The Dark Knight

[MacGuffin]

Batman's Burden: A Director Confronts Darkness and Death
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER; New York Times

A DREARY office plaza at Wabash Street and the river, late afternoon. A mist blows in from Lake Michigan. Producers and idle actors huddle under a flimsy canopy; grips hastily unfold another over their high-priced gear. A few stories overhead, a stunt double in a familiar black-caped costume swings from a hoist, slamming into a window in a Mies van der Rohe tower that we shall imagine is Gotham City Hall. A noose is around his neck, a knife plunged into his heart.

The meaning is clear: Batman, or at least his döppelganger, is dead.

Christopher Nolan, the director of "The Dark Knight" — the follow-up to his 2005 franchise reboot, "Batman Begins" — is unperturbed by the rain, but a tiny detail irks him. "Hey, buster!" he shouts to the stuntman, craning his neck skyward and raising his voice for the first time all day (politely, as ever, but enough so he can be heard). "Could you turn yourself a little more to the left?"

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.

Yet Mr. Nolan, 37, has barely changed his approach to filmmaking since his 2000 indie-smash "Memento," the film noir in reverse starring Guy Pearce that Mr. Nolan's brother, Jonathan, dreamed up, and Christopher Nolan made for $5 million. "A movie is a movie," he says. So he's still scribbling new dialogue on the set, improvising camera moves as he goes, letting his actors decide when it's time to move on and otherwise racing through each day as if his money might run out. It's just that his jazz combo of a crew has mushroomed into a philharmonic — with whole new sections of prosthetics artists, special-effects wizards and so on. "But we're still all riffing off of him," Mr. Pfister says.

That kind of maestro is just what Warner Brothers wanted five years ago when it hired Mr. Nolan to restore a jewel of a property that had become a laughingstock with Joel Schumacher's 1997 reviled "Batman and Robin," best remembered for George Clooney's nipple suit.

But any risks inherent in giving over such a huge franchise, with so much history and potential, to an auteur untested at making blockbusters were outweighed by the need to re-establish credibility with Batman's alienated fan base. "If the people who make the film aren't taking it seriously," Mr. Nolan said, summarizing fans' view of the 1997 movie, "why should we?"

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.

But if Mr. Nolan was feeling any stress on the set in Chicago last year, his easygoing reserve concealed it. Dressed, as always, in his own somewhat formal uniform — dark blazer, waistcoat, French cuffs; a thermos of tea in hand; a wireless video monitor around his neck — he also seemed a bit of a throwback. While many filmmakers watch in seclusion on television screens, he stood next to the camera, always on his feet unless he was kneeling to whisper in someone's ear. "Acting is such a vulnerable thing, you don't want to be told in front of others that you've made a mistake, or 'Try this,' " said Aaron Eckhart, who plays Harvey Dent, a district attorney. "Chris understands that."

But then, it hasn't been so long since Mr. Nolan bootstrapped himself into the film business, cobbling together bits of 16-millimeter film stock with $6,000 to make his first feature, "Following" (1998), over a year's worth of weekends. "Memento," which came next, was a critical smash, and with Steven Soderbergh's endorsement, he landed his first studio assignment: directing Al Pacino and Hilary Swank in "Insomnia" (2002) on a $50 million budget.

That fall, after slaving over a screenplay about Howard Hughes only to have Martin Scorsese beat him to the punch, Mr. Nolan put together a passionate 45-minute pitch for rewinding the Batman saga to its beginning. Alan Horn, Warner's president, approved it on the spot. "Besides his excitement about the story he wanted to tell, he just brings a certain weight and credibility," said Jeff Robinov, the studio's No. 2 executive, who had first tried to interest Mr. Nolan in "Troy."

