New The Dark Knight trailer

Posted by Chris

May 5, 2008

As promised over the weekend a new trailer for The Dark Knight has been released by Warner Bros. The trailer was released theatrically in front of Iron Man and online as the payoff to the latest round of Why So Serious hunting.

The new spot certainly offers an expanded look at the world of Gotham City and its inhabitants. We see Bruce Wayne/Batman, obviously, though this new installment features a character that’s a little less introspective than was shown in the first trailer. Instead of crying and asking “What would you have me do” the new trailer starts off with Batman intoning he “knows now what he must do” in the fight against the city’s latest menace.

I wonder how much of that was planned for a while and how much of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that the trailers for both Iron Man and Hulk feature speeches from the heroes about being sure the path they’ve chosen is the right one. I’m just saying that self-doubt has been replaced by righteous justification and that between the changes a couple other much more assured – even if reluctantly – heroes have been advertised.

Moving on, we do get plenty of Joker footage, with the character obviously not being pulled from the campaign and obviously a cause of much damage and mayhem in the movie. While there are showier moments, my personal favorite line-reading is when the late Heath Ledger pulls out the playing card and presents it to the assembled criminals with a very B2B-vendor-esque “Here’s my card…”

Harvey Dent also makes his first trailer appearance, an appearance that’s heavy on the foreshadowed irony. Aaron Eckhart is obviously having fun on a big movie set, with what appears to be an energized performance. We do see Dent with his face being held in a stream of gasoline on the floor and even a glimpse of him post-transformation into Two-Face that, if you missed it, was caught by the guys at CinemaBlend.

Overall the trailer is pretty darn cool. The expansion of the character roster a bit makes for an increasingly engaging spot that shows you just enough of what happens to get you excited without giving away too much, largely a consequence of a number of really short edits. I’m sure this works even better on the big-screen, but it’s still pretty effective online as well.