The NYTimes have posted a very inter­est­ing Dark Knight report which closely fol­lows Chris Nolan’s work as direc­tor. It is a must read, even if the minor plot spoil­ers in the first para­graph would put you off. I’ve included some choice excerpts for you below, along with the new images that fea­ture in the article.

In so many ways this isn’t what you’d expect of a $180 mil­lion Hol­ly­wood comic-book movie sequel with a zil­lion mov­ing parts, a cast of thou­sands and sets from here to Hong Kong. Any­one else would shoot indoors, use dig­i­tal effects or wait for clear skies; Mr. Nolan rolls with the weather’s punches, believ­ing that the messi­ness of real­ity can’t be faked. Another film­maker would leave a shot like this in the hands of a second-unit direc­tor, but Mr. Nolan doesn’t use one; if it’s on the screen, he directed it, and his long­time cin­e­matog­ra­pher, Wally Pfis­ter, worked the cam­era. Stars on any other movie would have fled to their trail­ers to wait in com­fort until needed again. Here, Gary Old­man is watch­ing and shiv­er­ing along with every­body else, crack­ing jokes to keep warm.

[…]

Now the ques­tion is whether Mr. Nolan’s vision of Bat­man can not only main­tain its hold on the imag­i­na­tions of comic fans and crit­ics, but expand its reach to a wider sum­mer moviego­ing audi­ence, even as the death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” has added unan­tic­i­pated mor­bid­ity to the film’s delib­er­ate darkness.

[…]

“As we looked through the comics, there was this fas­ci­nat­ing idea that Batman’s pres­ence in Gotham actu­ally attracts crim­i­nals to Gotham, attracts lunacy,” he said. “When you’re deal­ing with ques­tion­able notions like peo­ple tak­ing the law into their own hands, you have to really ask, where does that lead? That’s what makes the char­ac­ter so dark, because he expresses a venge­ful desire.”

[…]

Will Mr. Ledger’s death cast a pall over “The Dark Knight,” whose tragic plot turns already make it much darker than “Bat­man Begins”? “We’ll see,” said Mr. Robi­nov, of Warner Broth­ers. Mr. Nolan, for his part, said he felt a “mas­sive sense of respon­si­bil­ity” to do right by Mr. Ledger’s “ter­ri­fy­ing, amaz­ing” performance.

Ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com, a long time offi­cial Dark Knight web­site — orig­i­nally host­ing a mere cam­paign poster has now gone online — pre­sent­ing us with a fully func­tional “vote Dent” viral web­site, com­plete with Dent mobile.

Fans shall now be enlisted to help out with Har­vey Dent’s polit­i­cal cam­paign to elect him as Gotham City’s Dis­trict Attor­ney. See what you need to do, then sub­mit your details to the web­site, with images and video (dead­line March 26th).

Rec­om­mended things to do: 

Get your friends together and spell out Har­vey Dent in human let­ters
Get a video of your school’s cheer­lead­ing team yelling out chants for Har­vey Dent
Try to cover every square inch of someone’s cubi­cle area with Har­vey Dent posters
Write and per­form a “Take Back Gotham” song
Make up a “Dent Dance” rou­tine
See if you can get up a Har­vey Dent sign in every sin­gle win­dow of your dorm build­ing
Turn your own car into a “Dent­mo­bile”
Arrange a Dent parade down Main Street
Make a human pyra­mid with other Har­vey Dent supporters

Down­load a ZIP of all the high res­o­lu­tion Har­vey Dent pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial (7 PDFs, 3.5mb)

The Dent-mobile shall also be touring:

The future of Gotham City is in our hands now, peo­ple! Let’s get out there and make some noise!

Wiz­ard Uni­verse have had a sit down chat with Aaron Eck­hart (Har­vey Dent). This inter­view reveals a lot of juicy bits about Two-Face and Har­vey Dent’s role in The Dark Knight — direct from the Horse’s mouth. As a warn­ing, this inter­view does con­tain spoilers!

WIZARD: Direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan said he saw Two-Face and Har­vey Dent as the back­bone of “Dark Knight.” Did you draw inspi­ra­tion from the comics or the older movies?
ECKHART: Chris [Nolan] comes at this with such a dif­fer­ent take on Bat­man, so I didn’t feel that I had to be true to any other actor play­ing this role. Of course, I read the comic books. His rela­tion­ships with Lt. Gor­don and with Bat­man, with Gotham City, those really helped me the most.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent ways that you could go with the Two-Face per­for­mance, […]Where will you take it when the film opens July 18?
I believe that it’s stronger if you have a heart. If you can relate to a char­ac­ter who’s a vil­lain, or not, it’s always bet­ter. If I can help you to relate to my char­ac­ter, then I think that I’m more likely to keep your attention.

