THE DARK KNIGHT already starting to look good

The 2007 summer movie season "officially" kicks off next weekend, but I'm already looking forward to next year... and no movie more so than The Dark Knight, the follow-up to 2005's Batman Begins. That has become one of the very rare movies that the more times I've watched it, it just keeps getting better and better. Christopher Nolan's vision was the best on-screen portrayal of Batman and his world by far: this guy gets Batman. Nolan's Batman is realistic and not comic-booky or "superheroic"... which ironically helped make Batman Begins the finest superhero movie ever, in my opinion. I just hope that nobody drops the ball with future installments of this series, 'cuz the first really was the best way to kick off a potential movie franchise that I've ever seen.

Well, this past week saw quite a few good bits of material coming out of The Dark Knight's production, and I'm already feeling positive that this movie is going to work, too. The first to make note of is that Eric Roberts and Nestor Carbonell have joined the cast. Roberts - lately seen on NBC's Heroes and the brother of Julia Roberts (although he will always first and foremost in my mind be known as playing the Master in the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie... am I a geek or what?) will be playing Gotham crime lord Boss Maroni. If you know much about DC's Batman comics, then you already know how this is significant. Carbonell is going to be the mayor of Gotham City... which is good. But Carbonell is already going to be in a new series on CBS this coming fall and more important in my mind, he's the guy playing the mysterious and seemingly forever-young Richard Alpert on Lost. Hope he'll have no problem doing all of those things, especially Lost: the last few weeks have catapulted Richard to the forefront of the mythology. But this is terrific casting for The Dark Knight and I think he'll be great in it.

Then there's this graphic that appeared on The Dark Knight's official website yesterday...

That's Aaron Eckhart playing Harvey Dent. I'm already liking this Dent over how he's previously been portrayed (by Billy Dee Williams in 1989's Batman and Tommy Lee Jones in Batman Forever). This Harvey Dent exudes confidence and a lust for justice. He's also handsome in the way that Dent needs to be handsome... which he should be, 'cuz it'll make his eventual transformation into Two-Face that much more tragic to behold.

So far, so good. Now if only a really good picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker could turn up somewhere...