*SPOILERS* The Dark Knight *SPOILERS*

[Hutch2004]

I can't recommend the sound track enough. "Watch the World Burn" is brilliantly tragic (played during Dent's "We tried to be decent men!" speech). All horns and strings, echoes of "Harvey Two-Face", Dent's theme, as well as the Joker's drone at the beginning. Good soundtrack, although the first few are a little same-y.

Watching the original Batman now, I can't even begin to imagine how some people are saying this is better film than Dark Knight. Nicholson is just Nicholson being Nicholson, which is great, but honestly just feels like he's on auto-pilot, where as Ledger was convincing. Liking Keaton as Bruce though, nice and tragic, but he doesn't have the burning desire to rid Gotham of crime you got from Bale.

[VinnyT]

Two-Face is NOT RETURNING, says Aaron Eckhart

[JairusCain]

Eh. It's not hard to play it off in interviews that he's not coming back just so that when he does, it'll be a surprise. It's been done before. But hey, who knows. We'll all just have to wait and see.

[Pepsi]

That's too bad if it's true. I felt that the momentum was actually building for a confrontation between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent instead of ending at the conclusion of the movie. Kind of feels like a wasted opportunity.

[AboveAverage]

Good. It would've been pretty lame if they tried to convince us that Gordon and Batman can't tell whether or not a person is dead.

[Hajjhowe]

I'm not saying that they should never use Catwoman, but if they want box office success (and let's face it, this is a blockbuster series before it's about artistic integrity), I think they'd be wise to stay away from a character who's most recent appearance was a complete critical and commercial flop for at least a while until the memory of the Catwoman film has blown over. If they'd be prepared to completely restart Superman after one sub-par movie, I doubt they'd want to connect their current big franchise with an utter failure.

Personally I'd prefer to see them never use Catwoman at all, though, especially if Nolan doesn't care for her. I'm still not sure about The Riddler for the next villain, though (if indeed he will be), because he's more intrinsically tied to the campy character (skintight green spandex and all) than just about any other major character in the Batman universe bar Robin, so his character would need more of an obvious overhaul than The Joker to make the general public care about him, plus he falls into the same kind of evil prankster category of The Joker - it's another eccentric criminal leaving clues on the crime scene...it would be too similar a story, surely? I wouldn't mind seeing him as a minor villain, but it would be difficult to make him interesting enough as the main antagonist - although I would love to see Tennant portray him, and he has apparently expressed interest...but what kind of stock does he have in America?

After we saw Dark Knight, Mrs. Skummy and I sat down to work out who we reckoned should be the villain in the next film - assuming that Two-Face and Joker are out of the picture - and we were pretty stumped. We doubt they'll use Catwoman, for reasons already explained. Anyone with actual superpowers, or visible mutations like Croc, Clayface et al is out of the question. Harley Quinn is a possibility, but her character only really works as a subordinate to The Joker, not as a standalone villain. Mad Hatter is another "themed" villain, and another merry prankster type, and probably not a strong enough character to justify using as a central villain. Not too sure about Bane - not an interesting enough character to be the main villain, and with the Bruce Wayne/Batman character firmly established, we need an involving and interesting antagonist to hold our interest - not a big, lumbering brute. I wouldn't be against him appearing, but not as a central villain.

Really, it comes down to The Penguin, who could work, but only really in conjunction with another villain - he wouldn't be able to hold up in the physical side of villainy, and even a master criminal would ideally be able to hold their own in a climatic fight scene with Batman. Would work best as a constant thorn in the side while another villain, ideally a returning Two-Face (although possibly a debuting Riddler) doing the "grunt" work. Other than him, who? Black Mask? And, as I said about Riddler; Penguin, Catwoman and Riddler are three characters all very much tied in with the campier side of Batman, while Joker was always able to transcend that and be a little more sinister, they'd all need more work than Ledger's Joker ever did for people to take them seriously in the current chronology, in my opinion.

Actually, Bane wasn't a 'big brute'. He was portrayed to be just as smart, if not smarter, than Batman. He didn't just walk up and break Batman's back, he weakened him in various ways and waited for the right moment. That being said, I think introducing a new character and having him become Batman in the same movie is too much stuff going on. Unless they just ended the movie with Batman being crippled and had Jean-Paul/A new Robin/whoever take his place in the movie after that.

But clearly I am getting ahead of myself.

[LexChaney]

Just seen the beginning of the film, the opening scene with the bank was pretty impressive.

