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The Rewatchables ·

The Dark Knight

year 2008decade 00sdirector Christopher Nolangenre Actiongenre Neo-noirgenre Crimegenre Superhero
host Chris Ryanhost Sean Fennesseyhost Jason Concepcion
All 11 categories

Most Rewatchable Scene · 20:10

The Joker's fundraiser party appearance

Nominees open with the bank robbery, maybe the best opening of a movie this century: note for note a recreation of elements of Heat, called an annoying homage, but with the hairs-on-the-neck feeling of zip lines across skyscrapers that look real and robbers in clown masks shooting each other; the clip is played.

Asked whether all the bank-robbery dialogue was recorded in post, a research tidbit is offered: not much went wrong on this set, but there were problems with the IMAX cameras in this scene and a couple of out-of-focus shots, so audio fixes would not be surprising.

The film

The Dark Knight (2008)

Directed by Christopher Nolan · Action

152 minutes

IMDb
Cast

Selected cast credits · Film reference

Christian Bale Bruce Wayne / Batman
Michael Caine Alfred Pennyworth
Heath Ledger the Joker
Gary Oldman James Gordon
Aaron Eckhart Harvey Dent / Two-Face
Maggie Gyllenhaal Rachel Dawes
Morgan Freeman Lucius Fox

Everything from the episode

In the order the hosts got to it. Open a row for the discussion.

16:28

Casting What-Ifs

Josh Lucas, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo and Matt Damon were linked to Harvey Dent; Paul Bettany, Steve Carell, Robin...

Josh Lucas, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo and Matt Damon were linked to Harvey Dent; Paul Bettany, Steve Carell, Robin Williams, Adrian Brody and Ryan Phillippe were rumored for the Joker; Dwight Yoakam was said to have been offered the bank manager

In the discussion (6)
Approx. transcript time · 00:16:28Read transcript
  • Casting what-ifs are knocked out fast because the movie cannot be imagined with anyone else; Harvey Dent is called secretly very good casting because the part needed someone who thought he was a big deal but actually was not, which is perfect for Aaron Eckhart, a shot another host, who loves Eckhart, pushes back on with a joke about a Gulf Coast condo built on Eckhart stock.
  • Actors who expressed interest or auditioned for Harvey Dent: Josh Lucas, not heard from much since Glory Road; Liev Schreiber, judged a little too dark and stormy for a Dent who has to start as a golden boy, though he could have been a good Two Face; Mark Ruffalo, rejected as way too cerebral and neurotic; and Matt Damon, which prompts the question of why Damon just wants to be in a Christopher Nolan movie.
  • Young, Courage Under Fire-era Matt Damon would have made a great Robin.
  • Christopher Nolan is quoted as never really having considered anyone but Heath Ledger for the Joker, which is dismissed as what they say after the fact; actors rumored for the role were Paul Bettany (fine), Steve Carell (no), Robin Williams (maybe in a Tim Burton movie, a little too ghoulish), Adrian Brody (as transcribed; 'I can see it') and Ryan Phillippe, who is said to turn up more than anyone in lists of roles he did not get and to have been in the final three for Captain America with Krasinski and Chris Evans, which usually means great publicist, bad agent.
  • Ledger's performance is so legendary, arguably the most iconic movie performance of the 21st century, that nobody can be put in the role; an actor rumored for it would be wise to scrub that from the internet.
  • William Fichtner's bank manager is said to have been offered to Dwight Yoakam, who was busy recording Dwight Meets Buck, prompting the question whether that is a Buck Owens cover record; the hosts love Yoakam as a movie actor, a legend in Panic Room and Wedding Crashers with a quiet malevolence on screen, though he would not have been right for this particular role.
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20:10

Most Rewatchable Scene

The Joker's fundraiser party appearance; the underground chase transporting Harvey Dent; the Joker's first meeting wi...

