The Dark Knight
Since its release, The Dark Knight has been assessed as one of the greatest superhero films ever, one of the best movies of the 2000s, and one of the best films ever made. It is considered the blueprint for many modern superhero films, particularly for its rejection of a typical comic book movie style in favor of a crime film that features comic book characters. Many filmmakers sought to repeat its success by emulating its gritty, realistic tone to varying degrees of success. The Dark Knight has been analyzed for its themes of terrorism and the limitations of morality and ethics. The United States Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2020. A sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, concluded The Dark Knight trilogy in 2012.
Warner Bros. Pictures prioritized a sequel following the successful reinvention of the Batman film series with Batman Begins. Christopher and Batman Begins co writer David S. Goyer developed the story elements, making Dent the central protagonist caught up in the battle between Batman and the Joker. In writing the screenplay, the Nolans were influenced by 1980s Batman comics and crime drama films, and sought to continue Batman Begins’ heightened sense of realism. From April to November 2007, filming took place with a $185 million budget in Chicago and Hong Kong, and on sets in England. The Dark Knight was the first major motion picture to be filmed with high-resolution IMAX cameras. Christopher avoided using computer generated imagery unless necessary, insisting on practical stunts such as flipping an 18-wheel truck and blowing up a factory.
The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed by Christopher Nolan, from a screenplay co-written with his brother Jonathan. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it is the sequel to Batman Begins (2005), and the second installment in The Dark Knight trilogy. The plot follows the vigilante Batman, police lieutenant James Gordon, and district attorney Harvey Dent, who form an alliance to dismantle organized crime in Gotham City. Their efforts are derailed by the Joker, an anarchistic mastermind who seeks to test how far Batman will go to save the city from chaos. The ensemble cast includes Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Morgan Freeman.
The Dark Knight was marketed with an innovative interactive viral campaign that initially focused on countering criticism of Ledger’s casting by those who believed he was a poor choice to portray the Joker. Ledger died from an accidental prescription drug overdose in January 2008, leading to widespread interest from the press and public regarding his performance. When it was released in July, The Dark Knight received acclaim for its mature tone and themes, visual style, and performances particularly that of Ledger, who received many posthumous awards including Academy, BAFTA, and Golden Globe awards for Best Supporting Actor, making The Dark Knight the first comic book film to receive major industry awards. It broke several box-office records and became the highest-grossing 2008 film, the fourth highest grossing film to that time, and the highest-grossing superhero film.
Wayne struggles to understand the Joker’s motives, to which his butler Alfred Pennyworth says some men just want to watch the world burn. Dent claims he is Batman to lure out the Joker, who attacks the police convoy transporting him. Batman and Gordon apprehend the Joker, and Gordon is promoted to commissioner. At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who says he finds Batman entertaining and has no intention of killing him. Having deduced Batman’s feelings for Rachel, the Joker reveals she and Dent are being held separately in buildings rigged to explode. Batman races to rescue Rachel while Gordon and the other officers go after Dent, but they discover the Joker gave their positions in reverse. The explosives detonate, killing Rachel and severely burning Dent’s face on one side. The Joker escapes custody, extracts the fortune’s location from Lau, and burns it, killing Lau in the process.
Inception
After the 2002 completion of Insomnia, Nolan presented to Warner Bros. a written 80 page treatment for a horror film envisioning dream stealers, based on lucid dreaming. Deciding he needed more experience before tackling a production of this magnitude and complexity, Nolan shelved the project and instead worked on 2005’s Batman Begins, 2006’s The Prestige, and 2008’s The Dark Knight. The treatment was revised over six months and was purchased by Warner in February 2009. Inception was filmed in six countries, beginning in Tokyo on June 19 and ending in Canada on November 22. Its official budget was $160 million, split between Warner Bros. and Legendary. Nolan’s reputation and success with The Dark Knight helped secure the film’s US$100 million in advertising expenditure.
Cobb accepts the offer and assembles his team a forger named Eames, a chemist named Yusuf, and a college student named Ariadne. Ariadne is tasked with designing the dream’s architecture, something Cobb himself cannot do for fear of being sabotaged by his mind’s projection of his late wife, Mal. Maurice Fischer dies, and the team sedates Robert Fischer into a three layer shared dream on an airplane to America bought by Saito. Time on each layer runs slower than the layer above, with one member staying behind on each to perform a music-synchronized “kick” to awaken dreamers on all three levels simultaneously.
Cobb explains to Ariadne that he and Mal entered Limbo while experimenting with dream-sharing, experiencing fifty years in one night due to the time dilation with reality. After waking up, Mal still believed she was dreaming. Attempting to “wake up,” she committed suicide and framed Cobb for her murder to force him to do the same. Cobb fled the U.S., leaving his children behind.
Revived into the third level, Robert discovers the planted idea: his dying father telling him to create something for himself.
