In the world of cinema, people will argue what the best movie is.
Fellow staff writer John Bricker thinks that an anime movie is better than a crafted piece of film perfection and I can say with full confidence that he is wrong.
Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is the greatest movie ever made. Period.
The Dark Knight trilogy itself left a legendary legacy on what a superhero movie could be and what it meant to be a trilogy.
The stories intertwine beautifully and the character development of Bruce Wayne is impeccable.
Although I can rave for hours about the masterpiece Nolan crafted over the span of three movies, the best movie of all time is one film and one film only.
The middle piece to the trilogy captures the essence of what it means to be Batman on screen and what a struggling man must give up in the name of justice.
The character arcs for Wayne, Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon all show the rise and fall of three heroic figures with different outcomes.
Wayne fought as a vigilante and ends up a wanted criminal. Dent, once a hero of the city, ends up dead. While Gordon becomes praised and promoted as the new police commissioner.
All three outcomes resemble how dancing with the law can benefit one person and tarnish another.
Individually taking apart the characters, Wayne’s development shines, showing him face his match in the Joker and struggle to see what it means to fight for a city.
Stellar performances make the character development seem more real to the viewer.
Christian Bale as Batman and Heath Ledger as the Joker steal the show with brilliantly chilling depictions of the beloved characters.
Ledger’s acting is deranged on screen, creating laughs and uncomfortable moments for the audience.
The movie’s plot is so dense and is accompanied by a tense tone that throughout the film tricks the audience to think that this could all happen in real life.
Without Batman being present in the movie at all, the film would still work well as a corrupt cop movie looking for a manic lunatic tearing through Gotham.
Having a plot that can stand alone without the superhero that the movie is named after is something other films do not achieve.
Name any Marvel movie that would work without the main hero. You can’t.
Nolan delivers a genre-bending film while also making it look beautiful in the process.
The cinematography for “The Dark Knight” is impeccable with darkness playing the real hero in the film.
Scenes where Batman is hidden in the shadows while the subject in the sequence is kept in focus adds an eerie layer to shots that if executed poorly would come off as dark.
There had been arguments and video breakdowns calling out Nolan’s poor choices for filming action scenes, specifically the bike chase, but a few jumbled cuts in a hectic scene does not take away from the tension felt within action sequences.
The film mixes a perfect amount of action to coincide with well drawn-out characters that make for a near perfect movie thrill ride.
“The Dark Knight” might be categorized a superhero movie, but it is so much more.
The film can be enjoyed by anyone and is a must watch for someone who has not yet felt the rush that the movie provides.