Three times the cost of "Insomnia" and far greater in scope, "Batman Begins" catapulted Mr. Nolan into the top tier of mainstream filmmakers. Critics mostly loved it, though some seemed to resent him for leaving the indie world behind. While not an overpowering blockbuster, with $205 million in domestic box office, it expanded the audience for Batman well beyond comic fans. And it gave Warner Brothers a superhero who could hold his head up next to Sony's Spider-Man and Fox's X-Men.

His Caped Crusader, Christian Bale (who also starred in Mr. Nolan's entr'acte between the Batman films, "The Prestige"), recalls how "people would kind of laugh" when they heard that he and Mr. Nolan were taking Batman seriously. But when they finally saw the film, the same people "would say, 'What a surprise,' " Mr. Bale said. "I believe that even the most popcornlike movie can be done incredibly well, and can have something that you really have to work at. That was what attracted me to doing it the first time, because I felt I'd never seen that done, and I didn't understand why."

It's enough to make a marketing executive cringe, that the word "dense" pops up in conversations with Mr. Nolan and his actors. But it's true: "The Dark Knight," which will be released on July 18, is jammed with characters, plot and action. It picks up where "Batman Begins" left off, with Mr. Oldman's police lieutenant, Jim Gordon, warning about the perils of escalation: that Batman's extreme measures could invite a like response from the criminal element. And sure enough, a deadly new villain, the Joker, emerges to wreak havoc.

In a political context this would politely be called an "unintended consequence." (Gotham as Baghdad, anyone?) Mr. Nolan doesn't deny the overtones. "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."

In Mr. Bale's view "The Dark Knight" is an even lonelier outing for his character, who once naïvely thought his crime fighting could be a finite endeavor. "This escalation has now meant that he feels more of a duty to continue," he said. "And now you have not just a young man in pain attempting to find some kind of an answer, you have somebody who actually has power, who is burdened by that power, and is having to recognize the difference between attaining that power and holding on to it."

It may not be too much of a stretch to see another analogy here for Mr. Nolan: Rebooting the Batman franchise may be behind him, but he still has to improve upon it. Sequels are always trickier. And now he must also navigate the aftermath of the Jan. 22 death of Mr. Ledger.

It came well into editing, and only after the studio had introduced Mr. Ledger's Joker through posters, trailers and a six-minute Imax short. But it automatically raised the stakes: the acclaimed actor's final role would be ... a comic-book grotesque? Worse, though Mr. Ledger had finished work on "The Dark Knight" in October and was already halfway through another film, news that the prescription drugs that killed him included sleep aids — along with narcotics — prompted Internet chatter about whether his intense performance as the Joker, styled after Malcolm McDowell's in "A Clockwork Orange," had been a factor in his demise.

Mr. Ledger, however, also called it "the most fun I've ever had, or probably ever will have, playing a character." But his fatigue was obvious, said Michael Caine, who briefly overlapped with him. "He was exhausted, I mean he was really tired. I remember saying to him, 'I'm too old to have the bloody energy to play that part.' And I thought to myself, I didn't have the energy when I was his age."

Mr. Pfister, the cinematographer, said Mr. Ledger seemed "like he was busting blood vessels in his head," he was so intense. "It was like a séance, where the medium takes on another person and then is so completely drained."

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.

"It's stunning, it's iconic," he said. "It's going to just blow people away."

All the talk of darkness obscures what may come as an aesthetic surprise in "The Dark Knight": the creepy shadows and gothic Wayne Manor are gone, replaced by sleek towers, shiny surfaces, bright lighting and the vistas of a city with shoulders bigger than Batman's. "I've tried to unclutter the Gotham we created on the last film," said Nathan Crowley, Mr. Nolan's production designer. "Gotham is in chaos. We keep blowing up stuff. So we can keep our images clean," setting a solitary hero against the vastness of Chicago.

Mr. Nolan said he tried to make "Batman Begins" realistic by taking Wayne out of Gotham for portions of the story. For "The Dark Knight" he wanted Gotham to seem straight out of the news. "We just let everyone know up front: this is a location movie," he said.

