Oh sorry looks like we’re back at talking about The Dark Knight. See, I do have a love/hate relationship with this film.
This is so retarded that it has to be brought to your attention, a writer for the Hong Kong-based newspaper South China Morning Post (publishing since 1908) wrote a piece about his discomfort on the portrayal of Hong Kong in The Dark Knight.
The writer expresses sadness that money gets laundered in HK (it does, by much richer men than the mobsters of Gotham), a place where only criminals hang-out and that Nolan and crew only went for the Infernal Affairs HK mythology. (Which I prefer as its much closer to the truth than the Enter the Dragon comparison, no, nobody is kung fu fighting in the streets.)
For what its worth, Nolan mentioned that he did in fact write a draft of The Dark Knight in Hong Kong as the city inspired him, and was inspired enough to return to film a sequence in the city; kind of as a ‘give-back’ – but in typical Hong Kong mentality, people complained anyways: complained that Christian Bale didn’t wear the Bat-outfit when they were filming, complained that there wasn’t enough of HK in the movie, complained when they were asked to leave the lights on for the night when they filmed that big B-52 sequence, and for what?
Nolan gets props in my book for even BOTHERING with this at all (even though I thought it should have been cut) unless it truly is a marketing trick for HK and China to get better box office. Don’t laugh, this is how and why the Robert Deniro/Al Pacino of Japan: Ken Watanabe was used for in Batman Begins. As you recall, Watanabe was used for all of 5 minutes in the first movie as the decoy Ra’s Al Ghul. American audiences might not care, but when you go to see a movie to see your local celebs in a big US movie you expect a little more. And don’t start me on Edison Chen’s supposed cameo in The Dark Knight – the Justin Timberlake/Paris Hilton of Hong Kong. (Go ahead and Google him, NSFW though)
The South China Morning Post is a paid site – but we were able to get a clipping of it below:
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