The Joker's fundraiser party appearance; the underground chase transporting Harvey Dent; the Joker's first meeting with the mob bosses

In the discussion (12)
Approx. transcript time · 00:20:10Read transcript
  • Nominees open with the bank robbery, maybe the best opening of a movie this century: note for note a recreation of elements of Heat, called an annoying homage, but with the hairs-on-the-neck feeling of zip lines across skyscrapers that look real and robbers in clown masks shooting each other; the clip is played.
  • Asked whether all the bank-robbery dialogue was recorded in post, a research tidbit is offered: not much went wrong on this set, but there were problems with the IMAX cameras in this scene and a couple of out-of-focus shots, so audio fixes would not be surprising.
  • The robbers' performative, unnatural dialogue about the Joker wearing makeup sets a comic-book tone the rest of the movie does not have; with everyone in clown masks and not quite speaking to one another it is a perfect microcosm of the film, where you do not know who these guys are but do not care because Hans Zimmer violins are playing and this is Heat again.
  • Further nominees: the Joker's meeting with the mob and the disappearing pencil; the Lau kidnapping in Hong Kong, which one host is not a fan of; the Joker's fundraiser party appearance with the champagne and Senator Patrick Leahy; the police funeral assassination, interestingly staged but also confusing; and the game of chicken between the 18-wheeler and the motorcycle, one of a host's favorite movie scenes ever.
  • One pick is the Joker's party appearance: he is obviously deeply damaged but also lying about everything, tells a different story about his scars than the one he told the gangsters, controls the room and the screen, and brings a crazy clown force into the locus of Gotham's economic power; the second scar story is when you realize he is an unreliable narrator who is either messing with everybody or having a break from reality.
  • Another pick is the entire chase through the underground after Harvey Dent turns himself in as the Batman and is transported in the truck: Nicky Katz (as transcribed) plays the exposition cop with the funny 'once he gets to county, he's their problem' line, the driver turns out to be Gordon in a gas mask after faking his death at the attempt on the mayor, and the Joker and his escaped Arkham lunatics pursue with a lot of grenade launching.
  • The flipping 18-wheeler, end to end, is called the single best car-flip in movie history and the hair-on-the-neck moment; Batman's decision not to kill the Joker there is a character note that pushes the psychology forward while exciting you about what comes next, which only Nolan does in these movies.
  • That moment exposes Batman's inherent sadism: how many people have died because he will not kill the Joker, the fundraiser gun-disarming looks like a hollow moral victory, and he knows the Joker and the other villains always break out of Arkham; a lonely billionaire whose only friend is an old British man keeps going because he likes the fights and wants to feel something.
  • The third pick is the Joker's first meeting with the mob bosses, both the best and the worst scene: Lau is on a little Sanyo TV beamed from a plane to China with no wireless internet, and the group is Richie Costner (as transcribed) as the Chechen, Eric Roberts as the Italian mob boss Sal Maroney, and Michael Jai White's Gamble with his crew, holding a quorum in what seems to be the back room of a restaurant.
  • The Joker's entrance should be stupid, but he kills a guy with a pencil and then narrates the flaws of the room, which is what differentiates good Nolan from bad Nolan, as with Gordon-Levitt and Hardy voicing how insane things are in Inception; the 'wind the clocks back a year' speech is played.
  • Favorite small moments include his 'I'm not' when called crazy and the varied laugh when he opens his coat to show the grenades; the hosts joke about demarcating five minutes for Ledger impersonations and note the Oscars might as well not have been held.
  • The Joker's long-term plan is parked for later because it is really hard to tell what it is; the segment closes with various winners, three different picks, which is judged a good thing.
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30:17

What’s Aged the Best?

Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker

Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:30:17Read transcript
  • Nominees: Ledger's performance, the action sequences, the Breaking Bad fall and turn of Harvey Dent, unusual in a superhero movie, and the death of Rachel Dawes, whose he-went-to-the-wrong-building reveal is emotionally affecting and is placed second.
  • Rachel Dawes was Katie Holmes's part in the first film; the story is that she was busy making a Queen Latifah movie, which is read as a publicist's version of being replaced; Maggie Gyllenhaal reportedly did not understand Batman and just wanted to work with Nolan, and though she is a little divisive she gives the movie a gravitas it would not otherwise have.
  • Gyllenhaal seems like a real person in a movie without many, and credibly reads as someone who has known Bruce for a very long time, which he needs since nobody else in his life says 'my friend Bruce'; the love triangle is an underrated nuance, with both men making major life decisions on whether she will be with them.
  • On the rescue: the Joker lies about the locations, so Batman heads for Rachel, in part because he wants to keep being the Batman rather than hand over to the golden boy, and ends up with Dent; just before, she had answered his if-I-stop-being-Batman question, then chose Harvey.
  • Asked directly, the answer is Ledger: a YouTube mashup of his scenes is the most interesting stuff; where Sean Penn in Mystic River went from wow to the 'is that my daughter in there' meme, Ledger in clown makeup doing mannered work does not age a day, helped by how controlled his Brokeback Mountain performance had been, everything twenty miles beneath the surface.
  • Because he arrived already trusted as a great actor, the over-the-top choices are accepted, the tonguing of his scars, the crooked, bent-over posture, the head turned left, as an interpretation differentiated from the comics, the cartoons and Jack Nicholson, a Joker very on the ground and messed up.
  • Ledger died in January 2008 and the film came out that July, so first viewings carried the knowledge that this was the last time the character would be seen; rewatching ten years later you are simply in the moment with him, and he is the reason to rewatch; compared with the Joker of Suicide Squad, Ledger's has a complete lack of vanity that is crucial.
  • The interrogation room is the first time he is seen in bright light: makeup cracking away from his eyes, slouched on the floor, poking at the cop, Gordon and Batman, looking weak and deranged, genuinely frightening where Nicholson in Tim Burton's movie, also liked, is cartoonish.
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36:19

