The Dark Knight (2008)

VERDICT:
9/10 Reasons to Thank God That Gotham City is a Fictional Place

It’s the best comic book movie of all time. Wasn’t an easy task to beat out Spider-Man 2, the former champ in that category, but that’s just how it goes.

The Dark Knight picks up where Batman Begins left off with Bruce Wayne back in action as Gotham’s guardian angel, this time teaming up with the city’s new district attorney, Harvey Dent, to take on the biggest criminal threat the city’s ever had, The Joker.

There’s a lot more to the story that I can’t cram into two sentences, but you already know what this movie’s about anyway. Hasn’t everyone seen this by now?

But yeah, what an awesome movie. It’s not often that the heavens align in such a way that a cast like this is paired with a script like this, but lord almighty did they mesh into something fantastic.

So, where to begin.

It’s helmed by Christopher Nolan, one of the best directors and storytellers out there who’s been putting out one great movie after another his entire career. I feel like he doesn’t get the credit he deserves in the mainstream, but if directing movies was my career of choice, I would contemplate killing a total stranger to have Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Batman Begins or this movie on my resume’, let alone be responsible for all of them. Not trying to endorse homicide as a path to success here, but I’m just sayin’, Chris Nolan is the man. The guy shits out good movies.

And holy crap, did I mention the cast? It’s a confederation of badasses. Gary Oldman: total badass. Morgan Freeman: sure, you can be a badass. Maggie Gyllenhall: not so much a badass, but whatever, she’s badass by association. They’ve all upped their game from Batman Begins, and they really make the audience care no matter how big or small their roles are.

It’s also about damn time Aaron Eckhart hit the A-list. Go check him out in In The Company of Men, I have no idea how Hollywood wasn’t clawing at his bootheels after that one.

But lets not kid ourselves, The Dark Knight is a pretty misleading title for a movie where Batman gets totally overshadowed. Heath Ledger was unreal as The Joker, he absolutely deserved every award and accolade that came his way, and it’s goddamn lunacy to assume that his death factored into that in any way. It definitely factored into why so many people went to see this movie, but good acting is good acting, and Heath hit it out of the park. He was a talented guy and at least we have this and Brokeback Mountain to remind us of that.

Anyway, I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but The Dark Knight is just a great movie with a really smart, dark, and original storyline that stands on its own outside of being another comic book movie. It’s kinda tough to follow everything that’s going on the first time around, but this is a movie worth seeing more than once and it all really comes together the second time around.

Should’ve gotten the props it deserved at The Oscars this year.

And the disappearing pencil trick? Awesome.