‹ All movies

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.

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.
Share this discussion More Most Rewatchable Scene answers
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.
Share this discussion More What’s Aged the Best? answers
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.
Share this discussion More What’s Aged the Worst? answers
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.
Share this discussion More The Dion Waiters Award for Best Heat Check Performance answers
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.
Share this discussion More Apex Mountain answers
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.
Podcast choices
Speaker not identified
Heath Ledger
Share this discussion More Who Won the Movie? answers

Mentions across The Rewatchables

Recorded movie reference

Aliens

The Rewatchables · aired August 31, 2026

The ten best sequels, plus the hosts’ additions

Transcript time unavailableRead transcript
Source 1