While Cobb searches for Saito in Limbo, the others ride the synced kicks back to reality. Cobb finds an aged Saito and reminds him of their agreement. The dreamers all awaken on the plane, and Saito makes a phone call. Arriving in Los Angeles, Cobb passes the immigration checkpoint, and his father-in-law accompanies him to his home. Cobb uses Mal’s totem a top that spins indefinitely in a dream to test if he is indeed in the real world, but he chooses not to observe the result and instead joins his children.
Yusuf drives the team around the first level as they are sedated into the second level, a hotel dreamed by Arthur. Cobb persuades Robert that Browning has kidnapped him to stop the dissolution and that Cobb is a defensive projection, leading Robert to another third level deeper as part of a ruse to enter Robert’s subconscious.
Dom Cobb and Arthur are extractors who perform corporate espionage using experimental dream sharing technology to infiltrate their targets’ subconscious and extract information. Their latest target, Saito, is impressed with Cobb’s ability to layer multiple dreams within each other.
He offers to hire Cobb for the ostensibly impossible job of implanting an idea into a person’s subconscious; performing inception on Robert Fischer, the son of Saito’s competitor Maurice Fischer, with the idea to dissolve his father’s company. In return, Saito promises to clear Cobb’s criminal status, allowing him to return home to his children.
In the third level, the team infiltrates an alpine fortress with a projection of Maurice inside, where the inception itself can be performed. However, Yusuf performs his kick too soon by driving off a bridge, forcing Arthur and Eames to improvise a new set of kicks synchronized with them hitting the water by rigging an elevator and the fortress, respectively, with explosives. Mal then appears and kills Robert before he can be subjected to the inception.
he and Saito are subsequently lost in Limbo, forcing Cobb and Ariadne to rescue them in time for Robert’s inception and Eames’s kick. Cobb reveals that during their time in Limbo, Mal refused to return to reality; Cobb had to convince her it was only a dream, accidentally incepting in her the belief that the real world was still a dream. Cobb makes peace with his part in Mal’s death. Ariadne kills Mal’s projection and wakes Robert up with a kick.
The team abducts Robert in a city on the first level, but unknown to any team member, his subconscious projections, trained to anticipate such a scenario, attack them. After Saito is wounded, Cobb reveals that while dying in the dream would usually awaken dreamers, Yusuf’s sedatives will instead send them into “Limbo”: a world of infinite subconscious. Eames impersonates Robert’s godfather, Peter Browning, to introduce the idea of an alternate will to dissolve the company.
Fight Club
Fight Club is a 1999 American film directed by David Fincher and starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton and Helena Bonham Carter. It is based on the 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Norton plays the unnamed narrator, who is discontented with his white collar job. He forms a fight club with a soap salesman, Tyler Durden (Pitt) and becomes embroiled with an impoverished but beguiling woman, Marla Singer (Bonham Carter).
who struggles with insomnia and dissatisfaction with his job and lifestyle, finds temporary solace in support groups. As his insomnia worsens, he discovers that expressions of emotional vulnerability help him sleep, leading him to join multiple groups for people facing emotionally distressing problems, despite his expressions being fraudulent. His efforts are thwarted when Marla Singer, another impostor, joins the same groups. The Narrator cannot present his fabricated struggles as genuine, or divert his attention from her presence as an impostor, causing his sleeplessness to return. He arranges for them to attend different sessions to regain his ability to sleep and, under certain circumstances, to exchange contact information, to which she reluctantly agrees.
Learning that Project Mayhem plans to erase debt records by blowing up the headquarters of credit card companies, the Narrator unsuccessfully warns Marla and goes to the police, some of whom are also Project Mayhem members. He attempts to disarm the explosives, but Tyler attacks him. The Narrator shoots himself in the mouth, killing Tyler. Marla arrives then she and the Narrator hold hands as they watch the targeted buildings collapse.
Palahniuk’s novel was optioned by Fox 2000 Pictures producer Laura Ziskin, who hired Jim Uhls to write the film adaptation. Fincher was selected because of his enthusiasm for the story. He developed the script with Uhls and sought screenwriting advice from the cast and others in the film industry. It was filmed in and around Los Angeles from July to December 1998. He and the cast compared the film to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Graduate (1967), with a theme of conflict between Generation X and the value system of advertising.
Studio executives did not like the film and restructured Fincher’s intended marketing campaign to try to reduce anticipated losses. Fight Club premiered at the 56th Venice International Film Festival on September 10, 1999 and was released in the United States on October 15, 1999, by 20th Century Fox.
The film failed to meet the studio’s expectations at the box office and polarized critics. It was ranked as one of the most controversial and talked about films of the 1990s. However, Fight Club later found commercial success with its home video release, establishing it as a cult classic and causing media to revisit the film. In 2009, on its tenth anniversary, The New York Times dubbed it the defining cult movie of our time.