In terms of the heart of the char­ac­ter, Har­vey has gone through a large arc. Will we be see­ing Harvey’s full arc here or will it play out in, say, another movie?
I think with the other [films], you’re look­ing at the cli­max of a character’s arc. Where does he go after that? I think that right now we’re show­ing who Har­vey was before he was scarred, and it’s an inter­est­ing role that he plays. We’re look­ing at Gotham City try­ing to get out of its dark­ness. That’s why Har­vey is important.

Does Har­vey get scarred in this movie or will we have to wait until the next one to see that?
Har­vey Dent turns into Har­vey Two-Face in this movie. So that answers your ques­tion bet­ter. [Laughs]

Have you filmed a lot of scenes in makeup?
I have done scenes as Har­vey Two-Face. It’s inter­est­ing. I won’t tell you exactly what we’re going for, but I think that I can say that it will use all of today’s tech­nol­ogy to cre­ate this char­ac­ter. He’s going to be inter­est­ing, and I think that’s what makes this char­ac­ter impor­tant in the movie—you get to see him as he was before, as in the comic books. Har­vey is a very good guy in the comic books. He’s judi­cious. He cares. He’s pas­sion­ate about what he loves and then he turns into this char­ac­ter. So you will see that in this film.

[…]

There are cir­cum­stances that cre­ate the darker side of his per­son­al­ity…
It’s inter­est­ing to show that there are rea­sons for his behav­ior. It depends on which [of Harvey’s per­son­al­i­ties] you think is more attrac­tive and excit­ing. Obvi­ously a guy who goes out and mur­ders peo­ple, that’s vig­i­lante jus­tice. It’s prob­a­bly more cin­e­mat­i­cally excit­ing, but I think that know­ing why he got there and that he was a cool dude before is impor­tant, as well.

Are you say­ing you see Two-Face as more of a vig­i­lante in this as opposed to his clas­sic por­trayal as a bank-robbing, blow­ing sh– up kind of thug?
Well, I mean, in terms of vil­lains and movies, in anyone’s moti­va­tion in a movie you’re always try­ing to improve your lot in life and to exact your own code in life and I think that Har­vey Two-Face has a code, and his code is killing peo­ple for rea­sons that…will remain secret.

Game Trail­ers has the “world exclu­sive” on the Bat­man Lego video game trailer. Not based on The Dark Knight fran­chise, this still looks like it will be great fun to play:

In other news, here’s a video pre­view of the upcom­ing Six Flags Dark Knight roller-coaster.

Kung Fu Rodeo has posted some excel­lent pre­views of The Gotham Knight animé, thanks to Juno for the heads up.

The offi­cial Har­vey Dent web­site, “ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com” has been updated to include a new mes­sage and some text entry boxes for your email and phone number,

“We have the power to change Gotham City, soon you’ll find out how”

On doing so you get a quick con­fir­ma­tion email reading:

Cit­i­zens of Gotham! The future of our city rests in your hands! Alone, we are help­less against the thugs and killers men­ac­ing our city. Together, we have the power to take back Gotham. In just a few days, you’ll find out how. Please click … to ver­ify your e-mail address. Keep an eye on http://​www​.ibelievein​har​vey​dent​.com and get ready to join a move­ment that will trans­form our city!

It looks like the sec­ond major viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign shall be focus­ing around Har­vey Dent, rather than the Joker, which falls in line with the rumors we have heard con­cern­ing the third Dark Knight trailer.

Via Hol­ly­wood Chicago and with thanks to Austin

The third Dark Knight trailer is set to land in the next few weeks — how, when and where is not quite cer­tain yet. It is widely rumored to revolve around Bat­man and Har­vey Dent, with much less of a focus on The Joker.

Dark Hori­zons have recently heard that a slot before the fea­ture film “10,000 BC” is the most likely can­di­date for the first trailer show­ing — and that pre­mières on March 7th. We’ll keep our fin­gers crossed.

As an aside, the arti­cle also linked to the MTV blog which has a video with one of the new Bat­man toys, Bruce Wayne’s Lam­borgh­ini Murcielago.

Com­ing­Soon have posted a sec­ond gallery of images from the Mat­tel toy show, this time reveal­ing The Joker action fig­ure and free­ing oth­ers from their restric­tive child-proof pack­ag­ing. Looks like their are two ver­sions of the Joker toy — a Heath Ledger looka­like and a stylised kids rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Also included are some close-ups of the Bat­mo­bile, Bruce Wayne’s Mur­cielago and Bat­pod auto-mobile toys.

Thanks to Ghell again for the very fast heads up!