What’s Aged the Worst?

Lucius Fox's sonar cell-phone surveillance device

Lucius Fox's sonar cell-phone surveillance device

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:36:19Read transcript
  • Most candidates relate to plotting and storytelling: the ferry choice the citizens face at the end and, more broadly, the Joker's plan, widely debated on Reddit, where beat-by-beat defenses unravel under any scrutiny of what he could not have known; Gordon faking his own death; and, quoting Wikipedia's shade, Batman finding the Joker with a sonar device that spies on the entire city.
  • Asked directly, the pick is the sonar device, Lucius Fox's cell phone. — Jason Concepcion
  • The device is the definition of a deus ex machina, a machine built just to find the Joker; the clip of Fox calling it unethical and dangerous, every cell phone in Gotham turned into a microphone, is played.
  • An honorable mention is Coleman Reese, a Wayne Enterprises employee assigned to kick the tires on Lau's company who finds the Batmobile plans in the archives and tries to blackmail Lucius Fox and Batman, then ends up on Anthony Michael Hall's television show; the hosts ask why any of that is in the movie and why a two-hour movie runs two and a half hours.
  • One host's number one is the ending: rewatching the night before, they turned it off with twenty minutes to go, and argue the best version would end right after the Joker breaks out again with his head out the car window like a dog, the best shot and most exhilarating moment, chaos can win, with a Joker-led sequel or Arkham to follow.
  • Reese is defended as a way to underline Harvey Dent's heroism after Dent steps up as the Batman to take the fall; still, it is absurd that a forensic accountant can trip across the super-weapon car's plans filed in the basement, like the Citadel in Thrones, while Wayne has Alfred burn his personal files.
  • A second host agrees on the cell phone, citing a James Bond element: Batman cuts a bullet-shattered piece of concrete out of a wall, runs tests and essentially prints the bullet in 3D to predict the funeral attack instead of knocking on doors, which is hilariously overdone and probably exists to use the lab set, though it ties in the detective side of the character.
  • The cell phone exposes a Nolan weakness, overtly saying something big, security versus freedom, by having a scanner listen to the entire city; back then the idea of anyone listening to cell phone calls seemed far-fetched.
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42:58

Half-Assed Internet Research

Nolan avoided a Joker origin story and changed the chemical scarring to knife wounds; Michael Caine doubted the film ...

Nolan avoided a Joker origin story and changed the chemical scarring to knife wounds; Michael Caine doubted the film and that Ledger could top Nicholson, then forgot his lines on first working with him; IMAX camera problems left out-of-focus shots in the bank robbery