Mr. Nolan does his planning in his own tricked-out lair: a converted garage behind his home near the Hollywood hills (and just down the street from the Batcave entrance in the campy 1960s television series). There he and his producer-wife, Emma Thomas — who gave birth to their fourth child last September — gathered with Mr. Crowley, Mr. Pfister, the costume designer Lindy Hemming and other department heads to brainstorm. It's where Mr. Crowley designed the tanklike Batmobile known as "the Tumbler," where Ms. Hemming came up with a uniform that finally let Mr. Bale turn his head at the neck and where she first pitched the idea of the Joker as Johnny Rotten.

If he barely uses storyboards, let alone the computer-animated "previsualization" wizardry common to effects-heavy films, Mr. Nolan is on the cutting edge with one technology. He used the unwieldy Imax cameras to shoot about 30 minutes of "The Dark Knight," including the entire opening.

"We've been trying to talk filmmakers into doing this for nearly 40 years," said David Keighley, an old Imax hand. And even after a Steadicam collapsed under the weight of an Imax camera, Mr. Nolan held firm. "If David Lean could carry a 65-millimeter camera through the desert," he said, "why shouldn't we be able to do this?"

"It scares people a bit," Mr. Nolan says of what could be called his planned-out impulsiveness. "We just go and shoot the stuff, and see what looks the best and what works. But on a big movie, you actually have more freedom. You can say, 'O.K., it's 3 in the morning — can we get the police to close down that street?' "

[MacGuffin]

Ledger's Joker Makes Dramatic Entrance

This time out, there's no vat of chemicals to explain how Batman's greatest enemy came to be the twisted sociopath known as the Joker.

Heath Ledger's Joker springs full-blown in this summer's "The Dark Knight," the sequel to 2005's "Batman Begins" that was previewed for theater owners Thursday with a clip showing the new movie's opening sequence.

Unlike 1989's "Batman," in which the deranged, disfigured clown appearance of Jack Nicholson's Joker resulted from a dip in chemical goo, "The Dark Knight" starts right in with the bad guy in all his psychopathic glory.

"I believe whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you stranger," Ledger's depraved Joker cryptically tells an accomplice in the opening scenes, in which he pulls off a daring bank robbery.

In an interview at ShoWest, a theater-owners convention where distributor Warner Bros. showed off footage of "The Dark Knight" and the rest of its summer lineup, director Christopher Nolan said it was almost inevitable that the sequel would pit Christian Bale's Batman against the Joker.

"The psychopathic clown, that's an icon to stand with the guy with the ears and cape," Nolan said. "It's just a wonderful visual relationship, and it's a terrifying image."

Long before Ledger's death of an accidental prescription drug overdose in January, the marketing of the movie had focused on the villain's rise to power and his creepy appearance.

There had been speculation among critics and fans that the studio and filmmakers might take a different approach to selling the film in light of Ledger's death, but the marketing has gone on as originally planned.

"I think he'd be very pleased to see we're just moving ahead as is," Nolan said. "If you try to honor somebody, you honor them by respecting their work and putting it out there for as many people to see. He was immensely proud of the work he did on the film. I feel a great burden to present that in an undistorted form."

"The Dark Knight" is due in theaters July 18.

The last time producer Charles Roven saw Ledger was when he showed the actor the very footage that was screened at ShoWest.

Fans have been buzzing over the anarchic style Ledger brings to the role in the movie's trailer, but the actor himself was utterly taken by what he saw of himself on screen, Roven said.

"He was just blown away by his own performance," Roven said. "He said, `Can I see it again?' So he was really, really thrilled."

Bale reprising his role as the wealthy Bruce Wayne, who moonlights as the emotionally tormented crimefighter said he watched the footage Thursday with a heaviness of heart over Ledger. But Bale said he hopes the movie will serve as a testament.

"I hope that this can be seen as a celebration of his work," Bale said. "He did a phenomenal job. It was a real joy working with the man. It was a joy knowing him, as well. I liked him a great deal, and I liked also how seriously he took his work."

