Villains

Dr. Horrible is now only available on iTunes. It's only $3.99, though, so not bad. There are better villains than Dr. Horrible, though.

I watched The Dark Knight last night. I don't know why I should even talk about it, since everyone's going to see it anyway, but I can't resist. There's something about superhero movie sequels that defy the tradition of sequels not being as good as the original. Until Spiderman 2 my favorite superhero movie was X-Men 2, and now I think it's this Batman sequel. I never really could get into the cartoony, over-the-top silly older Batman movies, no matter who played Batman, and I really appreciate the attempt at realism this new re-imagining of the franchise has made.

First, the good.  Heath Ledger is amazing. All I'd seen him in before was The Brothers Grimm (very cool, Matt Damon is in it, too), and A Knight's Tale, neither of which were really roles to stretch an actor. Now, posthumously he has become one of my favorite actors, for stealing the show from Batman as a villain I'd always thought was really ridiculous. He makes it completely believable. I've never been fond of the Batman villains, but they made a convincing Scarecrow in Batman Begins and now an amazing Joker (but my favorite villain is still Magneto from the two good X-Men movies). I also hate the whole overdone killer clown gimmick, and movies that have senseless mind-game violence like Saw. But.... The Dark Knight has a killer clown villain who loves senseless mind-game violence for the purpose of brining about anarchy, and they did it right and it was awesome.

I honestly thought the movie was over at one point, having done a very good job with every stage of a typical hero/villain storyline in about 90 minutes. The movie could have ended there and already been one of the best superhero movies, but there's another hour after that, and I was hoping for still another hour after that! It kept me guessing and on the edge of my seat; I've seen very few movies that have kept my attention so completely. I could fill pages and pages with praise for this movie, but it would get old. It's not enough to beat my Children of Men/Serenity/Fight Club three-way tie for favorite movie, but everyone should see this movie.

It wasn't perfect, though. The gadgetry was a bit excessive, though no where near as silly as in the old Batman movies, and it didn't detract from the story, not even the impossible bat-cycle and cell-phone sonar thing. I don't like Rachel Dawes (I can't stand Katie Holmes at all, and Maggie Gyllenhaal can't act either). Harvey Dent was way too perfect in the beginning, and the movie was far too heavy with the foreshadowing. His transformation was a bit hasty, though not even in the same league of ridiculousness as the stupid way Anakin Skywalker's turn to the dark side was mishandled by that idiot George Lucas (sorry, that was off-topic, I know). The most distracting thing, though, was the stupid CGI Two-Face... face. It didn't look close to realistic, and was just lame. A make-up job would have been much cheaper, and more realistic, and less irritating. All is forgiven, though, since the movie was easily amazing enough to more than make up for these weaknesses. Go see it!