Posted on 07/21/2008 6:22:11 AM PDT by Perdogg
KAPOW! The new Batman movie "The Dark Knight" smashed the weekend record set by "Spider-Man 3" last year, selling an estimated $155.3 million worth of tickets during its first three days of release across the United States and Canada, distributor Warner Bros. Pictures said on Sunday.
The hotly anticipated film, co-starring late actor Heath Ledger as the anarchic Joker, surpassed the $151.1 million haul for "Spider-Man 3" during its first weekend in May 2007.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
“Momma Mia” came in second with $28 Million.
Now...let's see. Spend $28 and see the movie this weekend, or wait three months and rent it for $4. Use the remaining $24 to buy a couple of steaks and a decent bottle of wine. Hmmm...don't think I'll be going to the movies again any time soon.
Lets see if I have this straight. The new iPhone, a $200 item, broke a sales record by selling 1 million units in 3 days. Now, a movie breaks opening weekend records.
Yep, the economy is in dire straights and Americans have no disposable income. Yep, I’ll continue to buy that line......
When Hollywood actually use the “number of ticket sales” as opposed to the “gross dollars of ticket sales” to determine a record, then I'll be impressed. With movie tickets increasing every year, then you will always have “records”.
I think HP6 could topple this.
I know a lot of Americans are having a tough time right now, but a lot are also able to spend on cell phones, movie tickets, eating out, etc. Until the former group outnumbers the latter group you will have a hard time convincing most Americans that we are in a recession.
A large percentage of the group that's hurting financially are always in that group, many because of decisions they've made throughout life. I'm having a tough time right now. I chose to finance a business using credit card debt. It has been tough going and I'm paying the penalty for my choice. But I am not bitter at the credit card companies, they upheld their end of the bargain, it was my end and the income that has faltered.
I am a professional freelance photographer. There are more and more of us these days as newspapers cut their photo staff to the minimum. It's always been a hard business to make a go of, and now it's even rougher. I still have faith that I'll make it work. But I really don't have $28 for a movie and some popcorn!
I am thrilled that there are so many doing well enough to push this movie, not to mention cell phone sales, to a record. My parents taught me not to resent people who have done better than you, just use them to encourage yourself to buckle down, do the job and join them for the next round! I am so thankful my parents didn't teach me to envy and resent those who do well. I had an aunt that simply could not enjoy the good fortune of others, not even her own children. Sad.
We might well be on the cusp of recession or worse, but the amount of money Americans spend on movies and cell phones certainly don't show it.
Well, it is very dark and rated PG-13.
However - It was very dark, and very heavy. Don't go expecting to see Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholsen wisecracking and prancing around in a funny suit. Heath Ledger finally played the Joker as portrayed in the comics - a psychopathic murderer. Just a really, really bad guy.
Well written, well acted, good effects. Easily the best movie that I've seen in the past couple of years.
That’s why I watch free movies online.
Dark Knight was pretty good, saw it at 7am yesterday ;)
Oh please.. “Inspire Hope?” anyone who is remotely familiar with the Batman Comic Books, in particular the “Dark Night” title, know that Batman is not a book about “HOPE”... its about a very disturbed man, who in spite of little hope of ever truly winning and saving Gotham.. battles on anyway.
I hate when folks project onto things what they want, that are obviously completely ignorant of the source materials from which the movies come from. “The Dark Knight” comics are not the old Batman TV shows, they are as the title implies DARK... He battles on, in a generally dark world, knowing that the best he will ever manage is holding the line... and that is no less noble.
You want cheesy kiddy fare, you should not be going to this movie, and if you saw BATMAN RETURNS (the previous movie to this one) you’d know this out of the gate. Batman is not some 2 dimentional character anymore, you want this sort of stuff, there are pleanty of movies like that out there... personally I’m glad that hollywood has stopped dumbing down super hero movies and respected their source material.
That’s exactly what I was just thinking. In Ohio, OSU football coach Jim Tressel just released his new book, The Winners Manual, this past week. He had a number of book signings and every single signing was packed. People bought thousands of books and stood in line for hours to get them signed. Yes, we are definitely in a depression.
Heath Ledger nailed the Joker, portraying him as a psychopathic, anarchic, terrorist just as he is in the comics. Deinitely not Cesar Romero or Jack Nicholson.
A few great lines in there, as well...I liked the one by Michael Caine's character about how "some men just want to watch the world burn."
It will be interesting to see how they develop the storyline for the this version. These last two are consistant with each other, but this one was certainly more on target than the last which seemed to digress into ninja wannabes too much.
ANd on that point ou are correct. Spiderman 3 sold 21.96 million it’s opening weekend while TDK sold 21.94, because the average price of tickets increased from 6.88 for Spidey-3 to 7.08 for TDK, Batman wins due to inflation.
Whoops, that should read BATMAN BEGINS.. NOT batman returns was a joke of a movie....
Man, there were some scenes in the flick where I winced and said "Gaaa! Can't believe that they did that....."
