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Post by bob on Jul 18, 2009 19:58:17 GMT -5
wow....I believe, yes for the first time in this countdown there is no tie at a position This film came in 9th place with a total of 12 votes/points. I've seen this film and highly recommend it. This film came about because of the abortion that "won" last weeks worst movie ever countdown....... Coming in at number 12 Batman Begins here's what you said about it: Everything I ever wanted in a Batman movie. I felt like it was made specifically for me, and for that it will always be above Dark Knight IMO ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1b/Batman_begins.jpg/200px-Batman_begins.jpg) Batman Begins is a 2005 superhero film based on the fictional DC Comics character Batman, directed by Christopher Nolan. It stars Christian Bale as Batman, along with Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson, and Rutger Hauer. The film reboots the Batman film series, telling the origin story of the character and begins with Bruce Wayne's initial fear of bats, the death of his parents, and his journey to becoming Batman. It draws inspiration from classic comic book storylines such as Batman: The Man Who Falls, Batman: Year One, and Batman: The Long Halloween. After a series of unsuccessful projects to resurrect Batman on screen following the 1997 critical failure of Batman & Robin, Nolan and David S. Goyer began work on the film in early 2003 and aimed for a darker and more realistic tone, with humanity and realism being the basis of the film. The goal was to get the audience to care for both Batman and Bruce Wayne. The film, which was primarily shot in England and Chicago, relied on traditional stunts and miniatures—computer-generated imagery was used minimally. A new Batmobile (called the Tumbler) and a more mobile Batsuit were both created specifically for the film. Batman Begins was critically and commercially successful. The film opened on June 15, 2005 in the United States and Canada in 3,858 theaters. It grossed $48 million in its opening weekend, eventually grossing $370 million worldwide. The film received an 84% overall approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Critics noted that fear was a common theme throughout the film, and remarked that it had a darker tone compared to previous Batman films. A sequel titled The Dark Knight was released in July 2008 and also saw the return of both Nolan and Bale to the franchise. The film has also popularized the notion of reboots in Hollywood. The film grossed $496,853,783 in both DVD and box office sales.[1] The film opens with eight-year-old Bruce Wayne playing with his friend Rachel Dawes. Through the course of their game, Bruce falls into a well, where he encounters a swarm of bats and develops a fear of them. The film then cuts to the present, showing a Bruce in his late twenties languishing in a Bhutanese prison. Following a prison brawl, Bruce is approached by Henri Ducard, who invites him to join an elite vigilante group, the League of Shadows, led by Ra's al Ghul. Freed the next day, Bruce travels to the league's headquarters on a snowy mountaintop to begin his martial arts training. Cutting back to the beginning of the film, the young Bruce Wayne accompanies his parents to a production of Mefistofele, which features actors dressed as bats. Frightened by these bat-like portrayals, he urges his father to leave the opera. Outside the theater, Joe Chill mugs and kills Bruce's parents. Although Chill is later arrested that same night, Bruce blames himself for his parents' murders. Back in the present, Bruce continues to train with the League. Having heard the tragedy of Bruce's parents, Ducard asks Bruce why he never avenged their deaths. Cutting back several years, an adult Bruce returns to Gotham City from Princeton University, intent on killing Chill, whose prison sentence is being suspended in exchange for testifying against mobster Carmine Falcone. Before he can act, however, one of Falcone's assassins kills Chill. When Bruce tells Rachel about his foiled plan, she is disgusted and tells him that his father would be ashamed of him. Bruce confronts Falcone, who tells him that he is ignorant of the nature of crime, so Bruce decides to travel the world for nearly seven years to understand the criminal mind. He is eventually detained for theft (ironically of Wayne Enterprises products), wrapping up to the beginning of the film. In the present, Bruce finally completes his training, culminating in overcoming his childhood phobia of bats. Ra's states that he plans to have Bruce lead his men to destroy Gotham, which he claims to have become a breeding ground for criminals and the corrupt and is beyond saving. As a final test, Bruce is asked to execute a local criminal. Bruce refuses, and instead turns on the league, setting the temple on fire and killing Ra's in the process. Bruce rescues an unconscious Ducard from the wreckage and leaves him at a nearby village. Bruce returns to a Gotham City ruled by Falcone, and plots his war against the city's corrupt system. He seeks the help of Rachel, now an assistant district attorney, and police sergeant Jim Gordon, who consoled him after his parents' murder. After reestablishing his connections to Wayne Enterprises, Bruce acquires, with the help of former board member Lucius Fox, a prototype armored car and an experimental armored suit. In his first night, he disrupts a drug shipment, and leaves Falcone tied to a searchlight, forming a makeshift Bat-Signal. He also disrupts an assassination attempt on Rachel, leaving her with evidence against a judge on Falcone's payroll. While investigating the drugs in the shipment, Batman is stunned by Dr. Jonathan Crane, an Arkham Asylum psychiatrist on Falcone's payroll, who sprays him with a powerful hallucinogen. Bruce's butler Alfred Pennyworth rescues him, using an anti-toxin developed by Fox to save him. Crane later poisons Dawes after showing her that the toxin, which is lethal in vapor form, is being piped into the city water supply. Batman saves her and attacks Crane with his own poison. Batman interrogates Crane, who claims to be working for Ra's al Ghul. Before Batman can ask further, the police swarm Arkham to arrest Crane, and Batman escapes with Dawes in the Batmobile. After administering the antidote to her in the Batcave, he gives her two vials of it for Gordon — one for inoculating himself and the other for mass production. Later at Wayne Manor, Bruce is confronted at his birthday celebration by a group of League of Shadows ninjas led by Ducard, who reveals himself to be the real Ra's al Ghul, and that the man killed earlier was a decoy. Ra's, who had been conspiring with Crane the entire time, plans to destroy Gotham by distributing the toxin via the city's water supply, and vaporizing it with a microwave-emitter stolen from Wayne Enterprises. Bruce dismisses his guests by insulting them while pretending to be drunk, and fights briefly with Ra's while the League lights the Manor on fire. At the last minute, Bruce escapes the inferno with Alfred's help. Batman arrives at the Narrows section of Gotham to aid the police in battling psychotic criminals — including Crane, now calling himself "Scarecrow" — whom the League set free. Dawes is briefly confronted by Crane, but quickly wards him off with a taser before being chased by more inmates. After saving her, Batman reveals his identity to her, and leaves Gordon in control of the Batmobile to stop the elevated train used to transport the weapon to the city's central water-hub at Wayne Tower. Batman battles Ra's aboard the train, then escapes just as Gordon topples the elevated line using the Batmobile's missiles, leaving Ra's to crash to the ground and perish in the explosion. Following the battle, Batman becomes a public hero in Gotham. Bruce gains control of Wayne Enterprises and installs Fox as the new CEO. However, he is unable to hold onto Rachel, who cannot reconcile her love for Bruce with his dual life as Batman. Newly-promoted Lieutenant Gordon unveils a Bat-Signal for Batman. Gordon mentions that they will have their hands full finding all of the psychopaths released from Arkham by Ra's, as well as the possibility that Batman's presence could actually result in an escalation of crime. Gordon also mentions a criminal, who has "a taste for theatrics," that leaves Joker playing cards (The Joker) at all of his crime scenes. Batman promises to investigate it. As Batman prepares to leave, Gordon mentions he never thanked Batman for all he's done. Batman replies that he'll never have to, and flies off into the night. The filmmakers intended to create a very mobile Batsuit that would allow the wearer to move easily to fight and crouch. Previous film incarnations of the Batsuit had been stiff and especially restricted full head movement. Costume designer Lindy Hemming and her crew worked on the Batsuit at an FX workshop codenamed "Cape Town", a secured compound located at Shepperton Studios in London. The Batsuit's basic design was a neoprene undersuit, which was shaped by attaching molded cream latex sections. Christian Bale was molded and sculpted prior to his physical training so the team could work on a full body cast. To avoid imperfections picked up by sculpting with clay, plastiline was used to smooth the surface. In addition, the team brewed different mixtures of foam to find the mixture that would be the most flexible, light, durable, and black. The latter presented a problem, since the process to make the foam black reduced the foam's durability.[5] For the cape, director Christopher Nolan wanted to have a "flowing cloak... that blows and flows as in so many great graphic novels". Hemming's team created the cape out of their own version of parachute nylon that had electrostatic flocking, a process shared with the team by the British Ministry of Defence. The process was used by the London police force to minimize night vision detection. The cape was topped by a cowl, which was designed by Nolan, Hemming, and costume effects supervisor Graham Churchyard. The cowl was created to be thin enough to allow motion but thick enough to avoid wrinkling when Bale turned his head in the Batsuit. Churchyard explained the cowl had been designed to show "a man who has angst", so his character would be revealed through the mask ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/96/Batman_bale_small.jpg/140px-Batman_bale_small.jpg) Based on 249 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Batman Begins currently garners an 84% "fresh" rating.[45] The film's reception was more ambivalent within the 40 reviews in Rotten Tomatoes' "Cream of the Crop" subset, reaching a 62% positive consensus.[46] By comparison, Metacritic calculated an average score of 70 from the 41 reviews it collected.[47] James Berardinelli applauded Nolan and Goyer's work creating more understanding into "who [Batman] is and what motivates him", something Berardinelli felt Tim Burton's film lacked; at the same time, Berardinelli felt the romantic aspect between Bale and Holmes did not work because the actors lacked the chemistry Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder (Superman), or Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst (Spider-Man) shared in their respective roles.[48] According to Total Film, Nolan manages to create such strong characters and story that the third-act action sequences cannot compare to " the frisson of two people talking", and Katie Holmes and Christian Bale's romantic subplot has a spark "refreshingly free of Peter Parker/Mary Jane-style whining".[49] Los Angeles Times' Kenneth Turan, who felt the film began slowly, stated that the "story, psychology and reality, not special effects", assisted the darkness behind Batman's arsenal; he noted that Neeson and Holmes, unlike Bale's ability to "feel his role in his bones", do not appear to fit their respective characters in "being both comic-book archetypes and real people".[50] The New Yorker's David Denby did not share Berardinelli and Turan's opinion. He was unimpressed with the film, when comparing it to the two Tim Burton films, and that Christian Bale's presence was hindered by the "dull earnestness of the screenplay", the final climax was "cheesy and unexciting", and that Nolan had resorting to imitating the "fakery" used by other filmmakers when filming action sequences.[51] Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune believed Nolan and Miller managed to "comfortably mix the tormented drama and revenge motifs with light hearted gags and comic book allusions", and that Nolan takes the series out of the "slam-bang Hollywood jokefests" the franchise had drifted into.[52] Comic book scribe and editor Dennis O'Neil stated that he "felt the filmmakers really understood the character they were translating", citing this film as the best of the live-action Batman films.[53] In contrast, J.R. Jones, from the Chicago Reader, criticized the script, and Nolan and David Goyer for not living up to the "hype about exploring Batman's damaged psyche".[54] Roger Ebert, who gave mixed reviews to the previous films, wrote this was "the Batman movie I've been waiting for; more correctly, this is the movie I did not realize I was waiting for". Giving it four out of four stars, he commended the realistic portrayals of the Batman arsenal—the Batsuit, Batcave, Batmobile, and the Batsignal—as well as the focus on "the story and character" with less stress on "high-tech action".[55] Like Berardinelli, USA Today's Mike Clark thought Bale performed the role of Batman as well as he did Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, but that the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes was "frustratingly underdeveloped".[56] Kyle Smith thought Bale exhibited "both the menace and the wit he showed in his brilliant turn in American Psycho", and that the film works so well because of the realism, stating, "Batman starts stripping away each layer of Gotham crime only to discover a sicker and more monstrous evil beneath, his rancid city simultaneously invokes early ’90s New York, when criminals frolicked to the tune of five murders a day; Serpico New York, when cops were for sale; and today, when psychos seek to kill us all at once rather than one by one."[57] In contrast, Salon.com's Stephanie Zacharek felt Nolan did not deliver the emotional depth expected of "one of the most soulful and tortured superheroes of all"; she thought Bale, unlike Michael Keaton who she compared him to, failed to connect with the audience underneath the mask, but that Gary Oldman succeeds in "emotional complexity" where the rest of the movie fails.[58] However, Tim Burton felt Nolan "captured the real spirit that these kind of movies are supposed to have nowadays. When I did Batman twenty years ago, in 1988 or something, it was a different time in comic book movies. You couldn't go into that dark side of comics yet. The last couple of years that has become acceptable and Nolan certainly got more to the root of what the Batman comics are about. Batman Begins opened on June 15, 2005 in the United States and Canada in 3,858 theaters,[60] including 55 IMAX theaters.[61] The film ranked at the top in its opening weekend, accumulating $48,745,440,[60] which was seen as "strong but unimpressive by today's instantaneous blockbuster standards". The film's five-day gross was $72.9 million, beating Batman Forever (1995) as the franchise high. Batman Begins also broke the five-day opening record in the 55 IMAX theaters, grossing $3.16 million. Polled moviegoers rated the film with an A, and according to the studio's surveys, Batman Begins was considered the best of all the Batman films. The audience's demographic was 57 percent male and 54 percent people over the age of 25.[61] The film held its top spot for another weekend, accumulating $27,589,389 in a 43 percent drop from its first weekend.[62] Batman Begins went on to gross $372,353,017 worldwide.[60] It is the third-highest grossing Batman film to date, behind Tim Burton's Batman, which grossed $411,348,924 worldwide and The Dark Knight which has grossed over $1 billion. In comparison to the previous Batman films, Batman Begins averaged $12,634 per theater. It was released in more theaters, but sold fewer tickets then the other previous Batman movies, with the exception of Batman & Robin.[63] Batman Begins was the eighth-highest grossing film of 2005 in the US. Wally Pfister was nominated for Best Cinematography at the 78th Academy Awards, receiving the film's only Oscar nomination. The film received three nominations at the 59th BAFTA Awards. Just months after its release, Batman Begins was voted by Empire readers as the 36th greatest film of all time.[73] In 2006, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored James Newton Howard, Hans Zimmer, and Ramin Djawadi with an ASCAP award for composing a film that became one of the top grossing films of 2005.[74] The film was awarded three Saturn Awards in 2006 as well: Best Fantasy Film, Best Actor for Christian Bale, and Best Writing for Nolan and Goyer.[75] Christian Bale would go on to win an MTV Movie Award for Best Hero.[76] However, Katie Holmes's performance was not well received, and she was nominated for a Razzie Award for Worst Supporting Actress.[77] Batman Begins won the fan-based Total Film award for Best Film.[78] Shawn Adler of MTV stated after Batman Begins, a trend of darker genre films, that either retold back-stories or rebooted them altogether, began. Examples he cited were Casino Royale, as well as the in-development RoboCop, Red Sonja, and He-Man.[79] Filmmakers, screenwriters and producers who have mentioned the film to describe their projects include; Jon Favreau and Iron Man;[80] Edward Norton and The Incredible Hulk;[81] McG and Terminator Salvation (which also stars Bale);[82] Damon Lindelof and Star Trek;[83] Lorenzo di Bonaventura and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra;[84] and even Hugh Jackman and X-Men Origins: Wolverine.[85]
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Post by bob on Jul 18, 2009 20:49:49 GMT -5
wow.....2 in a row without a tie anyways, this next movie is one of my favorites and is considered to be one of the best films of all time by damn near everyone in an episode of Seinfeld made refereance to one of the characters in this film coming in at number 8 with 13 total votes The Godfather Part 2![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/03/Godfather_part_ii.jpg/215px-Godfather_part_ii.jpg) The Godfather Part II is a 1974 American crime thriller directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a script co-written with Mario Puzo. The film is both a sequel and a prequel to The Godfather, chronicling the story of the Corleone family following the events of the first film while also depicting the rise to power of the young Vito Corleone. The film stars Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, and Talia Shire. New cast members include Robert De Niro, Michael V. Gazzo and Lee Strasberg. The Godfather Part II was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won six, including Best Picture[2] and Best Supporting Actor for Robert De Niro, and has been selected for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry. The Godfather Part II presents two parallel storylines. One involves Mafia chief Michael Corleone following the events of the first movie from 1958 to 1959; the other is a series of flashbacks following his father, Vito Corleone, from his childhood in Sicily (1901) to his founding of the criminal Corleone Family in New York City while still a young man (1917–1925). In 1901, in the town of Corleone in Sicily, at the funeral procession for young Vito's father, Antonio Andolini, who had been ordered killed by the local Mafia chieftain, Don Ciccio. During the procession, Vito's older brother Paolo is also murdered because he swore revenge on the Don. Vito's mother goes to Ciccio to beg him to let young Vito live. When he refuses, she holds a knife to his throat, sacrificing herself to allow Vito to escape, and Ciccio's gunmen shoot her. They scour the town for Vito, warning the sleeping townsfolk that they will regret harboring the boy. With the aid of a few of the townspeople, Vito finds his way by ship to New York. Arriving at Ellis Island, an immigration agent, mishearing Vito's hometown of Corleone as his surname, registers him as "Vito Corleone". In 1958, Michael Corleone, Godfather of the Corleone Family, deals with various business and family problems at his Lake Tahoe, Nevada compound during an elaborate party celebrating his son's First Communion. He meets with Nevada Senator Pat Geary, who despises the Corleones, but has shown up with his wife to accept a large endowment to the state university. Senator Geary demands a grossly exaggerated price for a new gaming license and a monthly payment of 5% of the gross profits from all of the Corleone Family's Nevada gaming interests, to which Michael responds with a counter-offer of "nothing ... not even the fee for the gaming license, which I would appreciate if you would put up personally." Michael also deals with his sister Connie, who, although recently divorced, is planning to marry a man with no obvious means of support, and of whom Michael disapproves. He also talks with Johnny Ola, the right hand man of Jewish gangster Hyman Roth, who is supporting Michael's move into the gambling industry. Finally, Michael meets with Frank "Five Angels" Pentangeli, who took over Corleone caporegime Peter Clemenza's territory after his death, and now has problems with the Rosato Brothers, who are backed by Roth. Michael refuses to allow Pentangeli to kill the Rosatos, due to his desire to prevent interruption of his business with Roth. Pentangeli leaves abruptly, after telling Michael "your father did business with Hyman Roth, your father respected Hyman Roth, but your father never trusted Hyman Roth or his Sicilian messenger boy Johnny Ola." Later that night, an assassination attempt is made on Michael, which he survives when his wife Kay notices the bedroom window drapes are inexplicably open. Afterwards, Michael tells Tom Hagen that the hit was made with the help of someone close, and that he must leave, entrusting Hagen to protect his family. In 1917, the 25-year-old Vito Corleone, now married with one son, works in a New York grocery store with his close friend Genco Abbandando. The neighborhood is controlled by a blackhander, Don Fanucci, who extorts protection payments from local businesses. One night, Vito's neighbor Clemenza asks him to hide a stash of guns for him, and later, to repay the favor, takes him to a fancy apartment where they commit their first crime together, stealing an expensive rug. Michael meets with Hyman Roth in his home near Miami and tells him that he believes Frank Pentangeli was responsible for the assassination attempt and that Pentangeli will pay for it. Traveling to Brooklyn, Michael lets Pentangeli know that Roth was actually behind it and that Michael has a plan to deal with Roth, but needs Frankie to cooperate with the Rosato Brothers in order to put Roth off guard. When Pentangeli goes to meet with the Rosatos, he is told "Michael Corleone says hello," as he is garroted; but the attempted murder is accidentally interrupted by a policeman. Pentangeli is left for dead, and his bodyguard, Willi Cicci, is wounded by gunfire. In Nevada, Tom Hagen is called to a brothel run by Fredo, where Senator Geary is implicated in the death of a prostitute. Tom offers to take care of the problem in return for "friendship" between the Senator and the Corleone Family. It has been suggested that the entire event was staged by the Corleone Family in order to gain leverage with Geary and force his cooperation. Meanwhile, Michael meets Roth in Havana, Cuba at the time when dictator Fulgencio Batista is soliciting American investment, and guerrillas are trying to bring down the government. At a birthday party for Roth, Michael – having earlier witnessed a rebel deliberately killing himself and an army officer with a hand grenade – mentions that there is a possibility that the rebels might win, making their business dealings in Cuba problematic. The comment prompts Roth to remark, privately, that Michael has not delivered the two million dollars to seal their partnership. Fredo, carrying the promised money, arrives in Havana and meets Michael. Michael mentions Hyman Roth and Johnny Ola to him, but Fredo says he has never met them. Michael confides to his brother that it was Roth who tried to kill him, and that he plans to try again. Michael assures Fredo that he has already made his move, and that "Hyman Roth will never see the New Year." Instead of turning over the money, Michael asks Roth who gave the order to have Frank Pentangeli killed. Roth avoids the question, instead speaking angrily of the murder of his old friend and ally Moe Greene, which Michael had orchestrated (as depicted at the end of the first film), saying, "I didn't ask who gave the order, because it had nothing to do with business!" Michael asks Fredo, who knows Havana well, to show Senator Geary and other important American officials and businessmen a good time, during which Fredo pretends to not know Johnny Ola. Soon after, at a sex show, a drunk Fredo comments loudly that he learned about the place from Johnny Ola, contradicting what he told Michael twice earlier, that he didn't know Roth or Ola. Michael now realizes that the traitor in the Corleone Family is his own brother, and dispatches his bodyguard back to their hotel to kill Roth. There, Johnny Ola is strangled, but Roth, whose health is failing, is taken to a hospital before he can be assassinated. Michael's bodyguard follows, but is shot by police while trying to smother Roth with a pillow. It is left open to interpretation how the police become aware of the assassination attempt. At Batista's New Year's Eve party, at the stroke of midnight, Michael grasps Fredo tightly by the head and kisses him, telling him "I know it was you Fredo; you broke my heart." Batista announces he is stepping down due to unexpected gains by the rebels. The guests flee as the guerrillas pour into the city. Fredo runs away from Michael, despite Michael's pleas that he is still his brother and that the only way out is with him. Michael returns to Las Vegas where Hagen tells him that Roth escaped Cuba after suffering a stroke and is recovering in Miami, that Michael's bodyguard is dead, and that Fredo is likely hiding in New York. Hagen also informs Michael that Kay had a miscarriage while he was away, which causes Michael to lose his usually calm and collected demeanor. In New York, in 1921, Don Fanucci is now aware of the partnership between Vito, Clemenza and Sal Tessio, and demands that they "wet his beak." Clemenza and Tessio agree to pay, but Vito is reluctant and asks his friends to leave everything in his hands to convince Fanucci to accept less money, telling his friends "I make him an offer he can't refuse." Vito manages to get Fanucci to take only one sixth of what he had demanded. Immediately afterwards, during a neighborhood festa, Vito kills Fanucci and escapes via the rooftops of the tenement buildings. Michael returns to his compound in Lake Tahoe, where he wanders the house in silent contemplation. He sees Kay (whom he has prevented from leaving the compound for her own safety) in the bedroom, but does not approach her. In Washington, D.C., a Senate committee, of which Senator Geary is a member, is conducting an investigation into the Corleone Family. They question disaffected "soldier" Willi Cicci, but he cannot implicate Michael because he never received any direct orders from him. With Fanucci now gone, Vito earns the respect of the neighborhood and begins to intercede in local disputes, operating out of the storefront of his Genco Olive Oil Company, named after his good friend Genco Abbandando. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b5/Michael_Corleone_testifies.jpg/200px-Michael_Corleone_testifies.jpg) When Michael appears before the committee, Senator Geary makes a big show of supporting Italian-Americans and then excuses himself from the proceedings. Michael makes a statement challenging the committee to produce a witness to corroborate the charges against him. The hearing ends with the Chairman promising a witness who will do exactly that. Tom Hagen and Michael discuss the problem. They have found out that Frank Pentangeli is the witness who will testify against him, and observe that Roth's strategy to destroy Michael is well planned. Michael's brother Fredo has been found and persuaded to return to Nevada, and in a private meeting he explains to Michael his betrayal: upset about being passed over to head The Family in favor of Michael, he wants respect and his due. He helped Roth, thinking there would be something in it for him, but he swears he didn't know they wanted to kill Michael. He also tells Michael that the Senate Committee's chief counsel is on Roth's payroll. Michael then tells Fredo: "You're nothing to me now. Not a brother, not a friend, nothing," and privately instructs Al Neri that nothing is to happen to Fredo while their mother is still alive; the understanding is that Fredo will be killed after her death. Frank Pentangeli has made a deal with the FBI to testify against Michael, believing he was the one who organized the attempt on his life. At the hearing in which Pentangeli is to testify, Michael arrives accompanied by Pentangeli's brother Vincenzo, brought in from Sicily. Vincenzo is a Sicilian mafia chieftain who upholds the mafia code of honor, Omertà. Pentangeli, not wanting to break this code of honor in front of his brother, claims that he just told the FBI what they wanted to hear, and makes no direct statements about Michael, the Corleone family, or his time served as a Corleone capo. With no witness to testify against Michael, the committee adjourns, with Hagen, acting as Michael's lawyer, loudly demanding an apology. At a hotel room afterwards, Kay tries to leave Michael and take their children with her. Michael at first tries to mollify her, but loses his temper and hits her when she coldly reveals to him that her recent "miscarriage" was actually an abortion to avoid bringing another son into Michael's criminal family. In 1925, Vito visits Sicily for the first time since leaving for America 24 years earlier. He is introduced to the elderly Don Ciccio by Don Tommasino (who initially helped Vito escape to America) as the man who imports their olive oil to America, and who wants his blessing. When Ciccio asks Vito who his father was, Vito says, "My father's name was Antonio Andolini, and this is for you!" He then plunges a large knife into the old man's stomach and carves it open, thereby avenging the deaths of his father, mother and brother. In the ensuing gun battle, Tommasino is shot, confining him to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Carmella Corleone, Vito's widow and the mother of his children, dies and the whole Corleone family reunites at the funeral. Michael is still shunning Fredo, who is miserable and depressed, but relents when Connie implores him to forgive his brother. Michael and Fredo embrace, but at the same time Michael signals to his capo Al Neri that Fredo's protection from harm, in effect while their mother lived, is now over. Michael, Tom Hagen, Al Neri, and Rocco Lampone discuss their final dealings with Hyman Roth, who has been unsuccessfully seeking asylum from various countries, and was even refused entry to Israel as a returning Jew. Michael rejects Hagen's advice that the Corleone Family's position is secure, and killing Roth and the Rosato brothers for revenge is an unnecessary risk. Later, Hagen pays a visit to Frank Pentangeli on a military base and suggests that he take his own life in return for having his family taken care of. With the help of Connie, Kay visits her children, but cannot bear to leave them and stays too long. When Michael arrives, he closes the door in her face. The film reaches its climax in a montage of assassinations and death, reminiscent of the end of The Godfather: As he arrives in Miami to be taken into custody, Hyman Roth is killed by Rocco Lampone disguised as a journalist, who is immediately shot dead in turn. Frank Pentangeli is found dead in his bathtub, having followed Hagen's instructions and committed suicide, slashing his wrists while taking a bath. Finally, Fredo is murdered by Al Neri while they are fishing on Lake Tahoe, as Fredo is saying a Hail Mary to help him catch a fish. The penultimate scene takes place as a flashback to 1941, as the Corleone family is preparing a surprise birthday party for Vito. Sonny introduces Carlo Rizzi, Connie's future husband and eventual betrayer of Sonny, to his family. Sal Tessio comes in with the cake, and they all talk about the recent attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese. Michael shocks everybody by announcing that he has just enlisted in the United States Marines. Sonny angrily ridicules Michael's choice, while Tom Hagen mentions how his father has great expectations for Michael and has pulled a lot of strings to get Michael a draft deferment. Ironically, Fredo is the only one who supports his brother's decision. When Vito arrives (offscreen), all but Michael leave to greet him. The film ends with a final flashback depicting Vito and a young Michael leaving Corleone by train, and Michael sitting outside the Lake Tahoe compound, alone in contemplative silence Casting notes James Caan agreed to reprise the role of Sonny in the birthday flashback sequence on the condition that for the single scene he be paid the same amount he received for the entire last film. He got his wish. Marlon Brando initially agreed to return for the brief but important birthday flashback sequence, but the actor, feeling mistreated by the board at Paramount, failed to show up for the single day's shooting. Coppola rewrote the scene that same day. Richard Castellano, who portrayed Pete Clemenza in the first film, also declined to return, as Castellano and the producers could not reach agreement on Castellano's demands that he be allowed to write the character's dialogue in the film. Clemenza's role was subsequently filled by his successor, Frank Pentangeli. Troy Donahue, in a small role as Connie's boyfriend, plays a character named Merle Johnson: Merle Johnson is Troy Donahue's birth name. Dominic Chianese, notable for his role as Uncle Corrado "Junior" Soprano in The Sopranos, plays the role of Johnny Ola in his film debut. Two actors who appear in the film played different character roles in other Godfather films; Carmine Caridi, who plays Carmine Rosato, also went on to play crime boss Albert Volpe in The Godfather Part III, and Frank Sivero, who plays a young Genco Abbandando, also plays a bystander to the fight between Sonny Corleone and Carlo Rizzi in The Godfather. Among the Senators in the hearing committee are film producer/director Roger Corman, writer/producer William Bowers, producer Phil Feldman, and science-fiction writer Richard Matheson. For both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, many scenes that were shot were not shown in the original theatrical run but were included in the television adaptation The Godfather Saga (1977) and the home video releases The Godfather Epic (1981) and The Godfather Trilogy (1992). To date, there has not been a single release that contains all of this footage together in one collection. There is also a series of flashbacks in the film. A limited time-reduced version of The Godfather Part II was later released because of its runtime. The shorter version was 2hr 7min 56sec rather than the original 3hr 20min 45sec version.[citation needed] The Godfather Part II ranks among the most critically and artistically successful film sequels in movie history, and is the most honored. Many critics praise it as equal, or even superior, to the original film (although it is almost always placed below the original on lists of "greatest" movies). The film received a "98%" rating on Rotten Tomatoes with only one rotten review. The film also regularly ranks independently on many "greatest movies" lists. The Godfather Part II is ranked as the #1 greatest movie of all time in TV Guide's "50 Best Movies of all time", and is ranked at #7 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time". The film is also featured on movie critic Leonard Maltin's list of the "100 Must-See Films of the 20th Century", as well as Roger Ebert's "Great Movies" list. It was also featured on Sight and Sound's list of the ten greatest films of all time in 1992 and 2002. Like the film itself, Al Pacino's performance has become legendary. The general public and many movie critics have praised Pacino's performance in Part II as perhaps his best, and one of the best performances of all time by any actor. Many critics have criticized the Academy Awards for not awarding Pacino the Academy Award for Best Actor (Art Carney won instead, for his role in Harry and Tonto). In 2006, Premiere Magazine issued "The 100 Greatest Performances of all Time", ranking Pacino's performance at #20 Between The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Coppola directed The Conversation, which was released in 1974 and was also nominated for Best Picture. This resulted in Coppola being the second director in Hollywood history to have two films released in the same year nominated for Best Picture. (The first was Alfred Hitchcock in 1941 with Foreign Correspondent and Rebecca, which won. This achievement was matched by Herbert Ross in 1977 with The Goodbye Girl and The Turning Point and again with Steven Soderbergh in 2000, when the films Erin Brockovich and Traffic were both nominated for Best Picture.) American Film Institute recognition 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #32 2003 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains: Michael Corleone — Villain #11 2005 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," #58 2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #32 2008 AFI's 10 Top 10 #3 Gangster film This was the final major film to be processed in Technicolor The scene in which Vito negotiates with Don Fanucci inspired George Lucas' deleted (and later restored) scene in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, in which Han Solo negotiates with Jabba the Hutt for more time to pay the money he owes. The character Hyman Roth, portrayed by Lee Strasberg, is based on Meyer Lansky. Shortly after the premiere in 1974, Lansky phoned Strasberg and congratulated him on a good performance, but added "You could've made me more sympathetic." Richard Nixon was said by Coppola to have been the inspiration for Peter Donat's character, Questadt the Senate lawyer. The Senate hearings seem a conflation of the Kefauver and McClellan committees on organized crime and union corruption, respectively; the former, a more general investigation of Mafia corruption, was only operable from 1950 through '51, but the McClellan committee's investigations (focused on Mob infiltration of labor unions like the Teamsters) would be contemporaneous to the film's events. Roth specifically mentions Kefauver at one point in the film. The murder of Roth by Rocco Lampone visually recalls Jack Ruby's assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald. In an early draft of the script, Tom Hagen had an affair with Sonny's widow, causing some friction within the Corleone family. This sub-plot was soon cut from the script. The statue carried during the Festa (in the movie, The Feast Of St. Rocco) is of St. Rocco and is currently located at St. Joseph Church in New York City. The priest in the Festa is Rev. Joseph Moffo, who was the pastor of St. Joseph at the time of the filming. In addition, the altarboys and men carrying the canopy were also from St. Joseph. Coincidentally, Fr. Moffo was also a priest at the Church Of St. Rocco in Johnston, RI, for some time in the late 1960s and again in the mid 1980's. The Italian spoken in the film is actually an amalgamation of Southern Italian dialects (or languages: see Sicilian language, Calabrian languages), markedly different from the standard Tuscan-based Italian language. After bad experiences directing the first film, Coppola originally sought Martin Scorsese to direct the sequel after seeing Mean Streets. Eventually, under pressure from Paramount, Coppola directed, but was also given other incentives such as a larger budget and the chance to make The Conversation in the same year.
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Post by Shovelman on Jul 18, 2009 21:05:44 GMT -5
Godfather Part II, very nice. Even better the first
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Post by bob on Jul 18, 2009 21:44:13 GMT -5
Another tie. Oh well. Having one film in a slot was nice while it lasted. Both these films landed in the 7th spot and received 14 votes. These two films are very similar in many ways. The first one........ Star Wars Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Backhere's what you said about it: The epitome of Star Wars. It has everything that people think about when they think Star Wars, Hoth, Yoda, Boba Fett, Cloud City, 'Luke I am your father', Han Solo being a pimp, etc ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/3c/SW_-_Empire_Strikes_Back.jpg/200px-SW_-_Empire_Strikes_Back.jpg) Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is a 1980 space opera film directed by Irvin Kershner. The screenplay, based on a story by George Lucas, was written by Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan. It was the second film released in the Star Wars saga, being followed by Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, and the fifth in terms of internal chronology. The film is set three years after the destruction of the Death Star. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Princess Leia Organa, and the rest of the Rebel Alliance are being pursued by Darth Vader and the elite forces of the Galactic Empire. While Han and Leia are chased across the galaxy by the Empire, Luke studies the Force under Jedi Master Yoda. Vader is secretly plotting a trap for Luke that will lead to a vicious confrontation and a shocking revelation. Following a difficult production, The Empire Strikes Back was released on May 21, 1980, and received mixed reviews from critics, though it has since grown in esteem to become one of the most well-regarded chapters of the saga and one of the most highly rated films in history.[3][4][5] It earned more than US$538 million worldwide over the original run and several re-releases, making it the highest grossing film of 1980. When adjusted for inflation, it is the 12th highest grossing film of all time in the United States. Despite their victory over the Galactic Empire with the destruction of the Death Star, the Rebel Alliance was driven out of their base and forced to establish a new base on the remote ice planet Hoth. Darth Vader, having become obsessed with finding Luke Skywalker, now a lieutenant commander in the Rebellion, has multiple probe droids dispatched throughout the galaxy, one of which lands on Hoth. While patrolling near the base, Luke is attacked and knocked unconscious by an indigenous predator, called a Wampa. Back at the base, Han Solo announces his intentions to leave the Rebellion to pay off a debt to Jabba the Hutt (much to Princess Leia's displeasure), but stalls to search for Luke when he doesn't return. Escaping from the creature's lair, Luke nearly succumbs to the cold and has a vision of his late mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi, who instructs him to go to the planet Dagobah to train under Jedi Master Yoda. Han finds Luke and provides shelter before they are rescued the following morning. Meanwhile, the Imperial probe droid locates the Rebel base on Hoth, and Vader orders an attack while the Rebels prepare to evacuate and disperse. The Imperial forces eventually overpower the Rebels and capture the base. Han and Leia escape on the Millennium Falcon with C-3PO and Chewbacca, but are unable to enter hyperspace due to technical difficulties and evade pursuit in an asteroid field, where Han and Leia begin to grow closer to each other. Vader turns to several notorious bounty hunters, including Boba Fett, to assist in locating the Falcon. Meanwhile, Luke escapes from Hoth with R2-D2 and crash lands on Dagobah, where he meets a wizened little green creature who reveals himself to be Yoda. While undergoing intensive training, Luke has a premonition of Han and Leia in danger and, against Yoda's wishes, leaves to save his friends, promising to return to complete his training. With Imperial forces off their trail, Han's party set a course for Cloud City, a floating gas mining colony in the skies of the planet Bespin run by Han's old friend, Lando Calrissian, unaware that they have been tracked by Fett. Shortly after they arrive in Cloud City, Lando turns them over to Vader to be used as bait in a trap for Luke, insisting that he was forced to do so to prevent occupation of his city by the Empire. Vader intends to hold Luke in suspended animation via carbon freezing, selecting Han as a test subject for the process. Before Han is frozen in carbonite, he and Leia profess their love for each other. Han's frozen form is given to Fett, who plans to present him to Jabba the Hutt. Lando later repents and helps Leia and the others escape, insisting that there is still a chance to save Han. Unfortunately, Fett makes off with his quarry before they get a chance to confront him, forcing them to make an escape on the Millennium Falcon. Meanwhile, Luke arrives in Cloud City and falls right into Vader's trap. He and Vader engage in a lightsaber duel within the carbon-freezing facilities, eventually bringing them to the city’s central air shaft. Gaining an advantage, Vader cuts off Luke's dueling hand along with his lightsaber. With Luke cornered and defenseless, Vader goads Luke to rule the galaxy alongside him, making the horrifying revelation that he is Luke's father. Unwilling to join Vader, Luke casts himself into the air shaft and finds himself hanging on an antenna on the underbelly of the city. He makes a desperate call to Leia, who senses Luke's distress aboard the Millennium Falcon and manages to get him to safety. Its hyperdrive finally functional (thanks to timely repairs by R2-D2), the Falcon escapes. Aboard a Rebel medical frigate, Luke is fitted with an artificial hand while Lando and Chewie set out on the Falcon to locate Han Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: A lieutenant commander in the Rebel Alliance, leader of Rogue Group, and Jedi-in-training, Luke is a young farm-boy-turned-hero with the rebels at Echo Base on Hoth. After having a vision of his old master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke, along with his droid, R2-D2, set out to find Yoda on Dagobah. Harrison Ford as Han Solo: A smuggler who aided the Rebellion in exchange for money, Han is in debt to Jabba the Hutt, due to his dumping of illegal cargo to avoid detection by Imperial authorities. Intending to pay off Jabba, Solo is trapped on Hoth by the Imperial blockade. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa is a high ranking official in the Rebellion chain of command. David Prowse as Darth Vader: Vader, a Sith Lord and apprentice to Emperor Palpatine, is obsessed with finding Luke Skywalker, the young rebel who destroyed the Death Star. His search brings him to Hoth, where he orders the blockade of the ice planet. It is also revealed later in the film that he is actually Luke's father, Anakin Skywalker. James Earl Jones provided the voice of Darth Vader. Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian: Calrissian is the Baron Administrator of Bespin's Cloud City. He is a long-time friend of Han Solo and former captain of the Millennium Falcon. Anthony Daniels as C-3PO: C-3PO is Princess Leia Organa's protocol droid. Kenny Baker as R2-D2: R2-D2 is Luke Skywalker's astromech droid. Frank Oz as Yoda: Yoda is a self-exiled Jedi Master, who lives on Dagobah. Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca: Chewbacca is Han Solo's Wookiee copilot and close friend. Jeremy Bulloch as Boba Fett: A bounty hunter, Fett has gained infamy throughout the galaxy and is hired by Darth Vader to hunt down the Millennium Falcon. Jason Wingreen provided Fett's voice in the original theatrical cut and the 1997 Special Edition of the film. Bulloch also makes a cameo appearance as the Imperial officer who grabs Leia when she tells Luke to avoid Vader's trap. In the 2004 special edition, Temuera Morrison, who played Jango Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones replaced Wingreen as Fett's voice to create better continuity between the original and prequel trilogy. Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi: Kenobi was slain by Darth Vader on the Death Star in A New Hope. However, moments before his death, he released himself into the nether world of the Force, giving him the ability to appear as a spirit, and allowing him to give guidance to his former student, Luke Skywalker. Denis Lawson as Wedge Antilles: Wedge is a pilot in the Rebel Alliance, who flew with Luke Skywalker at the Battle of Yavin. In the end credits, as with A New Hope, Denis Lawson's name is misspelled "Dennis." Clive Revill voices Emperor Palpatine: Palpatine, the ruler of the Galactic Empire, was displeased with the loss of the Death Star; consequently, he listed the Rebel Alliance as a top priority for his military forces. Revill was later replaced with Ian McDiarmid for the 2004 DVD release. In addition to Clive Revill as the voice of the Emperor, an unknown actress played the part in the original theatrical cut and the 1997 Special Edition of the film with superimposed chimpanzee eyes.[6][7] Ian McDiarmid, who portrayed Palpatine in Return of the Jedi as well as the prequel trilogy films, replaced both the actress and Revill as the Emperor in the 2004 DVD version with filming taking place during the principal photography of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.[6][8] Actor John Ratzenberger, best known as "Cliff Clavin" from the TV series Cheers and the voices of many characters from Pixar's animated films, has a small part as deck officer Major Bren Derlin. Notable character actor Treat Williams portrayed several background characters, including a trooper in the Hoth rebel base and a trooper in Cloud City As part of Star Wars' 20th anniversary celebration in 1997, The Empire Strikes Back was digitally remastered and re-released with A New Hope and Return of the Jedi under the campaign title The Star Wars Trilogy: Special Edition. Lucas took this opportunity to make several minor changes to the film. These included explicitly showing the Wampa creature on Hoth in full form, creating more details for the Falcon's approach to Cloud City, digitally inserting windows with vistas of Bespin into the original white interior walls of Cloud City, and replacing certain lines of dialogue. A short sequence was also added depicting Vader's return to his flagship after duelling with Luke, using alternate angles of a scene from Return of the Jedi. Most of the changes were small and aesthetic; however, some fans believe that they detract from the film.[6] Although many now consider it the best film in the saga,[3] The Empire Strikes Back initially received mixed reviews.[16] Financially, the film surpassed industry expectations; within three months of the film's release, Lucas had recovered his budget—a $30 million investment.[9] Opening weekend in the United States generated $10,840,307. When it was re-released in 1997, its opening weekend in the USA made $21,975,993. In the USA, as of 2007, the gross revenue is $290,475,751 and worldwide gross revenue is $538,375,067.[24] Some critics had problems with the story but admitted the film was a technical achievement. For instance, Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote a largely negative review.[25] Judith Martin of The Washington Post complained of the film's "middle-of-the-story" plot, which featured no particular beginning or end,[26] a concept that Lucas actually intended.[16] However, Bob Stephens of the San Francisco Examiner later described the film as "the greatest episode of the Star Wars Trilogy."[27] Empire is now considered the most morally and emotionally complex of the Star Wars trilogy.[28] Roger Ebert, in his 1997 review, called the film the strongest and "the most thought-provoking" of the original trilogy.[29] On Rotten Tomatoes, The Empire Strikes Back has a 97% "certified fresh" rating, making it the highest Star Wars rated film episode on the site.[28] Darth Vader was ranked as the third greatest film villain of all time on the American Film Institute's 2003 list of the 100 greatest heroes and villains for his role in this film,[30] while Wizard magazine named the film's ending as the greatest cliffhanger of all time.[31] The film's most famous line "No, I am your father" is often misquoted as "Luke, I am your father."[32] At the 1981 Academy Awards, The Empire Strikes Back won for Best Sound, given to Bill Varney, Steve Maslow, Greg Landaker, and Peter Sutton; in addition the film received the Academy Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects that went to Brian Johnson, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, and Bruce Nicholson. It was also nominated for Best Music, Original Score, to John Williams, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, to Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, Harry Lange, Alan Tomkins, and Michael Ford.[33] It won the BAFTA Film Award for "Best Original Film Music" by John Williams, as well as being nominated for "Best Sound" and "Best Production Design." Williams' score also received the Grammy Award and the Golden Globe.[33] The Empire Strikes Back received four Saturn Awards, including Mark Hamill for "Best Actor," Irvin Kershner for "Best Director," "Best Special Effects" to Brian Johnson and Richard Edlund, and it was awarded "Best Science Fiction Film." The film was awarded with the Golden Screen Award as well as the Hugo Award for "Best Dramatic Presentation." It was nominated for the WGA Award (Screen) for "Best Comedy Adapted from Another Medium."[34] For many, The Empire Strikes Back has become the prime example of a superior sequel. Director Bryan Singer and producer Tom DeSanto emulated the film for X2, the sequel to X-Men, in that the characters are "all split apart, and then dissected, and revelations that occur that are significant... the romance comes to fruition and a lot of things happen Video games based on the film have been released on several consoles. Additionally, several Star Wars video games feature or mention key events seen in the film, but are not entirely based upon the film. In 1982 Parker Brothers released Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Atari 2600 games console, which featured the speeder attack on the AT-ATs on Hoth.[43] The arcade game Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back followed in 1985. The game features familiar battle sequences and characters played from a first-person perspective. Specific battles include the Battle of Hoth and the subsequent escape of the Millennium Falcon through an asteroid field.[44] A conversion was released in 1988 for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga.[45] In 1992, JVC released the LucasArts-developed video game also titled Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) console.[46] The player assumes the role of Luke Skywalker and maneuvers through Skywalker's story as seen in the film. In 1992, Ubisoft released a version for the Game Boy. Like its previous incarnation, it follows the story of Luke Skywalker.[47] Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back was developed for the console Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) by LucasArts and was released by JVC in 1993. The SNES game is similar in spots to the 1991 NES release, and is on an 12-megabit cartridge.[48] LucasArts's Shadows of the Empire game was one of the first games made available for Nintendo's 3rd generation console, the Nintendo 64 and Windows. The most commercial product in the Shadows of the Empire line, the game was first released as an exclusive N64 title four months after the console's launch in December 1996. The PC version came nearly a year later in September 1997. In the game, players control mercenary Dash Rendar in his efforts to help Luke Skywalker and rescue Princess Leia from Prince Xizor's hands. It is divided into four parts (or chapters), the first of which chronicles Rendar's involvement in the Battle of Hoth. In the years since Shadows, several games have dropped players into the action of Empire: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (Nintendo 64): The Battle of Hoth is an unlockable level. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (Nintendo GameCube): The Battle of Hoth is a playable level. Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike (GameCube): The Battle of Hoth is reimagined in the single-player campaign, and the Rogue Leader level is available in the two-player cooperative campaign. Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (Arcade only): Players must complete a campaign based on each of the three original trilogy films. For Empire, players fly a speeder on Hoth before making their way through Echo Base on foot. Lego Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy/Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga (PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, GCN, Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation Portable, PC): Contains six missions from Empire, including both vehicular and foot missions on Hoth; the asteroid flight of the Millennium Falcon; Luke's Jedi training on Dagobah; and missions on Cloud City featuring Luke's battle with Vader, as well as Leia and Lando's escape. Star Wars Battlefront II (PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Xbox, PC): The battle of Hoth is playable by the Empire in the Campaign Mode. Also, battles on Hoth, Dagobah, and Bespin (Xbox download content only), are playable on the Galactic Conquest Mode, as well as Instant Action mode. In strategy games, such as Star Wars: Rebellion, action often takes place during the timeline of Empire but only infrequently drops players directly into the action from the film ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/d7/Battlehothesb.JPG/350px-Battlehothesb.JPG) and the other film is................ wait for it Star Wars Episode 4 A New Hopehere's what you said about it: Not sure why people put this one down these days. It's no Empire, but it's far better than it has any right to be, if you know how filming went on the set. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/87/StarWarsMoviePoster1977.jpg/199px-StarWarsMoviePoster1977.jpg) Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released simply as Star Wars,[2] is an American 1977 space opera film,[3] written and directed by George Lucas. It was the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films continue the story, while a prequel trilogy contributes backstory, primarily for the troubled character of Darth Vader. Ground-breaking in its use of special effects, this first Star Wars movie is one of the most successful films of all time and is generally considered one of the most influential as well. Set far in the past in a distant galaxy, the movie tells the story of a plot by a group of freedom fighters known as the Rebel Alliance to destroy the Death Star space station of the oppressive Galactic Empire. The plot follows the tale of farm boy Luke Skywalker who is suddenly thrust into the role of hero when he inadvertently acquires the droids carrying the schematic plans of the station. He must accompany Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi on a mission to rescue the owner of the droids, rebel leader Princess Leia Organa, deliver the plans to the rebels' secret base, and help destroy the station before it reaches and destroys the rebel base. Inspired by films like the Flash Gordon serials and the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa, as well as such critical works as Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Lucas began work on Star Wars in May 1973. Produced with a budget of $11,000,000 and released on May 25, 1977, the film went on to earn $460 million in the United States and $337 million overseas, and received several awards, including 10 Academy Award nominations, among them Best Supporting Actor for Alec Guinness and Best Picture. It was re-released several times, sometimes with significant changes; the most notable versions are the 1997 Special Edition and the 2004 DVD release, which were modified with computer-generated effects and recreated scenes. The galaxy is in a state of civil war. Spies for the Rebel Alliance have stolen plans to the Galactic Empire's Death Star: a space station capable of annihilating a planet. Rebel leader Princess Leia is in possession of the plans, but her ship is captured by Imperial forces under the command of Darth Vader. Before she is captured, Leia hides the plans in a droid named R2-D2, along with a holographic recording. The small droid escapes to the surface of the desert planet Tatooine with fellow droid C-3PO. The two droids are quickly captured by Jawa traders, who sell the pair to moisture farmer Owen Lars and his nephew, Luke Skywalker. While Luke is cleaning R2-D2, he accidentally triggers part of Leia's holographic message, in which she requests help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. The only "Kenobi" Luke knows of is an old hermit named Ben Kenobi who lives in the nearby hills; Owen, however, dismisses any connection, suggesting that Obi-Wan is dead. During dinner, R2-D2 escapes to seek Obi-Wan. Luke and C-3PO go out after him and are met by Ben Kenobi, who reveals himself to be Obi-Wan and takes Luke and the droids back to his hut. He tells Luke of his days as a Jedi Knight and explains to Luke about a mysterious energy field called the Force. He also tells Luke about his association with Luke's father, also a Jedi, whom he claims to have been betrayed and murdered by Darth Vader, Obi-Wan's former pupil who turned to the Sith. Obi-Wan then views Leia's message, in which she begs him to take R2-D2 and the Death Star plans to her home planet of Alderaan, where her father will be able to retrieve and analyze them. Obi-Wan asks Luke to accompany him to Alderaan and to learn the ways of the Force. After initially refusing, Luke discovers that his home has been destroyed and his aunt and uncle killed by Imperial stormtroopers in search of the droids. Luke agrees to go with Obi-Wan to Alderaan, and the two hire smuggler Han Solo and his Wookiee co-pilot Chewbacca to transport them on their ship, the Millennium Falcon. Meanwhile, Leia has been imprisoned on the Death Star and has resisted giving the location of the secret Rebel base. Grand Moff Tarkin, the Death Star's commanding officer and Vader's superior, tries to coax information out of her by threatening to destroy Alderaan and proceeds to do so even after she appears to cooperate as a means of demonstrating the power of the Empire's new weapon. When the Falcon arrives at Alderaan's coordinates, they find themselves in a field of rubble. They follow a TIE fighter towards the Death Star and are captured by the station's tractor beam and brought into its hangar bay. The group takes refuge in a command room on the station while Obi-Wan goes off by himself to disable the tractor beam. While they are waiting, they discover that Princess Leia is onboard and is scheduled to be executed. Han, Luke, and Chewbacca stage a rescue and free the princess. Making their way back to the Millennium Falcon, their path is cleared by the spectacle of a lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. Obi-Wan allows himself to be struck down as the others race onto the ship and escape. The Falcon journeys to the Rebel base at Yavin IV where the Death Star plans are analyzed by the Rebels and a potential weakness is found. The weakness will require the use of one-man fighters to slip past the Death Star's formidable defenses and attack a vulnerable exhaust port. Luke joins the assault team while Han collects his reward for the rescue and leaves, despite Luke's request for him to stay. The attack proceeds when the Death Star arrives in the system, with Darth Vader having placed a homing device on the Falcon. The Rebel fighters suffer heavy losses and, after several failed attack runs, Luke remains as one of the few surviving pilots. Vader appears with his own group of fighters and begins attacking the Rebel ships. Luke begins his attack run with Vader in pursuit as the Death Star approaches firing range of Yavin IV. As Vader is about to fire at Luke's ship, Han arrives in the Millennium Falcon and attacks Vader and his wingmen, sending Vader's ship careening off into space. Guided by Obi-Wan's voice telling him to use the Force, Luke fires a successful shot which destroys the Death Star seconds before it fires on the Rebel base. Later, at a grand ceremony, Princess Leia awards medals to Luke and Han for their heroism in the battle. Cast Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker: Skywalker is a young man who lives with his aunt and uncle on the remote world Tatooine and who dreams of something greater than his current position in life. Harrison Ford as Han Solo: Solo is a self-absorbed smuggler whom Obi-Wan and Luke meet in a cantina and with whom they later travel. Solo, who owns the ship Millennium Falcon, is good friends with Chewbacca, the ship's co-pilot. Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia Organa: Organa is a member of the Imperial Senate and a leader of the Rebel Alliance. She plans to use the stolen Death Star plans to find the station's weakness. Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan "Ben" Kenobi: Kenobi is an aging man who served as a Jedi Knight during the Clone Wars. Early in the film, Kenobi introduces Luke to the Force. Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin: Tarkin is the commander of the Death Star and a Regional Governor. He leads the search for the Rebel Base, hoping to destroy it. David Prowse as Darth Vader. Vader is a Dark Lord of the Sith, and a prominent figure in the Galactic Empire who hopes to destroy the Rebel Alliance. He was voiced by James Earl Jones. Anthony Daniels as C-3PO: C-3PO is a protocol and interpreter droid who falls into the hands of Luke Skywalker. He is rarely without his counterpart droid, R2-D2. Kenny Baker as R2-D2: R2-D2 is a mechanic droid who also falls into the hands of Luke. He is carrying a secret message for Obi-Wan Kenobi. Like C-3PO, through the First Trilogy he is characteristically found with his subsequent partner C-3PO. Peter Mayhew as Chewbacca: Chewbacca is the Wookiee co-pilot of the Millennium Falcon and a close friend of Han Solo. Denis Lawson as Wedge Antilles: Antilles is a starfighter pilot who fights alongside Luke in the Battle of Yavin. In the ending credits, Lawson's first name is misspelled "Dennis". Lucas shared a joint casting session with long-time friend Brian De Palma, who was casting his own film Carrie. As a result, Carrie Fisher and Sissy Spacek auditioned for both films in each other's respective roles.[4] Lucas favored casting young actors without long-time experience. While reading for Luke Skywalker (then known as "Luke Starkiller"), Hamill found the dialogue to be extremely odd because of its universe-embedded concepts. He chose to simply read it sincerely and was selected instead of William Katt, who was subsequently cast in Carrie.[5][6][7] Lucas initially rejected the idea of using Harrison Ford, as he had previously worked with him on American Graffiti, and instead asked Ford to assist in the auditions by reading lines with the other actors and explaining the concepts and history behind the scenes that they were reading. Lucas was eventually won over by Ford's portrayal and cast him instead of Kurt Russell, Nick Nolte,[7] Christopher Walken, Billy Dee Williams (who would play Lando Calrissian in the sequel), and Perry King, who wound up playing Solo in the radio plays.[4][5][8] Virtually every young actress in Hollywood auditioned for the role of Princess Leia, including Terri Nunn,[9] Jodie Foster,[4] and Cindy Williams.[5] Carrie Fisher was cast under the condition that she lose 10 pounds of weight for the role. Aware that the studio disagreed with his refusal to cast big-name stars, Lucas signed veteran stage and screen actor Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi.[5] Additional casting took place in London, where Mayhew was cast as Chewbacca after he stood up to greet Lucas. Lucas immediately turned to Gary Kurtz, and requested that Mayhew be cast.[10] Daniels auditioned for and was cast as C-3PO after he saw a McQuarrie drawing of the character; struck by the vulnerability in the robot's face, he instantly wanted to help to bring the character to life.[5][11] Lucas has often alleged that the entire original trilogy was written as one film; that the Star Wars script was too long, so he split it into three films.[5][33][34] However, none of Lucas' drafts had more pages or scenes than his final draft. Lucas' second draft is usually cited as the script he is referring to with these comments.[35] Michael Kaminski argues in his work The Secret History of Star Wars that this draft is structurally very similar to the final film in plot arrangement, and that the only elements from it that were saved for the sequels were an asteroid field space chase (moved to The Empire Strikes Back) and a forest battle involving Wookiees (moved to Return of the Jedi, with Ewoks in place of Wookiees), and that none of the major plot of the sequels are present.[35] Lucas himself has actually occasionally admitted this.[36] ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Hotel_Sidi_Driss-underground_view_only.jpg/220px-Hotel_Sidi_Driss-underground_view_only.jpg) After Lucas was disappointed with first edit of Star Wars by his editor John Jympson, some main scenes were cut from it, mainly for pacing reasons, and as for what Lucas described "to get that Grafitti feel out of it." [70] These scenes have never been included on any VHS or DVD release, and are only available on the 1998 "Behind the Magic" CD-ROM-disc, and some pre-release publicity photographs. [71] These scenes are: Luke repairing a moisture vaporator at the Skywalker farm, assisted by a treadwell droid, when he notices shining objects in the sky. With his macrobinoculars Luke sees two ships engaged in combat beyond the atmosphere (Tantive IV chased by Dark Vader). Luke jumps in his landspeeder off into the desert to find his friends. The malfunctioning Treadwell blows a fuse and is unable to follow. Before this scene was cut, this was the audience's first sight of the young Luke Skywalker, much earlier than in the final cut. George Lucas had originally written the scenes and shot them at the suggestion of his industry friends who thought that audiences wouldn't understand the story. Upon realizing that the story was really about the droids adventures and it was them leading things to Luke and Obi-Wan, Lucas took the footage out. It has no sound and very little color, being degraded by poor film storage conditions over the years. Luke storming into the Tosche Station at Anchorhead to tell his friends, Deak, Windy, Camie, Fixer and Biggs Darklighter about the space battle he witnessed. The battle appears to have ended and Luke's friends ridicule him for making it all up. After Lucas's first screening of the rough cut of Star Wars, a fellow film-maker jokingly accused him of producing "American Graffiti in space". This was a deciding factor for Lucas to cut all the scenes set in Anchorhead. Note that the radio play also has this scene. Biggs' extended goodbye scene. Biggs talks about his assignment to work on the starship Rand Ecliptic. Luke's envy of Biggs's success conflicts with his duty to his uncle and his reasons for remaining on Tatooine. Biggs quietly tells Luke that he has decided to join the Rebellion against the Empire. It also includes some close-ups of the droids that are later seen in the Jawa Sandcrawler scene. The scene was meant to illustrate the close friendship of Luke and Biggs, probably cut for pacing reasons. The radio play also includes this scene. Extended cantina-scene, including a scene with Han kissing another woman. This scene is yet missing the soundtrack and voice-overs, and is in poor quality. Darth Vader and Chief Bast scene, in which they walk along a corridor on the Death Star. Bast reports that the search for the missing droids has extended to Mos Eisley spaceport. Vader observes that Princess Leia is resisting interrogation, and Bast boldly criticizes Tarkin's plan to break her as "foolish". Also in the Star Wars Holiday Special (the "Life On Tatooine" segment). The Search for R2D2 scene. Early in the morning, Luke and C3PO rush off in the landspeeder to search for R2D2 who has absconded from his new master Luke. While C3PO drives the landspeeder, they talk about Ben Kenobi and how angry Uncle Owen is going to be. This landspeeder cockpit sequence had to be filmed against a rear-projection screen, and was likely dropped due to poor quality Star Wars debuted on May 25, 1977, in 32 theaters and proceeded to break house records, effectively becoming one of the first blockbuster films.[72] It remains one of the most financially successful films of all time. Some of the cast and crew noted lines of people stretching around theaters as they drove by. Even technical crew members, such as model makers, were asked for autographs, and cast members became instant household names.[5] The film's original total U.S. and Canada gross came to $307,263,857, and it earned $6,806,951 during its first weekend in wide release. Lucas claimed that he had spent most of the release day in a sound studio in Los Angeles. When he went out for lunch with his then-wife Marcia, they encountered a long queue of people along the sidewalks leading to Mann's Chinese Theatre, waiting to see Star Wars.[41] The film became the highest-grossing film of 1977 and the highest-grossing film of all time until E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial broke that record in 1982. (With subsequent rereleases, Star Wars reclaimed the title, but lost it again to James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster Titanic.) The film earned $775,398,007 worldwide, making it the first film to reach the $300, $400, $500, $600 and $700 million mark.[1] Adjusted for inflation, it is the second highest grossing movie of all time in the United States, behind Gone with the Wind (1939).[73] The film received an overwhelmingly positive critical reception. In his 1977 review, Roger Ebert called the film "an out-of-body experience," compared its special effects to those of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and opined that the true strength of the film was its "pure narrative."[74] Vincent Canby called the film "the movie that's going to entertain a lot of contemporary folk who have a soft spot for the virtually ritualized manners of comic-book adventure."[75] However, there were a few negative responses. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker criticized the film, stating that "there's no breather in the picture, no lyricism," and that it had no "emotional grip."[76] Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader stated, "None of these characters has any depth, and they're all treated like the fanciful props and settings!"[77] Peter Keough of the Boston Phoenix said "Star Wars is a junkyard of cinematic gimcracks not unlike the Jawas' heap of purloined, discarded, barely functioning droids."[78] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic also responded negatively, noting, "His work here seems less inventive than in THX 1138."[79] According to Rotten Tomatoes, of the 59 critical reviews of the film provided on that site, 56 responded favorably (95% of the reviewers), stating in consensus that "the action and special effects are first rate."[79] In 1989, the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress selected the film as a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" film.[80] In 2006, Lucas' original screenplay was selected by the Writers Guild of America as the 68th greatest of all time.[81] The American Film Institute (or AFI) listed it 15th on a list of the top 100 films of the 20th century;[82] in the UK, a poll created by Channel 4 named A New Hope (together with its successor, The Empire Strikes Back) the greatest film of all time.[83] The American Film Institute has named Star Wars and specific elements of it to several of its "top 100 lists" of American cinema, compiled as a part of the Institute's 100th anniversary celebration. These include the 27th most thrilling American film of all time;[84] the thirty-ninth most inspirational American film of all-time;[85] Han Solo as the fourteenth greatest American film hero of all time and Obi-Wan Kenobi thirty-seventh on the same list.[86] The often repeated line "May the Force be with you" was ranked as the eighth greatest quote in American film history.[87] John Williams' score was ranked as the greatest American film score of all time.[88] Star Wars won six Academy Awards, including Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, which went to John Barry, Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley and Roger Christian. Best Costume Design was awarded to John Mollo; Best Film Editing went to Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew; John Stears, John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Grant McCune and Robert Blalack all received awards for Best Effects, Visual Effects. John Williams was awarded his third Oscar for Best Music, Original Score; the Best Sound went to Don MacDougall, Ray West, Bob Minkler and Derek Ball; and a Special Achievement for Sound Effects went to Ben Burtt. Additional nominations included Alec Guinness for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, George Lucas for Best Screenplay and Best Director, although it did not win Best Picture, which went to Annie Hall.[89] At the Golden Globe awards, the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture - Drama, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guinness), and Best Score. It only won the award for Best Score.[89] It received six BAFTA nominations: Best Film, Best Editing, Best Costume, Best Production/Art Design, Best Sound, and Best Score; the film won in the latter two categories.[89] John Williams' soundtrack album won the Grammy award for Best Album of an original score for a motion picture or television program,[89] and the film was awarded the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.[89] In 1997, the MTV Movie Awards awarded Chewbacca the lifetime achievement award for his work in the Star Wars trilogy.[89] In 2002, Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back were voted as the greatest films ever made on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Films poll. In the American Film Institute's 2007 poll 100 Years, 100 Movies - the Anniversary Edition, Star Wars was voted the 13th greatest American movie. American Film Institute 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #15 2001 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #27 2003 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains: Darth Vader, villain #3 Han Solo, hero #14 Obi-Wan Kenobi, hero #37 2005 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes: "May the Force be with you." #8 2005 AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores #1 2006 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Cheers #39 2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #13 2008 AFI's 10 Top 10 Sci-Fi film #2
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Post by bob on Jul 18, 2009 23:08:19 GMT -5
alright......getting down to the top movies here just the top 5 left I have seen all 5 remaining films and highly recommand them coming in with a total of 16 votes and placing in 5th is........ Raiders of the Lost Ark here's what we said about it: Just good clean classic film making fun. There's really nothing else to even say about ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a9/Raiders_of_the_lost_ark_poster_B.jpg) Raiders of the Lost Ark (also known as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark) is a 1981 action-adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, produced by George Lucas, and starring Harrison Ford. It is the first film in the Indiana Jones franchise, and pits Indiana Jones (played by Ford) against the Nazis, who search for the Ark of the Covenant, in an attempt to make their army invincible. The film co-starred Karen Allen as Indiana's former lover Marion Ravenwood; Paul Freeman as Indiana's nemesis, French archaeologist René Belloq; John Rhys-Davies as Indiana's sidekick, Sallah; and Denholm Elliott as Indiana's colleague, Marcus Brody. The film originated with Lucas' desire to create a modern version of the serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Production was based at Elstree Studios, England, and filming also took place in La Rochelle, Tunisia, Hawaii, and California from June to September 1980. Released on June 12, 1981, Raiders of the Lost Ark became the top grossing film of 1981;[2] it remains one of the highest-grossing films ever made.[2] It was nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1982 and won five (Art Direction, Film Editing, Sound, Visual Effects, and Sound Effects Editing). The film's critical and popular success led to three additional films, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), as well as a television series: The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (1992-1996). In 1936, treasure hunter/archaeologist Indiana Jones braves an ancient temple in Peru filled with booby traps in the Peruvian jungle to retrieve a Golden Idol. Upon escaping the temple, Indiana is confronted by rival archaeologist René Belloq and the indigenous Hovitos people. Surrounded and outnumbered, Indiana is forced to surrender the idol to Belloq, and flees from a jungle chase onboard a waiting seaplane. Shortly after returning to America to the college where he teaches archeology, Indiana is informed by two Army intelligence agents that the Nazis, in their quest for occult power, are searching for his old mentor, Abner Ravenwood. Ravenwood is in possession of the headpiece of an artifact called the Staff of Ra and is the leading expert on the ancient Egyptian city of Tanis. Indiana deduces that the Nazis are searching for the Ark of the Covenant, the biblical chest built by the Israelites to contain the fragments of the Ten Commandments, that is said to grant the power of God to whoever holds it. The Staff of Ra, meanwhile, is the key to finding the Well of Souls in Tanis, which is where the Ark is buried. The agents subsequently authorize Indiana to recover the Ark with the promise of displaying it in a museum. Indiana travels to Ravenwood's tavern in Nepal for the headpiece, only to find that he has died and that the headpiece is in the possession of his daughter and Indiana's embittered former lover, Marion. The tavern is suddenly raided by a group of thugs commanded by Nazi agent Major Toht. The tavern is burned down in the ensuing fight, during which Toht burns his hand on the searing hot headpiece as he tries to grab it. Indiana and Marion escape with the headpiece, with Marion declaring she will accompany Indiana in his search for the Ark so he can repay his debt. Indiana and Marion travel to Cairo where they learn from Sallah, Indiana's friend and a skilled digger, that the Nazis are currently digging for the Well of Souls with the aid of Belloq and a replica of the headpiece modeled after the scar on Toht's hand. In a bazaar, Nazi operatives kidnap Marion and fake her death in front of Indiana, who strengthens his resolve to find the Ark. That evening, while deciphering the markings on the headpiece, Indiana and Sallah realize that the Nazis have miscalculated where to dig for the Well of Souls. Using this to their advantage, Indiana and Sallah infiltrate the Nazi dig and use the Staff of Ra to correctly determine the location of the Well of Souls. Shortly afterward, Indiana discovers that Marion is captured but alive, but does not free her out of fear that it will draw the Nazis' attention to him. Indiana gathers a small group of diggers and uncovers the Well of Souls, which is filled with venomous snakes (of which Indiana is deathly afraid). Upon obtaining the Ark, Belloq and the Nazis arrive to take it for themselves. They proceed to toss Marion, who had refused to reveal any information to the Nazis despite Indiana's perceived betrayal, down into the well with Indiana and seal them both in. However, Indiana and Marion manage to navigate the underground temple and escape. After blowing up a flying wing ready for shipping the treasure to Germany and chasing down a convoy of trucks holding the Ark, Indiana manages to take it back before it can be shipped to Berlin. Indiana and Marion leave Cairo to escort the Ark to England on board a tramp steamer. The next morning, their boat is boarded by the Nazis who once again steal the Ark and kidnap Marion. Indiana stows away on the Nazis' U-boat and follows them to an isolated island where Belloq and the Nazis plan to test the power of the Ark before presenting it to Adolf Hitler. Indiana reveals himself and threatens to destroy the Ark with a rocket launcher, but Belloq calls his bluff for, as archaeologists, they both want to see it opened. Indiana surrenders and is tied to a post with Marion as Belloq performs a ceremonial opening of the Ark, which appears to contain nothing but a pile of dust, the ruined remains of the Ten Commandments. Suddenly, spirits emerge from the Ark; aware of the supernatural danger of looking at the opened Ark, Indiana warns Marion to close her eyes. Belloq, Toht, and the Nazis, who do not look away, are all killed by the Ark's divine powers, and the Ark closes itself with a crack of thunder. Back in Washington, D.C., the Army intelligence agents tell a suspicious Indiana that they are sending the Ark away to be studied by "top men." In reality, the Ark is sealed in a wooden crate labeled "top secret" and stored in a giant underground government warehouse in Nevada filled with countless similar crates. Harrison Ford stars as Indiana Jones, an archeology professor who often embarks on perilous adventures to obtain rare artifacts. Jones initially claims he has no belief in the supernatural, only to have his skepticism challenged when he discovers the Ark. Spielberg suggested casting Harrison Ford as Jones, but Lucas objected, stating that he did not want Ford to become his "Bobby De Niro" or "that guy I put in all my movies", a reference to Martin Scorsese, who often worked with Robert De Niro.[3] Desiring a lesser known actor, Lucas persuaded Spielberg to help him search for a new talent. Among the actors who auditioned were Tim Matheson, Peter Coyote, John Shea, and Tom Selleck. Selleck was originally cast in the role, but he was unavailable for the part because of his commitment to the television series Magnum, P.I.[3] In June 1980, three weeks away from filming,[4] Spielberg persuaded Lucas to cast Ford after producers Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy were impressed by his performance as Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back.[5] Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, a spirited, tough former lover of Indiana's. She is the daughter of Abner Ravenwood, Indiana Jones' mentor, and owns a bar in Nepal. Allen was cast after auditioning with Matheson and John Shea. Spielberg was interested in her, as he had seen her performance in National Lampoon's Animal House. Sean Young had previously auditioned for the part,[3] while Debra Winger turned it down.[6] Paul Freeman as Dr. René Belloq. Jones' arch nemesis, Belloq is also an archaeologist after the Ark, but he is working for the Nazis. He intends to harness the power of the Ark himself before Hitler could, but he is killed by the supernatural powers of the Ark. Ronald Lacey as Major Arnold Toht. Toht is an interrogator for the Gestapo, who tries to torture Marion Ravenwood for the headpiece of the Staff of Ra. He is killed by the supernatural powers of the Ark when his face melts. Lacey was cast as he reminded Spielberg of Peter Lorre.[3] Klaus Kinski was offered the role, but he hated the script.[7] John Rhys-Davies as Sallah. Sallah is "the best digger in Cairo", and has been hired by the Nazis to help them excavate Tanis. Although he fears disturbing the Ark, he is an old friend of Indiana Jones, and agrees to help him obtain it. Initially, Spielberg approached Danny DeVito to play Sallah, but could not play the part due to scheduling conflicts. Spielberg cast Rhys-Davies after seeing his performance in Shogun.[3] Denholm Elliott as Dr. Marcus Brody. Marcus is a museum curator, and buys whatever artifacts Indiana obtains for display in his museum. The U.S. government agents approach him in regards to recovering the Ark, and he sets up a meeting between them and Indiana Jones. Spielberg hired Elliott as he was a big fan of the actor.[3] Wolf Kahler as Colonel Dietrich. Dietrich is a ruthless Nazi officer leading the operation to secure the Ark. He is killed by the supernatural powers of the Ark when his head implodes. Alfred Molina, in his film debut, as Satipo. Satipo is one of Jones' guides through the South American jungle. He betrays Jones and steals the golden idol, but is killed by one of the traps in the temple. Vic Tablian plays Barranca and the Monkey man. Producer Frank Marshall played a pilot in the airplane fight sequence. The stunt team was ill, so he took the role instead. The result was three days in a hot cockpit, which he joked was over "140 degrees".[3] Pat Roach plays the large mechanic with whom Jones brawls in this sequence, as well as Toht's Sherpa henchman in Marion's bar. He had the rare opportunity to be killed twice in one film.[8] Special-effects supervisor Dennis Muren made a cameo as a Nazi spy on the seaplane Indiana Jones takes to Nepal. In 1973, George Lucas wrote The Adventures of Indiana Smith.[10] Like Star Wars, which he also wrote, it was an opportunity to create a modern version of the film serials of the 1930s and 1940s.[3] Lucas discussed the concept with Philip Kaufman, who worked with him for several weeks and came up with the Ark of the Covenant as the plot device.[11] Kaufman was told about the Ark by his dentist when he was a child.[12] The project stalled when Clint Eastwood hired Kaufman to direct The Outlaw Josey Wales.[11] Lucas eventually shelved the idea, deciding to concentrate on his outer space adventure which would become Star Wars. In late May 1977, Lucas was in Maui, trying to escape the enormous success of the first Star Wars film. Friend and colleague Steven Spielberg was also there, on vacation from work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. While building a sand castle at Mauna Kea,[13] Spielberg expressed an interest in directing a James Bond film. Lucas convinced his friend Spielberg that he had conceived a character "better than James Bond" and explained the concept of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Spielberg loved it, calling it "a James Bond film without the hardware",[14] although Spielberg told Lucas that the surname Smith was not right for the character, Lucas replied "OK. What about Jones?". Indiana was the name of Lucas' Alaskan Malamute.[3] ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b6/Indianagrabsidol.jpg/250px-Indianagrabsidol.jpg) The following year, Lucas focused on developing Raiders and the Star Wars sequel The Empire Strikes Back, during which Lawrence Kasdan and Frank Marshall joined the project as screenwriter and producer respectively. Between January 23-January 27, 1978 for nine hours a day, Lucas, Kasdan, and Spielberg discussed the story and visual ideas. Spielberg came up with Jones being chased by a boulder,[3] which was inspired by The Seven Cities of Cibola at the INDUCKS, an Uncle Scrooge comic by Carl Barks. Lucas later acknowledged that the idea for the idol mechanism in the opening scene, and deadly traps later in the film were inspired by several Uncle Scrooge comics.[15] Lucas came up with a submarine, a monkey giving the Nazi salute, and Marion punching Jones in Nepal.[14] Kasdan used a 100-page transcript of their conversations for his first script draft,[16] which he worked on for six months.[3] Ultimately some of their ideas were too grand and had to be cut: a mine chase,[17] an escape in Shanghai using a rolling gong as a shield,[18] and a jump from an airplane in a raft, all of which made it into the prequel, Temple of Doom.[3] Spielberg and Lucas disagreed on the character: although Lucas saw him as a Bondian playboy, Spielberg and Kasdan felt the professor and adventurer elements of the character made him complex enough. Spielberg had darker visions of Jones, interpreting him as an alcoholic similar to Humphrey Bogart's character Fred C. Dobbs in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. This characterization fell away during the later drafts.[14] Spielberg also initially conceived of Toht as having a robotic arm, which Lucas rejected as falling into science-fiction. Comic book artist Jim Steranko was also commissioned to produce original illustrations for pre-production, which heavily influenced Spielberg's decisions in both the look of the film and the character of Indiana Jones himself.[19] Initially, the film was rejected by every major studio in Hollywood, as most executives thought that the story was too over the top and would be exceedingly expensive to produce. Eventually Paramount agreed to finance the film, with Lucas negotiating a five picture deal. By April 1980, Kasdan's fifth draft was produced, and production was getting ready to shoot at Elstree Studios, with Lucas trying to keep costs down.[5] With four illustrators, Raiders of the Lost Ark was Spielberg's most storyboarded film of his career to date, further helping the film economically. He and Lucas agreed on a tight schedule to keep costs down, and to stylistically follow the "quick and dirty" feel of the old Saturday matinée serials. Special effects were done using puppets, miniature models, animation, and camera trickery.[3] "We didn't do 30 or 40 takes; usually only four. It was like silent film--shoot only what you need, no waste," Spielberg said. "Had I had more time and money, it would have turned out a pretentious movie." Lucas also directed some of the second unit.[20] ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/IndySallahArk.jpg/250px-IndySallahArk.jpg) Filming began on June 23, 1980 at La Rochelle, France, for scenes involving the Nazi submarine,[5] which was rented from the production of Das Boot. The U-boat pen was a genuine one that had survived from World War II.