[MacGuffin]

'Dark Knight' Stars, Director Want Film To 'Celebrate' Heath Ledger's Work 
Christian Bale says Ledger's Joker will be 'incredibly memorable for years to come.'
Source: MTV

LAS VEGAS — With roughly four months to go, the talents behind "The Dark Knight" gathered recently to reveal a film that's become remarkably similar to its cowl-clad title character. As such, like Batman himself, Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal and director Christopher Nolan find themselves shifting gears between being secretive, superheroic and fighting back a deep sadness.

"It was tremendously emotional, right when he passed, having to go back in and look at him every day," Nolan revealed of his mind-set while editing the movie in the weeks following Heath Ledger's tragic death. "But the truth is, I feel very lucky to have something productive to do, to have a performance that he was very, very proud of, and that he had entrusted to me to finish."

Gyllenhaal said she expected to be emotional on her first viewing of a finished "Knight" print. "I'll feel a lot of things about it. ... I don't know how it will be."

"Heath has given an incredible performance, a real definition of the character that I think will be incredibly memorable for years to come," Bale said of Ledger's work as the Joker. "I want to do nothing but celebrate his work."

With that in mind, it was back to the business at hand: getting the stars to cough up tasty tidbits on what is arguably the most anticipated film of the year. (Read what Nolan had to say about Batman's new "gizmos and gadgets and things" here in the MTV Movies Blog.)

"There is a pretty amazing meeting of the minds between Batman and Joker in the middle of the film that we haven't wanted to show to people yet," Nolan revealed when asked about the "Dark Knight" moment he most enjoys watching in the edit bay. "We want to save that for the movie. ... It's very much an acting scene, but I would be lying if I said it was a purely verbal smackdown."

"I did a scene where I get to interrogate a bad guy as a lawyer, trying to break a witness, and I had a blast shooting that scene," explained Gyllenhaal, who takes over the Katie Holmes role of Rachel Dawes for the sequel. "I've always wanted to play a lawyer in a courtroom, and I got to do that a little bit here."

"We have progressed from an angry young man trying to come to terms with his own pain and starting on an endeavor which he believes to be finite [to] somebody who's attained that power, and is now having to recognize the responsibilities that come with it," Bale said of the subject matter that made him want to hop back into that hot leather suit. "We had no interest in making a second unless we believed that we could surpass and improve on the first. I've not seen ['Dark Knight'], but from working on the movie, the feeling was that absolutely we surpassed that."

The team also cleared up a few details on whether we'll ever see deposed mob boss Carmine Falcone in a Batman sequel ("No," Nolan said. "But Tom [Wilkinson] was superb to work with in 'Batman Begins' "); Anthony Michael Hall's mysterious role ("He plays a news anchorman in the movie," Bale revealed); and whether Gyllenhaal is the final Rachel in the series ("Yeah," she promised. "I would love to do another one").

When Gyllenhaal does return for a third flick, the 30-year-old actress hopes she'll have the same interesting dichotomy of lead actors. "I sort of have two leading men in the movie, both Aaron Eckhart and Christian. ... They're both fantastic and gorgeous and incredibly talented," she said of her character's schizophrenic love triangle with Bruce Wayne/Batman and Harvey Dent/Two-Face. "In both actors, and both characters they play, they embrace what's right and sexy and also really dark and troubled about both of the people they play."

"I would say the Bruce Wayne character is a lot closer to Harvey Dent than the Joker," Nolan reasoned. "[Dent] is very relatable to Batman, and he certainly makes that point himself in the movie. ... The Joker is an absolute. He is a force of evil and anarchy. He just cuts through the movie like the shark in 'Jaws' or something. This is not a guy with an arc, and it's not about his origin. This is just the rise of the Joker to power through the criminal underworld of Gotham. He's a pretty terrifying figure."