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:42:58Read transcript
  • Little wild happened before or after filming apart from the tragic air of Ledger's passing; Nolan purposely avoided giving the Joker an origin story and changed his canonical chemical scarring to knife wounds to keep his origins unclear.
  • Michael Caine did not think the movie would work or that Ledger could top Jack Nicholson's Joker, but was blown away and so frightened on first working with Ledger that he forgot his lines; the hosts call him dead wrong about Ledger.
  • Caine's role is worth exploring: he has become the Professor Emeritus of every Nolan movie, the man who comes in and says something pithy, and here he keeps telling Batman why he is doing what he does, as if he thinks he is Batman; a Lethal Weapon 2 South African villain impression breaks out along the way.
  • Alfred mythology as the hosts recall it: a British soldier with combat medical training, which is why he can fix Bruce's broken ribs, who somehow got into manservanting after a colonial expedition and buoyed Bruce after his parents' death; yet he tells a Burmese bandit story Bruce, a 40-year-old man ten years into fighting villains, has never heard.
  • The bandit story is an extended metaphor for a Joker with no methodology who just wants to watch the world burn, an iconic line, but also movie poppycock, screenwriter push-ups, like letting Michael Caine get a couple of minutes isolated on the wing; he got to cry in Dark Knight Rises.
  • The hosts question how Alfred's Dark Knight sermon, that Batman must eat shit as the outcast and sin eater, squares with his Dark Knight Rises wish to see Bruce at a cafe in Venice; it is jarring, though five or six years have passed, Wayne keeps coming home bruised and concussed, and Alfred has his own arc toward believing Batman should stop.
  • Does Morgan Freeman need to be in these movies, could Alfred not also be good at gadgets, and how many characters could be removed with the movie still effective.
  • An early tidbit: there were problems with the IMAX cameras on the bank robbery and a couple of out-of-focus shots.
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47:19

The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance

Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel

Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 00:47:19Read transcript
  • Nominees: Nestor Carbonell as Mayor Antonio Garcia, Joshua Harto as Coleman Reese, Anthony Michael Hall as TV interviewer Mike Engel and William Fichtner as the bank manager; added is Richie Costner (as transcribed) as the Chechen, whom only the three hosts came to know as the corrupt mayor in True Detective season two, giving a very good performance with a very bad Count Dracula accent.
  • One host gives the award to Anthony Michael Hall for embodying the action-movie trope of the TV crew always present when something important happens, the William Atherton role from Die Hard, with the accountant going on the local Charlie Rose to reveal the Batman after the commercial.
  • A second host also lands on Anthony Michael Hall, because swole late-career Hall never fails to stop them in their tracks, and asks whether he only works in Nolan movies now.
  • One more name: Chin Han as Lau, a Chinese corporate titan laundering money for Gotham's gangsters, called the definition of a heat check; every conversation he goes for it, toe to toe with Morgan Freeman, moving all the mob's money without telling them, and never finding it odd that Lucius Fox turns up to check him out right after.
  • Fox breaks the building's one no-phones rule, does a switcheroo and brings down a multi-billion-dollar corporation with a cell phone, which leads to Batman illegally extraditing Lau from China via skyhook; Lau then becomes a living MacGuffin who must be protected to testify against all of Gotham's criminals.
  • Why is Lau needed when the Chechen could surely be prosecuted; it is read as an early sell-the-movie-in-China move and as the cynical choice to hand the most convoluted part of the plot to an Eastern character because he is mysterious anyway.
  • The Hong Kong shoot is compared to the hosts' own deep-in-the-weeds blog obsessions: Bale insisting on standing on the skyscraper himself, Alan Horn cutting a $35 million check to send 400 people to shoot in IMAX when Gotham or CGI would have been fine.
  • Bruce's cover story compounds the absurdity: landing a plane in the ocean because he cannot use Hong Kong airport, a yacht with ballet dancers, Michael Caine surrounded by companions in the South China Sea, mystery pilots; it all goes back to Lau, and a Lau trilogy would probably get greenlit.
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53:11

Apex Mountain

Heath Ledger; Aaron Eckhart; Christopher Nolan, for cultural impact; Christian Bale, as a movie star only

Heath Ledger; Aaron Eckhart; Christopher Nolan, for cultural impact; Christian Bale, as a movie star only