[3] The crew moved to Elstree Studios[5] for scenes involving the Well of Souls, the interiors of the temple in the opening sequence and Marion Ravenwood's bar.[21] The Well of Souls required 7,000 snakes, though the only poisonous snakes on set were the cobras. However, one crew member was bitten by a python on set.[3] To shoot the scene where Indiana comes face-to-face with the cobra, a glass sheet was put between Ford and the animal, which is partially visible in the film when the light hits it at a certain angle.[3] Unlike the character he portrayed, Ford does not actually have a fear of snakes; Spielberg was not afraid either, but seeing all the snakes on the set writhing around made him "want to puke".[3] The opening sequence featured live tarantulas: Alfred Molina had to have many put on him, but they did not move until a female tarantula was introduced. A fibreglass boulder 22 feet (7 m) in diameter was made for the scene where Indiana escapes the temple; Spielberg was so impressed by production designer Norman Reynolds' realization of his idea that he told Reynolds to increase the length of the boulder run by 50 feet (15 m).[22] All of the scenes set in Egypt were filmed in Tunisia, and the canyon where Indiana threatens to blow up the Ark was shot in Sidi Bouhlel, just outside of Tozeur.[23] The location was previously used in the Tatooine scenes from 1977's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, since many people in the location crew were the same for both films.[3] Notably, that canyon was the exact same location wherein R2-D2 was attacked by Jawas.[3] The Tanis scenes were filmed in nearby Sedala and it was a harsh experience due to the heat and disease. Several members of the cast and crew fell ill; Rhys-Davies in particular defecated in his costume during one shot.[3] Spielberg was never ill, as he only ate tinned foods from England.[3] Spielberg did not like the area and quickly pushed forward a scheduled six-week shoot to four-and-a-half weeks. Much was improvised there: the scene wherein Marion puts on her dress and attempts to leave Belloq's tent was improvised, as was the entire plane fight. During shooting of that scene, Ford tore his cruciate ligament in his left leg as a wheel went over his knee, but he did not accept local medical help and simply put ice over it.[3] The fight scenes in the town were filmed in Kairouan; by then Ford was suffering from dysentery and did not want to shoot a fight scene between Indiana and a swordsman. He said to Spielberg "Why don't we just shoot the sucker?" Spielberg agreed, scrapped the rest of the fight scene, and filmed the gag of Indiana quickly gunning down the swordsman.[24] The truck chase was shot entirely by the second-unit who mostly followed Spielberg's storyboards, though they decided to add Indiana being dragged by the truck. Spielberg shot all the close-ups with Ford afterwards.[3] The interior staircase set in Washington, D.C. was filmed inside of San Francisco's City Hall. The University of the Pacific, located in Stockton, California, stands in for the exterior of the college where Jones works, while his classroom and the hall where he meets the American intelligence men was filmed at the Royal Masonic School for Girls in Hertfordshire, England. His home exteriors were filmed in the city of San Rafael, California.[21] The opening exteriors were filmed in Kauai, Hawaii, with Spielberg wrapping in September, finishing under schedule in 73 days, in contrast to his previous film, 1941.[5][14] The Washington, D.C. coda not included in early edits and, although it appeared in early drafts of the script, was added later when it was realized that there was no resolution to Jones's relationship with Marion.[25] Shots of the Douglas DC-3 Jones flies on to Nepal were taken from Lost Horizon, while a street scene was cut from a shot in The Hindenburg.[20] The special visual effects for Raiders were provided by Industrial Light & Magic and include: a matte shot to establish the Pan Am flying boat in the water[26] and miniature work to show the plane taking off and flying, superimposed over a map; animation effects for the beam in the Tanis map room; a miniature car and passengers[27] superimposed over a matte painting for a shot of a Nazi car being forced off a cliff. The bulk of effects shots were featured in the climactic sequence wherein the Ark of the Covenant is opened and the wrath of God is unleashed. This sequence featured animation, a woman to portray a beautiful spirit's face, rod puppet spirits moved through water to convey a sense of floating[28], a matte painting of the island, and cloud tank effects to portray clouds. The melting of Toht's head was done by exposing a gelatine and plaster model of Ronald Lacey's head to a heat lamp with an under cranked camera, while Dietrich's crushed head was a hollow model from which air was withdrawn. The spirits were shot underwater for a ghostly look.[9] The firestorm that cleanses the canyon at the finish was a miniature canyon filmed upside down.[29] Ben Burtt, the sound effects supervisor, made extensive use of traditional foley work in yet another of the production's throwbacks to days of the Republic serials. He selected a 30-30 Winchester rifle for the sound of Jones' pistol. Sound effects artists struck leather jackets and baseball gloves with a baseball bat to create a variety of punching noises and body blows. For the snakes in the Well of Souls sequence, fingers running through cheese casserole and sponges sliding over cement were used for the slithering noises. The sliding lid on a toilet cistern provided the sound for the opening of the Ark. In addition to his use of such time-honored foley work, Burtt also demonstrated the modern expertise honed during his award-winning work on Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. He employed a synthesizer for the sounds of the Ark, and mixed dolphins' and sea lions' screams for those of the spirits within The $20 million budget film grossed $384 million worldwide in its initial theatrical release. It remains one of the top twenty highest-grossing films ever made when adjusted for inflation.[32] The film was subsequently nominated for nine Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1982 and won four (Best Sound, Best Film Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Art Direction-Set Decoration (Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, and Michael D. Ford)). It also received an additional Special Achievement Award for Sound Effects Editing. It won numerous other awards, including a Grammy and Best Picture at the People's Choice Awards. Spielberg was also nominated for a Golden Globe.[33] The film received positive reviews from most critics. In his review for The New York Times, Vincent Canby praised the film, calling it, "one of the most deliriously funny, ingenious and stylish American adventure movies ever made."[34] Roger Ebert in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Two things, however, make Raiders of the Lost Ark more than just a technological triumph: its sense of humor and the droll style of its characters [...] We find ourselves laughing in surprise, in relief, in incredulity at the movie's ability to pile one incident upon another in an inexhaustible series of inventions."[35] He later added it to his list of "Great Movies".[36] Rolling Stone said the film was "the ultimate Saturday action matinee–a film so funny and exciting it can be enjoyed any day of the week."[37] Bruce Williamson of Playboy claimed: "There's more excitement in the first ten minutes of Raiders than any movie I have seen all year. By the time the explosive misadventures end, any movie-goer worth his salt ought to be exhausted."[38] Stephen Klain of Variety also praised the film. Yet, making an observation that would revisit the franchise with its next film, he felt that the film was surprisingly violent and bloody for a PG-rated film.[39] New Hollywood champion Pauline Kael, who once contended that she only got "really rough" on large films that were destined to be hits but were nonetheless "atrocious,"[40] found the film to be a "machine-tooled adventure" from a pair of creators who "think just like the marketing division."[41] (Lucas later named a villain, played by Raiders' Nazi strongman Pat Roach, in his 1988 fantasy film Willow after Kael.[40]) Today, the film is considered to be a classic of the action and adventure genres by many contemporary critics and carries a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Following the success of Raiders, a prequel, Temple of Doom, and two sequels, The Last Crusade and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, were produced. A television series, entitled The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, was also spun off from this film, and details the early years of the character. Numerous other books, comics, and video games have also been produced. In 1998, the American Film Institute placed the film at number 60 on its top 100 films of the first century of cinema. In 2007, AFI updated the list and placed it at number 66. They also named it as the 10th most thrilling movie, and named Indiana Jones as the second most thrilling hero. In 1999, the film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. Indiana Jones has become an icon, being listed as Entertainment Weekly's third favorite action hero, while noting "some of the greatest action scenes ever filmed are strung together like pearls" in this film.[43] An amateur, near shot-for-shot remake was made by Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala, and Jayson Lamb, then children in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It took the boys seven years to finish, from 1982-1989. After production of the film, called Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, it was shelved and forgotten until 2003, where it was discovered by Eli Roth[44][45] and acclaimed by Spielberg himself who congratulated the boys on their hard work and said he looked forward to seeing their names on the big screen.[46] Scott Rudin and Paramount Pictures have purchased the trio's life rights and will be producing a film based on their adventures making their remake.[47][48] Assessing the film's legacy in 1997, Bernard Weinraub, film critic for The New York Times, which had initially reviewed the film as "deliriously funny, ingenious, and stylish",[40] maintained that "the decline in the traditional family G-rated film, for 'general' audiences, probably began" with the appearance of Raiders of the Lost Ark. "Whether by accident or design," found Weinraub, "the filmmakers made a comic nonstop action film intended mostly for adults but also for children."[40] Eight years later, in 2005, viewers of Channel 4 in the UK rated the film as the twentieth best family film of all time, with Spielberg taking best over-all director honors The only video game based exclusively on the film is Raiders of the Lost Ark, released in 1982 by Atari for their Atari 2600 console. The first third of the video game Indiana Jones' Greatest Adventures, released in 1994 by JVC for Nintendo's Super Nintendo Entertainment System, is based entirely on the film. Several sequences from the film are reproduced (the boulder run and the showdown with the Cairo Swordsman among them); however, several inconsistencies with the film are present in the game, such as Nazi soldiers and bats being present in the Well of Souls sequence, for example. The game was developed by LucasArts and Factor 5. In Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine a bonus level brings Jones back to 'Peru, South America' from this film. He can explore the cave and he discovers another hidden idol. LucasArts released Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures on June 3, 2008 in North America and June 6, 2008 in Europe to coincide with the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Lego also released several building sets based on the film in early 2008. In 1981, Kenner released a 12-inch (30-cm) doll of Indiana Jones, and the following year they released nine action figures of the characters in the film, three playsets, as well as toys of the Nazi truck and Jones's horse. They also released a board game. In 1984, miniature metal versions of the characters were released for a role playing game, and in 1995 Micro Machines released die-cast toys of the vehicles in the film.[50] Hasbro released action figures based on the film, ranging from 3 to 12 inches (8 to 30 cm), to coincide with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on May 1, 2008.[51] A novelization by Ryder Windham was released in April 2008 by Scholastic to tie in with the release of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull The film was released on VHS in pan and scan only and on laserdisc in both pan and scan and widescreen. It was also released on Betamax. For its 1999 VHS re-issue, the film was remastered in THX and made available in widescreen. The outer package was retitled Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark to correlate with the film's prequel and sequel. The subsequent DVD release in 2003 features this title as well. The title in the film itself remains unchanged, even in the restored DVD print. In the DVD, the glass partition separating Jones from the cobra in the Well of Souls was digitally removed.[52] The film (along with Temple of Doom and Last Crusade) was re-released on DVD with additional extra features not included on the previous set on May 13, 2008.
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Post by The Raven on Jul 18, 2009 23:16:05 GMT -5
10. They Live 9. Fight Club 8. 7. Raiders of the Lost Ark 6. Batman Begins 5. Close Encounters of the Third Kind 4. Jurassic Park 3. Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope 2. JAWS 1. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
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Post by Some kind of a DSR-type person on Jul 19, 2009 3:03:46 GMT -5
How I'm doin' so far...
1. Superman: The Movie 2. Creepshow 3. Breakfast Club 4. On Her Majesty's Secret Service 5. Batman Begins 6. Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey 7. 12 Monkeys 8. Friday the 13th Part 2 9. 10. Humanoids from the Deep (1980)
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Post by bob on Jul 19, 2009 10:37:53 GMT -5
this will resume in a bit...when I finish my breakfest
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Post by bob on Jul 19, 2009 10:58:01 GMT -5
Here we are the final four films. We've had ties throughout this countdown, so why should this position be any different. Tie at number 4 features 2 of the best movies I've ever seen. They are both considered to be classics for very different reasons. They have both been spoofed in movie paradies. It is often said that imitation is the most sincereist form of flattery, if a film is spoofed that traditionally means that it was extremely successful. Both films received a total of 20 votes. The 1st film is.................................... Terminator 2: Judgement Day ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/85/Terminator2poster.jpg/200px-Terminator2poster.jpg) Terminator 2: Judgment Day, commonly abbreviated as T2, is a 1991 action/science fiction film directed, co-written and co-produced by James Cameron and starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Edward Furlong, and Robert Patrick. Set eleven years after the events of The Terminator, it follows Sarah Connor, her 10-year-old son John, and a reprogrammed Terminator from the future as they defend themselves from a T-1000 and attempt to prevent Judgment Day, a future event in which machines will begin to exterminate humanity. T2 was a significant box office and critical success. It had an impact on popular culture, and is considered by many to be hugely influential in the genres of action and science fiction.[1] The film's visual effects include many breakthroughs in computer-generated effects, marking the first use of natural human motion for a CG character and the first computer-generated main character.[2] The film won several awards including four Academy Awards for makeup, sound mixing, sound editing and visual effects. In 1995, eleven years after the events of The Terminator, John Connor (Edward Furlong) is ten years old and living in Los Angeles with foster parents. His mother Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) had been preparing him throughout his childhood for his future role as the leader of the human Resistance against Skynet, but she was arrested after attempting to bomb a computer factory and remanded to a hospital for the criminally insane under the supervision of Dr. Silberman (Earl Boen). Skynet sends a new Terminator, a T-1000 (Robert Patrick), back in time to 1995 to kill John. A more advanced prototype than the Terminator that was sent after Sarah, the T-1000 is composed of "a mimetic polyalloy", a liquid metal that allows it to take the shape and appearance of anything it touches. Though it cannot mimic complex machines such as guns or bombs, it can shape parts of itself into knives and stabbing weapons and can mimic the voice and appearance of humans. It assumes the identity of a police officer and goes in pursuit of John. Meanwhile, the future John Connor has sent back a reprogrammed Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger), identical to the one that attacked Sarah, to protect his younger self. The Terminator and the T-1000 converge on John in a mall, and a chase ensues in which John and the Terminator escape by motorcycle. The Terminator explains that he has been programmed to protect and obey John. Fearing that the T-1000 will kill Sarah in order to get to him, John orders the Terminator to help free her. They encounter Sarah in the midst of her own escape attempt, and she is initially terrified by the Terminator but accepts his assistance after he helps them to escape the T-1000. The Terminator informs John and Sarah about Skynet, the artificial intelligence that will initiate a nuclear holocaust on "Judgment Day" and go on to create the machines that will hunt the remnants of humanity. Sarah learns that the man most directly responsible for Skynet's creation is Miles Bennett Dyson (Joe Morton), a Cyberdyne Systems engineer working on a revolutionary new microprocessor that will form the basis for Skynet. Gathering weapons from an old friend, Sarah plans to flee with John to Mexico. However, after having a horrific nightmare of a nuclear explosion she awakens with strengthened resolve and sets out to kill Miles Dyson. She wounds him at his home but finds herself unable to kill him in front of his family. Deducing her plan, John and the Terminator arrive and inform Miles of the consequences of his work. They learn that much of his research has been reverse engineered from the CPU and arm of the previous Terminator sent after Sarah. Convincing him that these items and his designs must be destroyed, they break into the Cyberdyne building and retrieve the CPU and arm. The police arrive and Miles is mortally wounded, but stays behind to trigger the detonator that will destroy his research. The T-1000 pursues John, Sarah, and the Terminator, catching up to them in a steel mill. In a climactic battle, the Terminator fires a grenade into the T-1000 and it falls into a vat of molten steel where it is destroyed. John throws the pieces of the first Terminator into the steel as well. The Terminator then sacrifices himself, asking Sarah to lower him into the steel so that his technology cannot be used to create Skynet. Sarah looks to the future with hope, believing that if a Terminator can learn the value of human life, then perhaps humanity is not doomed to self-destruction. Arnold Schwarzenegger as The Terminator Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor Edward Furlong as John Connor Robert Patrick as the T-1000 Earl Boen as Dr. Peter Silberman Joe Morton as Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson S. Epatha Merkerson as Tarissa Dyson Castulo Guerra as Enrique Salceda Danny Cooksey as Tim Jenette Goldstein as Janelle Voight Michael Biehn as Kyle Reese (Special Edition only) Hamilton suggested Sarah become psychotic in the intervening years after her encounter with the terminator.[3] Biehn reprised his role from The Terminator, but his scene was cut from theaters. They were restored in the Special Edition of the film. Schwarzenegger received a salary of $12–15 million for his role as the terminator.[4][5] Linda Hamilton's twin sister, Leslie Hamilton Gearren doubled in the film as the T-1000 Sarah and Sarah Connor's mirror reflection in a scene in the film's extended version. Billy Idol was Cameron's original choice for the T-1000, and Cameron had drawn storyboards to resemble him, but Idol could not accept the role following a motorcycle accident ' Shooting began on October 9, 1990 and was completed on April 4, 1991.[7] Most of the key Terminator effects were provided by Industrial Light & Magic for computer graphics and Stan Winston for practical effects. The external shots of Cyberdyne Systems Corporation were filmed on location at an office building on the corner of Gateway Boulevard and Bayside Parkway in Fremont, California. According to the "Extreme Edition" DVD special features, Linda Hamilton's twin sister Leslie was used in scenes that required two Sarahs. She is the mirror image of Sarah in the scene where they open up the Terminator's head, and in the scene where the T-1000 impersonates Sarah, she is whichever one is farthest from the camera, alternating between the real Sarah and the T-1000 based on camera position. Another set of twins, Don and Dan Stanton, were used to play the mental hospital security guard and the T-1000 copying him. It was also mentioned in one of the DVD special features that James Cameron nearly removed Edward Furlong from the project after Furlong messed up his lines out of nervousness from being in the same scene as Linda Hamilton, in a scene that was ultimately deleted (in which the Connors attempt to reboot the Terminator), but Cameron was persuaded by casting director Mali Finn to give Furlong one more chance. At that point, Furlong was able to deliver his lines without any problems. The scene is available in the Extreme and Ultimate editions of the DVD. The sawed-off shotgun used by Schwarzenegger throughout the film was a modified Winchester Model 1887, modified especially for the film to allow it to be "flip-cocked" by the actor in several of the film's scenes. The movie was made for approximately $102 million,[8] and at the time was the most expensive movie ever made. It was a box-office success, earning $204.8 million in the United States alone, and was the highest grossing film of 1991, beating Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.[8] The original Terminator grossed only $38 million in the U.S. in its theatrical run,[9] making Terminator 2's 434% increase a record for a sequel. Upon its release, the theatrical cut ran 137 minutes. On November 24, 1993, the Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Special Edition cut of the film was released to Laserdisc and VHS, containing 17 minutes of never-before-seen footage including scenes with Michael Biehn reprising his role as Kyle Reese in a dream sequence. The subsequent "Ultimate Edition" and "Extreme Edition" DVD releases also contain this version of the film The Montreal Film Journal calls it "one of the best crafted Hollywood action flicks."[10] Screenwriting guru Syd Field lauds the plot of Terminator 2, saying, for example, "every scene sets up the next, like links in a chain of dramatic action."[11] The film was placed #33 on Total Film's 2006 list of The Top 100 Films of All Time.[12] The film received mostly positive reviews from critics, currently scoring 97% on the popular review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes[13] and 69/100 on the similarly themed Metacritic.[14] At the 64th Academy Awards, the film won four Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Make Up, Best Visual Effects, and Best Sound Editing.[15] It was nominated for two additional Academy Awards, Best Cinematography and Film Editing. It also won big at the 1992 MTV Movie Awards. The film took Best Movie and Best Action Sequence, Linda Hamilton won Best Female Performance and Most Desirable Female, Edward Furlong Best Breakthrough Performance and Arnold Schwarzenegger won Best Male Performance. In 2003, The American Film Institute released its list of the 100 greatest screen heroes and villains of all time. The Terminator appeared as number 48 on the list of heroes for its appearance in T2, as well as number 22 on the list of villains for its appearance in the first Terminator. This is the only instance where the "same" character appears on both lists, though technically they are different characters based on the same model. During the 2008 AFI's 10 Top 10, it was voted the eighth best science fiction film ever made. Three versions of the film exist: the Theatrical cut, a "Special Edition" of the film for Laserdisc, VHS and DVD and an "Extended Special Edition" available only as an Easter egg on the Ultimate Edition DVD. The "Special Edition" was titled the director's cut on the European high definition releases. The special edition has been the same from release to release, with all the scenes that Cameron reinserted intact. There are, however, two scenes that Cameron shot but chose not to reinsert into the film which have been included as an accessible extra on most "Special Edition" releases. The first scene shows the T-1000's tactile approach to acquiring information about the physical world, "scanning" John's room with its fingertips, and eventually finding a hidden shoebox containing pictures and tapes of Sarah, seen at the end of the first film. The second scene is an alternate ending set in 2029 with an aged Sarah Connor reflecting on how Judgment Day was averted. The addition of these scenes is the only difference between the "Special Edition" and the "Extended Special Edition". This version can be accessed by pressing 8, 2, 9, 9, 7 (based on August 29, 1997, the date of Judgment Day) on the main menu of the DVD. The Easter egg is only functional on the Ultimate Edition DVD (no longer produced); however, these scenes can be accessed at a certain point in the film with the interactive mode on the Extreme DVD. In addition, the Extreme edition contains several Easter eggs, which include access to the theatrical version of the movie and a preview for the Ultimate Edition DVD. The Extreme edition DVD has several DVD-ROM features, including Infiltration Unit Simulator and T2 FX Studio, an application where images of a person can be imported and morphed into a T-800 or T-1000, and Skynet Combat Chassis Designer, a program where viewers could build a fighting machine and be able to track progress online.[17] The Extreme DVD also contains a WMV-HD theatrical edition of T2, where the film can be watched, for the first time, in Full HD 1080p format. However the DRM rights required to watch the film had been heavily criticized.[by whom?] Two Blu-ray editions of T2 have been released, a UK and a US version. Both are presented in a slightly washed-out 1080p transfer and included no special special features and a DTS 5.1 audio track from the DVDs instead of a high definition audio track. On May 19, 2009, the film was re-released on Blu-ray with an enhanced video transfer and THX certified DTS-Master Audio 6.1 audio in two editions: a "SkyNet Edition" and a limited collector's edition encased in an Endoskull. The limited collector's edition includes the Blu-ray "SkyNet Edition" as well as the Extreme Edition and Ultimate Edition DVDs and a digital copy of the film.[18] The Easter Egg required to watch the theatrical cut on the Extreme edition is as follows: One must highlight "Sensory Control" on the main menu and press the right arrow five times (speed is not a factor in this case), to highlight the panel on the right, which has some text on it. When the Enter key is pressed while these words are visible, the menu and scene selectors will change to those of the theatrical version The film was adapted by Marvel Comics as a three issue miniseries, which was collected into a trade paperback. Following the film, an attraction at Universal Studios Theme Parks, entitled T2 3-D: Battle Across Time, was directed by James Cameron and reunited the original T2 cast. Terminator 2 was later followed by two sequels, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator Salvation, as well as an alternate timeline TV series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Prior to the release of T3, there were several sequel books including: Malibu Comics Terminator 2 - Judgment Day: Cybernetic Dawn(aka.'Present War'), Terminator 2 - Judgment Day: Nuclear Twilight (aka.'Future War'), IDW Comics T2: Infiltrator & T2: Revolution by S.M. Stirling and The John Connor Chronicles by Russell Blackford. Robert Patrick makes a cameo as the T-1000 in Wayne's World, where he pulls Wayne Campbell over and asks him if he's seen John Connor while showing him a picture of Connor. Patrick also has a (non-speaking) cameo in his T-1000 costume in Last Action Hero (also starring Schwarzenegger). The other film is..... The Godfather![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/1c/Godfather_ver1.jpg/215px-Godfather_ver1.jpg) The Godfather is a 1972 American crime thriller based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Mario Puzo and directed by Francis Ford Coppola from a screenplay by Puzo, Coppola, and Robert Towne, who was not credited.[3] It stars Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard S. Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton, and features John Cazale and Abe Vigoda. The story spans ten years from 1945 to 1955 and chronicles the fictional Italian-American Corleone crime family. The Godfather received Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and has been selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. In addition, it is ranked as the second greatest film in American cinematic history, behind Citizen Kane on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) list by the American Film Institute.[4] Two sequels followed The Godfather: The Godfather Part II in 1974, and The Godfather Part III in 1990. In late summer 1945, guests are gathered for the wedding reception of Don Vito Corleone's daughter Connie (Talia Shire) and Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo). Vito (Marlon Brando), the head of the Corleone Mafia family – who is known to friends and associates as "Godfather" – and Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall), the Corleone family lawyer and consigliere (counselor), are hearing requests for favors. Meanwhile, the Don's youngest son Michael (Al Pacino), a decorated Marine war hero returning from World War II service, tells his girlfriend Kay Adams (Diane Keaton) anecdotes about his family, attempting to inform her about his father's criminal life; he reassures her that he is different from his family. Among the guests at the celebration is the famous singer Johnny Fontane (Al Martino), Corleone's godson, who has come from Hollywood to petition Vito's help in landing a movie role that will revitalize his flagging career. Hagen is dispatched to California to fix the problem by convincing the head of the studio, Jack Woltz (John Marley) to give Fontane the part. Woltz refuses and is soon persuaded, when he finds the severed head of his prized $600,000 stud horse in bed with him, after waking up the next morning. Upon Hagen's return, the family meets with Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo (Al Lettieri), who is being backed by the rival Tattaglia family. He asks Don Corleone for financing, and political and legal protection for importing and distributing heroin. Despite the huge profit to be made, Corleone doesn't agree and feels his political influence could be jeopardized. The Don's second eldest son, Sonny questions Sollozzo's assurances along with the family's investment with the Tattaglia family. Don Corleone then sends Luca Brasi (Lenny Montana) to infiltrate Sollozzo's organization and report back with information. During the meeting, Brasi is stabbed in his hand to prevent him from defending himself and garroted by an assassin. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/21/Godfather15_flip.jpg/200px-Godfather15_flip.jpg) Soon after his meeting with Sollozzo, Don Corleone is shot in an assassination attempt. Sollozzo abducts Tom Hagen and persuades him to offer Sonny a deal previously offered to the Don. Sonny instead issues an ultimatum to the Tattaglia family to turn over Sollozzo or face war. They send him "a Sicilian message," in the form of a fresh fish wrapped in Luca Brasi's bullet-proof vest, to tell the Corleones that Luca Brasi "sleeps with the fishes." Michael, whom the other Mafia families consider a "civilian" uninvolved in mob business, visits his father at the small private hospital. He is shocked to find that no one is guarding him. Realizing that his father is again being set up to be killed, he calls Sonny for help, moves his father to another room, and goes outside to watch the entrance. Michael enlists help from Enzo the baker, who has come to the hospital to pay his respects. Together, they bluff away Sollozzo's men as they drive by. Police cars soon appear with the corrupt Captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden), who breaks Michael's jaw when he insinuates that Sollozzo paid McCluskey to set up his father. Just then, Hagen arrives with "private detectives" licensed to carry guns to protect Don Corleone, and he takes Michael home. Sonny responds by having Bruno Tattaglia, son and underboss of Don Phillip Tattaglia (Victor Rendina), killed. Following the attempt on the Don's life at the hospital, Sollozzo requests a meeting with the Corleones, which Captain McCluskey will attend as Sollozzo's bodyguard. When Michael volunteers to kill both men during the meeting, Sonny and the other senior Family members are amused; however, Michael convinces them that he is serious and that killing Sollozzo and McCluskey is in the family's interest: "It's not personal. It's strictly business." Although police officers are usually off limits for hits, Michael argues that since McCluskey is corrupt and has illegal dealings with Sollozzo, he is fair game. Before the meeting in an Italian restaurant, McCluskey frisks Michael for weapons and finds him clean. Michael excuses himself to go to the bathroom where he retrieves a planted revolver, and returning to the table, he fatally shoots Sollozzo, then McCluskey. Michael is sent to hide in Sicily while the Corleone family prepares for all-out warfare with the Five Families who are united against the Corleones, as well as a general clampdown on the mob by the police and government authorities. Sonny severely beats Carlo Rizzi for brutalizing the pregnant Connie, and threatens to kill him if he ever abuses his sister again. An angry Carlo responds by plotting with Tattaglia and Don Emilio Barzini (Richard Conte), the Corleones' chief rivals, to have Sonny killed. Carlo again beats Connie in order to lure Sonny out. Furious, Sonny drives off alone to fulfill his threat. On the way, he is ambushed at a toll booth and shot to death in his car. In Sicily, Michael patiently waits out his exile, protected by Don Tommasino, an old family friend. Michael aimlessly wanders the countryside, accompanied by his ever-present bodyguards, Calo and Fabrizio. In a small village, Michael meets and falls in love with Apollonia Vitelli (Simonetta Stefanelli), the beautiful young daughter of a bar owner. They are soon married, but soon Michael's presence becomes known to the Corleone's enemies. As the couple is about to be moved to a safer location, Apollonia is killed when their car is bombed; Michael, who barely escapes alive, spots Fabrizio hurriedly leaving the grounds mere seconds before the explosion, implicating him in the assassination plot. Back in New York City, Don Corleone returns home from the hospital and is distraught to learn that it was Michael who killed Sollozzo and McCluskey and that Sonny is dead. Rather than seek revenge for Sonny's killing, Don Corleone meets with the heads of the Five Families to negotiate a cease-fire. Not only is it draining all their assets and threatening their survival, but ending the conflict is the only way that Michael can return home safely. Reversing his previous decision, Vito agrees that the Corleone family will provide political protection for Tattaglia's traffic in heroin, as long as it is controlled and not sold to children. At the meeting, Don Corleone deduces that Don Barzini, not Tattaglia, was ultimately behind the mob war and Sonny's death. With his safety guaranteed, Michael returns home. More than a year later, he reunites with his former girlfriend Kay after a total of four years, three in Italy, and one in America. He tells her he wants them to be married. Although Kay is hurt that he waited so long to contact her, she accepts his proposal. With the Don semi-retired, Sonny dead, and middle brother Fredo (John Cazale) considered incapable of running the family business, Michael is now in charge; he promises Kay he will make the family business completely legitimate within five years. Peter Clemenza (Richard S. Castellano) and Salvatore Tessio (Abe Vigoda), two Corleone Family caporegimes (captains), complain that they are being pushed around by the Barzini Family and ask permission to strike back, but Michael denies the request. He plans to move the family operations to Nevada and after that, Clemenza and Tessio may break away to form their own families. Michael further promises Connie's husband, Carlo, that he will be his right hand man in Nevada. Tom Hagen has been removed as consigliere and is now merely the family's lawyer, with his father Vito serving as consigliere. Privately, Hagen complains about his change in status, and also questions Michael about a new "regime of soldiers" secretly being built under Rocco Lampone (Tom Rosqui). Don Vito explains to Hagen that Michael is acting on his advice. In Las Vegas, Michael meets with casino boss Moe Greene (Alex Rocco). Michael offers to buy out Greene's casino but is rudely rebuffed. Greene believes the Corleones are weak and that he can secure a better deal from Barzini. As Moe and Michael heatedly negotiate, Fredo sides with Moe. Afterward, Michael warns Fredo to never again "take sides with anyone against the family." Michael returns home. In a private moment, Vito explains his expectation that the Family's enemies will attempt to murder Michael by using a trusted associate to arrange a meeting as a pretext for assassination. Vito also reveals that he had never really intended a life of crime for Michael, hoping that his youngest son would hold legitimate power as a senator or governor. Shortly after, Vito collapses and dies while playing with his young grandson Anthony in his tomato garden. At the burial, Tessio conveys a proposal for a meeting with Barzini, which identifies Tessio as the traitor that Vito was expecting. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/e/e9/Al_Pacino_and_Robert_Duvall_in_the_Godfather.jpg/180px-Al_Pacino_and_Robert_Duvall_in_the_Godfather.jpg) Michael arranges for a series of murders to occur simultaneously while he is standing godfather to Connie's and Carlo's newborn son at the church. Don Anthony Stracci is gunned down along with his men in an elevator by Peter Clemenza. Moe Greene, while having a massage, is shot through the eye by an unknown assassin. Don Ottilio Cuneo is trapped in a revolving door and shot dead by Willi Cicci. Don Philip Tattaglia is assassinated in his bed, along with a prostitute, by Rocco Lampone and an unknown associate. Don Emilio Barzini, along with his bodyguard and driver, are shot by Al Neri in Foley Square, disguised in his old police uniform. After the baptism, Tessio believes he and Hagen are on their way to the meeting between Michael and Barzini that he has arranged. Instead, he is surrounded by Willi Cicci and other button men as Hagen steps away. Realizing that Michael has uncovered his betrayal, Tessio tells Hagen that he always respected Michael, and that his disloyalty "was only business." He asks if Tom can get him off for "old times' sake," but Tom says he cannot. Meanwhile, Michael confronts Carlo about Sonny's murder and forces him to admit his role in setting up the ambush. Michael assures Carlo he will not be killed, that his punishment is exclusion from all family business. He hands Carlo a plane ticket to exile in Las Vegas. However, when Carlo gets into a car headed for the airport, he is garroted to death by Clemenza, on Michael's orders. Later, a hysterical Connie confronts Michael, accusing him of murdering Carlo. Kay questions Michael about Connie's accusation, but he refuses to answer, reminding her to never ask him about his business. She insists, and Michael lies, reassuring his wife that he played no role in Carlo's death. Kay believes him and is relieved. The film ends with Clemenza and new caporegimes Rocco Lampone and Al Neri paying their respects to Michael. Clemenza kisses Michael's hand and greets him as "Don Corleone." As Kay watches, the door is closed: Michael is officially the new Godfather. Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone – the boss (the "Don") of the Corleone family, Formerly known as Vito Andolini. He is the father of Santino (Sonny), Federico (Fredo), Michael and Costanzia (Connie) and adoptive father to Tom Hagen. Husband of Carmella Corleone. A native Sicilian. Al Pacino as Michael Corleone – the Don's and Carmella's youngest son, recently returned from military service following the end of World War II. The only college-educated member of the family, he initially wants nothing to do with the Corleone family business. His evolution from doe-eyed outsider to ruthless boss is the key plotline of the film. James Caan as Santino "Sonny" Corleone – Vito's and Carmella's hot-headed eldest son; he is being groomed to succeed his father as head of the Corleone family. He is the family's underboss. Robert Duvall as Tom Hagen – an informally adopted son of Vito and Carmella Corleone, he is also the family lawyer and the new consigliere (counselor). He is not Sicilian, but German-Irish. Diane Keaton as Kay Adams-Corleone – Michael's girlfriend and, ultimately, his wife and mother to his children. John Cazale as Fredo Corleone – the middle son of Vito and Carmella Corleone. Fredo is not very bright and appears to be the weakest of the Corleone brothers. Talia Shire as Costanzia "Connie" Corleone – Vito's and Carmella's youngest child and only daughter. She marries Carlo Rizzi. Richard S. Castellano as Peter "Fat" Clemenza – a caporegime for the Corleone family. Abe Vigoda as Salvatore "Sal" Tessio – a caporegime for the Corleone Family. Al Lettieri as Virgil "The Turk" Sollozzo – a heroin dealer associated with the Tattaglia family. Gianni Russo as Carlo Rizzi – Connie's husband. Becomes an associate of the Corleone family, and ultimately betrays Sonny to the Barzini family. Sterling Hayden as Captain Mark McCluskey – a corrupt police captain on Sollozzo's payroll. Lenny Montana as Luca Brasi – an enforcer utilized by Vito Corleone. Richard Conte as Emilio Barzini– Don of the Barzini family. Al Martino as Johnny Fontane – a world-famous popular singer and godson of Vito. John Marley as Jack Woltz – a powerful Hollywood producer. Alex Rocco as Moe Greene – a longtime associate of the Corleone family who owns a Las Vegas hotel. Morgana King as Carmella Corleone – Vito's wife and mother of Sonny, Fredo, Michael and Connie, and adoptive mother to Tom Hagen. John Martino as Paulie Gatto – A "button man" (soldier/hit man) under Capo Pete Clemenza and Vito's driver. Victor Rendina as Philip Tattaglia– Don of the Tattaglia family. Simonetta Stefanelli as Apollonia Vitelli-Corleone – A stunningly beautiful young girl Michael meets and marries while in Sicily. Louis Guss as Don Zaluchi – Don of the Zaluchi family of Detroit. Tom Rosqui as Rocco Lampone – a soldier under Clemenza who eventually becomes a caporegime in the Corleone family. Joe Spinell as Willi Cicci – a soldier in the Corleone family. Richard Bright as Al Neri – Michael Corleone's bodyguard. He eventually becomes a caporegime. Julie Gregg as Sandra Corleone – wife of Sonny. Francis Ford Coppola was not the first choice to direct. At least two other directors were approached first. Italian director Sergio Leone was offered the job, but he declined in order to direct his own gangster opus, Once Upon a Time in America, which focused on Jewish-American gangsters.[5] According to Robert Evans, head of Paramount Pictures at the time, Coppola also did not initially want to direct the film because he feared it would glorify the Mafia and violence, and thus reflect poorly on his Sicilian and Italian heritage; on the other hand, Evans specifically wanted an Italian-American to direct the film because his research had shown that previous films about the Mafia that were directed by non-Italians had fared dismally at the box office, and he wanted to, in his own words, "smell the spaghetti". When Coppola hit upon the idea of making it a metaphor for American capitalism, however, he eagerly agreed to take the helm.[6] At the time, Coppola had directed eight previous films, the most notable of which was the film version of the stage musical Finian's Rainbow — although he had also received an Academy Award for co-writing Patton in 1970.[7] Coppola was in debt to Warner Bros. for $400,000 following budget overruns on George Lucas's THX 1138, which Coppola had produced, and he took The Godfather on Lucas's advice.[8] There was intense friction between Coppola and the studio, Paramount Pictures, and several times Coppola was almost replaced. Paramount maintains that its skepticism was due to a rocky start to production, though Coppola believes that the first week went extremely well. Paramount thought that Coppola failed to stay on schedule, frequently made production and casting errors, and insisted on unnecessary expenses. Coppola says he was shadowed by a replacement director, who was ready to take over if Coppola was fired, but despite such intense pressure, Coppola managed to defend his decisions and avoid being replaced.[9] Paramount was in financial troubles at the time of production and so was desperate for a "Big Hit" to boost business, hence the pressure Coppola faced during filming. They wanted The Godfather to appeal to a wide audience and threatened Coppola with a "Violence coach" to make the film more exciting. Coppola added a few more violent scenes to keep the studio happy. The scene where Connie breaks crockery after finding out that her husband is playing around, was added for this reason Coppola's casting choices were unpopular with studio executives at Paramount Pictures, particularly Marlon Brando as Don Vito Corleone. Paramount, which wanted Laurence Olivier (who could not take the part owing to health problems), originally refused to allow Coppola to cast Brando in the role, citing difficulties Brando had on recent film sets. One studio executive proposed Danny Thomas for the role citing the fact that Don Corleone was a strong "family man." At one point, Coppola was told by the then-president of Paramount that "Marlon Brando will never appear in this motion picture". After pleading with the executives, Coppola was allowed to cast Brando only if he appeared in the film for much less salary than his previous films, perform a screen-test, and put up a bond saying that he would not cause a delay in the production (as he had done on previous film sets).[10] Coppola chose Brando over Ernest Borgnine on the basis of Brando's screen test, which also won over the Paramount leadership. Brando later won an Academy Award for his portrayal, which he refused to accept. The studio originally wanted Robert Redford or Ryan O'Neal to play Michael Corleone, but Coppola wanted an unknown who looked like an Italian-American, whom he found in Al Pacino.[9] Pacino was not well known at the time, having appeared in only two minor films, and the studio did not consider him right for the part,[10] in part because of his height. Pacino was given the role only after Coppola threatened to quit the production. Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Martin Sheen,[10] and James Caan also auditioned.[10] Among those who auditioned for other parts were Bruce Dern, Paul Newman and Steve McQueen, who were considered for the role of Tom Hagen that eventually went to Robert Duvall. Sylvester Stallone auditioned for Carlo Rizzi and Paulie Gatto, Anthony Perkins for Sonny, and Mia Farrow auditioned for Kay. William Devane was seen for the role of Moe Greene. Mario Adorf was approached for a role as well. A then-unknown Robert De Niro auditioned for the roles of Michael, Sonny, Carlo and Paulie Gatto. He was cast as Paulie, but Coppola arranged a "trade" with The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight to get Al Pacino from that film. De Niro later played the young Vito Corleone in Part II, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for the role. To some extent, The Godfather was a family affair for Francis Ford Coppola. Carmine Coppola, his father, who had a distinguished career as a composer, conductor and arranger, wrote additional music for the film and appeared in a bit part as a piano player, and Carmine's wife Italia Coppola was an extra. The director's sister Talia Shire was cast as Connie, and his infant daughter, Sofia, played Connie's and Carlo's newborn son, Michael Francis Rizzi, in the climactic baptism scene near the movie's end.[11] Coppola also cast his sons as Frank and Andrew Hagen, the two sons of Tom Hagen. They are seen in the Sonny-Carlo streetfight scene and behind Al Pacino and Robert Duvall during the funeral scene. Al Pacino, James Caan and Diane Keaton each received $35,000 for their work on The Godfather, and Robert Duvall got $36,000 for eight weeks of work. Marlon Brando, on the other hand, was paid $50,000 for six weeks and weekly expenses of $1,000, plus 5% of the film, capped at $1.5 million. Brando later sold his points back to Paramount for $300,000.[12] Most of the principal photography took place from March 29, 1971 to August 6, 1971, although a scene with Pacino and Keaton was shot in the autumn — there were a total of 77 days of shooting, fewer than the 83 for which the production had budgeted. One of the movie's most shocking moments involved the real severed head of a horse. Animal rights groups protested the inclusion of the scene. Coppola later stated that the horse's head was delivered to him from a dog food company; a horse had not been killed specifically for the movie. This scene was shot in Port Washington, New York.[9][10] In the novel, Jack Woltz, the movie producer whose horse's head is put in his bed, is also shown to be a pedophile as Tom Hagen sees a young girl (presumably one of Woltz's child stars) crying while walking out of Woltz's room. This scene was cut from the theatrical release but can be found on the DVD (though Woltz can still briefly be seen kissing the girl on the cheek in his studio in the film). The shooting of Moe Green through the eye was inspired by the death of gangster Bugsy Siegel. To achieve the effect, actor Alex Rocco's glasses had two tubes hidden in their frames. One had blood in it, and the other had a BB and compressed air. When the gun was shot, the compressed air shot the BB through the glasses, shattering them from the inside. The other tube then released the blood.[citation needed] The equally startling scene of McCluskey's shooting was accomplished by building up a fake forehead on top of actor Sterling Hayden. A gap was cut in the center, filled with fake blood, and capped off with a plug of prosthetic flesh. During filming, the plug was quickly yanked out with monofilament fishing line, making a bloody hole suddenly appear in Hayden's head. The opening scene of The Godfather is a long, slow zoom, starting with a close-up of the undertaker, Bonasera, who is petitioning Don Corleone, and ending with the Godfather, seen from behind, framing the scene. This zoom, which lasts for about three minutes, was shot with a computer-controlled zoom lens designed by Tony Karp.[13] The lens was also used in the making of Silent Running Locations[15] around New York City and its environs were used for the film, including the then-closed flagship store of Best & Company on Fifth Avenue, which was dressed up and used for the scene in which Pacino and Keaton are Christmas shopping. At least one location in Los Angeles was used also (for the exterior of Woltz's mansion), for which neither Robert Duvall nor John Marley was available; in some shots, it is possible to see that extras are standing in for the two actors. A scene with Pacino and Keaton was filmed in the town of Ross, California. The Sicilian towns of Savoca and Forza d'Agrò outside of Taormina were also used for exterior locations. Interiors were shot at Filmways Studio in New York. A side entrance to Bellevue Hospital was used for Michael's confrontation with police Captain McCluskey.[16] As of 2007, the steps and gate to the hospital were still there but victim to neglect. The hospital interiors, when Michael visits his father there, were filmed at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary on 14th Street, in Manhattan, New York City. The scene in which Don Barzini was assassinated was filmed on the steps of the New York State Supreme Court building on Foley Square in Manhattan, New York City.[17] The wedding scene (and the Corleone Family compound) was shot on Longfellow Road in the Ocean Terrace section of Staten Island. The numerous Tudor homes on the block gave the impression that they were part of the same "compound." Paramount built a Plexiglas "stone wall" which traversed the street — the same wall where Sonny smashed the camera. The wedding scenes were filmed on an open backyard lot which is still intact today. Many of the extras were local Italian-Americans who were asked by Francis Ford Copolla to drink homemade wine, enjoy the traditional Italian food, and participate in the scene as though it were an actual wedding. Food was catered by "Demyans" restaurant (which is no longer in existence). The wedding cake was prepared by a bakery on Port Richmond Avenue. Two churches were used to film the baptism scene. The interior shots were filmed at Old St. Patrick's in New York. For the baptism, Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 582 was used, as were other Bach works for the pipe organ. The exterior scenes following the baptism were filmed at Mount Loretto Church in Pleasant Plains on Staten Island, New York. In 1973 much of Mount Loretto Church was destroyed in a fire. Only the façade and steeple of the original church remained, and were later incorporated into a new structure that was built to replace the structure destroyed in the fire. The funeral scene was filmed at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, Queens The film is greatly respected among international critics and the public and is routinely listed as one of the greatest films ever made.[19] Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of 61 reviews were positive[20] and Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received a perfect average score of 100, based on 14 reviews.[21] It was voted greatest film of all time by Entertainment Weekly,[22] and is now ranked as the second greatest film in American cinematic history – behind Citizen Kane – by the American Film Institute.[4] In the 2002 Sight & Sound poll of international critics, The Godfather (along with The Godfather Part II) was ranked as the fourth best film of all time.[23] Both The Godfather and The Godfather Part II were selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in 1990 and 1993, respectively. The soundtrack's main theme by Nino Rota was also critically acclaimed; the main theme ("Speak Softly Love") is well-known and widely used. (See Score Controversy.) Director Stanley Kubrick believed that The Godfather was possibly the greatest movie ever made, and without question the best cast.[24] Previous gangster movies had looked at the gangs from the perspective of an outraged outsider.[25] In contrast, The Godfather presents the gangster's perspective of the Mafia as a response to corrupt society.[25] Although the Corleone family is presented as immensely rich and powerful, there is no hint of where its money comes from, no scenes depicting prostitution, gambling, loan sharking or other forms of racketeering.[26] The setting of a criminal counterculture allows for unapologetic gender stereotyping, considered an important part of the film's appeal.[26] ("You can act like a man!", Don Vito tells a weepy Johnny Fontane.)[26] Real-life gangsters responded enthusiastically to the film.[27] "I left the movie stunned....I mean I floated out of the theater. Maybe it was fiction, but for me, then, that was our life. It was incredible. I remember talking to a multitude of guys, made guys, who felt exactly the same way," said Salvatore "Sammy the Bull" Gravano.[27] One of the primary parts of Puzo's novel which was not used for the movie was the flashback story of Vito Corleone's earlier life, including the circumstances of his emigration to America, his early family life, his murder of Don Fanucci, and his rise in importance in the Mafia, all of which were later used in The Godfather Part II. Many subplots were trimmed in the transition from the printed page to the screen, including: singer Johnny Fontane's misfortunes with women and his problems with his voice; a teenaged Sonny's impulsive dabbling in street crime and his utterly lacking the tact and coolheadedness possessed in such abundance by his father; Sonny's mistress, Lucy Mancini's new-found love in Dr. Jules Segal (a character entirely missing from the film), who not only assists in surgically repairing Lucy's vaginal malformation (a condition that allowed her to tolerate Sonny's excessively large penis) but he refers Michael to the surgeon who repairs Michael's facial disfigurement (resulting from Capt. McCluskey smashing his jaw), and also operated on Johnny Fontane's vocal cords, thus restoring his singing voice; Jack Woltz's increasing pedophilia; Kay Adams' home life and her brief separation from Michael; Luca Brasi's demonic past; the Corleone family's victorious rise to power in earlier New York gang wars in which Don Corleone survives a previous assassination attempt and Al Capone sends triggermen from Chicago in an unsuccessful attempt to aid a rival gang; disgraced former police officer Al Neri's recruitment as a Corleone hit man, Don Corleone's ingenious plan to bring Michael out of exile in Sicily; the detailed savage attack on the two men who assaulted the undertaker Bonasera's daughter, which was led by Paulie Gatto and involved retainer thugs (which was only alluded to in the film). Additionally, the novel states that Lucy Mancini was not pregnant by Sonny when she moved to Las Vegas, thus leaving no room for her son, Vincent Mancini of The Godfather Part III. Connie's confrontation with Michael over Carlo's death is also portrayed somewhat differently. Although she is initially distraught, accusing Michael of executing her husband as revenge for Sonny's brutal murder, in the book she apologizes to Michael a few days later, claiming she was mistaken, apparently glad to be rid of the abusive Carlo and that Sonny has been avenged. She also marries again less than a year later. Characters with smaller roles in the film than in the novel include Johnny Fontane, Lucy Mancini, Rocco Lampone, and Al Neri (the last two are reduced to non-speaking roles). Characters dropped in the film adaptation besides Dr. Segal include Vito's terminally-ill consigliere, Genco Abbandando (only spoken of, he appears in a deleted scene featured in The Godfather Saga; he first appears on film in The Godfather II), family friend Nino Valenti, and Dr. Taza from Sicily. Also, in the book, Michael and Kay have two sons, but in the movies they have a son and a daughter. The novel and film also differ on the fates of Michael's bodyguards in Sicily, Fabrizio and Calo. The film has them both surviving (Calo, in fact, appears in the third installment). In the book, however, it is stated that Calo dies along with Apollonia in the car explosion, and Fabrizio, implicated as an accomplice in the bombing, is shot and killed as one more victim in the famous "baptism scene" after he is tracked down running a pizza parlor in Buffalo. Fabrizio's murder was deleted from the film but publicity photos of the scene exist.[28] (He is later killed in a completely different scene in The Godfather Saga which was deleted from The Godfather Part II.) The book's ending differs from the movie: whereas in the film Kay suddenly realizes that Michael has become "like his family", the drama is toned down in the book. She leaves Michael and goes to stay with her parents. When Tom Hagen visits her there, he lets her in on family secrets for which, according to him, he would be killed should Michael find out what he has revealed. Kay returns to Michael in an uneasy compromise; she loves him, holds herself apart from the details of his work and attends Catholic mass daily with Mama Corleone to pray for Michael's soul, just as Mama had done for Vito The Godfather won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Writing (adapted screenplay) for Francis Coppola and Mario Puzo, and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Marlon Brando, who declined to collect the award and sent Native American actress Sacheen Littlefeather to the Oscars in his place to explain his reasons.[29] The film had been nominated for eight other Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for Al Pacino, James Caan, and Robert Duvall, Best Director, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. The film also had a Best Original Score nomination but was disqualified when found out that Nino Rota used another score. The film won five Golden Globes, one Grammy, and numerous other awards. Nino Rota's score was removed at the last minute from the list of 1973 Academy Award nominees when it was discovered that he had used the theme in Eduardo De Filippo's 1958 comedy Fortunella. Although in the earlier film the theme was played in a brisk, staccato and comedic style, the melody was the same as the love theme from The Godfather, and for that reason was deemed ineligible for an Oscar.[30] Despite this, The Godfather Part II won a 1974 Oscar for best original score, although it featured the same love theme that made the 1972 score ineligible. The film is ranked as #1 on Metacritic's top 100 list,[31] and in the top 10 on Rotten Tomatoes' all-time best list.[32] In 2002, The Godfather and The Godfather Part II reached #2 in Channel 4's "100 Greatest Films" poll.[33] Entertainment Weekly named The Godfather the greatest film ever made.