"I think that's what Chris Nolan does so well, is that he manages to make really entertaining movies that you can watch just for the sheer adrenaline rush of them, but he also manages to incorporate an awful lot of thought and intelligence," Bale said of the new villains. "He brings in ethical questions — things that, if you wish, you can dwell on and consider later."

"A lot of [the Joker] came from Heath himself and conversations we had very early on," Nolan said of the character's ultra-violent, anti-establishment ways. "We talked about Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange,' we talked about Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious, having a younger approach to the Joker, really tapping into what can be threatening about a guy like this. It seemed that the youthful-anarchy idea [worked best]. It is that fear of a teenager, the fear of the rebel in society that some of these people embody and that gave us the idea of having a little bit of a punk aesthetic to it."

In "Dark Knight," Nolan explained, Gotham is the Joker's town — and everybody else is just living in it. "I felt like I really had to get on and [finish Ledger's work], and I felt very fortunate to have something like that to get on with," he said. "The truth is, the performance is so iconic. It's so not Heath Ledger; it is the Joker. He just inhabits it. It's riveting to watch this incredible performance. I am very proud to work with him on this. I know he was very proud of the role, and I am very excited to show it to people. I think they are going to be blown away."

[MacGuffin]

Teasing Batman
'Dark Knight' promoters use genre-bending ways to tantalize potential viewers.
By Chris Lee, Los Angeles Times

THE billboards arrived without fanfare or explanation in more than a dozen major cities last May. Bearing two simple catch phrases, "Harvey Dent for district attorney" and "I believe in Harvey Dent," they featured a photo of a stately Dent (imagine Eliot Spitzer with a shock of blond hair) against an American flag.

But within 72 hours, each billboard had been defaced by identical graffiti: The candidate's eyes were scrawled over with black rings, his lips crudely rouged with a smeary, clown-like grin. As well, each of the placards' messages had been altered to read: "I believe in Harvey Dent TOO."

Although not outwardly advertising anything other than Dent's political aspirations (never mind the impossibility of running for D.A. in more than one city), the billboards were in fact the opening salvo of one of the most interactive movie-marketing campaigns ever hatched by Hollywood: a multi-platform, hidden-in-plain-sight promotional blitz for the new Batman movie "The Dark Knight," which stars Christian Bale and Heath Ledger and reaches theaters on July 18.

By employing a variety of untraditional awareness-building maneuvers and starting the film's promo push strategically, more than a year before the film's release, marketers at the firm 42 Entertainment (subcontracted by the film's distributor, Warner Bros.) seem to have struck a chord with "The Dark Knight's" core constituency: fanboys and comic-book geeks. The promotional efforts -- part viral marketing initiative, part "advertainment" -- fit into an absorbing, nascent genre-bending pastime called alternate reality gaming that have been the toast of movie and comic blogs for months.

"The Dark Knight" is hardly the only summer action flick to step up its Internet game in anticipation of the tent-pole season: Trailers for " Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" are spreading across the Web like kudzu since being turned into "widgets" -- small, portable applications that can be posted on social networking sites and blogs by marketers for its distributor, Paramount. Earlier this month, HarperCollins Children's Books launched a "read it before you see it" global digital campaign tying in the film "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" with the C.S. Lewis children's classic from which it was adapted.

And then there's good, old-fashioned movie salesmanship: The trailer for "Iron Man" has been streamed 3.7 million times on Yahoo Movies since it was launched in September.

So to stand out, "The Dark Knight's" alternate reality game (ARG for short) is mashing up advertising, scavenger-hunting and role-playing in a manner that variously recalls "The X-Files" and the play "Tony n' Tina's Wedding," "The Matrix" and the board game Clue -- all in the name of galvanizing a community of fans to bond (with the new Batman and each other) over the course of a wild goose chase.

