At the end of every month, I will be releasing an itinerary for next month. Get used to it.

There will be two movies and two video games. This will be the normal schedule, with an exception if an event is happening. Events planned for October, December, January, February, April, May, and June.

September 6th: Batman: Arkham City(game)

September 13th: Terminator 2: Judgement Day(movie)

September 20th: Call of Duty: Black Ops II(game)

September 27th: Rocketman(movie)

Thanks to everybody who read the last post, and have a god day!

Why So Serious? – Heath Ledger as The Joker

The Dark Knight is a masterpiece of a movie. To call it a movie is an insult to the piece. Nay, it is a seven-course meal! Sit down, my friend, let us dig in to this feast of cinematic artwork!

I’ll stop the enormous praise now, and get to the cold, hard facts. I will start with a general intro, then move to a summary, head to the good and the bad, the cast and crew, and the reviews of actual critics.

The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero movie directed by Christopher Nolan. It starred Christian Bale as Batman, Micheal Caine as Alfred, Heath Ledger as Joker, Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, Gary Oldman as Commissioner James Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, and Cillian Murphy as Scarecrow. It was released as the second movie in The Dark Knight trilogy(also known as the Nolan trilogy), and made 1.005 billion dollars at the box office.

Now here is the general summary. Spoiler warning ahead for those of you who have never seen it. I highly recommend you do. I will do a cast review after this, so stay tuned!

In Gotham City, 2008, a group of five criminals rob a bank controlled by the Gotham Mob. after completing their specific tasks, the criminals kill each other until one is left: The Joker, who kills everyone in the bank and escapes with 68 million. Later that night, after apprehending Scarecrow, Bruce Wayne, AKA Batman, finds out about the robbery and tells Captain James Gordon not to worry about it, telling him instead to focus on taking down the mob with the help of Gotham DA Harvey Dent, Gotham’s White Knight. Bruce believes that with Dent as Gotham’s protector, he can retire as Batman and live a life with Rachel Dawes, his former lover who is now romantically involved with Dent.

The next day, Gordon meets with Dent, asking him to back up his operation on the mob. Dent agrees, on the condition that he meets with Batman. At the same time, the three heads of the Gotham Mob(Salvatore Maroni, Chechen, and Gambol) have a videoconference with their accountant, Lau, who tells them that he has moved their funds to Hong Kong with him. The Joker interrupts, telling the Mob that Batman will track down Lau and make him talk. He offers to kill batman in exchange for half of all of the money in the Mob, saying that Batman has stricken fear into their hearts. The Mob argues on what to do, with Gambol putting a bounty on Joker’s head. Later, Joker finds and kills Gambol, taking over his gang and causing the mob to take him up on his offer.

Lucius Fox designs a new suit for Bruce, who takes it to Hong Kong to track down Lau. He finds and kidnaps him, taking him back to Gordon, who uses him to allow Dent to arrest the entire Mob. The Joker threatens to begin killing people if Batman does not reveal his identity to the public, setting his sights on Commissioner Gillian Loeb, Judge Sorrello, Harvey Dent, and Mayor Anthony Garcia. he succeeds in killing the former two, but Harvey is saved by Batman, while Gordon dies protecting the Mayor. Harvey then learns that Rachel is Joker’s next target.

Bruce decides to reveal his identity to prevent further deaths, but Harvey falsely tells the public that he is Batman. While being taken to the precinct, Joker attacks Harvey’s convoy, but is stopped by Batman and Gordon, who faked his death, earning him a promotion to Commissioner. Harvey and Rachel are picked up by cops on the Mob’s payroll, with Gordon discovering this later. Batman interrogates Joker for the locations, who tells him where they are, but making him choose who to save, due to the fact that both are in buildings full of bombs. Batman goes to Rachel, while Gordon goes to Dent. They realize that the locations were swapped, and that Batman had arrived to Dent, when the bombs explode, killing Rachel and disfiguring half of Dent’s face. The Joker, meanwhile, escapes the GCPD with Lau, who leads him to the Mob’s funds. Joker kills Lau and the Chechen, burning the money in the process.

Coleman Reese, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, deduces that Bruce Wayne is Batman and threatens to tell the public to prevent further deaths. Joker threatens to blow up a hospital if Reese is not killed within a hour, because he doesn’t want Reese interfering with his plan. All hospitals are evacuated, with Gordon securing Reese at Gotham City News. The Joker disguises himself as a hospital nurse and breaks into Dent’s room, convincing him to seek revenge for Rachel’s death. The Joker then destroys the Hospital, stealing a busload of hostages in the process. Dent goes on a killing spree, killing the cops on the Mob’s payroll and Maroni, before kidnapping Gordon’s family, believing that their love for each other parallels his love for Rachel.

