The Dark Knight rocks!

I caught a 10:20PM show of The Dark Knight last night and it rocked! Wow!

Over 30 minutes of the effects sequences were filmed in IMAX and they look absolutely splendid-shallow depth of field, super high resolution, beautiful and very realistic for the world the film lives in.

One of the problems with most effects movies is what I call “the Star Wars effect”-the depth of field is too long in the effects shots, like in the Star Wars prequels. While watching Hellboy 2 last week (a movie I hated) I couldn’t help but notice in the effects shots that there was too much depth of field-you could see everything from near to infinity, which is actually distracting because there is so much going on on the screen, you don’t know what you should be looking at so you check out of the scene. The Dark Knight is not like that.

Christopher Nolan did a perfect job capturing a totally compelling mood and story for the film. Everything from the dark blue look to the entire movie, to the totally boss score to the performances of the ensemble cast was right on.  Heath Ledger is amazingly awesome as The Joker. He totally steals the show, which is saying a lot for his performance given that he was up against the likes of Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Cain!

What makes this movie so good is that it never strays from being about the story (and the effects serve that story well). The script is so well-written, it delves deep into themes less cursory than ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’ which would be too predictable. Think chaos vs. order, anarchy vs. conformity, establishment vs. the individual.

The Dark Knight is one of the best superhero movies ever.

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