Cassie Critiques

Adherence to Prompt: A lot of movies are full “of sound and fury, signifying nothing; pointless chases, explosions, gratuitous violence, explosions, lots of speed, explosions, and just for good measure, more explosions” (Understanding Movies 35). The Dark Knight does have some pretty good explosions, but I agree with this statement that sometimes they are added for no good reason. For this reason, I will discuss something far more important to the special effects, the make-up. The make-up job was to perfect to not blog about.

Ethos-Aaron was never really popular until 2005 for his film Thank You for Smoking. I will be honest I never saw the film, but looking at the rating from Rotten Tomatoes it did pretty well with an 86%. Even the well-known critics rated more tomatoes then splats for the movie.  Aaron’s role in the movie was a vice president of the Academy of Tobacco Studies.  This role is similar to the role in The Dark Knight when he plays the district attorney of Gotham City. Having played a similar role before, it helps the viewers to connect Aaron to the character of Harvey Dent since they view him as that character.

Logos- In this particular scene we see Gordon and Harvey talking in the hospital. (Gordon is the police commissioner of Gotham who works closely with Harvey). Gordon is commanded by Harvey to tell him what people at work were calling him. Gordon proceeds to say that they called Harvey, “Harvey Dent Two Faced.” This comment fits perfectly because as we see throughout the scene Harvey is literally, two faced. One side of his face is perfectly skinned, and the other side has opened wounds and burns. The make-up to make his face look like that was outstanding. The wound and gaps looked very realistic. I was convinced that his face was burnt in real life.

 Pathos- In this scene we are not introduced to Harvey’s face for quite some time. All that viewers could see was the perfectly skinned side of his face. Then we see Gordon’s reaction to the other side of Harvey’s face which is a look of disgust. Based off of the emotion Gordon had it made me scared and anxious to see Harvey’s face. When I finally saw his face though, my face and stomach cringed. I felt the pain of his face on my own because it looked so real and painful. Even in Harvey’s voice it sounded like he was dying which, gave me even more feelings of pain and suffering.

RATING: Over all I would give this film four pickles. I want give it a full five pickles because I think that although Aaron did have credibility from his past film, he was not super well known. Aaron was still on the up and coming in my eyes and I am sure everyone else. It is hard to be in one movie and then be super well known from then on out. Don’t get me wrong it does happen for some actors, but not for Aaron. The make-up , facial expression, and voice usage however was perfection.