Aaron Eckhart as district attorney Harvey Dent, transformed by a Jokerly twist of fate into the schizoid Two-Face.
As mentioned earlier, WB opted to present the film with alternating aspect ratios in order to re- tain the immersive IMAX footage. Blacks are pro- foundly deep, color saturation is rich, and the image is marvelously detailed, with an unparal- leled three-dimensional depth. It is, quite simply, one of the top four or five Blu-rays we own. The Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround soundtrack is also demonstration quality, with realistic, subtle effects and an immersive ambience, while also capable of ramping up during the thunderous action se- quences. Most of the various supplements are contained on the second disc, but as we noted earlier, Disc 1 contains “Gotham Uncovered,” con- sisting of behind-the-scenes footage of the mak- ing of the film, most importantly the discussion of the IMAX segments. This material, referred to as “Movie with Focus Points,” is Warner’s equivalent of Universal’s “U-Control,” but we found that much of the information contained in these segments, which can be accessed throughout the screening of the film, is reiterated in material found on the second disc.
Disc 2 consists of two documentaries presented in HD totalling 92m: “Batman Tech: The Incred- ible Gadgets and Tools” (46m), and “Batman Un- masked: The Psychology of The Dark Knight” (46m). The title of the first is self-explanatory and,
Lt. Gordon looks the other way, allowing the Batman to interrogate the Joker (Heath Ledger).
as indicated, contains a rehash of some of the material included in “Gotham Uncovered” on the first disc. Primary focus is given to the militarized vehicles, the Batmobile and the Batpod, with ad- ditional discussion of the various gadgets used in the film. “Batman Unmasked” is more interesting, consisting largely of comics experts and psycholo- gists exploring the dualistic nature of the Batman/ Bruce Wayne character. The most interesting dis- cussion concerns the real identity of the charac- ter, inverting the common sense assumption that Bruce Wayne is the real identity of Batman, when in fact Bruce Wayne is the mask that hides the true individual, Batman. “Gotham Tonight: 6 Epi- sodes of Gotham Cable’s Premier News Program” (46m) consists of six mock newscasts which we passed on after the first few minutes. More inter- esting is “The Galleries,” consisting of concept and poster art, production stills (with a slide show op- tion), and an utterly fascinating array of the vari- ous designs of Joker cards. Also included are 9m of theatrical trailers and TV spots, all in high defi- nition and with DD-5.1 soundtracks. Warner’s Blu- ray package also includes a third disc, a SD digital copy compatible with several portable devices. Feature film audio options include a DD-5.1 soundtrack in French and Spanish, while subtitles are available English for the deaf and hard-of-hear- ing, as well as French and Spanish. We chose not to explore the “BD-Live” material, finding the supplements included on the second disc quite sufficient.
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