I can’t remember a recent film that’s received as much publicity leading up to its release as The Dark Knight. What with all the insane viral advertising, marketing deals with Domino’s and Comcast and whoever else, and then all the press surrounding the sudden and tragic death of Heath Ledger shortly after he completed filming his role as the Joker, it’s been hard to avoid hearing about the movie. Reviews of the film have been ridiculously positive, and there has even been talk of a posthumous Oscar nomination for Ledger.So, could the movie possibly live up to all this hype? Could it top its predecessor, 2005’s Batman Begins, which was widely hailed as one of the best comic book/superhero movies ever made? Could it beat out Iron Man, which was considered by many (including me) to have stolen the crown for best superhero movie from Batman Begins?

The simple answer is, yes. The Dark Knight is not only the best Batman movie ever made, it’s also the best movie ever made based on a comic book. This is because it avoids all the typical problems of superhero and comic book movies. It doesn’t try to jam in as many storylines and heroes and villains as it can, thus ultimately short-shrifting them all. It doesn’t forgo character development and good writing for huge action/special effects set pieces (although it has its share of huge action/special effects set pieces, too). Instead, it is all character development, spending its entire length examining Bruce Wayne and his doubt about the Batman and his mission; Harvey Dent and his belief in order and law and good, and what happens to him when that belief comes crashing down; Jim Gordon and his desire to protect his family and his city; and most of all, it examines the villain these three men are arrayed against: a mysterious agent of chaos and death named the Joker.

This is far less a Batman movie than it is a Joker movie. And I’m totally okay with that, because the Joker is an endlessly fascinating character. Director and co-writer Christopher Nolan makes the interesting, and I think very smart, choice to avoid cluttering the film up with the Joker’s origin story. Sure, the Joker tells stories about himself and where his scars came from to other characters in the film, but he keeps changing them, and we never learn his real name or really anything concrete about his past. So he remains a frightening cipher, a monster born out of darkness come to take all we love.

As for Ledger’s performance in the part… the actor’s death is a tragedy in and of itself, but it’s especially sad to think of this role having to go to someone else in the next movie. Ledger rules this movie, stalking and shambling and cackling his way through every scene and leaving nothing but destruction and death in his wake. The Joker also, in many ways, wins in the end, after the heroes have spent most of their time flailing vainly to catch up with him. It’s a brutal, dark film full of a deep sense of doom, and an almost unbearable tension which is only increased by the eerie soundtrack. Which isn’t to say there aren’t funny moments; there are. But many of them are based in dark humor, like the scene in which the Joker, dressed as a nurse, fights with an uncooperative detonator switch. And the heroes and their city do ultimately survive, but they are all deeply scarred—some physically, all emotionally—by the ordeal.

If you know anything about Batman, you probably know what ends up happening to Harvey Dent, and there is a great deal of very clever and powerful foreshadowing of his terrible destiny throughout. He’s also constantly referred to as Gotham’s white knight—its bright, shining hero, who can show his face proudly to the world—with the masked Batman defined as his partner, but also his shadow and his opposite: a dark knight for dark times.

The Dark Knight has its flaws. At 152 minutes, it’s a little too long (and I don’t mean that it gets boring; there’s just so much tension and action and story that after a while it becomes exhausting). There are also some cheesy moments, especially in the film’s final speech. But it’s such a brilliant, entertaining, and powerful film otherwise that these small problems hardly matter. Even if you’re not a geek, you’ll be impressed. And if you are a geek, rejoice. Somebody finally took comic books seriously, and transformed them into a serious work of cinematic art.

phillyist.com