After announcing that he will rule Gotham by nightfall, Joker rigs the ferryboats evacuating people(one filled with citizens, the other with prisoners) with explosives, giving each boat the trigger to the other. He threatens to destroy them both if one is not destroyed by midnight. Batman finds Joker using a sonar device that spies on the whole city, with the reluctant help of Lucius Fox, and apprehends him. The two boats refuse to blow each other up. Joker taunts Batman, telling him that all of Dent’s good work will be undone when the city finds out about his killing spree.

Gordon and Batman arrive at the building where Rachel was killed and find Dent holding Gordon’s family hostage. Gordon tells Dent to take his vengeance out on those responsible for Rachel’s murder, which Dent does, shooting Batman in the chest and pointing the gun at himself. However, Batman was wearing body armor, and tackles Dent off the building to his death. Batman tells Gordon to blame him for the murders, saying that if Dent’s reputation is ruined, all his good work will be undone. The film ends with Gordon destroying the bat-signal, Lucius Fox destroying the sonar device, and Alfred burning a letter from Rachel saying that she would have left Dent for Bruce.

The Best Scene

Anybody who is an intellectual will tell you the best scene in The Dark Knight. There are many good scenes(The opening bank heist, the Joker interrupting the Mob meeting, the scar stories, the hospital scene), but the best is the interrogation room scene. Here, the Joker shows us just how much power he has over Batman, in the fact that Batman has nothing to threaten him with. Heath Ledger plays Joker in a way we have never seen, because remember, the only other big screen Joker we had was Jack Nicholson’s Joker in ’89. He played it like he was wanting to take over a city, but Ledger plays it like a man who thinks that blowing up a hospital is genuinely funny. His line, “I don’t want to kill you!” that he shouts a Batman shows us that he thinks everything is just a joke. He doesn’t even care that Batman tosses him around like a rag doll, he just wants to have fun.

The good stuff

This movie is 152 minutes of pure goodness. If I tried to say all the good things about this movie, this section would take hours. However, some things stand above the rest. The aforementioned Interrogation scene, the Bank heist, the Mob meeting, The Joker’s stories about how he got his scars, the hospital scene, the Joker burning a pile of money and saying it’s about sending a message, the Joker and Batman’s fight at the end, the Joker testing if Batman will hit him on the road, Batman flipping a goddamn 18-wheeler, every scene with Harvey Dent/Two-Face, the list goes on.

The bad stuff

There is nothing wrong with this movie.

The Cast and Crew

The Cast of this movie does a phenomenal job, giving their hardest effort in every scene that they are in.

Christian Bale is a Welsh actor(age 45), and is the epitome of what every actor should strive to be when playing Batman. As well as having the best Batman voice ever, he excels at playing billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. He works very well with other actors, especially Micheal Caine and Aaron Eckhart. He also did all of his own stunts, making his work as Batman all the more impressive. His very outstanding resume includes film such as: The Machinist, The Prestige, Reign Of Fire, American Psycho, and Vice.

Sir Micheal Caine is a British actor(age 86) with a career spanning more then 70 years and 130 films, but is now mostly known for playing Alfred in the Nolan trilogy. Giving a Grade-A performance, he plays the role of mentor/friend of Batman very well, giving advice at the right times and helping him with whatever he needs. Even so, he also plays the side of his character that knows Bruce will die quite well, with a particularly memorable set of dialogue talking about knowing one’s limits. His career includes: Inception, The Prestige, The Italian Job, and A Muppet Christmas Carol.

Heath Ledger was an Australien actor(died at age 28) who delivered the best performance of the Joker in history, as well as the scariest. Before Ledger’s Joker, all we had were Cesar Romero form the 60’s and Jack Nicholson from ’89. Both were not that serious, but were still enjoyable to watch. Ledger took this to a whole new level. I can’t really describe how good he was in the movie, you will just have to see it for yourself. His career included: A Knight’s Tale, Brokeback Mountain, 10 Things I Hate About You, and Patriot.

Gary Oldman is a British actor(age 61) who disappears into all his roles, and this is no exception. Instead of seeing an old, slightly overweight British man, you just see good ol’ Commissioner Gordon. As a police officer who would do anything to uphold the law, he was sort of underused in the movie. This is in no means a bad thing, as this makes way for Christian Bale and Heath Ledger. His career includes: Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Leon: The Professional, Darkest Hour, The Fifth Element, JFK, and The Harry Potter movies 3-5.

