IS THE BOMB-DIGGITY.
How's that B-Fish? He asked me for a Dark Knight Review. It is, quite possibly, better than Batman Begins, which is quite possibly now only the second best live action Batman movie ever made. That's not a lot to compete with, I know. But in my head the list now goes like this:
1. The Dark Knight (2008)
2. Batman Begins (2005)
3. Batman (1989)
4. Batman (1966)
5. Batman Returns (1992)
6. Batman Forever (1995)
7-1,304,402,948. Every other movie ever made (18??-20??)
1,304,402,949. Batman and Robin (1997)
That's right, every other movie ever made, ever, is a better Batman movie than Batman and Robin. (By the way, I made that number up, I can't back that up with facts).
Oh, and I'm not putting the animated movies on this list (there are now three of them) because they exist in their own seperate world, and they're all really quite good. If I had to put them up there they'd be numbers 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3.
I know there are people who disagree with me, that think Batman Returns was pretty good. We can all agree that the 1989 Batman with Michael Keaton was pretty good, better than people thought it would be. Jack Nicholson is a passable Joker, though really, he's just playing Jack Nicholson in clown make up. But that's ok. We all love Jack.
I was so disappointed with the second one though, with the mutant Penguin biting people's noses and giant penguins with rockets strapped to their backs...I mean, come on. That would have been something I expected from the old Adam West Batman. And yeah, Adam West Batman made it onto the list ahead of this because at least they knew they were being campy. They weren't pretending to make real movies.
Batman and Robin, though? What an atrocity. I mean it's Star Trek V level of bad. Remember that? When Kirk went across the universe to meet God because God needed a space ship? Yes, that's for real. That's the plot.
Dark Knight though, man, there's nothing that's not good about that movie. It's long. It's almost two movies in one, but I couldn't get enough of it. Heath Ledger is beyond amazing as a crazy Joker who is genuinely creepy and funny, just like a homicidal clown should be. He's, well, he's the Joker.
Let me not spoil any of it, but know this, Joker is just bat-guano crazy. There's no Darth Vader-esque backstory that ruins the Joker by showing me his troubled childhood and why he became a villain. And I think villains are all the scarier for that. I loved Vader before I knew he was just a whiny punk who didn't think he got enough respect from Obi-Wan. Man, I wish I could forget those movies existed. (As a side note, there's a new Conan movie that's supposed to come out next summer, despite the fact that they don't have a cast, a director, or anything resembling an idea of what they're doing, except apparently they're doing Thulsa Doom's backstory...Yeah, the character James Earl Jones played in the original Conan. Cause we need to see his childhood and figure out what whiny thing happened to him to make him go bad. Great. Thanks jerks. This is what I need.)
Anyway, Ledger is Awesome, Aaron Eckhart is awesome as Harvey Dent, Bale is still a great Batman, Michael Caine is still a wonderful Alfred, and Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) is still just as fantastic as he always is. The whole cast is great, the script is above and beyond, and the movie is just a phenomenal amount of awesome all packed up together.
Iron Man was top notch, and now Batman is raising the bar. I wish all superhero movies were this good.
