Batman – The Dark Knight starts two years after the events of Batman Begins.

Rating: 10/10 (8 December 2017)

Batman - The Dark Knight (EUA, 2008)
Batman Begins, as the name suggests, was a promise of a new beginning (not a remake or a comeback) to Batman's story. We needed to forget Tim Burton's and Joel Schumacher's movies and all those "colorful and exaggerated things". The main idea is to show the Batman in a real world, like ours, with people willing to change Gotham City. Batman – The Dark Knight starts two years after the events of Batman Begins. The director Christopher Nolan builds his new plot around a more experienced and altruistic Bruce Wayne/Batman (Christian Bale) than ever. If Nolan, in Batman Begins, introduced to the general public a complex main character, full of hatred and bitterness (as a strong sense of justice), in this case, Nolan opens a new world of possibilities, raising the dramatic elements to a new level. After two years since Batman's (Christian Bale) emergence, the criminals in Gotham City have much to fear. Working with Alfred (Michael Caine) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), receiving help from the lieutenant James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and the public promoter Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), Batman fights against the organized crime, headed by Salvatore Maroni (Eric Roberts), which is established in every Gotham City corner. This time, Katie Holmes (Rachel Dawes in Batman Begins) does not return to the role of the love interest. Magie Gyllenhall (Rachel Dawes in Batman - The Dark Knight) takes Katie Holmes place. However, a new threat appears in Gotham, as the Joker (Heath Ledger) wants to prove that anyone who has a bad day can face madness. Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker deserves some comments. The early tragic death of Heath Ledger, in January of 2008, when he accidentally overdosed on a lethal combination of pills, being found unconscious in his apartment, moved a legion of fans of the actor and the character, proving to be a factor that boosted the film's box office. Ledger's performance will remain in the history of the cinema. The Joker created by Ledger and Nolan is a psychopath, a brash murderer and an anarchist. He has just one rule: he lives without rules, he lives in an anarchically world and he wants to spread chaos. The way he talks, moves and operate contribute to the fact that his Joker cannot be compared to any other version of the character, even Jack Nicholson's, who became worldwide known for his acting as the Joker. Nicholson's Joker is much more like the Joker created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, in 1940 - a thief who repeatedly bothers Batman. Nolan's version of the Joker, created together with his brother and co-producer Jonathan Nolan, and with Heath Ledger, really scares everyone, even a grown man. The character's construction is simple, deep and creepy. The director Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan tell us a gripping story in 152 minutes, proposing just one thing: How would the Batman be in the real world? Well, Christopher and his brother seek in dozens of comic books this answer. However, the movie uses three main comics as inspiration: Batman: The long Halloween (written by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale), Batman: Year One (written by the great Frank Miller) and finally Batman: The Killing Joke (written by Alan Moore). We have here strong influences, mostly in the Joker found in Batman: The Killing Joke, in which the villain wants to prove to Batman that the trigger of madness and insanity is just a bad day (a really bad day). By the way, two moments deserve a special comment: the truck's chase and the hospital explosion. The realism, created by Christopher Nolan, goes beyond anything he'd done so far. The scenes are captured in real time, in just one roll, without CGI, deserving our applause. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy is a representative of the fact that superhero movies can be serious and profitable. The Dark Knight Rises, launched in 2012, cannot overcome his predecessor though it manages to successfully finish the story started in Batman Begins, which opened a range of possibilities to Warner Bros. Entertainment.