Previous poster was right, this was not a PG-13 movie. (I didn't know that it was...just assumed an R rating) Very, very violent.
touche
I track the movie results every monday and laugh at the news reports as they go froma “gas crisis” story directly to a “top movie openings” story on Monday morning news shows. They just don’t get the irony of their own reporting and it gives me a good laugh daily.
I really had a hardy laugh at this lady in my local watering hole. She was playing the “keno” and dropping $20 at a time. That amount was lasting her about 15 minutes and she had been playing for about an hour when I got her talking about gas prices. I steered her into some heavy complaining about it and finally I said, “yeah, I wish Bush would just steal that Iraqi oil so that I could finally afford to throw my money down a keno hole too!”
She just looked at me with a blank stare on her face. Then again, I do reside in a liberal safe haven here in SE MI.
(Sorry for hijacking this thread....)
I loved the first Batman in this series and am really looking forward to this one.
We hope to see it in a DLP theater.
Make sure you hit the rest room before the movie though, it's about 2-1/2 hours long. :-)
What really blew me away was the trailer for "Watchmen" that played before the movie. WOW! Almost every image in the trailer is taken directly from the comic. If Zack Snyder (the director) can do as well keeping the story line intact, then that will be a movie I will go and see again and again.
It would seem that some illustrated novel fans are aware of these dark origins in the Batman saga. Batman was thoroughly sanitized in its TV incarnation with Adam West. The general public doesn’t have the knowledge you apparently do. I was glad to see the review I posted and to ask that my young grandchildren not be exposed to the kind of moral equivalency shown in this film.
Perhaps the rating should be changed to R. There are things more dangerous than nudity and violence to the young teenage mind.
Saw it twice this weekend.
The second time around the plot becomes much clearer. Easily the best TRUE to character superhero movie to date. Still they are miss showing how smart Bruce Wayne really is, just like They missed Peter Parker’s brains in the Spidey movies.
I don’t think it shows any Nihilism at all. Batman does what is RIGHT through the whole thing. He is undoubtedly good while the Joker is purely evil. I would suggest seeing the movie instead of reading articles by some clown and making your judgment second-hand.
If anything it shows that we should keep doing good even if its unpopular. (IE today’s society in the US)
The Dark Knight was a truly great movie. If Ledger doesn’t get an Oscar, it will be a travesty of justice. Ledger’s “Joker” should go down as the best superhero villain in movie history — possibly matched only by Terrence Stamp’s “General Zod” of Superman II. Kevin Spacey’s “Lex Luthor”, Alfred Molina’s “Doc Ock”, and Nicholson’s “Joker” would probably round out the top 5, but lag far behind those two.
Not only that, but I’d place Ledger’s Joker among some of the greatest characters in ALL movies, not just the superhero genre. Ledger managed to pull off truly sadistic and somewhat amusing simultaneously. A great character. I cannot recommend this movie highly enough.
The movie was dark — Ledger was quite creepy — but, other than Harvey Dent’s fire-damaged face, is was not particularly graphic. Not for kids, but pre-teens and teens should be fine.
I am thrilled that someone has finally gotten Batman right.
A+
H
Thanks for that link. My son saw this movie and liked it. The reviews I’ve seen (such as the one you posted) are disturbing which means I’ll go see this so I can discuss it. It seems much of the entertainment and world view aimed at young adults is nihilistic and therefore they latch onto this familiar theme when they see it.
If the reviews are correct not only is the Joker a pure demonstration of Nihilism but the “hero” response of telling a lie for the greater good is as well. Perhaps these reviews are wrong, I’ll find out for myself.
>> it wasn’t just one review - the “cool” crowd is reveling in the way “good” is pulled down to the level of “evil” - now if that isn’t nihilism, what is?
I’m not sure its any more nihilistic than Jack Bauer in 24. He does what is necessary. Batman doesn’t kill — but he isn’t a lighthearted idealistic character. He is ultimately driven to combat crime to avenge the murder of his parents.
But, ultimately, the Dark Knight is a movie showing the differences b/w good and evil ... and, even with a darker hero, there are obvious differences. There are lessons that can be learned from such a movie. Batman isn’t an idealistic hero like Superman or Luke Skywalker — he’s more like a Han Solo or Jack Bauer. Lessons can be learned from both.
H
Thanks - I appreciate your thoughtful response.
c
And therein lies the problem, particularly with the media's coverage of the new film, since the reporters can't resist using the cheezy "Bam! Pow! Crash!" or "Holy Bat Freak!" exclamations of the Adam West Batman show to open their pieces about the current movie. This tends to lead the uniformed movie-goer into beleiving that Nolan's Batman is just another offshoot of West's Batman, which it is not.
I’m 39 and I loved every minute of it. It was pretty simple to understand: Joker bad, Joker nuts, Joker smarter than cops, Joker not smarter than Batman but smarter and more vicious than Batman expected.
Thanks for the re cap. My husband is 73 and I am 68, you are younger than our son. I am glad my dinner didn’t sit well with me and I got to leave. LOL!