In the discussion (16)
Approx. transcript time · 00:53:11Read transcript
  • Heath Ledger is Apex Mountain, with the 'all part of the plan' speech performed; this and Brokeback are his two shining achievements, he is an all-time great American, or Australian, actor, the performance is burned into the brains of a generation, and he has kind of ruined comic book villains.
  • Tangent: basically all other comic book villains are bad or problematic; Marvel punted with various space monsters, Thanos is a rip-off of Darkseid, and apart from Magneto there is no psychological depth to apply.
  • Two exceptions are offered: Magneto, especially the Fassbender iteration, and Sam Raimi's Dr. Octopus as played by Alfred Molina in the second Spider-Man, good for the opposite reason to Ledger because he is vulnerable, with a story about his wife driving him mad. — Sean Fennessey
  • There are only a handful of great villains, Anton Chagru (as transcribed), Hannibal Lecter and the Joker; a great villain thinks he is the hero, which cannot apply to a cartoon Nazi like the Red Skull, while the Joker understands he is the flip side of Batman; Lex Luthor was left on the table, Gene Hackman's version a great movie character if schlocky.
  • Taken on its face, Ledger's Joker literally asks the audience why they care about anything, lighting a mountain of money on fire, which pokes at the heroism and financial motivations of these movies.
  • Bale is the most interesting Apex question: his only huge non-ensemble success is Batman, Big Short and American Hustle were ensembles and his top-lined films are strange, a couple of Malicks and Scott Coopers; The Fighter is arguably his greatest role, one host personally picks Empire of the Sun though he was a child, and some are partial to American Psycho.
  • The vote is American Psycho: he is extraordinarily well suited to that role and not to Bruce Wayne; this host has never liked his Batman, finding many of his choices grating, particularly the voice. — Sean Fennessey
  • Does the movie work without Ledger: no. Not being all the way in on Christian Bale, with American Psycho his most interesting and The Fighter his most realized performance, leads to this not being Apex Mountain for him as a performance, though probably as a movie star, a framing that is agreed to.
  • American Psycho is also picked, as an investigation of the dark side of the handsome, square-jawed movie-star image, where Bruce Wayne is a blank mirror for the far more interesting Joker; the tonal similarity between Bane's and Bruce's voices is part of why Dark Knight Rises did not resonate.
  • Batman might be the hardest role in movies: a performer with any sense of irony cannot play Bruce Wayne, which is why Bale's funny American Psycho turn and Affleck's larded irony are problems; Keaton did a good job and nobody has tried the snappy Adam West version.
  • Aaron Eckhart's canon is read out: In the Company of Men, Any Given Sunday, Erin Brockovich (as transcribed, Aaron Brockovich), The Core, Thank You for Smoking, Battle for Los Angeles, President Benjamin Asher in Olympus Has Fallen and London Has Fallen, and Jeff Skiles, Sully's loyal co-pilot.
  • Is Harvey Dent Apex Mountain for Eckhart: yes, citing a Twitter meme that one of the great movie moments is Dent not recognizing the Joker in the hospital until the surgical mask comes off, a scene liked a lot, with the comment that it is a good scene for Eckhart too and a huge flex for Ledger, every line of his great; Eckhart is a pretty good actor, a really good number two, and well cast and good here.
  • Maggie Gyllenhaal: no, that goes to The Honorable Woman or Secretary, and she is phenomenal in The Deuce.
  • Nolan: in terms of cultural impact, yes; whether it is his best movie splits the room among Dunkirk, Inception, and Dark Knight first with Inception second; what he accomplishes even in fits and starts is above almost all his peers, he can be John Ford, Howard Hawks or Spielberg, which is why one host is harder on him than on anyone.
  • Does Nolan need a David Coop (as transcribed) or William Goldman to write his scripts, the way Andy Reid needs a time-management coach; his Dark Knight dialogue is more comic-booky than remembered, telling you the theme of each scene, and the set pieces hold the movie up while seams show in the small moments.
  • Nolan and Fincher together would be the greatest filmmaker of all time, since Fincher cares about the precision of intimate one-on-one scenes while Nolan's set pieces are incredible but he does not know how two people talk to each other; another host accepts comic-book corniness but finds the plotting of almost all his movies too convoluted for no reason, charming only in Memento.
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1:04:35

The Neil McCauley “A Book about Metals” Award for Best Line from the Movie

"you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

"you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:04:35Read transcript
  • The Joker's 'I don't want to kill you... No, you complete me' raises whether Jerry Maguire exists in the world of The Dark Knight, whether the Joker has seen it, whether Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweger are figures there, and whether the Joker had a Netflix subscription.
  • Harvey Dent's die-a-hero line gets a 'Ding, ding, ding', the line quoted every night on social media; the Joker's 'better class of criminal' line sounds great though nobody knows what it means; Gordon's closing 'hero Gotham deserves... a dark knight' speech is mocked with hashtag who talks like this and I said the name of the movie in the dialogue.
  • More Joker lines follow: 'Why so serious?', basically the movie's tagline, which Pink put in a song; 'introduce a little anarchy'; 'I'm an agent of chaos'; the vision of a world without Batman; and 'I want my phone call'; his melodramatic readings make you believe the dialogue is good.
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1:07:09

Probably Unanswerable Questions

What happens to the Joker? Why couldn't Harvey's crimes have been pinned on the Joker instead of Batman? Why are all ...