Aaron Eckhart is an American actor(age 51) who plays one of my personal favorite Batman villains in this movie: Two-Face. He does an amazing job pulling off the tortured duality of the character, and his death helps set up the next movie and the character arc of Batman in that movie. Playing a DA with such skill that you may think he went to Law School, He was admittedly shoehorned into the third act of the movie, but at least he did a damn fine job of it. His career includes: The first two “Has Fallen” movies, Thank You For Smoking, Erin Brockovitch, Love Happens, and Sully.

Morgan Freeman is an American actor(age 82), and plays Lucius Fox in this movie, CEO of Wayne Enterprises and tech guy to Batman. My own nominee for most underused actor in this movie, he still does a fine job as Fox, delivering some funny lines such as: “Mr. Reese. You think that the owner of Wayne Enterprises is secretly a masked vigilante who spends his nights beating criminals to a pulp with his bare hands….and your plan is to blackmail this person?” Very funny. His career includes: The Shawshank Redemption, Seven, Bruce Almighty, Now You See Me, Million Dollar Baby, and Unforgiven.

Let’s not be forgetting The Crew.

Christopher Nolan is an English Director(age 49) who blows my tiny mind every time I see one of his movies. He nails every movie he has ever done, going into the smallest details to make his movies perfect. He gets only the highest actors in his movies, and Directs, Writes, and Produces all of his movies. He also wears a full-on dress suit when directing. His career is: Memento, Insomnia, Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Inception, The Dark Knight Rises, Interstellar, and Dunkirk.

Hans Zimmer is a German Composer(age 61) who has done work on multiple movies, but is most famous for this one. Christopher Nolan insists on having an all-original soundtrack in his movies, and Zimmer did not disappoint. He Composed the famous “Joker Theme”, which is a single rising Violin chord. He has worked on films such as: Pirates Of The Caribbean, The Lion King, Every Nolan Movie, Gladiator, Man Of Steel, and The Da Vinci Code.

For the actual critic reviews, I will be going to be giving the scores from audiences, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, and Metacritic.

Audience Score: 96%

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

IMDB: 9/10

Metacritic: 84

Here are some Good Quotes from the movie.

“Why So Serious?”-Joker

“Would you like how I got these scars?”-Joker

“Do I really look like a guy with a plan?”-Joker

“I believe that whatever doesn’t kill you simply makes you…stranger.”-Joker

“WHERE ARE THEY?”-Batman

“I’M NOT WEARING HOCKEY PADS.”-Batman

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”-Harvey Dent

Now it’s time to end this enormous review and give an outro.

Grossing 1.005 billion dollars. The greatest superhero ever released. Christopher Nolan’s masterpiece, Heath Ledger’s legacy, and holding its own against 100 other movies, ladies and gentlemen, I give you…..

The Dark Knight.

Watch the movie on: Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime

Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.

— Oscar Wilde.

This is the first post on my blog. I’m just getting this blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.

I’m doing this for a few reasons, them being: fame, riches, a strong desire to meet Tom Cruise, Etc.

But the main reason I am doing this is to get all the information in my head about movies/video games out of my 300 pound, egotistical head and into all of your heads. It is my choice to do this, and I’m doing it for you guys.

I will post a movie review on Wednesdays(except for this week, where i will post it Tuesday), and a Video Game review on Friday. If I have schedule conflicts, I will post something letting all the people reading my Blog know that there will be a change.

The layout of my Posts will go two separate ways, if they are movie critiques or Video game critiques.

For Movies, I will talk about the summary of the movie(spoiler warning at the beginning of each post), good points, bad points, the cast, the crew, how much it made, and what real critics think of the movie.

For Video games, I will talk about the summary, good points, bad points, the voice actors, the developer, the overall game design(world design, weapon design, car design, Etc.), the amount of DLC content, how much it made, and what actual critics think.

In the future of this Blog, we will have months devoted to specific types of video games and movies(Star wars month, Superhero month, Open World Month, FPS month, Horror Month, Etc.), but I will take your opinions. if i get negative feedback on a post, I will not post something like that.

However, The first two posts will be of my choosing. The first Movie will be The Dark Knight(2008), My all-time favorite movie. The first Video game will be GTA V(2013), my submission for the best game ever.

Subscribe to get notified about the latest post, please. I would like to know if there are people out there who read my stuff. The first post will be published on Wednesday, so get ready!