The Dark Knight Review

I loved reading Batman comics as a child.

Batman was my absolute favorite hero.

Green Lantern was a close second.

I also loved watching the comic Batman TV series.

A memorable opening theme with animated characters kicked off the fun before the human actors were introduced.

It was great stuff.

Adam West made a name for himself in this action sitcom.

“ To the Bat-mobile, Robin! “ shouted Batman.

Tim Burton revived the Batman franchise.

Jack Nicholson made a charming Joker.

Michael Keaton as Batman was a casting disaster.

With most Tim Burton films, the whole is always less than the sum of its parts.

But this popcorn flick did what it had to do.

It made a lot of money and revived the Batman series on the big screen.

Enter Chris Nolan from stage right.

The Dark Knight is by far the best superhero movie ever made.

It’s an almost perfect script.

This action thriller became a runaway hit.

It had a complex story but also a character web that screamed.

Batman and the Joker are perfectly matched opponents.

Each scene gradually revealed not just the usual action fireworks, but a morality play taken to its extremes.

There is a love triangle between Batman, Harvey Dent, and Rachel Dawes, but also a triangle between law and order, utter chaos, and Batman in the middle.

The Joker is the chaos.

The powerful political pyramid of Gotham City is corrupt.

Batman moves between these two poles and is emotionally troubled.

In each new scene, Batman has to choose between increasingly impossible decisions to keep people alive and bring the Joker to justice.

The Joker is betting that anarchy and corruption will win.

The Joker is the most dangerous criminal opponent possible.

He is not in it for the money.

The Joker plays the game for the fun of it.

It’s a psycho act with a sadomasochistic streak.

There are also so many “in-between” characters in The Dark Knight who keep switching sides that the viewer never knows exactly how the plot will develop, but it develops in such a complex manner that the story rollercoaster almost derails in the end

This is not a popcorn movie.

Hollywood has created an art movie for the masses by pure chance that works.

With The Dark Knight, we have a new and troubled mythological figure.

But the demonic energy might be too strong for us.

Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, died of a drug overdose after the final filming.

A deranged Joker wannabe killed twelve people in a Colorado movie theater after the Dark Knight premiered.

That’s some pretty expensive popcorn.