What happens to the Joker? Why couldn't Harvey's crimes have been pinned on the Joker instead of Batman? Why are all the criminals on a boat?

In the discussion (4)
Approx. transcript time · 01:07:09Read transcript
  • The major unanswerable question is what happens to the Joker: the Dark Knight Rises novelization has him as the lone prisoner in Arkham, but Nolan is quoted from the promo trail as not addressing the Joker at all out of respect for Heath and not wanting to account for a real-life tragedy.
  • Why could Harvey's crimes not have been pinned on the Joker, a criminal mastermind already in an asylum, instead of making Batman take the public fall; the answer offered is that it is an artifact of earlier scripts where Dent's goodness carried more of the dramatic load.
  • Why are all the criminals on a boat, and to go where; the hosts can only guess they are being evacuated with the city.
  • Earlier, the Joker's long-term plan was flagged as something to return to because it is really hard to tell.
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1:07:47

Picking Nits

Nobody notices a drastically scarred cop in the 21-gun salute; Gordon could not have planned his fake death; just sho...

Nobody notices a drastically scarred cop in the 21-gun salute; Gordon could not have planned his fake death; just shoot the Joker in the face; the Lau and Coleman Reese pursuits are unnecessary; the boat scene is on the nose; constant shuttling of criminals and unexplained lying; Lucius Fox objects to phone surveillance after years of building weapons

In the discussion (8)
Approx. transcript time · 01:07:47Read transcript
  • How does nobody notice a drastically scarred cop at the funeral, one of the 21-gun salute participants, still wearing caked-on makeup, with a buddy who looks equally criminally insane in uniform.
  • Gordon could not have planned to fake his death without knowing how or where the assassination attempt would come from; the whole plan is high-level poppycock, any resulting case gets thrown out of court, and he could have just hidden.
  • The one thing you cannot do in a superhero movie, but should, is just shoot the Joker in the face, which would solve every problem.
  • The entire Lau pursuit and the entire Coleman Reese pursuit are unnecessary; plotting problems are otherwise accepted as part of a comic book movie, but the two-boats social experiment is wished less on the nose; the clip is played.
  • There is a lot of shuttling of supposed criminals, Lau from Hong Kong, Dent from central holding to county, prisoners onto a boat, and a lot of weird lying excused as not having time to tell anyone.
  • Lucius Fox has overseen war weapons for an outlaw detective yet draws the line at listening to phone calls; a correction notes he built them as his job, like an arms dealer, Tony Stark style, and the Batsuit itself comes from dark weapons experiments; pull one thread of a Nolan plot and fifteen balls of yarn come out.
  • Early aside: the skyhook feels out of place in a movie that otherwise feels like Heat.
  • During the mob meeting, Lau appears on a little Sanyo TV from a plane to China with no wireless internet, so it is unclear how high-quality video is being beamed.
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1:11:51

Who Won the Movie?

Heath Ledger

Heath Ledger

In the discussion (3)
Approx. transcript time · 01:11:51Read transcript
  • Called the most anticlimactic final question of a podcast ever: an amazing actor giving an amazing performance in a role that should not work in movies, basically stupid and larded with existential questions, and the hosts get caught up every rewatch; Heath Ledger is then named as the conversation turns to what his career would have been.
  • Ledger does not map onto peers like Joaquin Phoenix or Jake Gyllenhaal, would he have done Source Code, and the movie-star version of him is hard to picture; he cared about working with great directors, so it is a shame there will never be a Ledger film with Paul Thomas Anderson or Martin Scorsese.
  • He gave only two or three iconic performances across maybe 12 or 13 movies, good in all of them: Dark Knight, Brokeback Mountain, 10 Things I Hate About You, very good in only ten minutes of I'm Not There and in the not very important Lords of Dogtown, serious fare like Monsters Ball and The Four Feathers, and movie-star attempts like The Patriot; Brokeback and Dark Knight read as the start of what would have been an incredible run.
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More from the conversation