Or to be more precise, a wild Joker chase -- one that so far has involved clues spelled out in skywriting, secret meeting points, cellphones embedded inside cakes, Internet red herrings, DIY fan contests and even fake political rallies. Moreover, last week several players were nearly arrested in Chicago while engaging in civil disobedience to promote the movie; others have even been "kidnapped" and "murdered" over the course of the game.

Befitting the campaign's covert-ops M.O., neither Warner Bros. nor 42 Entertainment would comment for this story. But as Jonathan Waite, founder of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network (www.argn.com) sees it, "The Dark Knight's" multifaceted promo push transcends marketing to exist as a standalone cultural event.

"This is looked upon as viral marketing, but you have to look at it as an engrossing experience -- you have people getting very attached to the game," Waite said. "You're not a passive onlooker, you're taking an active role. And any time you take an active role, you're emotionally connecting. That's why people keep coming back: You make personal connections with others and a community gets built."

'Take back Gotham City'

As any Bat-fanatic will tell you, the Dent propaganda is meant to conjure Batman's "Dark Knight" nemesis, politician turned crime kingpin Two Face (a role memorably embodied by Tommy Lee Jones in 1995's "Batman Forever;" Two Face is played by Aaron Eckhart in the new movie). Early in the "Dark Knight" marketing campaign, an official website for the film redirected viewers to www.ibelieveinharveydent.com -- a URL notably lacking any references to Batman that urges "concerned Gotham citizens" to "take back Gotham City" by backing the candidate's run for district attorney.

More specifically, it tells them how to get involved in a faux grass-roots political campaign through initiatives such as filming videos, writing "Take Back Gotham" songs and coming out to meet the "Dentmobile," now touring several dozen American cities.

On March 12, however, a rally for the fictional D.A. candidate was broken up by Chicago police who seemed perplexed in the face of a group of volunteers handing out Harvey Dent bumper stickers, buttons and T-shirts.

Taking the self-referentiality a step further, another website, www.ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com provides a tantalizing clue about some connection between the Joker and Two Face that will presumably be explained in the film.

But discovering it takes some work. Call up the site and you'll see a blacked-out page with the message: "Page not found." But pull down "select all" from your browser's edit menu and a none too subtle shout-out to the killer clown is revealed: a pages-long sequence of repeating Ha ha ha's.

"I've never been a fan of the Batman series," writes a poster on the the marketing-analysis blog "Catch Up Lady," "but this sort of thing makes me want to go see it."

A 'top-secret' trailer

Of course, moviedom's paradigm has been shifted by high-impact, low-cost viral marketing campaigns before. Promos for the 1999 indie thriller "The Blair Witch Project" led viewers to believe the movie was a student film gone horribly wrong, resulting in the disappearance and possible murder of a group of Maryland college students. Likewise, stealth Internet marketing for this year's alien-invasion hit "Cloverfield" tantalized moviegoers by keeping them guessing about the movie's subject matter -- and even, initially, its title.

Wired magazine contributing editor Frank Rose has extensively covered the world of alternate reality gaming and credits the "Cloverfield" ARG campaign with helping the film surpass all box office expectations (hauling in nearly $50 million in its opening weekend). The debut of its "top-secret" trailer last July caused a sensation, compelling moviegoers to take to the Net to uncover a host of interlinking websites and viral tie-ins. But Rose feels "Cloverfield" marketers failed to sustain that early critical mass of interest through the film's January release, ultimately squandering its full viral potential.

"It had what looked like was going to be an ARG behind it, but then it fizzled out," Rose said. "Although there was a lot of comment about 'Cloverfield' online, with people looking for clues and debating the clues, things died down and didn't start to heat up again until before the movie was released. It got a pretty big opening weekend, but then ticket sales fell off a cliff. That's an example of what a not terribly well-executed ARG can do."

To date, however, the "Dark Knight" campaign's master stroke has to be its clown-cake giveaway.