I adored Joker along with his magic trick with the pencil, it was very comical.

[Dingle]

How long is Dark Knight in the cinema for now? Has it still got a few weeks left?

[Bigal]

My local cinema is still showing it 3 times a day, 4 on weekends.

I'd say the multiplexes will be looking another month out of it.

[Dingle]

Awesome. I want to go see it again

[jrtdot]

in my area its showing everywhere and the big attraction in downtown Toronto is the IMAX version, pretty fucking sweet

[tristy]

I still haven't seen this movie.

I'll probably end up waiting for the DVD, since I hate going to the movies alone.

[James Casey]

Seriously, unless you have a BIG TV (like, 50 or more inces) it's worth seeing in the cinema. Go alone to an early showing and our coke on the seats around you to get some space to yourself.

If you have any interest in Batman/Joker/Harvey Dent... Go and see this film.

[tristy]

Seriously, unless you have a BIG TV (like, 50 or more inces) it's worth seeing in the cinema. Go alone to an early showing and our coke on the seats around you to get some space to yourself.

If you have any interest in Batman/Joker/Harvey Dent... Go and see this film.

I have a 61 inch hi-def TV in my room.

[Hutch2004]

Seriously, unless you have a BIG TV (like, 50 or more inces) it's worth seeing in the cinema. Go alone to an early showing and our coke on the seats around you to get some space to yourself.

If you have any interest in Batman/Joker/Harvey Dent... Go and see this film.

I have a 61 inch hi-def TV in my room.

Bastard.

[Mike Ockizitchy]

Johnny Depp on portraying The Riddler

Don't think anyone posted this. Short, not very interesting, but ya, you know you need your Batman 3 fix.

[Hutch2004]

And also linked to that article, Japan hates the Dark Knight, it having been beaten at the box office by M$ummy 3 and What Happens In Vegas. Apparently it was too dark, and not fun and light enough. If ANYTHING proves that the Japanese are actually aliens doing a crude impression of what they think humans should be, this is it.

[ChrisSteeleAteMyHamster]

Well it's still getting good showing times at my local cinema, in fact this was the first chance myself and the mrs have got to go and see the film together so tonight we FINALLY went to see it and quite frankly it's a magnificent film.

The whole tale of Harvey Dent is tragically beautiful and Ledger's Joker is astonishing.

The only downsides were the silly little cameo that the Scarecrow got (we NEEED more Scarecrow in 3) and Morgan Freeman going through the motions a little as Fox.

Tightly scripted and very cool with all the social experiments. It just kept going on and on though which was groovy.

[apsham]

Okay, so it's been a while since I've seen the film and now that I've had time to think about it, and not be around it.

Meh.. it was an excellent film and nothing else really. They did good work with what they had already built on, did some great character building and then it was over. I do feel now that it dragged on a tad too long, but it didn't take away ALL that much in retrospect. After a while, the movie just doesn't hold up as much as it did the first few weeks.

[livid]

Casting rumors for the next Christopher Nolan-directed Batman have run rampant ever since The Dark Knight opened, with one of the most persistent being Johnny Depp as the Riddler. Michael Caine spoke to MTV recently, where he confirmed the rumor.

Even with Depp recently being non-committal about the role, Caine still says that Depp is a lock for the Riddler, and Philip Seymour Hoffman will be the Penguin.

Caine said:

When Christopher [Nolan] said we were going to do The Dark Knight next, I didn't what that meant in Batman terms. I said, 'What's the story?' and he said The Joker. I said, 'Oh, s-t! How are you going to top Jack [Nicholson]?' He said, 'Well, I've cast Heath Ledger. And I went 'Ha! I couldn't top Jack, but if anyone could, maybe Heath could.' And he did.

I was with [a Warner Bros.] executive and I said, 'Are we going to make another one?' They said yeah. I said, 'How the hell are we going to top Heath? And he says 'I'll tell you how you top Heath - Johnny Depp as The Riddler and Philip Seymour Hoffman as The Penguin.' I said, 'S-t, they've done it again!'" [Laughs]

So, while this still isn't a confirmed casting announcement, it certainly seems to add weight to the rumor.

Meanwhile, when asked if he had seen a script yet, Caine responded "No. He's gone. He'll come back with a script sometime."

Credit: Movieweb.com

Like the article says, it's not like it's 100% confirmation but it's interesting that there seems to be at leas some truth to the rumors.