[22] The Godfather was voted in at #1 in Empire Magazine's "500 Greatest Films Ever" poll in November 2008 1998 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies #3 2001 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills #11 2005 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes: "I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse," #2 2005 AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores #5 2007 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition) #2 2008 AFI's 10 Top 10 #1 gangster film Although many films about gangsters had been made before The Godfather, Coppola's sympathetic treatment of the Corleone family and their associates, and his portrayal of mobsters as characters of considerable psychological depth and complexity[35] was hardly usual in the genre. This was even more the case with The Godfather Part II, and the success of those two films, critically, artistically and financially, opened the doors for more and varied depictions of mobster life, including films such as Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas and TV series such as David Chase's The Sopranos. The image of the Mafia as being a feudal organization with the Don being both the protector of the small fry and the collector of obligations from them to repay his services, which The Godfather helped to popularize, is now an easily recognizable cultural trope, as is that of the Don's family as a "royal family". (This has spread into the real world as well – cf. John Gotti – the "Dapper Don", and his celebritized family.) This portrayal stands in contrast to the more sordid reality of lower level Mafia "familial" entanglements, as depicted in various post-Godfather Mafia fare, such as Scorsese's Mean Streets and Casino, and also to the grittier hard-boiled pre-Godfather films. In the 1999 film Analyze This, which starred Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal, many references are made both directly and indirectly to the Godfather. One dream scene is almost a shot by shot replica of the attempted assassination of Vito Corleone (Crystal playing the Don and De Niro playing Fredo). In the 1990 comedy The Freshman, Marlon Brando plays a role reminiscent of Don Corleone. And one of those most unlikely homages to this film came in 2004, when the PG-rated, animated family film Shark Tale was released with a storyline that nodded at this and other movies about the Mafia. The 2005 Indian film Sarkar, directed by Ram Gopal Varma, with Amitabh Bachan in the lead role as a "Don" and his son Abhishek Bachchan as the equivalent of Michael, is modeled on The Godfather with due credits appearing at the beginning of the film. In 1975, Coppola edited The Godfather and The Godfather Part II together for TV, putting the scenes in chronological order and adding some previously unseen footage, but also toning down the violence, sex, and profanity. It is rated TV-14. This version of the story was called The Godfather Saga. In 1981, Paramount released the Godfather Epic box set which combined parts I & II in chronological order, again with additional scenes not shown in theaters. In 1992, Coppola would again re-edit all three Godfather movies (The Godfather, The Godfather Part II and The Godfather Part III) in chronological order dubbed The Godfather Trilogy 1901-1980. It was released on VHS and laserdisc in 1993 but has yet (as of 2008) to appear on DVD. The total run time for this version is 583 minutes (9 hours, 43 minutes). This version spanned five VHS tapes and incorporated new previously deleted scenes that had not been seen in The Godfather Saga. This set also included a sixth VHS tape: "The Godfather Family: A Look Inside" a making-of documentary. None of these releases contains all the additional scenes in one package. The Saga contains scenes not in the Epic or Trilogy, the Epic contains scenes not in the Saga or Trilogy, and the Trilogy contains scenes not in the Saga or the Epic. Fans have longed for a complete release of the entire series[36] though Francis Ford Coppola has stated that the films were meant to be seen in their original form and has not agreed (as of 2008) to a chronological release. The Godfather was released on DVD for the first time on October 9, 2001 as part of a DVD package called The Godfather DVD Collection.[37] The collection contained all three films with commentary from Francis Ford Coppola and a bonus disc that featured a 73-minute documentary from 1991 titled The Godfather Family: A Look Inside, plus a 1971 documentary. The package also contained deleted footage, including the additional scenes originally contained in The Godfather Saga; "Francis Coppola's Notebook" a look inside a notebook the director kept with him at all times during the production of the film; rehearsal footage; and video segments on Gordon Willis's cinematography, Nino Rota's and Carmine Coppola's music, Francis Ford Coppola, locations and Mario Puzo's screenplays. The DVD also held a Corleone family tree, a "Godfather" timeline, and footage of the Academy Award acceptance speeches.[38] The restoration was confirmed by Francis Ford Coppola during a question-and-answer session for The Godfather Part III, when he said that he had just seen the new transfer and it was "terrific". After a careful restoration of the aging first two movies, The Godfather movies were released on DVD and Blu-ray on September 23, 2008 under the title The Godfather: The Coppola Restoration. The work was done by Robert A. Harris of the Film Preserve. The Blu-ray box set (four discs) includes high-definition extra features on the restoration and film. They are included on disc 5 of the DVD box set (five discs). Other extras are ported over from Paramount's 2001 DVD release. There are slight differences between the repurposed extras on the DVD and Blu-ray sets, with the HD box having more content.[39] Paramount lists the new (HD) extra features as: Godfather World The Masterpiece That Almost Wasn't ...when the shooting stopped Emulsional Rescue Revealing The Godfather The Godfather on the Red Carpet Four Short Films on The Godfather The Godfather vs. The Godfather, Part II Cannoli Riffing on the Riffing Clemenza The new DVD boxset was released on June 2, 2008 in Europe.[40] It has been rerated as a "15" by the BBFC.[41] It is unclear whether a chronological box set will be released. In the Coppola restoration on Blu-ray (2008), the end credit theme music for The Godfather Part II is missing the final chord (approximately 10 seconds) from the film proper.[citation needed] This missing chord would be located immediately before the restoration credit music begins. Robert A. Harris has not publicly commented about this The Godfather along with the other films in the trilogy, had a strong impact on the public at large. Don Vito Corleone's line "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse" was voted as the second most memorable line in cinema history in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes by the American Film Institute.[42] Reports from Mafia trials and confessions suggest that Mafia families began a "real-life" tradition of paying respect to the family Don by kissing his ring, in imitation of the ending scene of the movie.[citation needed] There is no evidence of this custom being mentioned before the movie. The scene in which a delivery is made of a pair of pants and bullet proof vest wrapped around a fish is explained to be an old Sicilian message, "Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes". This expression has made it into widespread American parlance. An indication of the continuing influence of The Godfather and its sequels can be gleaned from the many references to it which have appeared in every medium of popular culture in the decades since the film's initial release. That these homages, quotations, visual references, satires and parodies continue to pop up even now shows clearly the film's enduring impact. In the television show The Sopranos, Tony Soprano's topless bar is named Bada Bing after the line in The Godfather when Sonny says, "You've gotta get up close like this and bada-bing! You blow their brains all over your nice Ivy League suit." Several television shows have contained references to the film, including the 1997 British film Twin Town, Arrested Development, Yes Dear, The Simpsons, Seinfeld, The King of Queens, Mr. Show with Bob and David, That '70s Show, and Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.[43] On the final season of Martin, Cole imitates the Godfather says "Martino, Gino, where the bambino?". The Warner Bros. animated show Animaniacs featured several segments called "Goodfeathers," with pigeons spoofing characters from various gangster films. One of the characters is "The Godpigeon," an obvious parody of Brando's portrayal of the Godfather; however, he speaks in complete gibberish In March 2006, a video game version of The Godfather was released by Electronic Arts. Before his death, Marlon Brando provided voice work for Vito; however, owing to poor sound quality from Brando's failing health, only parts of the recordings could be used. A sound-alike's voice had to be used in the "missing parts". James Caan, Robert Duvall and Abe Vigoda lent their voices and likenesses as well, and several other Godfather cast members had their likeness in the game. However, Al Pacino's likeness and voice (Michael Corleone) was not in the game as Al Pacino sold his likeness and voice exclusively for use in the Scarface video game. Francis Ford Coppola said in April 2005 that he was not informed and did not approve of Paramount allowing the game's production, and openly criticized the move.[44]
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Post by bob on Jul 19, 2009 11:54:38 GMT -5
In second place, with 24 votes, is a movie I think I saw but don't remember if I did or not. Like other films in this countdown it's a sequal. Like some movies in this countdown the main character is a superhero. In second place............ Spiderman 2![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0e/Sm2_peter_onesheet.jpg/200px-Sm2_peter_onesheet.jpg) Spider-Man 2 is a 2004 American superhero film directed by Sam Raimi, written by Alvin Sargent and developed by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and Michael Chabon. It is the second film in the Spider-Man film franchise based on the fictional Marvel Comics character Spider-Man. It saw the return of Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson and James Franco as Harry Osborn. Set two years after the original, the film focuses on Peter Parker struggling to manage both his personal life and his duties as Spider-Man. The main villain in this film is Dr. Otto Octavius (Alfred Molina), who turns insane following a failed experiment and the death of his wife. Using his mechanical tentacles, Octavius is dubbed "Doctor Octopus" and threatens to endanger the lives of the people of New York City. The film was released on June 30, 2004 in the United States by Columbia Pictures, and received positive reviews from critics. It grossed over $784 million worldwide, and won the Academy Award for Visual Effects. The film's success led to another sequel, Spider-Man 3. Peter Parker is finding his double life increasingly difficult. Precariously struggling to balance his crime-fighting duties with the demands of his normal life, Peter often finds his personal life taking a back seat. He loses a job, faces financial difficulties, and struggles to maintain his physics studies at Columbia University. Moreover, he has become estranged from both love interest Mary Jane and best friend Harry Osborn, and Aunt May is threatened with foreclosure. Harry, now head of Oscorp's research division, has invested in the research of brilliant scientist Otto Octavius, Peter's idol. To perform a sustained fusion experiment, Octavius has developed a set of artificially intelligent mechanical arms, which are impervious to heat and magnetism. Though the experiment overloads and becomes unstable, Dr. Octavius refuses to halt it, with devastating results: his wife is killed; the neural inhibitor chip which enabled him to control the arms is destroyed; and the arms are fused to his spine. Unconscious, he is taken to a hospital to have the tentacles removed, but the tentacles kill the surgeons, and he escapes. Uncontrolled, the tentacles begin to influence Octavius' mind, playing on his vanity and ego, and he decides he must complete his experiment at any cost. J. Jonah Jameson names him Doctor Octopus or "Doc Ock". Doc Ock attempts to rob a bank where Peter Parker and his Aunt May happen to be present. After a short glitch in his powers, Spider-Man manages to recover shortly after that and soon the two take their fight outside the bank, but Doc Ock takes Aunt May as a hostage. When Spider-Man rescues her, she revises her former opinion of him and realizes that he is a hero. During a party, Peter learns that M.J. is planning to marry J. Jonah Jameson's son, John Jameson. He also gets into a physical altercation with Harry, who is under the influence, over his loyalty to Spider-Man; shortly after he loses his powers while web-slinging across town. Meanwhile, Doc Ock rebuilds his experimental reactor. Peter questions if he could ever have what he "needs", a life as Peter Parker, which involves a vision of Uncle Ben, and resolves to give up being Spider-Man. Back home, after visiting Uncle Ben's grave, Aunt May is distressed by Peter's confession that he was somewhat responsible for his Uncle Ben's death. Aunt May and Peter reconcile, and she tells Peter of the hope that Spider-Man brings to others, in spite of what dreams he may have to sacrifice. Peter attempts to re-connect with Mary Jane, but she informs him it is too late. In the meantime, Doc Ock has completed rebuilding his reactor, and needs one final item: the tritium which fuels the reactor. He goes to Harry Osborn for it, dangling him over the edge of the Osborn mansion balcony when he refuses. Harry agrees to give Ock what he needs in exchange for capturing Spider-Man. Mary Jane meets Peter in a coffee shop to ask if he still loves her, but Peter tells her that he does not. Doc Ock, having been told by Harry to look for Peter Parker if he wants Spiderman, tries to attack Peter Parker by throwing a car at him. Peter regains his spider-sense for a split second, grabs Mary Jane and dodges the car, but Doc Ock abducts Mary Jane in a plot to lure Spider-Man into a trap. Peter's powers fully return, and he dons his costume and engages Doc Ock in a battle, which starts off at the top of a bell tower and then on top of a subway train. During the battle, Doc Ock manages to destroy the brakes to the train, forcing Spider-Man to rescue the runaway train. Spider-Man manages to stop the train before it can plunge over the end of the track, but at great physical exertion. He nearly falls, but the people in the train save him and see him without his mask on. They agree to keep his identity a secret and try to protect him from Doc Ock, but fail. Weak, he is captured by Doctor Octopus and delivered to Harry Osborn. Harry unmasks Spider-Man and is stunned to discover that his sworn enemy is his best friend. Peter awakens and convinces Harry to reveal Octavius' whereabouts so he can rescue Mary Jane. Spider-Man finds Doctor Octavius in an abandoned warehouse on a waterfront pier, where he's restarted his fusion experiment. After battling with Doc Ock, Spider-Man manages to stun the villain with an electric shock. Peter then reveals his true identity to Octavius and pleads with him to stop the machine. Returned to his senses by the shock and determined to end his doomsday experiment before it causes more harm, Octavius uses his mechanical arms to collapse the floor of the building, successfully drowning the device at the cost of his own life. Mary Jane sees Peter without his mask on, but Peter tells her they can never be together, as he will always have enemies. Across town, Harry has visions of his father, the late Norman Osborn, in a hanging mirror. The illusion demands that his son kill Peter Parker to avenge his death. Harry refuses and hurls a dagger at the mirror, shattering it and revealing a secret room, containing the Green Goblin's war gear. At the end of the film, Mary Jane leaves her wedding and finds Peter in his apartment, telling him that she has decided to be with him – despite the risks. She persuades Peter to finally let her in while accepting the need of his vows by letting him respond to a sudden call for help. She looks on in uncertainty as Spider-Man swings away. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/1/13/Octopusvsspider.jpg/180px-Octopusvsspider.jpg) Cast and characters Tobey Maguire as Peter Parker / Spider-Man: A superhero, a Columbia College physics student and photographer for the Daily Bugle. Juggling these separate lives means he briefly gives up his responsibilities as a superhero in a moment of adversity. When Maguire signed on to portray Spider-Man in 2000, he was given a three-film contract.[2] While filming Seabiscuit in late 2002, Maguire suffered injuries to his back and Sony was faced with the possibility of recasting their lead.[3] Negotiations arose to replace Maguire with Jake Gyllenhaal, who at the time was dating Kirsten Dunst, who portrayed Mary Jane Watson. However, Maguire recovered and was able to reprise his role, with a salary of $17 million.[4] Alfred Molina as Dr. Otto Octavius / Doctor Octopus: A scientist and hero of Peter's who goes insane after his failure to create a self-sustaining fusion reaction. Octavius is bonded with his handling equipment, four artificially intelligent mechanical tentacles. These convince him to carry on his dangerous experiments no matter the cost, in memory of his wife who was killed in the fusion accident. Molina was cast as Octavius in February 2003 and immediately began physical training for the role.[5] Raimi had been impressed by his performance in Frida and also felt he had the physicality.[6] Molina only briefly discussed the role and was not aware that he was a strong contender for the role,[7] and was excited, being a big fan of Marvel Comics.[8] Although he wasn't familiar with Doc Ock, Molina found one element of the comics that he wanted to maintain, and that was the character's cruel, sardonic sense of humor.[9] Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson: The woman Peter has loved since he was a child, yet he gave up the chance of being with her due to his obligations as a superhero. Since then, she has become a successful Broadway actress and model, and becomes engaged to John Jameson. She is angry due to Peter's failure to watch her performance in The Importance of Being Earnest, when everybody else close to her, even her abusive father, has seen it. James Franco as Harry Osborn: Harry Osborn has taken his father's position as head of Oscorp. He supplies Octavius with tritium for the fusion experiment, but when it fails, Harry falls into alcoholism and a desire to kill Spider-Man, whom he believes killed his father. Harry also becomes angry at Peter, believing he will not tell him who Spider-Man is, being the supplier of his photographs to the Daily Bugle. J.K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson: J. Jonah Jameson is the miserly chief of the Daily Bugle who carries a personal vendetta against Spider-Man, whom he considers a criminal. When Spider-Man temporarily gives up, Jameson also begins to reconsider his opinion of the superhero. Rosemary Harris as May Parker: May Parker is the loving aunt to Peter, a widow of Ben. She blames herself for his murder, but is still unaware of the circumstances surrounding it. Her house is threatened with foreclosure. Daniel Gillies as John Jameson: The son of J. Jonah Jameson, fiancé of Mary Jane and a national hero. Dylan Baker as Dr. Curt Connors: Dr. Curt Connors is one of Peter's physics professors at college, who reminds him to get his work done. He is a colleague of Octavius. Donna Murphy as Rosalie Octavius: Rosalie Octavius is the dedicated wife and assistant of Otto Octavius. Willem Dafoe as Norman Osborn / Green Goblin: Norman returns as a hallucination of his son Harry. Dafoe came up with the idea during promotion for Spider-Man, which he compared to King Hamlet haunting his son to avenge him.[10] Mageina Tovah as Ursula Ditkovich: An unassuming girl next door who is the daughter of Peter's landlord. Bruce Campbell cameos as an obnoxious usher who denies Peter access to Mary Jane's play when he is late, thus causing a rift in their relationship. Spider-Man's co-creator Stan Lee, as a man on the street who saves a woman from falling debris during a battle between Spider-Man and Doc Ock. Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel, as a man who attempts to eat some pizza Spider-Man is delivering, only to have it webbed from his hands. Joel McHale, as the teller in the bank who refuses Aunt May's loan. Hal Sparks, as the elevator passenger who has a conversation with Spidey. Phil LaMarr, in a very, very small cameo as one of the train passengers who catches Spidey before he falls. Comedian Donnell Rawlings, as the New Yorker who exclaims that Spider-Man stole pizza. Actor Joey Diaz, as a train passenger who tells Doctor Octopus that he has to get past him to get to Spider-Man. Actress Vanessa Ferlito, as one of Mary Jane's co-stars. Director John Landis, as one of the doctors who operates on Doctor Octopus. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/ac/Spideygivesup.jpg/180px-Spideygivesup.jpg) Immediately after finishing Spider-Man, director Sam Raimi segued into directing a sequel.[7] In April 2002, Sony hired Alfred Gough and Miles Millar to write a script with Doctor Octopus, the Lizard and Black Cat as villains.[3] On May 8, 2002, following Spider-Man's record breaking $115 million opening weekend, Sony Pictures announced a sequel for 2004.[11] Entitled The Amazing Spider-Man, after the character's main comic book title,[12] the film was given a budget of $200 million[13] and aimed for a release date of May 7, 2004. The following month, David Koepp was added to co-write with Gough and Millar.[3] In September 2002, Michael Chabon was hired to rewrite.[3] His draft had a younger Doc Ock, who becomes infatuated with Mary Jane. His mechanical limbs use endorphins to counteract the pain of being attached to his body, which he enjoys. When he injures two muggers on a date, this horrifies Mary Jane and in the resulting battle with Spider-Man his tentacles are fused together, and the fusion begins to kill him. In the script, Octavius is the creator of the genetically-altered spider from the first film, and gives Peter an antidote to remove his powers: this means when Octavius is dying with his tentacles, he wants to extract Spider-Man's spine to save himself. This leads to the alliance with Harry in the final film. Beforehand, Harry and the Daily Bugle put a $10 million price on Spider-Man's head, causing the city's citizens to turn against him.[14] Producer Avi Arad rejected the love triangle angle on Ock, and found Harry putting a price on Spider-Man's head unsubtle.[7] Raimi sifted through the previous drafts by Gough, Millar, Koepp and Chabon, picking what he liked with screenwriter Alvin Sargent.[15] He felt that thematically the film had to explore Peter's conflict with his personal wants against his responsibility, exploring the positive and negatives of his chosen path, and how he ultimately decides that he can be happy as a heroic figure.[7] Raimi stated the story was partly influenced by Superman II, which also explored the titular hero giving up his responsibilities.[16] The story is mainly taken from The Amazing Spider-Man #50, "Spider-Man No More!" It was decided that Doc Ock would be kept as the villain, as he was both a visually interesting villain who was a physical match for Spider-Man, and a sympathetic figure with humanity.[7] Raimi changed much of the character's backstory however, adding the idea of Otto Octavius being a hero of Peter, and how their conflict was about trying to rescue him from his demons rather than kill him.[12] Spider-Man 2 was shot on over 100 sets and locations, beginning with a pre-shoot on the Loop in Chicago during two days in November 2002. The crew bought a carriage, placing 16 cameras for background shots of Spider-Man and Doc Ock's train fight.[7] Principal photography began on April 12, 2003 in New York City. The crew moved on May 13 to Los Angeles,[3] shooting on 10 major sets created by producer designer Neil Spisak. After the scare surrounding his back pains, Tobey Maguire relished performing many of his stunts, even creating a joke of it with Raimi, creating the line "My back, my back" as Spider-Man tries to regain his powers.[15] Even Rosemary Harris took a turn, putting her stunt double out of work. In contrast, Alfred Molina joked that the stunt team would "trick" him into performing a stunt time and again.[7] Filming was put on hiatus for eight weeks, in order to build Doc Ock's pier lair. It had been Spisak's idea to use a collapsed pier as Ock's lair, reflecting an exploded version of the previous lab and representing how Octavius' life had collapsed and grown more monstrous,[7] evoking the cinema of Fritz Lang and the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.[17] Filming then resumed on that set, having taken 15 weeks to build, occupying Sony's Stage 30. It was 60 by 120 feet (37 m) long, and 40 feet (12 m) high, and a quarter-scale miniature was also built for the finale as it collapses.[7] Filming was still going after Christmas 2003.[18] A camera system called the Spydercam was used to allow filmmakers to express more of Spider-Man's world view, at times dropping 50 stories and with shot lengths of just over 2,400 feet (in New York) or 3,200 feet (Los Angeles). For some shots the camera would shoot at six frames per second for a faster playback increasing the sense of speed. Shots using the Spydercam were pre-planned in digital versions of cities, and movement of the camera was controlled with motion control, making it highly cost-effective. The camera system was only used in the previous film for the final shot.[7] Although roughly the same, costume designer James Acheson made numerous subtle changes to Spider-Man's costume. The colors were made richer and bolder, the spider emblem was given more elegant lines, the eye-lenses were somewhat smaller, and the muscle suit underneath was made into pieces, to give a better sense of movement. The helmet Maguire wore under his mask was also improved, with better movement for the false jaw and magnetic eye pieces, which were easier to remove.[7] To create Doctor Octopus' mechanical tentacles, Edge FX was hired to create a corset, a metal and rubber girdle, a rubber spine and four foam rubber tentacles which were eight feet long, which altogether weighed 100 pounds. The claws of each tentacle, which were dubbed "death flowers", were controlled by a single puppeteer in a chair, to control every available form on the claw. Each tentacle was controlled by four people, who rehearsed every scene with Molina to give a natural sense of movement as if the tentacles were moving due to Octavius' muscle movement.[19] On-set, Molina christened his co-stars "Larry", "Harry", "Moe" and "Flo", with "Flo" being the top-right tentacle.[20] Edge FX was only hired to do scenes where Octavius carries his tentacles. CGI was used for when the tentacles carry Octavius: a twenty feet high rig held Molina to glide through his surroundings, with CG tentacles added later.[19] The CG versions were scanned straight from the practical ones.[7] However, using the practical versions was always preferred to save money,[19] and each scene was always filmed first with Edge FX's creations to see if CGI was truly necessary. Completing the illusion, the sound designers chose not to use servo sound effects, feeling it would rob the tentacles of the sense that they were part of Octavius' body, and instead used motorcycle chains and piano wires.[7] Spider-Man 2 opened in the United States on June 30, 2004 and grossed $40.4 million in its first day; this was the second highest opening day, after The Matrix Reloaded.[21] In its first six days the film had grossed over $180 million[22] and eventually went on to gross $373.5 million, becoming the second-highest grossing film of 2004, behind Shrek 2. Worldwide, the film grossed $783.8 million, ranking 3rd highest-grossing film of 2004 behind Shrek 2 and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Spider-Man 2's gross is currently among the all-time top fifteen grossing films domestically (#11) and is among the top twenty-five worldwide (#25).[1] Spider-Man 2 won the Academy Award for Visual Effects, and was nominated for Sound and Sound Editing.[23] The film won Saturn Awards for Best Actor, Best Director, Best Fantasy Film, Best Special Effects, and Best Writer, while being nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Best Music.[24] It was nominated for two BAFTA awards for Special Visual Effects and Sound.[25] AFI listed the movie as one of the 10 best films of 2004.[26] Spider-Man 2 topped Rotten Tomatoes's list of the best-reviewed comic book movies of all time, beating out X2: X-Men United, Batman Begins and Superman.[27] In 2007, Entertainment Weekly named it the #21 greatest action movie of all time.[28] The film was extremely well received; it earned a collective rating of 83 out of 100, based on 41 reviews, on Metacritic.[29] Rotten Tomatoes calculated a rating of 93% based on 230 reviews.[30] Chicago Tribune's Mark Caro stated that Alfred Molina was a "pleasingly complex" villain, and the film as a whole "improves upon its predecessor in almost every way."[31] Kenneth Turan, of the Los Angeles Times, gave the film 4 out of 5 stars, and concurred with Caro when he stated, "Doc Ock grabs this film with his quartet of sinisterly serpentine mechanical arms and refuses to let go."[32] Roger Ebert, who was lukewarm on the first film, called it, "The best superhero movie since the modern genre was launched with Superman (1978)", and praised the film for "effortlessly [combining] special effects and a human story, keeping its parallel plots alive and moving."[33] He later called it the fourth best film of 2004."[34] IGN's Richard George felt "Sam Raimi and his writing team delivered an iconic, compelling version of Spider-Man's classic foe... We almost wish there was a way to retroactively add some of these elements to the original character."[35] Despite all the positive reviews, there were critics who did not care for the film. J. Hoberman, of The Village Voice, thought the first half of the film was "talky bordering on tiresome", with the film often stopping to showcase Raimi's idea of humor.[36] Charles Taylor believed, "The script's miscalculation of Peter's decision feeds into the pedestrian quality of Raimi's direction and into Maguire's weightlessness... [Maguire] simply does not suggest a heroic presence", and suggested that "Dunst appears to be chafing against strictures she cannot articulate."[37] The film was initially released on DVD as a 2-disc special edition on November 30, 2004. It was available in full screen and widescreen, as well as a Superbit edition and in a box-set with the first film. There was also a collector's edition including a reprint of The Amazing Spider-Man #50.[38] An extended cut of the film, with eight minutes of new footage, was released as Spider-Man 2.1 on DVD on April 17, 2007. In addition to the new cut, the DVD also included new special features not on the original release, as well as a sneak preview of Spider-Man 3.[39] The film was released on the Blu-ray high definition format in October, 2007 as a part of the Spider-Man: The High Definition Trilogy box set
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Post by The Raven on Jul 19, 2009 11:57:49 GMT -5
I can't even look at the poster for that movie, it pisses me off so bad.
