Review of the Reviews

The first review of the Dark Knight was a positive one from Timeout. The review started with opinions the author had on overall aspect of the movie. The author than moved towards describing the actors and how their performances affected his review. He then went on to compliment the filming and directing and ended with a conclusion to restate his ideas in the first paragraph. The author persuades you to liking the movie by showing you that the actors were good together and were able to play the roles very well although he does not speak much to the story of the movie. The reviews tone is favorable and you can tell by the word choice used by the author that he is favorable of the movie. The author focuses mainly on the actors. He references how they were able to embody their characters and they worked very well together on the screen. The author references how Christopher Nolan had to separate the interesting parts from the Batman comics in order to make the movie fun and captivating.

The second negative review of the Dark Knight was from the Wall Street Journal. The author organizes the article by dividing the paragraphs between different descriptions of how the acting was. The author references how the old Batman films were made and shows the stark contrast between Heath Ledger and Jack Nicholson. The author liked the Nicholson joker better and so did not have a very good view with how Ledger portrayed the Joker. The author focuses mostly on the acting of the film in his paragraphs.

I agree with the statement made in the negative review that "the elaborate action sequences are pounding but arrhythmic, like extended cardiac seizures". I think the music used during these scenes made it very extravagant and the camera work added a lot of excitement by switching between camera shots.

In the positive review, I agree with the statement "Nolan sidesteps the analyst’s couch and plunges us straight into battle." The beginning scene puts you right into the action and shows you exactly how the character of the Joker is. You can see how the Joker acts first hand without any earlier descriptions from other characters. It also creates a more suspenseful movie because the Joker acts in such a restless and compulsive way that you never really know what to expect from him for the rest of the movie.

I think the positive review would be more convincing. It had much more reasons that related to the actually movie rather than relating it back to previous Joker actors. The second review relied too heavily on past movies that it did not really focus on the negatives of the current Dark Knight movie.

I would like to leave in the way that the acting is. I really like how the Joker is portrayed in the Dark Knight because he truly embodies a criminal that you never really know what is going on in his mind. I think I would leave out references to other Batmans such as the TV show or the older movies because I believe the new trilogy is meant to be completely different and the director took a whole new approach to Batman's character.