Chapter 616: A Signature Trick

"Evan, bring the lighting and color saturation down a bit more."

Standing in front of the monitor, Duke steadily fired off directions.

"These daytime scenes need adjusting too. I don't want any bright, sunny shots. Change all the daytime backgrounds to something dark and a little damp."

Tina Fey walked over and whispered in his ear, "Hans Zimmer is here."

Just as he had for Batman Begins, Duke had once again invited Hans Zimmer to score The Dark Knight.

After giving Anna Printz a few instructions so she could temporarily take over, Duke left the studio and headed to a nearby reception room to meet the top-tier Hollywood composer.

"Hi, Hans."

"Hi, Duke."

Duke walked over and shook Hans Zimmer's hand. The two had collaborated several times already, so he skipped the pleasantries.

"The plot for this installment is going to be even darker than Batman Begins," he said directly. "My request isn't complicated. Keep the scoring style from the last movie, but add some new elements to make the whole thing more tense, more exciting, and distinctly stylish."

"I've already read the script." Knowing how busy Duke was, Hans Zimmer didn't waste words. "The character of the Joker left a particularly deep impression on me. I want to use highly agitated electronic sound effects as his musical theme."

Duke wasn't a music expert, but he trusted Hans Zimmer's abilities.

"That works," he said.

Hans Zimmer didn't stay long. After finalizing the basic direction for the score with Duke, he left Warner Studios.

Duke returned to the studio and continued his dark post-production work.

However, he kept a clear head. He knew that this kind of intensely dark film—just like epic films and other genres—would inevitably cause aesthetic fatigue if it became too common. In his plans, a film as heavy as The Dark Knight would be the only one of its kind.

Not all films suited this style. Even in the original The Dark Knight Rises, this tone had been severely dialed back.

As a cinematic style, the dark tone wouldn't become obsolete, but much like today's epic films, it would soon cease to be mainstream or would lose favor with audiences.

Every ten years or so, Hollywood experienced a shift in film genres and styles—from musicals to mob films, comedies, teen movies, action films, fantasy films, and now, superhero movies.

The dark superhero style was absolutely a novelty right now, and it wouldn't necessarily feel dated anytime soon. However, there simply weren't many stories capable of carrying such a bleak tone. Furthermore, given the current content frameworks and stylistic limits, turning every comic book adaptation into a dark film was just as unrealistic as eradicating the dark tone from superhero movies entirely.

To a certain extent, the dark visual style easily led to viewing fatigue.

In fact, the overall viewing experience was even more exhausting, precisely because of the bleak worldview. The constant, repetitive clashes between heroes and villains, with human nature violently churning in the middle, easily made viewers feel drained.

Films like this weren't like Marvel's lighthearted, comedic superhero movies that gave audiences an easy thrill. Even though dark stories were more profound and resonated more deeply, the discomfort of the viewing experience made it difficult to sustain the public's interest.

If a similar film came out once every two or three years, people would still have the appetite for it. But if there were two a year, many viewers wouldn't be able to stand it.

Of course, from another perspective, the dark tone wasn't a universally applicable style, nor was it an element every director could master. The Dark Knight was certainly the pinnacle of the dark style, but by the time of The Dark Knight Rises, the dark elements had been reduced to a level that was merely better than nothing.

While this was naturally due to commercial considerations, the massive limitations this style imposed on the film, the story, and the characters were also a huge factor.

Some people believed that the dark tone was a high-class, high-quality cinematic style that shouldn't even be compared to standard comic book adaptations—especially those noisy movies where a group of superheroes teamed up to fight.

In reality, whether a film used a dark style or not had absolutely nothing to do with prestige; it simply came down to the personal choices of the studio and the director.

If they wanted to adapt some of Marvel's superheroes into a dark style, it wouldn't be difficult. However, the original Marvel had never done so, because such a cinematic style wildly clashed with the tone of Marvel Comics and the broader franchise.

More importantly, not everyone liked dark films. For most audiences, movies were just a way to relax and be entertained, so shooting seemingly profound, highly stylized films often failed completely to satisfy the mainstream moviegoing crowd.

This was especially true in the increasingly important overseas film market, where audiences perceived comic book adaptations purely as high-tech blockbuster spectacles.

Therefore, when the original The Dark Knight was released, audiences were more willing to view it as a standalone film rather than a superhero movie adapted from a comic book.