The episode opens by naming The Dark Knight as the number one superhero movie of all time according to TheRinger.com, plays trailer audio, and frames 2008 as the birth of the era we are living in today.
Approx. transcript time · 00:00:58Read transcript
Context recited: 2007 was a regal year (There Will Be Blood, No Country for Old Men, Michael Clayton), while 2008 gave Iron Man and The Dark Knight, which set the poles of the superhero era; the film was conceived as a partial adaptation of Alan Moore's The Killing Joke and The Long Halloween, shot through the lens of Michael Mann's Heat as a very large city story, and is named alongside Godfather 2, Aliens, T2 and Empire among the greatest sequels.
Approx. transcript time · 00:01:54Read transcript
Asked as the comic book reader, the answer is that The Killing Joke and The Long Halloween are serious stories; The Killing Joke is a one-off by Alan Moore with an ambiguous ending that cemented its legend, and its really violent treatment of Barbara Gordon has aged badly, but its malevolent-clown Joker who wants to remind Batman how close they are is the essence of this film.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:01Read transcript
The film reads as adult because it is tactile and grounded, with no flying apart from the skyhook; calling it adult flatters excited young men, but people are murdered, main characters die and heroes compromise their ideals; it follows the second-film-in-a-trilogy pattern of Empire and Godfather, except Dark Knight Rises never delivered the sunny Return of the Jedi resolution, partly because Ledger's death left the Joker without closure.
Approx. transcript time · 00:03:51Read transcript
Batman is called a fascistic character, a rich man with problems who enjoys beating people up at night, and the Joker's 'what's the difference between you and me' is the core of the duality; Rises comes apart with international terrorism and the hole in Afghanistan; in this film Bruce Wayne's biggest foe is self-doubt, saying twice that he is done, which makes it morally and existentially cloudier, the Han-in-carbonite entry of the trilogy.
Approx. transcript time · 00:05:14Read transcript
Figures recited: more than a billion dollars worldwide, a 94 on Rotten Tomatoes and a 94 audience score, Oscars including Ledger's posthumous Best Supporting Actor over Josh Brolin, Robert Downey Jr., Philip Seymour Hoffman and Michael Shannon (as transcribed, Michael Shan); the Best Picture nominees were Slumdog Millionaire, Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Reader, and the snub is credited with the Academy expanding Best Picture to up to ten nominees.
Approx. transcript time · 00:07:24Read transcript
Nolan's participation became a beacon telling serious filmmakers a superhero series was a viable career move, something Tim Burton's Batman never did for him beyond Ed Wood; Batman is the perfect character for a serious interpretation, a detective or a bare-knuckle boxer, where Iron Man, Captain America, Ang Lee's Hulk, Spider-Man and the corny alien Superman lack that psychological text, and nothing Batman does looks fun.
Approx. transcript time · 00:08:55Read transcript
Why rewatch: the film also has corny moments, bad one-liners and jaw-dropping action, so is it the tactile comic book or the performances, as with Godfather 2; one host rewatches to recapture the hair-on-the-neck feeling Nolan can electrify, not caring about the comic book universe, which does not fit together well, while another rewatches for the duality of Batman and Joker and the film's critique of whether working outside a rotten system just creates more chaos.
Approx. transcript time · 00:11:24Read transcript
Inception is teased as an upcoming rewatchable the host cannot wait to hear.
Approx. transcript time · 00:28:50Read transcript
Wrap-up: the hosts rate The Dark Knight's rewatchability very, very highly; The Ringer's definitive superhero movie ranking, overseen by Andrew Grodadaro (as transcribed), is up ahead of Justice League on November 17, with Andrew joining The Watch and a special superhero Big Picture from Sean Fennessey; sign-off thanks Jason Concepcion and Sean Fennessey.
Approx. transcript time · 01:13:43Read transcript
Post-credits outtake: the hosts try to recall what Harvey Dent yells, sort out that 'some men just want to watch the world burn' is Alfred's and 'it's not about what I want, it's about what's fair' is Dent's, and lament that Two-Face, a major rogues-gallery villain, only gets to be Two-Face for about half a day.
Approx. transcript time · 01:15:36Read transcript
The 'Hit me' bit is performed, and the hosts conclude that the Joker's plan, not depicted with clarity, is a death wish: he wants Batman to break his one promise and kill him; the episode ends on the 'to them you're just a freak, like me' clip.
Approx. transcript time · 01:16:34Read transcript

Mentions across The Rewatchables

Recorded movie reference

Aliens

The Rewatchables · aired August 31, 2026

The ten best sequels, plus the hosts’ additions

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