In July, specially defaced dollar bills advertising yet another "Dark Knight" Web domain, at www.whysoserious.com were handed out to fans at San Diego's Comic-Con. On the website, the Joker (Ledger in the film) offered Bat-aficionados the chance to become his henchmen with special prizes tempting those willing to carry out his off-line demands. These players gathered at a physical location to obtain a phone number that was written in the sky by a plane, and from there, they embarked on an elaborate scavenger hunt around the city. It all ended with a scene taken from the "Dark Knight" trailer -- a fan being abducted by "thugs" in a Cadillac Escalade and getting symbolically "murdered" by armed men who mistook the player for the Joker.

Before you could say "Holy meta-narrative, Batman!," fan bulletin boards and chat rooms went wild with news after players posted about the staged event online. "I'm staying glued to this ARG until its end," wrote blogger Matt Keyser, "and definitely seeing 'The Dark Knight' when it comes out."

In December, conscientious followers noted a mysterious countdown on WhySoSerious.com that instructed viewers to travel to 22 real-world addresses in cities from coast to coast to pick up a "very special treat" under the name "Robin Banks" (get it?).

Turns out the addresses were bakeries in possession of a number of cakes bearing phone numbers spelled out in icing. Many of those who called the number recoiled in confusion when the cake in front of them began to ring -- cellphones encased in "Gotham City Evidence" bags had been baked directly inside, each containing a phone charger, Joker paraphernalia and explicit instructions to keep the phone with them at all times. In addition to enlisting the players as the Joker's minions, the devices conveyed invitations to special screenings of newly cut "Dark Knight" Imax trailers.

"Wow. You really took the cake! Now put the icing on it," the note says, continuing: "Let's hope your fellow goons come through as well as you. Once all the layers are in place, you'll all get your just desserts."

Similar campaign

Players can thank 42 Entertainment, the marketing firm behind "The Dark Knight" ARG that famously concocted a similar campaign for Nine Inch Nails' chart-topping 2007 album "Year Zero." That well-received alternate reality game involved a dystopian vision of the fictional "year 0000," USB drives left at various concert venues for fans to find, interconnecting websites, murals and recorded phone messages.

Although 42 Entertainment's principal creative executive Jordan Weisman would not comment for this story, Frank Rose got him to explain the operative ideas behind ARGs for an article that appeared in Wired in December.

"His outlook is that people are so bombarded by advertising messages, they automatically tune them out," Rose said. "So he figured out the way to get people's attention was to not shout the message but to hide it and let people discover it. That's been the basis of this genre from the start."

So, how are ARGs going to affect the future of movie marketing? "It's a very powerful marketing tool for a certain kind of product -- especially for a tent-pole like the 'Batman' films," said Rose.

Or, as ARGN.com's Waite couches the debate: "A movie experience is an hour and 45 minutes, you watch it, you can talk about it, you're done. But wouldn't it be cool if you could explore more of it with others and expand the universe yourself? This stuff is tailor-made for movie fans."

[MacGuffin]

[Stefen]

God, I hate her. She's like an untalented Kirsten Dunst (who isn't even that talented) with straighter teeth.

[bonanzataz]

God, I hate her. She's like an untalented Kirsten Dunst (who isn't even that talented) with straighter teeth.

yeah, but lesbians love her, though.

[Stefen]

God, I hate her. She's like an untalented Kirsten Dunst (who isn't even that talented) with straighter teeth.

yeah, but lesbians love her, though.

Lesbians are untalented too. They deserve eachother.

[modage]

beautiful.

[picolas]

coulda lost the second batman logo behind the title, though. i don't think anyone would've been confused about the batman involvement.

[MacGuffin]

Looks like Batman had an assignment for Project Mayhem.

[MacGuffin]

[Fernando]

Too cgi-ish, after the great mayhem poster how can they release this one?

TDK will make Batman Begins look like the 60's batsitcom.

[©brad]

Too cgi-ish, after the great mayhem poster how can they release this one?

prolly b/c the mayhem poster caused a bit of mayhem in the news for being a tad 9/11-y.

[MacGuffin]