Kevin Feige, the head of Marvel, had once said: "The Dark Knight truly shows the difference between a comic book and a movie, as well as the potential of cinema. But I don't think audiences will blindly love this kind of dark, gritty film. Therefore, we didn't shoot Thor or Captain America as dark films like The Dark Knight."

Duke knew very well that these words made perfect sense. As a cinematic style, the dark tone wouldn't become obsolete, but its prevalence would inevitably decline.

During his downtime from post-production, Duke also met with Zack Snyder a few times. Perhaps because The Dark Knight hadn't been released yet, neither Zack nor Warner Brothers had been overly influenced by this style.

Having partnered with him for over a decade, Duke understood Zack Snyder well. Strictly speaking, Zack wasn't particularly suited for this style.

After all, he was much more heavily influenced by Duke's early style.

He was naturally skilled at adjusting lighting and color saturation, and perhaps he could achieve a technically dark style like in 300 Spartans, but he wouldn't adapt well to the heavy themes that accompanied it.

Strictly speaking, Duke wasn't perfectly suited for it either. Much like Chicago, The Dark Knight could be considered an outlier in his long career.

Once he moved away from the Batman Series, he wouldn't use this style again.

All through February, Duke was busy with post-production work. At the same time, he made quite a few requests to Warner Brothers—such as prioritizing IMAX Cinemas for the premiere and the simultaneous advance screenings. This point also received strong support from the IMAX Company.

The crew had shot a full three hours of film using IMAX Cameras. Although the entire movie couldn't possibly be in the IMAX format, according to Duke's plan, the finished version would contain roughly 40 to 45 minutes of IMAX scenes.

While it wasn't especially long, it was still the Hollywood commercial film with the most IMAX footage to date.

In addition, under Duke's instructions, personnel from Warner Brothers and Duke Studio were searching across America for young Batman fans, preferably those who were severely ill.

For a movie to become a massive hit, promotional marketing was the most critical factor.

Per Duke's request, Heath Ledger came to Warner Studios every so often to participate in voice dubbing. Perhaps this played a role, but the Australian actor hadn't suffered any accidents up to this point.

Heath Ledger's death had contributed immensely to the original The Dark Knight. Countless historical precedents had proven that a dead lead actor contributed far more to a film than a living one.

Since Heath Ledger hadn't met with an accident, the film definitely needed to find another promotional angle—one that could draw a massive amount of attention.

Heading into mid-February, Duke and Mike Dawson began the fine cut of the film, looking to edit the nearly six hours of raw footage down into a suitable theatrical version.

Although many visual effects scenes requiring CGI compositing hadn't been added yet, the shots that only needed background and lighting adjustments were largely complete. Once the visual style of the rough cut fully met Duke's requirements, figuring out how to edit the entire story more tightly while maintaining the overall tone became his most pressing task.

With such a heavy theme, if it dragged on at a slow pace like Heat, Duke believed The Dark Knight would absolutely bomb at the box office.

"My requirement is very simple. Just like before, use crisp, sharp editing to create powerful narrative tension!"

After Duke finished speaking, the fine-cutting process commenced. As the director with final cut privilege, he took full responsibility for the edit, and Mike Dawson's team followed his demands to the letter.

Standing in front of the monitors, Duke watched the footage. The first shot was an extreme wide angle, and then the glass of a skyscraper suddenly shattered. Looking from the outside in, two silhouettes were revealed.

"Stop!" Duke rested his chin on his hand in thought, then said, "Cut the entire latter half of shot number two. After the window shatters, the camera needs to instantly switch to a close-up inside the room. Keep it clean and sharp."

A few minutes later, the footage resumed playing, and Duke continued to issue instructions.

"When the grappling hook fires out, don't wait for it to land. Cut straight to the Joker's back and keep pushing the camera in. Use the same technique—use the push-in to drive the rhythm and emotion of the film."

Mike Dawson operated the equipment personally, fulfilling Duke's requests one by one, and the two exchanged opinions from time to time.

"Duke, I think we can have the car that suddenly crashes in next to the Joker break the rhythm of the push-in."

Watching the screen, Duke nodded.

"Good idea. We can use the same approach for the next shot. The moment the Joker makes a move to get in the car, immediately cut to the thug getting up on the other side."

Cutting from an unfinished action to another action just starting defied traditional editing logic, but it was Duke and Mike Dawson's signature trick.