I actually cheered a couple of times during the preview for Watchmen. It was almost cruel to put a movie after that great a preview, luckily the movie was good enough to survive.
If the audience didn’t know from the first movie that this was the original/ newer spookier darker meaner Batman then they should have paid attention to the previews. If they didn’t get the hint from the previews which made it pretty clear that none of these characters are particularly sane then they should have paid attention to the posters. If they didn’t get from the posters that this Joker wasn’t the funny crazy but really seriously disturbed then they’re just dumb.
This is a Batman movie. The character has been borderline nuts or worse for the vast majority of its existence. The first movie caught the movie Batman up with the comicbook Batman. The movie was titled Dark Knight. People really need to pay attention.
If the Joker is a pure demonstration of Nihilism and also supposed to be the worst villain ever, then wouldn’t the hero come across as anti-nihilism? And I sort of don’t know about the whole ‘telling a lie’ thing - most superheroes have secret identities, and there’s usually a significant amount of lying and deception involved in keeping those secret (ie, Peter Parker’s spider-man pics that he had his girlfriend or whoever take for the paper and are passing off as his is technically plagiarism or something like that).
Personally, I found it to be an amazing movie. Very dark and violent, and it presents some truths about humanity that aren’t pretty (like that humans tend to not be inherently good, that evil can’t be satisfied, etc) but I think I prefer that to light-hearted, ‘everyone comes through for good at some point or another because of internal warm fuzzy feelings and the villian even breaks down in tears about his tragic upbringing at some point in the movie’ kind of stuff you get way too often. And, overall, it had a pretty conservative message, if you want to view things politically. Not to mention good writing, acting that blew me away, great special effects, good camera work and lighting, etc.
The reviewer is a goob. It’s not a nihilistic movie. It’s very clear in the movie that Batman in the end is a good guy who stands for good things, he’s just not sane, and in this movie has issues with the side effects of being a vigilante (primarily being that the bad guys will fight back). He questions whether it’s worth the additional bloodshed that comes when the bad guys fight back, but in the end he’s reminded by two people and one major plot point event I won’t spoil that it is indeed worth the fight, both because bad guys do need to be fought and because the population is worth the effort.
I’m actually kind of surprised the movie did so well. The real Batman, the dark mean not sane Batman who wears Bruce Wayne as a mask has never struck me as good “popular” fodder. Americans are famous for their love of happy endings, something the non-happy Batman is basically not capable of. I’m not sure what this all says about the American people, I mean I’m OK with it because this is the Batman I like, but there does definitely seem to be a sea change when it comes to American entertainment with this.
To be fair about it, the comic book version of the character was going through a light-and-goofy phase during the 50s through early 60s -- the comics were only just starting to return to their grim and gritty roots when the TV show was on the air.
“wouldn’t the hero come across as anti-nihilism”
Not necessarily, he could simply be an adversary with different goals. Also secret identities or keeping a personal secret is different than a “the end justifies the means” motive.
“it presents some truths about humanity that aren’t pretty (like that humans tend to not be inherently good,) “
The themes that humans aren’t good and humans are inherently evil are exactly what I expect a nihilistic world view to present for both the good and the bad guys. I guess I’ll see.
I hope you’re correct. That is a movie I’d like to see. One of the themes of nihilism is that it’s corrosive effects destroy the good around it. These reviews saying Batman tortures someone and Batman lies (the “good” Batman can only fight evil with evil) are pretty much in line with that thinking. Hopefully it’s not true.
I don’t remember Batman torturing anybody, Harvey Dent does a little but not as much as it appears. Other than the normal lies one must make in order to protect a secret identity and have a secret plan within a seriously corrupt police force Batman’s only lie is to protect someone’s public image, and in the course of that lie he makes a major sacrifice. I can’t get deeper into it without completely blowing the ending but it’s definitely not nihilistic.
The humans not being INHERENTLY good part of the story (emphasis for importance) is a big part of the story of the redemption of the city. There’s a big situation where people CHOOSE good because the people of Gotham are learning to be good people. One of the big themes of the movie is that Batman and Dent (the Dark Knight and the White Knight) are leading a moral revival of the city. Prior to the first movie the citizens of Gotham accepted rampant crime, a corrupt police force and terrible living conditions, during the course of this movie they’re learning to not accept these things, to do good, to fight back, learning they can be something other than a criminal or a victim.
“but it wasn’t just one review - the ‘cool’ crowd is reveling in the way ‘good’ is pulled down to the level of ‘evil’”
The “cool crowd” is a bunch of idiots with little comprehension. I remember when people lamented falling eading comprehension. These dopes exhibit failing watching comprehension.
Without giving any spoilers, yes, one good guy does fall. That’s life, isn’t it? Good people sometimes fail to stay good. (Someone once said something about this, all people being flawed - I think he used the word sinners - and needing redemption?) Batman, though, refuses to “fall” and puts good above all else, even himself. Others do, too. Trust the “cool crowd” libdims to miss that, though.
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