So what's number 1? Dark Knight? I kinda regret putting that one on my list. I used to have Planet of the Apes in it's place instead, which could have used my vote more than Dark Knight.
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thelesserevil
Super Trooper
![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star.png) ![*](//storage.proboards.com/forum/images/stars/star.png)
Thinks RKO is A-OK
Splat
Posts: 1,449
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Post by thelesserevil on Jul 19, 2009 12:04:10 GMT -5
That poster is meh, but the movie is good!
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Post by bob on Jul 19, 2009 12:18:15 GMT -5
Thanks to everyone who voted. Here we are number one. Well, let's get to it. This movie is amazing. With a total of 29 votes. Your number 1 movie of all time is...... The Dark Knighthere's what you said about it: Not even gonna talk about this film. What can be said that hasn't been driven into the ground? This is epic….just epic not a dull minute at all ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Dark_Knight.jpg) The Dark Knight is a 2008 superhero film directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan. Based on the DC Comics character Batman, the film is part of Nolan's Batman film series and a sequel to 2005's Batman Begins. Christian Bale reprises the lead role. The film follows Bruce Wayne/Batman (Bale), District Attorney Harvey Dent/Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart), Assistant D.A. Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Police Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman) and their struggles and journey in combating the new rising threat of a criminal who goes by the name of the "Joker" (Heath Ledger). Nolan's inspiration for the film was the Joker's comic book debut in 1940, and the 1996 series The Long Halloween, which retold Two-Face's origin. The Dark Knight was filmed primarily in Chicago, as well as in several other locations in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Hong Kong. Nolan used an IMAX camera to film some sequences, including the Joker's first appearance in the film. On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Heath Ledger died from a toxic combination of prescription drugs, leading to intense attention from the press and moviegoing public. Warner Bros. had initially created a viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, developing promotional websites and trailers highlighting screen shots of Ledger as the Joker, but after Ledger's death, the studio refocused its promotional campaign.[2][3] The film was released on July 16, 2008 in Australia, on July 18, 2008 in North America, and on July 24, 2008 in the United Kingdom. Before its box office debut in North America, record numbers of advanced tickets were sold for The Dark Knight. It was greeted with positive reviews upon release,[4] and became only the second film to earn more than $500 million at the North American box office, setting numerous other records in the process. It is also the fourth highest grossing film worldwide, and only the fourth film to earn more than $1 billion, worldwide.[5] The film received numerous awards nominations and two Academy Awards[6] for Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor for Ledger's performance. In Gotham City, the Joker robs a mob bank with his accomplices, whom he tricks into killing one another, ultimately killing the last one himself. That night, Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon contemplate including new district attorney Harvey Dent in their plan to eradicate the mob. However, Batman wonders if Dent can be trusted. Bruce runs into Rachel Dawes and Dent, who are dating, and after talking to Dent, he realizes Dent's sincerity and decides to host a fundraiser for him. Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and the Chechen meet with other underworld gangsters to discuss both Batman and Dent, who have been cracking down on the mobster's operations. Lau, a Chinese mafia accountant, informs them that he has hidden their money and fled to Hong Kong in an attempt to preempt Gordon's plan to seize the mobsters' funds and hide from Dent's jurisdiction. The Joker appears and offers to kill Batman for half of the mafia's money, but they flatly refuse and Gambol places a bounty on the Joker's head. Not long after, the Joker kills Gambol and takes control of his men. In Hong Kong, Batman captures Lau and delivers him to the Gotham City police, where Lau agrees to testify against the mob. In retaliation, the mobsters hire the Joker to kill Batman and Lau. The Joker issues an ultimatum to Gotham: people will die each day until Batman reveals his identity. When Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and Judge Surillo are murdered by corrupt police, the public readily blames Batman, prompting Bruce to decide to reveal his identity. Before Bruce can turn himself in, Dent holds a press conference to try and persuade the public not to sell Batman out just because of one terrorist, but the public, though grateful for everything Batman has done for the city, insists that things have now reached a point where Batman must make the sacrifice, so Dent announces that he himself is Batman and is arrested as part of a plan to draw the Joker out of hiding. The Joker attempts to ambush the police convoy carrying Dent, but Batman and Gordon intervene and capture him. In recognition of his actions, Gordon is appointed the new police commissioner. Later that night, Dent and Dawes disappear. At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that Dent and Dawes' police escorts were on Maroni's payroll and have placed them in warehouses rigged with explosives on opposite sides of the city — far enough apart so that Batman cannot save them both. Batman leaves to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police head after Dent. With the aid of a smuggled bomb, the Joker escapes police custody with Lau. Batman arrives, but finds Dent instead of Dawes. Batman successfully saves Dent, but the ensuing explosion disfigures Dent's face. Gordon arrives at Dawes' location too late, and she perishes when the bomb detonates. Unable to cope with this new level of chaos, Maroni goes to Gordon and offers him the Joker's location. Aboard a cargo ship, the Joker burns Lau to death atop a pile of half the mob's money, and has the Chechen killed before taking control of his men. Meanwhile, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, Coleman Reese, finds out Batman's identity and after failing to blackmail the company, decides to go public. However, realizing that he does what he does only because of Batman, The Joker changes his mind about revealing Batman's identity and issues a public ultimatum: either Reese is killed, or he will blow up a hospital. When the police refuse to carry out his demands, The Joker goes to the evacuated hospital, disguised as a nurse, and frees Dent from his restraints, convincing him to exact revenge on the people responsible for Dawes' death, as well as Batman and Gordon for not saving her. Dent begins by flipping for the Joker's life, and spares him. The Joker destroys the hospital on his way out, and then escapes with a hijacked bus full of hospital patients. Out of the hospital, Dent goes on a personal vendetta, confronting Maroni and the corrupt cops one by one. Now with complete control over the Gotham mob, the Joker announces to the public that anyone left in Gotham at nightfall will be subject to his rule. With the bridges and tunnels out of the city closed due to a bomb threat by the Joker, authorities begin evacuating people by ferry. The Joker has explosives placed on two of the ferries—one ferry with convicts, who were evacuated in an effort to keep the Joker from freeing them, and the other with civilians—telling the passengers the only way to save themselves is to trigger the explosives on the other ferry; otherwise, he will destroy both at midnight. Batman locates the Joker and the hostages he has taken. Realizing the Joker has disguised the hostages as his own men, Batman is forced to attack both Gordon's SWAT team and the Joker's henchmen in order to save the real hostages. The Joker's plan to destroy the ferries fails after the passengers on both decide not to destroy each other. Batman finds the Joker, and after a brief fight, is able to subdue him, preventing him from destroying both ferries. When Batman refuses to kill the Joker, the Joker acknowledges that Batman is truly incorruptible, but that Dent was not, and that he has unleashed Dent upon the city. Leaving the Joker for the SWAT team, Batman searches for Dent. At the remains of the building where Dawes died, Batman finds Dent holding Gordon and his family at gunpoint. Dent judges the innocence of Batman, himself, and Gordon's son through three coin tosses. As the result of the first two flips, he shoots Batman in the abdomen and spares himself. Before Dent can determine the boy's fate, Batman, who was wearing body armor, tackles him over the side of the building. Gordon's son is saved, but Dent and Batman fall to the ground below resulting in Dent's death.[7] Knowing that the citizens of Gotham will lose hope and all morale if Dent's rampage becomes public news, Batman convinces Gordon to hold him responsible for the murders. Images are shown of Gordon delivering the eulogy at Dent's funeral and smashing the Bat-Signal. Police swarm the building, and Batman flees as Gordon and his son watch. In Gotham City, the Joker robs a mob bank with his accomplices, whom he tricks into killing one another, ultimately killing the last one himself. That night, Batman and Lieutenant James Gordon contemplate including new district attorney Harvey Dent in their plan to eradicate the mob. However, Batman wonders if Dent can be trusted. Bruce runs into Rachel Dawes and Dent, who are dating, and after talking to Dent, he realizes Dent's sincerity and decides to host a fundraiser for him. Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and the Chechen meet with other underworld gangsters to discuss both Batman and Dent, who have been cracking down on the mobster's operations. Lau, a Chinese mafia accountant, informs them that he has hidden their money and fled to Hong Kong in an attempt to preempt Gordon's plan to seize the mobsters' funds and hide from Dent's jurisdiction. The Joker appears and offers to kill Batman for half of the mafia's money, but they flatly refuse and Gambol places a bounty on the Joker's head. Not long after, the Joker kills Gambol and takes control of his men. In Hong Kong, Batman captures Lau and delivers him to the Gotham City police, where Lau agrees to testify against the mob. In retaliation, the mobsters hire the Joker to kill Batman and Lau. The Joker issues an ultimatum to Gotham: people will die each day until Batman reveals his identity. When Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and Judge Surillo are murdered by corrupt police, the public readily blames Batman, prompting Bruce to decide to reveal his identity. Before Bruce can turn himself in, Dent holds a press conference to try and persuade the public not to sell Batman out just because of one terrorist, but the public, though grateful for everything Batman has done for the city, insists that things have now reached a point where Batman must make the sacrifice, so Dent announces that he himself is Batman and is arrested as part of a plan to draw the Joker out of hiding. The Joker attempts to ambush the police convoy carrying Dent, but Batman and Gordon intervene and capture him. In recognition of his actions, Gordon is appointed the new police commissioner. Later that night, Dent and Dawes disappear. At the police station, Batman interrogates the Joker, who reveals that Dent and Dawes' police escorts were on Maroni's payroll and have placed them in warehouses rigged with explosives on opposite sides of the city — far enough apart so that Batman cannot save them both. Batman leaves to save Dawes, while Gordon and the police head after Dent. With the aid of a smuggled bomb, the Joker escapes police custody with Lau. Batman arrives, but finds Dent instead of Dawes. Batman successfully saves Dent, but the ensuing explosion disfigures Dent's face. Gordon arrives at Dawes' location too late, and she perishes when the bomb detonates. Unable to cope with this new level of chaos, Maroni goes to Gordon and offers him the Joker's location. Aboard a cargo ship, the Joker burns Lau to death atop a pile of half the mob's money, and has the Chechen killed before taking control of his men. Meanwhile, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, Coleman Reese, finds out Batman's identity and after failing to blackmail the company, decides to go public. However, realizing that he does what he does only because of Batman, The Joker changes his mind about revealing Batman's identity and issues a public ultimatum: either Reese is killed, or he will blow up a hospital. When the police refuse to carry out his demands, The Joker goes to the evacuated hospital, disguised as a nurse, and frees Dent from his restraints, convincing him to exact revenge on the people responsible for Dawes' death, as well as Batman and Gordon for not saving her. Dent begins by flipping for the Joker's life, and spares him. The Joker destroys the hospital on his way out, and then escapes with a hijacked bus full of hospital patients. Out of the hospital, Dent goes on a personal vendetta, confronting Maroni and the corrupt cops one by one. Now with complete control over the Gotham mob, the Joker announces to the public that anyone left in Gotham at nightfall will be subject to his rule. With the bridges and tunnels out of the city closed due to a bomb threat by the Joker, authorities begin evacuating people by ferry. The Joker has explosives placed on two of the ferries—one ferry with convicts, who were evacuated in an effort to keep the Joker from freeing them, and the other with civilians—telling the passengers the only way to save themselves is to trigger the explosives on the other ferry; otherwise, he will destroy both at midnight. Batman locates the Joker and the hostages he has taken. Realizing the Joker has disguised the hostages as his own men, Batman is forced to attack both Gordon's SWAT team and the Joker's henchmen in order to save the real hostages. CAST Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, a billionaire dedicated to protecting Gotham City from the criminal underworld by night. Bale said he was confident in his choice to return in the role because of the positive response to his display in Batman Begins.[8] He continued training in the Keysi Fighting Method and performed many of his own stunts,[8][9] but did not gain as much muscle as in the previous film because the new Batsuit allowed him to move with greater agility.[10] Bale described Batman's dilemma as whether "[his crusade is] something that has an end. Can he quit and have an ordinary life? The kind of manic intensity someone has to have to maintain the passion and the anger that they felt as a child, takes an effort after a while, to keep doing that. At some point, you have to exorcise your demons."[11] He added, "Now you have not just a young man in pain attempting to find some kind of an answer, you have somebody who actually has power, who is burdened by that power, and is having to recognize the difference between attaining that power and holding on to it."[12] Bale felt Batman's personality had been strongly established in the first film, so it was unlikely his character would be overshadowed by the villains, stating: "I have no problem with competing with someone else. And that's going to make a better movie."[13] Heath Ledger as The Joker. Before Ledger was confirmed to play the Joker in July 2006, Paul Bettany,[14] Lachy Hulme,[15] Adrien Brody,[16] Steve Carell,[17] and Robin Williams[18] publicly expressed interest in the role. Yet Nolan had wanted to work with Ledger on a number of projects in the past (though he had been unable to do so), and was agreeable to Ledger's anarchic interpretation of the character.[19] When Ledger saw Batman Begins, he had realized a way to make the character work consistent with the film's tone:[20] he described his Joker as a "psychopathic, mass murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy".[21] To prepare for the role, Ledger lived alone in a hotel room for a month, formulating the character's posture, voice, and personality, and kept a diary, in which he recorded the Joker's thoughts and feelings.[13][22] While he initially found it difficult, Ledger eventually generated a voice unlike Jack Nicholson's character in Tim Burton's 1989 Batman film.[21][22] He was also given Batman: The Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, which he "really tried to read and put it down".[20] Ledger also cited A Clockwork Orange and Sid Vicious as "a very early starting point for Christian [Bale] and I. But we kind of flew far away from that pretty quickly and into another world altogether."[23][24] "There’s a bit of everything in him. There’s nothing that consistent," Ledger said, and added, "There are a few more surprises to him."[23] Ledger was allowed to shoot and mostly direct the videos the Joker sends out as warnings. Each take Ledger made was different from the last. Nolan was impressed enough with the first video shoot that he chose to not be present when Ledger shot the video with a kidnapped reporter (Anthony Michael Hall).[25] On January 22, 2008, after he had completed filming The Dark Knight, Ledger died of an accidental prescription drug overdose, leading to intense press attention and memorial tributes. "It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day [during editing]," Nolan recalled. "But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish."[24] All of Ledger's scenes appear as he completed them in the filming; in editing the film, Nolan added no "digital effects" to alter Ledger's actual performance posthumously.[26] Nolan has dedicated the film in part to Ledger's memory.[27][28] Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent / Two-Face, the district attorney who is hailed as Gotham's "White Knight". Dent's battle with the Joker transforms Dent into a murderous, disfigured vigilante called "Two-Face".[29][30] Bruce sees Dent as his heir, demonstrating his realization that Batman will be a lifelong mission, and furthering the tragedy of Dent's downfall.[28] Nolan and David S. Goyer had originally considered using Dent in Batman Begins, but they replaced him with the new character Rachel Dawes when they realized they "couldn’t do him justice".[31] Before Eckhart was cast in February 2007, Liev Schreiber,[32] Josh Lucas,[33] and Ryan Phillippe[34] had expressed interest in the role,[35] while Mark Ruffalo auditioned.[36] Hugh Jackman was also considered for the part of Dent. Nolan chose Eckhart, whom he had considered for the lead role in Memento, citing his "extraordinary" ability as an actor, his embodiment of "that kind of chiselled, American hero quality" projected by Robert Redford, and his subtextual "edge".[13] Eckhart was "interested in good guys gone wrong", and had played corrupt men in films such as The Black Dahlia, Thank You for Smoking, and In the Company of Men. Whereas Two-Face is an evil villain in the comics, Nolan chose to portray him as a twisted vigilante to emphasize his role as Batman's counterpart. Eckhart explained, "[He] is still true to himself. He's a crime fighter, he's not killing good people. He's not a bad guy, not purely."[29][30] For Dent, Eckhart "kept on thinking about the Kennedys", particularly Robert F. Kennedy, who was "idealistic, held a grudge and took on the Mob". He had his hair lightened and styled to make him appear more dashing. Nolan told Eckhart to not make Two-Face "jokey with slurping sounds or ticks".[37] Gary Oldman as James Gordon, a lieutenant in the Gotham City Police Department and one of the few police officers who is not corrupt. He forms a tenuous, unofficial alliance with Batman and Dent. When the Joker assassinates Police Commissioner Loeb, Mayor Garcia gives Gordon the position. Oldman described his character as "incorruptible, virtuous, strong, heroic, but understated".[38] Nolan explained that "The Long Halloween has a great, triangular relationship between Harvey Dent and Gordon and Batman, and that's something we very much drew from."[39] Oldman added that "Gordon has a great deal of admiration for him at the end, but [Batman] is more than ever now the dark knight, the outsider. I'm intrigued now to see: If there is a third one, what he's going to do?"[39] On the possibility of another sequel, he said that "returning to [the role] is not dependent on whether the role was bigger than the one before".[40] Maggie Gyllenhaal as Rachel Dawes, the Gotham assistant district attorney and childhood friend of Bruce Wayne. Before the events of the film, she told Bruce that if he ever decided to stop being Batman, they would be together. She is one of the few people to know the identity of Batman. Gyllenhaal took over the role from Katie Holmes, who played it in Batman Begins. In August 2005, Holmes was reportedly planning to reprise the role,[41] but she eventually turned it down to do Mad Money with Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah.[42] By March 2007, Gyllenhaal was in "final talks" for the part.[43] Gyllenhaal has acknowledged her character is a damsel in distress to an extent, but says Nolan sought ways to empower her character, so "Rachel's really clear about what's important to her and unwilling to compromise her morals, which made a nice change" from the many conflicted characters whom she has previously portrayed.[44] Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth, Bruce Wayne's trusted butler and adviser. His supply of useful advice to Bruce and his likeness to a fatherly figure to him has led to him being labeled as "Batman's batman".[45][46] Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, the recently-promoted chief executive officer of Wayne Enterprises who, now fully aware of his employer's double life as Batman, serves more directly as Bruce's armorer in addition to his corporate managerial duties.[47] Ng Chin Han as Lau, the accountant who handles the money for the mobs. Eric Roberts as Sal Maroni, a gangster who has taken over Carmine Falcone's mob. Bob Hoskins and James Gandolfini auditioned for the role.[48] Colin McFarlane as Gillian B. Loeb, the Police Commissioner of Gotham until his murder at the hands of the Joker.[49] The film's Gotham officials and authorities include Nestor Carbonell as Mayor Anthony Garcia, Keith Szarabajka as Detective Gerard Stephens, Monique Curnen as Anna Ramirez, and Ron Dean as Detective Michael Wuertz. While Stephens is an honest and good cop, the latter two are two corrupt officers who betray Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes to the Joker. The film also cast Anthony Michael Hall as Gotham Cable News reporter Mike Engel, Nydia Rodriguez Terracina as Judge Janet Surrillo, Joshua Harto as Coleman Reese, Melinda McGraw and Nathan Gamble as Gordon's wife and son, and Tom "Tiny" Lister, Jr. as a prison inmate on one of the bomb-rigged ferries. The film's criminals include Michael Jai White as gang leader Gambol, Ritchie Coster as the Chechan, and William Fichtner as the Gotham National bank manager. David Banner originally auditioned for the role of Gambol.[50] Cillian Murphy returns in a cameo as Jonathan Crane / Scarecrow, who is captured early on in the film by Batman.[51] Musician Dwight Yoakam was approached for the roles of either the manager or a corrupt cop, but he chose to focus on his album Dwight Sings Buck.[52] Another cameo was made by United States Senator Patrick Leahy, a Batman fan who was previously an extra in the 1997 Batman & Robin and also was a guest voice actor on Batman: The Animated Series. Leahy cameos as a guest who defies the Joker at a fundraiser thrown by Bruce Wayne.[53] Before the release of Batman Begins, screenwriter David S. Goyer wrote a treatment for two sequels which introduced the Joker and Harvey Dent.[54] His original intent was for the Joker to scar Dent during the Joker's trial in the third film, turning Dent into Two-Face.[55] Goyer, who penned the first draft of the film, cited the DC Comics 13-issue comic book limited series Batman: The Long Halloween as the major influence on his storyline.[31] While initially uncertain of whether or not he would return to direct the sequel, Nolan did want to reinterpret the Joker on screen.[13] On July 31, 2006, Warner Bros. officially announced initiation of production for the sequel to Batman Begins titled The Dark Knight;[56] it is the first live-action Batman film without the word "Batman" in its title, which Bale noted as signaling that "this take on Batman of mine and Chris' is very different from any of the others."[57] After much research, Nolan's brother and co-writer, Jonathan, suggested the Joker's first two appearances, published in the first issue of Batman (1940), as the crucial influences.[19] Jerry Robinson, one of the Joker's co-creators, was consulted on the character's portrayal.[58] Nolan decided to avoid divulging an in-depth origin story for the Joker, and instead portray his rise to power so as to not diminish the threat he poses, explaining to MTV News, "the Joker we meet in The Dark Knight is fully formed...To me, the Joker is an absolute. There are no shades of gray to him—maybe shades of purple. He's unbelievably dark. He bursts in just as he did in the comics."[59] Nolan reiterated to IGN, "We never wanted to do an origin story for the Joker in this film", because "the arc of the story is much more Harvey Dent's; the Joker is presented as an absolute. It's a very thrilling element in the film, and a very important element, but we wanted to deal with the rise of the Joker, not the origin of the Joker."[19] Nolan suggested Batman: The Killing Joke influenced a section of the Joker's dialogue in the film, in which he says that anyone can become like him given the right circumstances.[60] Nolan also cited Heat as "sort of an inspiration" for his aim "to tell a very large, city story or the story of a city": "If you want to take on Gotham, you want to give Gotham a kind of weight and breadth and depth in there. So you wind up dealing with the political figures, the media figures. That's part of the whole fabric of how a city is bound together."[19] According to Nolan, an important theme of the sequel is "escalation", extending the ending of Batman Begins, noting "things having to get worse before they get better".[61] While indicating The Dark Knight would continue the themes of Batman Begins, including justice vs. revenge and Bruce Wayne's issues with his father,[62] Nolan emphasized the sequel would also portray Wayne more as a detective, an aspect of his character not fully developed in Batman Begins.[10] Nolan described the friendly rivalry between Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent as the "backbone" of the film.[59] He also chose to compress the overall storyline, allowing Dent to become Two-Face in The Dark Knight, thus giving the film an emotional arc the unsympathetic Joker could not offer.[60] Nolan acknowledged the title was not only a reference to Batman, but also the fallen "white knight" Harvey Dent. ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/73/Jokerbehingdthaglass.jpg/180px-Jokerbehingdthaglass.jpg) While scouting for shooting locations in October 2006, location manager Robin Higgs visited Liverpool, concentrating mainly along the city's waterfront. Other candidates included Yorkshire, Glasgow, and parts of London.[64] In August 2006, one of the film's producers, Charles Roven, stated that its principal photography would begin in March 2007,[65] but filming was pushed back to April.[66] For its release in IMAX theaters, Nolan shot four major sequences in that format, including the Joker's introduction, and said that he wished that it were possible to shoot the entire film in IMAX: "if you could take an IMAX camera to Mount Everest or outer space, you could use it in a feature movie."