Well, there’s no point in adding to the chorus of blog posts about how amazing Ledger’s performance was, or how annoying Bale’s Batman voice is (it took me a few minutes to realize that it actually makes sense, plot-wise), so I’ll just go with this: I’m surprised the movie got the reception and word-of-mouth it did.

This is very much not a Batman movie (yeah, I know that bit has been said as well), and I wonder how the people who saw the first screenings came away so impressed — maybe because they expected the franchise to jump the shark (again) after Batman Begins, and they were surprised that Nolan decided instead to go in a completely different direction?

This is inarguably a very well-done, well-written movie, but I just fail to see anything in it that makes it mythical. Or maybe it’s the superhero movie of our times, one that can share billboards with the likes of Saw and Hostile… and I’m not sure how I feel about that. That’s not really what I’m looking for in a Batman flick, even if this was probably a better Watchmen movie than the Watchmen movie can ever be (and it didn’t have “Batman” in the title anyway).

I was curious about how they shot the hospital blowing up — because everything can be put on screen with good special effects, but it never looks quite as real as that did:

en.wikipedia.org

In London at the defunct Battersea Power Station, a rigged 200-foot fireball was filmed, reportedly for an opening sequence, prompting calls from local residents who feared a terrorist attack on the station. A similar incident occurred during the filming in Chicago, when an abandoned Brach’s candy factory (which was Gotham Hospital in the film) was demolished.

Wow.

I’m sure they had backup plans in case Heath Ledger screwed up his performance during the rather long tracking shot that filmed the entire explosion, but that’s still damn ambitious.

It must be nice to be a director when you can just buy an abandoned building and fill all the rooms with kerosene to make a nice shot.