I love this movie so very much. It feels weird for me to use that word, "love", but it is the first thing to pop into my mind, and it is most accurate. This is my second favorite film of all the ones that I have watched; even as I go further ahead in time and watch more and more movies, The Dark Knight still brings about awe in me. This is the rare film where If I see that it is playing on TV I drop whatever I am doing (even if I am trying to make a deadline), sit down, and watch until either the end or as long as I can before life calls.
And for the more watchful viewer, I want to point out something: The Dark Knight winks at past Batman adaptations by replaying some moments in different scenarios. One such example is that near the end of Tim Burton's Batman the Joker asks the Batwing in the sky to "come to" him, observes as all shots fired at him miss, and then proceeds to send one bullet into the sky as Batman passes overhead. Now, when director Christopher Nolan proceeds to introduce to us his vision of the Joker, he takes that same kind of end payoff setup and gives us not only a reason for why Batman misses, this time swerving the Batcycle out of the way and crashing, but arguably in that moment also begins to establish how the Joker has the guts and intelligence to do what no other villain can and tear Batman apart from the inside out. The Joker walks forward shooting his gun, growling for Batman to hit him (the line itself coming from Batman Returns), and proves that as long as Batman carries a personal cross of responsibility over his shoulders he can be exploited and played like a fiddle. This is the validation the Joker was waiting for, and with this he assures himself that Batman is the lovable play-toy that he thought he might turn out to be.
Nolan takes the knowledge we already have of the Batman mythos and gives it weight, spark, depth, sincerity, dexterity, and grandeur in his Dark Knight trilogy, the second film, The Dark Knight, being the pivotal center of it all. It is a film that understands the allure of darkness, sees how it can efficiently spread, and then presents us with the facts regarding the realities of honor, strength, and influence and the realities that passions can construct inside of us, the most twisted of all being those that see the faults in others' realities and can link the faults to the endurance of their own self-principles, channeling energy and free thought into the measured manipulation of society. How the citizens of Gotham view Batman and explain their emotions through what he stands for is enough to spark a conversation of its own, especially if one applies how Bruce Wayne created this image and how it defines both what he sees in himself and what he sees in others.
When The Dark Knight first came out it seemed to excite conversation; what I have observed in the past nine years is that it continues to do so, and the achievements it pulls off in areas across the board doesn't hurt its chances at being viewed as a milestone in the history of entertainment and art either. Even more than that, it is one of the greatest films ever made. Yeah, I went there.
My rating: 5/5