Newly Released Teaser for The Dark Knight

Over the weekend, official copies of the new teaser trailer for The Dark Knight popped up on the internet, as did several new teaser posters. A great summary page is here at Dark Horizons, and high resolution downloads of the teaser trailer can be found here at the official movie site.

I gotta say, this trailer has dissipated a lot of my apprehension about the movie. For instance, the Bat-cycle or Bat-pod or whatever they’re calling the new vehicle doesn’t look nearly as lame in the proper lighting and in motion. I had a feeling that would be the case, but it certainly didn’t stop me from doing the whole “fanboy overreacts” bitch-fest with my friends.

The teaser also gave me warm and fuzzies about The Joker. Although I was never all that worried, I’m definitely now more excited about Heath Ledger’s performance than I was before seeing the teaser. For the record, my concern was never “Will Heath’s Joker be as good as Jack’s Joker?” At the time, Nicholson’s performance was a “never seen anything like it before” performance, but much like the movie itself, his Joker has not withstood the test of time, at least in my opinion. There was too much silliness and not enough ruthless, sadistic genius for me. In fact, I’m saddened that so many people only know The Joker as Jack’s Joker.

Instead, my concern was derived from toeing the fine line between being true to the comic book and making a “realistic” movie. The first movie was able to do that because of the villain involved. Ra’s Al Ghul translates much more easily into reality than The Joker. I mean, the Clown Prince of Crime is a guy that has permanent clown make-up and wears a purple suit. It doesn’t get much more comic booky than that. How much will need to be toned down in order make the character “real”?

Well, based on the sampling of footage, they just might have gotten it right. The suit is a dirty purple and green, instead of the bold, vibrant colors of the comics; a decision I love. In fact, the color choice probably has most impact of any change they could make. Christopher Nolan might just pull this off after all. As a side note, I’ll still give him major props if he includes the lethal hand buzzer.

So even though I feel a lot better about The Joker’s look, there is still one major fly in my ointment that the teaser did nothing to address, and that’s the new Batman costume. Granted, all my pre-conceived notions are based on the few still photos online. Hopefully, like that Bat-pod, it will look much better in the lighting and context of the film. But being the pessimist that I am, I will continue to assume the costume will ruin the movie until it’s proved otherwise.