I have an idea for an internet teaser based on the rumours from the set, and the already infamous Joker pic. It would not play all that well for general movie audiences, but it would work for raging fanboys (we tell our own).
We open with the Warners logo as it dissolves into a colony of bats, that eventually covers the whole screen in black. We then get quick flickery lights, ala the first Saw teaser, and we see, from the back, a man walking towards a room at the end of a long corridor. The man is carrying a bag, and seems to be stalling. We hear almost muffled cackling combined with, what sounds like painful, subdued cries of agony. The man reaches a door, grabs the doorknob, and we get a quick shot, amid the flickering lights, of his hand. It's bloody.
The man enters the room and turns on a weak, yellow light. It's a filthy bathroom. He rests the bag on a counter, opens it - we see that the blood is all over his arms, and on his clothes, too - and grabs a painful looking medical needle and a thread. A quick shot show a huge gash running through the side of his face, like a Chelsea smile, and as the man brings the needle and the thread towards his face, his laughter now louder, we cut to a view from the back. Standing in front of a cracked mirror, he is stitching his own wounds.
And then, finally, the caustic cackling reaches a crescendo, as we are bombarded with extremely quick glimpses of the man's stitching his face. All momentary, all gone before we can truly process it. As he finishes his handiwork, he leaves the thread and the needle dangling from his lips, grabs from the bag a tub of whote face paint, opens it and starts smearing it all over his face. We see his bloodied fingers, and parts of his cheeks, forehead, etc, but never his full face. His cackling is out of control, and he rips some of the fresh stitches on his cheeks. In sheer agony, he throws the face paint away and, finally, rips the thread off of his face, lowers his head, and sighs.
We cut to the point of view of the cracked mirror, and the man starts raising his head slowly just as:
BANG! He almost leaps at the mirror, and shouts "SMILE!"
Cut to, over cackling,
The Dark Knight
Summer 2008
I am geek. Hear me roar.