Batman : Legend of the Dark Knight

I went to see the new summer blockbuster today. Anxious to see Heath Ledger's last role before his untimely death. His Joker is a demented, violent monster to be sure. Yet honestly it never really connected for me.

He claimed to be against order, but many of his actions were the definition of order gven his detaile dplanning. Even his violent acts were not shocking or really even that scary. Given that you aren't made to care for most of his victims, many of who are murderous crooks anyway, before their death.

That's basically the problem with the entire movie for me. I'm not led to care for anyone in the movie, which made the tragic events that happen to most of them have no meaning to me.

Take the Rachel character who is a carry over from Batman Begins, though with a new and new better actress in the role. She is sadly nothing but a trophy or prize in the entire movie though. Her entire role in the movie is something for Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent and eventually the Joker to seek or control. Yet she herself has little character at all, leaving me to wonder why the men saught after her so.

Christian Bale in the starring role is an odd duck for me. He nails the Bruce Wayne persona spectacurlarly, be it as the dimwitted playboy acting, or the sardonic wit sparring with Alfred or Mr. Fox. Yet as soon as the costume goes on, the emotion goes out.

Batman just looks stiff and awkward on the screen, which makes all of these huge fight scenes with him look fairly lame and at times boring. I think that's more to do with costume design and special effects though.

Though perhaps its that the mask/costume hides emotion, making it hard to care. Comparing it to Iron Man movie, Batman is about darkly litted fist fights. While Iron Man had him blowing things up, shooting missles and the like. Much more visually stimulating. Perhaps if there isn't a better way to show emotion with the bat costume, they should go for more visual interesting effects?

All in all, I'm just left sort of underwhelmed by LOTDK. It just doesn't seem to have much heart in it, and while good Ledger's Joker grew tedious over the length. I'm certainly glad I only had to pay $1 for the movie.