[67] For fifteen years Nolan had wanted to shoot in the IMAX format, and he also used it for "quiet scenes which pictorially we thought would be interesting."[59] Warner Bros. chose to film in Chicago for thirteen weeks, because Nolan had had a "truly remarkable experience" filming part of Batman Begins there.[68][69] Instead of using the Chicago Board of Trade Building as the location for the headquarters of Wayne Enterprises, as Batman Begins did,[70] The Dark Knight used the Richard J. Daley Center.[71] While filming in Chicago, the film was given the false title Rory's First Kiss to lower the visibility of production, but the local media eventually uncovered the ruse.[72] Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times commented on the absurdity of the technique, "Is there a Bat-fan in the world that doesn't know Rory's First Kiss is actually The Dark Knight, which has been filming in Chicago for weeks?"[73] Production of The Dark Knight in Chicago generated $45 million in the city's economy and created thousands of jobs.[74] For the film's prologue involving the Joker, the crew shot in Chicago from April 18, 2007 to April 24, 2007.[75][76] They returned to shoot from June 9, 2007 to early September.[74] Shooting locations included Navy Pier, 330 North Wabash, James R. Thompson Center, LaSalle Street, The Berghoff, Millennium Station, Hotel 71, the old Brach's factory, the old Van Buren Street Post Office, and Wacker Drive.[71][77] Pinewood Studios, near London, was the primary studio space used for the production.[78] Marina City was in the background throughout the movie.[71] While planning a stunt with the Batmobile in a special effects facility near Chertsey, England in September 2007, technician Conway Wickliffe was killed when his car crashed.[79] The film is dedicated to both Ledger and Wickliffe.[27] The following month in London at the defunct Battersea Power Station, a rigged 200-foot fireball was filmed, reportedly for an opening sequence, prompting calls from local residents who feared a terrorist attack on the station.[80] A similar incident occurred during the filming in Chicago, when an abandoned Brach's candy factory (which was Gotham Hospital in the film) was demolished.[81] Filming took place in Hong Kong from November 6 to November 11, 2007, at the Central-Mid-Levels escalators, Queen's Road, The Center, and International Finance Centre.[82][83][84] The city's walled city of Kowloon influenced the Narrows in Batman Begins.[85] The shoot hired helicopters and C-130 aircraft.[82] Officials expressed concern over possible noise pollution and traffic.[83] In response, letters sent to the city's residents promised that the sound level would approximate noise decibels made by buses.[82] Environmentalists also criticized the filmmakers' request to tenants of the waterfront skyscrapers to keep their lights on all night in order to enhance the cinematography, describing it as a waste of energy.[83] Cinematographer Wally Pfister found the city officials a "nightmare", and ultimately Nolan had to create Batman's jump from a skyscraper digitally. Costume designer Lindy Hemming described the Joker's look as reflecting his personality — that "he doesn't care about himself at all"; she avoided designing him as a vagrant but still made him appear to be "scruffier, grungier", so that "when you see him move, he's slightly twitchier or edgy."[13][22][22] Nolan noted, "We gave a Francis Bacon spin to [his face]. This corruption, this decay in the texture of the look itself. It's grubby. You can almost imagine what he smells like."[86] In creating the "anarchical" look of the Joker, Hemming drew inspiration from such countercultural pop culture artists as Pete Doherty, Iggy Pop, and Johnny Rotten.[87] Ledger described his "clown" mask, made up of three pieces of stamped silicone, as a "new technology", taking much less time for the make-up artists to apply than more-conventional prosthetics usually requires — the process took them only an hour — and said that he felt he was barely wearing any make-up.[13][88] Designers improved on the design of the Batsuit from Batman Begins, adding wide elastic banding to help bind the costume to Bale, and suggest more sophisticated technology. It was constructed from 200 individual pieces of rubber, fiberglass, metallic mesh, and nylon. The new cowl was modeled after a motorcycle helmet and separated from the neck piece, allowing Bale to turn his head left and right and nod up and down.[89] The cowl is equipped to show white lenses over the eyes when the character turns on his sonar detection, which gives Batman the white eyed look from the comics and animation.[90] The gauntlets have retractable razors which can be fired.[89] Though the new costume is eight pounds heavier, Bale found it more comfortable and less hot to wear.[10] The original suit was also worn during part of the film, where Batman employs hydraulic assistance on the gauntlets to bend a gun barrel and cut through steel. The depiction of Gotham City is less gritty than in Batman Begins. "I've tried to unclutter the Gotham we created on the last film," said Crowley. "Gotham is in chaos. We keep blowing up stuff, so we can keep our images clean." ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/9/90/HeathJoker.png/180px-HeathJoker.png) The film introduces the Batpod, which is a recreation of the Batcycle. Production designer Nathan Crowley, who designed the Tumbler for Batman Begins, designed six models (built by special effects supervisor Chris Corbould) for use in the film's production, because of necessary crash scenes and possible accidents.[91] Crowley built a prototype in Nolan's garage, before six months of safety tests were conducted.[10] The Batpod is steered by shoulder instead of hand, and the rider's arms are protected by sleeve-like shields. The bike has 508-millimeter (20-inch) front and rear tires, and is made to appear as if it is armed with grappling hooks, cannons, and machine guns. The engines are located in the hubs of the wheels, which are set 3 1/2 feet (1067 mm) apart on either side of the tank. The rider lies belly down on the tank, which can move up and down in order to dodge any incoming gunfire that Batman may encounter. Stuntman Jean-Pierre Goy doubled for Christian Bale during the riding sequences in The Dark Knight ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Batpod.jpg/180px-Batpod.jpg) Nolan designed Two-Face's appearance in the film as one of the least disturbing, explaining, "When we looked at less extreme versions of it, they were too real and more horrifying. When you look at a film like Pirates of the Caribbean – something like that, there's something about a very fanciful, very detailed visual effect, that I think is more powerful and less repulsive."[92] Framestore created 120 computer-generated shots of Two-Face's scarred visage. Nolan felt using make-up would look unrealistic, as it adds to the face, unlike real burn victims. Framestore acknowledged they rearranged the positions of bones, muscles and joints to make the character look more dramatic. For each shot, three 720-pixel HD cameras were set up at different angles on set to fully capture Aaron Eckhart's performance. Eckhart wore markers on his face and a prosthetic skullcap, which was acted as a lighting reference. A few shots of the skullcap were kept in the film. Framestore also integrated shots of Bale and Eckhart into that of the exploding building where Dent is burned. It was difficult simulating fire on Eckhart because only having half of something being burned is inherently unrealistic.[93] ![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/da/Two-face_before_and_after.jpg/140px-Two-face_before_and_after.jpg) Warner Bros. held the world premiere for The Dark Knight in New York City on July 14, 2008, screening in an IMAX theater with the film's composers James Newton Howard and Hans Zimmer playing a part of the film score live.[114] Leading up to The Dark Knight's commercial release, the film had drawn "overwhelmingly positive early reviews and buzz on Heath Ledger's turn as the Joker". The Dark Knight was commercially released on July 16, 2008 in Australia, grossing almost $2.3 million in its first day.[115] In the United States and Canada, The Dark Knight was distributed to 4,366 theaters, breaking the previous record for the highest number of theaters held by Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End in 2007. The number of theaters also included 94 IMAX theaters, with the film estimated to be played on 9,200 screens in the United States and Canada.[115] Online, ticketing services sold enormous numbers of tickets for approximately 3,000 midnight showtimes as well as unusually early showtimes for the film's opening day. All IMAX theaters showing The Dark Knight were sold out for the opening weekend.[116] The Dark Knight set a new midnight record on the opening day of July 18, 2008 with $18.5 million, beating the $16.9 million record set by Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith in 2005.[117] $640,000 of the record gross came from IMAX screenings.[118] The Dark Knight ultimately grossed $67,165,092 on its opening day,[119] beating the previous record of $59.8 million held by Spider-Man 3 in 2007.[120] For its opening weekend in the United States and Canada, The Dark Knight accumulated a total of $158,411,483 from 9,200 screens at a record 4,366 theaters, for an average of $36,283 per theater, or $17,219 per screen,[121] beating out the original weekend estimate by more than $3 million, and topping the previous record of $151,116,516 held by Spider-Man 3, while playing in 114 more theaters but on 800 fewer screens. The following Monday, it grossed another $24,493,313, and the following Tuesday it grossed $20,868,722. The Dark Knight also set a new record for opening weekend gross in IMAX theaters, accumulating $6.2 million to beat Spider-Man 3's previous record of $4.7 million.[122] Besides the United States and Canada, The Dark Knight premiered in 20 other territories on 4,520 screens, grossing $41.3 million in its first weekend.[123] The film came in second to Hancock, which was in its third weekend, screening in 71 territories. The Dark Knight's biggest territory for the weekend was Australia, grossing $13.7 million over the weekend, the third largest Warner Bros. opening and the largest superhero film opening to date. The film also grossed $7 million from 1,433 screens in Mexico, $4.45 million from 548 screens in Brazil,[124][125] and $2.12 million from 37 screens in Hong Kong.[126] Citing cultural sensitivities to some elements in the film, and a reluctance to adhere to pre-release conditions, Warner Bros. declined to release the film in mainland China.[127] The Dark Knight sold an estimated 22.37 million tickets with today's average admission of $7.08, meaning the film sold more tickets than Spider-Man 3, which sold 21.96 million with the average price of $6.88 in 2007.[128][129] It also broke the record for the biggest opening weekend ever.[130] As of December 23, 2008, The Dark Knight has grossed $530,833,780 in the North American box office, breaking the previous record of the fastest film to hit $500 million[131] and $465,993,073 in other countries.[132][133] As of March 5, 2009, its total worldwide gross stands at $1,001,758,644, and is the fourth highest grossing film of all time. The Dark Knight is currently the highest grossing movie of 2008 in North American box office and worldwide. Unadjusted for inflation, it is now the second highest grossing film in North America of all time with a total of $533,090,262, behind only Titanic with $600,788,188. It was the second film in history to pass the $500 million barrier, also in the fastest time, in 43 days (compared to Titanic's 98 days). The Dark Knight's theatrical run was very different from that of Titanic. While The Dark Knight broke records in its opening weekend, Titanic started out slowly (making $28.6 million in its opening weekend) and then increased ticket sales in the following weekends.[134] The Dark Knight instead slowed down after the first few weekends; 50 other movies had better tenth weekends and 91 had better eleventh weekends.[135] In its fifteenth weekend, The Dark Knight was at #26 at the box office.[136] Warner Bros. rereleased the film in traditional theaters and IMAX theaters in the United States on January 23, 2009, at the height of the voting for the Academy Awards, in order to further the chances of the film winning Oscars, as well as attempt to cross $1 billion in worldwide gross,[137][138] which it accomplished in February 2009.[139] The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in North America on December 9, 2008. Releases include a one-disc edition DVD; a two-disc Special Edition DVD; a two-disc edition Blu-ray; and a Special Edition Blu-ray package featuring a statuette of the Bat-pod.[140] The Blu-ray version presents the film in a variable aspect ratio, with the IMAX sequences framed in 1.78:1, while scenes filmed in 35 mm are framed in 2.40:1.[141] The DVD versions feature the entire film framed in a uniform 2.40:1 aspect ratio. Disc 2 of the two-disc Special Edition DVD features the IMAX sequences in the original 1.44:1 aspect ratio. In addition to the standard DVD releases, some stores released their own exclusive editions of the film. In the United Kingdom, the film had combined sales of 513,000 units on its first day of release, of which 107,730 (21%) were Blu-ray discs, the highest number of first-day Blu-ray discs sold.[142] In the United States, The Dark Knight set a sales record for most DVDs sold in one day, selling 3 million copies on its first day of release - 600,000 of which were Blu-ray discs.[143] The DVD and Blu-ray Disc editions were released in Australia on December 10, 2008. Releases were in the form of a one-disc edition on DVD; a two-disc edition on DVD; a two-disc edition including a Batmask on DVD; a two-disc Blu-ray edition; and a four-disc Batman Begins/The Dark Knight pack on DVD and Blu-ray disc. The DVD release is currently the top selling film in the Australian DVD Charts[144] and is expected to break the Australian sales record set by Finding Nemo Based on 263 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating from critics of 94%, with an average score of 8.5/10.[146] Among Rotten Tomatoes' Cream of the Crop, which consists of popular and notable critics from the top newspapers, websites, television, and radio programs,[147] the film holds an overall approval rating of 90%.[148] By comparison, Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 82, based on 39 reviews.[4] CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was "A" on an A+ to F scale, and that audiences skewed slightly male and older.[149] For seven years, IMDb's Top 250 Movies of All-Time (a list of the top movies based on user ratings on a scale of 1 to 10) had The Godfather ranked number one and The Shawshank Redemption ranked number two. On July 19, 2008, however, The Dark Knight dethroned The Godfather from that number one position.[150] The last time The Godfather hadn't been ranked number one was in 2001 when it was dethroned briefly by The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Currently, The Dark Knight is ranked seventh.[151] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times describes The Dark Knight as a "haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy." He praises the performances, direction, and writing, and says the film "redefine the possibilities of the comic-book movie".[152] He named it one of his twenty favorite films of 2008.[153] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writes that the film is deeper than its predecessor, with a "deft" script that refuses to scrutinize the Joker with popular psychology, instead pulling the viewer in with an examination of Bruce Wayne's psyche,[154] Travers has praise for all the cast, saying each brings his or her "'A' game" to the film. He says Bale is "electrifying", evoking Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II, and that Eckhart's portrayal of Harvey Dent is "scarily moving".[154] Ebert states that the "key performance" is by Heath Ledger, and pondered whether he would become the first posthumous Academy Award winner since Peter Finch in 1976 (Ledger ultimately did win the Oscar).[152] Travers says the actor moves the Joker away from Jack Nicholson's interpretation into darker territory, and expresses his support for any potential campaign to have Ledger nominated for an Academy Award,[154] a call echoed by filmmaker Kevin Smith.[155]
Travers says that the filmmakers move the film away from comic book cinema and closer to being a genuine work of art, citing Nolan's direction and the "gritty reality" of Wally Pfister's cinematography as helping to create a universe that has something "raw and elemental" at work within it. In particular, he cites Nolan's action choreography in the IMAX-tailored heist sequence as rivaling that of Heat (1995).[154] Emanuel Levy wrote Ledger "throws himself completely" into the role,[156] and that the film represents Nolan's "most accomplished and mature" work, and the most technically impressive and resonant of all the Batman films. Levy calls the action sequences some of the most impressive seen in an American film for years, and talks of the Hong Kong-set portion of the film as being particularly visually impressive.[156] Levy and Peter Travers conclude that the film is "haunting and visionary",[154][156] while Levy goes on to say that The Dark Knight is "nothing short of brilliant".[156]
David Denby of The New Yorker holds that the story is not coherent enough to properly flesh out the disparities. He says the film's mood is one of "constant climax", and that it feels rushed and far too long. Denby criticizes scenes which he argues are meaningless or are cut short just as they become interesting.[157] Denby remarks that the central conflict is workable, but that "only half the team can act it", saying that Bale's "placid" Bruce Wayne and "dogged but uninteresting" Batman is constantly upstaged by Ledger's "sinister and frightening" performance, which he says is the film's one element of success. Denby concludes that Ledger is "mesmerising" in every scene.[157] While Denby has praise for Pfister's cinematography, he does not rate the film as a remarkable piece of craftmanship. He puts forward that while a lot happens in the film, it is often difficult to follow due to the close, dark photography and editing. Denby says the film is too grim and is seemingly "jammed together".[157] He surmises that the "heavy-handed" score and "thunderous" violence only serve to coarsen the property from Tim Burton's vision of the franchise into a "hyperviolent summer action spectacle", and that the film embraces the themes of terror that it purports to scrutinize.[157]
The Dark Knight was ranked the 15th greatest film in history on Empire's 2008 list of the "500 Greatest Movies of All Time", based upon the weighted votes of 10,000 readers, 150 film directors, and 50 key film critics.[158] Heath Ledger's interpretation of the Joker was also ranked number three on Empire's 2008 list of the "100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time".[159]
The film appeared on many critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2008.[160]
1st - Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News[160] 1st - Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter[160] 1st - James Berardinelli, ReelViews[160] 1st - Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News[160] 1st - Mike Russell, The Oregonian[160] 1st - Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle[160] 1st - Mark Camilleri Mark's Movie Marks[160] 1st - Premiere[160] 1st - Empire[160] 2nd - Kirk Honeycutt, The Hollywood Reporter[160] 2nd - Nathan Rabin, The A.V. Club[160] 2nd - Richard Roeper, The Chicago Sun-Times[161] 2nd - Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly[160] 3rd - Lawrence Toppman, The Charlotte Observer[160] 3rd - Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly[160] 3rd - Marc Mohan, The Oregonian[160] 3rd - Michael Rechtshaffen, The Hollywood Reporter[160] 3rd - Peter Rainer, The Christian Science Monitor[160] 3rd - Peter Travers, Rolling Stone[160] 3rd - Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter[160] 4th - Kyle Smith, New York Post[160] 5th - Keith Phipps, The A.V. Club[160] 5th - Noel Murray, The A.V. Club[160] 5th - Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald (tied with Hellboy II)[160] 5th - Scott Foundas, LA Weekly[160] 5th - Wesley Morris, The Boston Globe[160] 6th - Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette[160] 6th - Peter Vonder Haar, Film Threat[160] 7th - Manohla Dargis, The New York Times[160] 7th - Marc Doyle, Metacritic.com[160] 7th - Sean Axmaker, Seattle Post-Intelligencer[160] 9th - Robert Mondello, NPR[160] 9th - Scott Tobias, The A.V. Club[160] 10th - Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune[160]
Mystery writer Andrew Klavan, writing in The Wall Street Journal, compared the extreme measures that Batman takes to fight crime with those U.S. President George W. Bush used in the War on Terror. Klavan claims that, "at some level" The Dark Knight is "a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war." Klavan supports this reading of the film by comparing Batman – like Bush, Klavan argues – "sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past."[162] Klavan's article has received criticism on the Internet and in mainstream media outlets, such as in The New Republic's "The Plank."[163] Reviewing the film in The Sunday Times, Cosmo Landesman reached the opposite conclusion to Klavan, arguing that The Dark Knight "offers up a lot of moralistic waffle about how we must hug a terrorist – okay, I exaggerate. At its heart, however, is a long and tedious discussion about how individuals and society must never abandon the rule of law in struggling against the forces of lawlessness. In fighting monsters, we must be careful not to become monsters – that sort of thing. The film champions the anti-war coalition’s claim that, in having a war on terror, you create the conditions for more terror. We are shown that innocent people died because of Batman – and he falls for it".[164] Benjamin Kerstein, writing in Azure, says that both Klavan and Landesman "have a point," because "The Dark Knight is a perfect mirror of the society which is watching it: a society so divided on the issues of terror and how to fight it that, for the first time in decades, an American mainstream no longer exists."[165]
According to David S. Goyer, the primary theme of The Dark Knight is escalation.[166] Gotham City is weak and the citizens blame Batman for the city's violence and corruption as well as the Joker's threats, and it pushes his limits, making him feel that taking the laws into his own hands are further downgrading the city. Roger Ebert noted, "Throughout the film, [the Joker] devises ingenious situations that force Batman, Commissioner Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent to make impossible ethical decisions. By the end, the whole moral foundation of the Batman legend is threatened."[152]
Other critics have mentioned the theme of the triumph of evil over good. Harvey Dent is seen as Gotham's "White Knight" in the beginning of the film but ends up becoming seduced to evil.[63] The Joker, on the other hand, is seen as the representation of anarchy and chaos. He has no motive, no orders, and no desires but to cause havoc and "watch the world burn". The terrible logic of human error is another theme as well. The ferry scene displays how humans can easily be enticed by iniquity
The Dark Knight garnered over 150 nominations from various critics and organization awards at year's end, winning for various aspects of the film. Most notable, however, was Heath Ledger's almost complete sweep of over twenty awards for acting, including the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture, and the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The Dark Knight also received nominations from the Writers Guild of America (for Best Adapted Screenplay), the Producers Guild of America, and the Directors Guild of America, as well as a slew of other guild award nominations and wins. It was nominated for Best Film at the Critics Choice Awards and was named one of the top ten films of 2008 by the American Film Institute.
The Dark Knight was nominated for eight Academy Awards for the 81st Ceremony[168], breaking the previous record of seven held by Dick Tracy[169] for the most nominations received by a film based on a comic book, comic strip, or graphic novel. The Dark Knight won two awards: Best Supporting Actor for Heath Ledger and Best Sound Editing. It was additionally nominated for six others, these being Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup, and Best Film Editing. Christopher Nolan was notably snubbed from a nomination in any of the categories he was up for (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay), and controversy ensued regarding the lack of a Best Picture nomination for either The Dark Knight or WALL-E, two films noted for being both critical and commercial successes. Heath Ledger was the first posthumous winner of the Best Supporting Actor award, and only the second posthumous acting winner ever (Peter Finch posthumously won the Best Actor award for his performance in the 1976 film Network). In addition, Ledger's win marked the first win in any of the major Oscar categories (producing, directing, acting, or writing) for a superhero-based film. Notably, Richard King's win in the Sound Editing category blocked a complete awards sweep of the evening by the eventual Best Picture winner, Slumdog Millionaire.
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Post by Mr. Emoticon Man on Jul 19, 2009 13:11:47 GMT -5
I really should have put Spider-Man 2 higher on my list.
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Post by The Raven on Jul 19, 2009 16:21:54 GMT -5
That poster is meh, but the movie is good! Quiet you! Anyways, not a bad countdown. Kinda wish Dark Knight hadn't won though, it seems like a tainted victory.
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Post by bob on Jul 19, 2009 20:29:12 GMT -5
That poster is meh, but the movie is good! Quiet you! Anyways, not a bad countdown. Kinda wish Dark Knight hadn't won though, it seems like a tainted victory. how you figure?
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Post by Shovelman on Jul 19, 2009 21:23:21 GMT -5
Quiet you! Anyways, not a bad countdown. Kinda wish Dark Knight hadn't won though, it seems like a tainted victory. how you figure? The Raven has this horrible idea that superhero movies suck....what a....something that's like a weirdo, but not a weirdo.
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Post by Mr. Emoticon Man on Jul 19, 2009 21:36:29 GMT -5
I guess I'm the anti-Raven then, 'cause...
1. Transformers 2. Iron Man 3. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen 4. Spider-Man 5. Spider-Man 3 6. Spider-Man 2 7. Dragonball Evolution 8. The Incredible Hulk 9. X-Men 1 10. X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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Post by Some kind of a DSR-type person on Jul 20, 2009 0:37:03 GMT -5
The Raven has this horrible idea that superhero movies suck....what a....something that's like a weirdo, but not a weirdo. Is that the reason? *sigh of relief* For a minute there, I thought we were gonna have to go through that whole "you wouldn't like the movie so much if Heath Ledger hadn't died" or something like that.
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Post by bob on Jul 20, 2009 1:00:46 GMT -5
The Raven has this horrible idea that superhero movies suck....what a....something that's like a weirdo, but not a weirdo. Is that the reason? *sigh of relief* For a minute there, I thought we were gonna have to go through that whole "you wouldn't like the movie so much if Heath Ledger hadn't died" or something like that. me too..... don't blame me I voted Godfather number 1....Dark Knight at 3
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