reflected. “No goofy gags or puns for him. This Joker doesn’t split sides … he splits skulls.”

As much of an influence Dini’s noirish vision may have had on the darker themes of Nolan’s Batman universe, no artist, perhaps, has made as big an impact on “Begins” and “Dark Knight” as Jeph Loeb, the legendary comics author of “Batman: The Long Halloween,” a 13-issue limited series that examined the origins of Harvey “Two-Face” Dent and the rise of Batman’s familiar rogues gallery after the fall of crime boss Carmine Falcone. By his own admission, Nolan credited the series as a powerful inspiration for his take on Batman.

The respect and admiration is mutual, Loeb said.

“I saw the trailer and loved it,” he enthused. “I’m as big a fan of Nolan’s and [writer David] Goyer as they are of me! They talked extensively about the influence of my work on both films — so what’s there not to like?!”

In particular, Loeb singled out Ledger’s Joker as particularly terrifying, contrasting it with previous incarnations of the character that might have been too “clowny.”

“I was never a big Nicholson fan,” Loeb said of Jack’s work as the Joker in Tim Burton’s “Batman.” “[Ledger] however feels just about right. I eagerly anticipate more!”

“If any franchise can benefit from being grittier and darker, it’s Batman,” Del Toro added. “With this I find him really scary. I find him really, really edgy and scary.”

With a scarier, grittier Joker on the loose in Gotham, what exactly is a crime-fighter to do?

Find out how the heck he got out in the first place, joked Adam West, best known to a whole generation of fans as TV’s Batman.

“The Joker? Heath Ledger?” the icon playfully questioned. “I thought the Joker was still serving hard time in Gotham State Prison.”

POW! BAM! Ledger’s Joker arrives in all his glory July 18.

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