Oh man, I hope he calls him "Bats" at some point!

Oh yes. That's right. This past Thursday, am.fm.pm was lucky enough to attend the Warner Bros. sponsored premiere of a six minute clip of The Dark Knight at the Lincoln Center IMAX theatre. (Passes were Gotham City school bus driver licenses.)

Surprisingly unpacked, here's the breakdown- the most paraphrased review ever:

We open on a lush tracking shot through the Gotham skyline. Landing on a rooftop, we find two men in baroque clown masks preparing a gatling gun. On the street, we find another two clowns manipulating a breaker box on the side of a building. Two clowns pull up outside the First Gotham Bank in an SUV. These clowns have a great back and forth, reminiscent of that "So why do they call him Batman?" alley exchange at the beginning of Burton's 1989 vision.

"I know why they call this guy the Joker, because he wears makeup."

"Makeup?" another asks.

"Yeah. It's like war paint."

The camera makes a steep pitch down the building's side, the first of many moments that the IMAX format hits on a visceral level- the audience feels like they're going to fall into the fucking screen. And all hell breaks loose. The clowns make a brutal charge on the bank's foyer. As two clowns go to work on the vault, we learn that the door is electrified, an extra security measure explained in a nice touch to Begins' Carmine Falcone storyline: this is a mob bank. A bank employee (William Fichtner) in his oak cubicle hears the commotion. With steely determination, he produces a shotgun from underneath his desk and stands.

Back on the rooftop, it is revealed that every robber has been given orders to kill their partner upon completion of their given tasks in the heist. One of our rooftop clowns is killed. Inside, the safe is cracked. The clown responsible is promptly killed. Within, duffel bags begin getting sloppily stuffed with bundles of cash by two clowns. Cutting away, we hear a gun blast.

As the final two clowns tear out across the lobby, the Fichtner character barrels through the bank, intensely firing his shotgun. Our two remaining clowns have hidden behind a slip kiosk. "Do you have any idea what you're doing!?" he shouts, "Do you have any idea whose money this is?" Raising up, the clown on the right promptly shoots out the teller at the knees.

The two clowns emerge from behind their barricade, and after assuring themselves that Fichtner has been incapacitated, move toward their stacked spoils. Raising his gun to the other's back, the clown on the left barks, "I'll bet the Joker told you to kill when this was all over"

"No", the clown on the right corrects, "I'm supposed to kill the bus driver."

"What busdriv-" the left clown is promptly silenced before he can finish his sentence, crushed under wheel by the yellow school bus that smashes through the bank's front doors. Unphased, the final clown continues his work. Heaving blue duffel bag after blue duffel bag full of money in through the bus's emergency rear exit, we notice this final clown has green hair. As he works, the wounded, flabbergasted teller begins to speak.

"The criminals in this town used to have a code! They used to have ethics! The criminals in this town used to believe in something! What the hell do you believe in!? What do you believe in!?"

The last clown is threading a purple string around the bus's trailer hitch. Giving it some slack, he runs the string all the way over to the teller in the middle of the lobby. "I believe", he begins, peeling off his mask, "that which doesn't kill you, makes you... stranger." The Joker: hollow, sunken eyes peer out from a ghostly chapped face. His lips are hideously blistered, the scarring extending up into a malformed grin. His hair is stringy and toxic looking. Flashing teeth through his mangled smile, Joker stuffs a grenade into the teller's mouth, it's pin attached to the long purple thread he has tied to the bus's tail. He remasks, turns his back, and leaps onto the bus.

Noisily pulling the vehicle out, the school bus nestles right in the middle of a caravan of passing yellow school buses on the busy street in front of the bank. They crawl away as police swarm the scene. Back inside, Fichtner's vigilante teller sweats, the grenade in his mouth ticking away.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Click.

A sulfur-yellow gas begins to seep from the device.

Montage of action sequences; Batman on the Batpod, the Batmobile whipping around, Gary Oldman's Commissioner Gordon destroying the Bat Signal with an axe. Title card, blackout.

Overall, what we are offered is a Joker the likes of which have not leaped forth from the comic's page yet, the The Killing Joke style lunatic Joker. Silly? Maybe. But the Joker is a fucking madman. He is demented, sadistic, and dangerous. His "jokes" are funny to him and him alone, sheer horror to the victims of his pranks. This is a perverse, self centered beast with no conscience.

In the lobby after the screening, copies of The Gotham Times were being distributed, a full size, four page newspaper. I'll get some proper scans with links to the new teaser websites it provides up before year's end. With this project, Heath Ledger is primed to vault the esteemed ranks of past celluloid Jokers: Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, and Batman: The Animated Series' brilliant turn brought to life by Mark Hamill. Never really got into Batman Beyond, though I'll concede that their Return of the Joker DTV flick was alright. As for The CW's current Saturday morning incarnation The Batman:

Nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh Bat songs!

The Ventures "Batman Theme"

Prince "Batdance"

Killing Joke "Love Like Blood"

Fatboy Slim Feat. Bootsie Collins "The Joker"