Stern’s The Dark Knight Pinball Photo

I was looking for a post on RGP (Pinball Newsgroup) today, and came across a link to Pinball Sales and a photo of the new Dark Knight pinball that Stern is releasing to coincide with the movie starring Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart being released next week! Here’s the photo showing the Batman and Joker themed artwork on the cabinet.

Sidebar: Good ‘ol Pinball Sales, they think they’re tricky with their 1998 tactic of javascript right click disable. But anyone with the Web Developer toolbar, or half a brain can get around that. The least they could do is make it a little difficult like protected images on Flickr using transparent .gifs and background images.

I don’t own a pinball yet, and if I thought I could spring for the cost I think The Dark Knight would probably be my pinball of choice. I think Christopher Nolan is a visionary director, knows a good story and builds a movie around it using strong character development. These Batman movies are very adult, but very true to the roots and doesn’t insult the lore by dumbing down the history or adjusting the themes to appeal to kids.

Evaluating The Dark Knight Pinball artwork

I am a huge artwork critic, and overall, I like The Dark Knight pinball cabinet artwork that Stern has worked up. I am ok with the montage, if I could have Drew Struzan do the art, Hell I would. I really like what I can see of the Joker with the playing cards montage on the back header, and I am ok with Batman on the Batpod on the side of the cabinet. That image is pretty dynamic.

What I don’t like? I hate that they put the Word Batman over the modernized logo. Batman is iconic, people know what it is, you don’t have to adjust the logo to your tastes because you feel it needs to say “Batman” on it. Why not use the amazing, breaking apart image of the logo with the blue light as the main backdrop of the translite on the pinball? Why make it the gunmetal grey? Jeeze. Put ‘The Dark Knight’ in standard lettering at the top and build the montage around it.

I don’t care for the Batman pose, and don’t usually care for glowing Batman images anyway. The Dark Knight is just that, dark. Silhouettes, shadows, etc. etc. We don’t need to see all the intricate, well lit details of the suit. Make Batman more ominous on the translite, and more true in theme. And give Heath Ledger’s Joker a more prominent size as well with the supporting characters placement but at a smaller proportion.

No Two Face photos on the cabinet – Good for them

I do love that largely, Chris Nolan and Warner Brothers have been able to keep images of Aaron Eckhart’s Two Face under wraps, and that they also didn’t make it onto the pinball. Could Two Face be in Stern’s final artwork? I don’t know, I don’t know if revisions would be made to The Dark Knight cabinet artwork before final release or not. It would be nice, but props for keeping the look secret.

I had the leaked images of Two Face Aaron Eckhart on my blog. Apparently I made someone at Warner Brothers mad 😉 Just like Movieweb.com and Superherohype, WB had us take them down.

If you can find the Two Face images before the legal team hunts them down across the web you are lucky. But at this point, you can just wait the two days max for the movie to come out if you didn’t see the images here over the last four days.

Update! July 18, 2008 – Dark Knight Playfield Photos

A few days earlier than rumored, photos of the Dark Knight pinball playfield have hit the net via PinballSales.com. Thanks guys for posting these. Wish they would have been rotated, so I did just that. Click on the photo below of Stern’s Dark Knight pinball back glass to check out the photo gallery showing the Joker figure in a spinning station, the ramps, the playfield photo collage of the movie characters and much more!

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Dark Knight pinball playfield photos!
• Three New Dark Knight Posters!
• It’s Aaron Eckhart as Two Face! (Image)
• Dark Knight IMAX Prologue Leaked
• Halloween reveal of Two-Face at Why So Serious.com?

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