The knife is shoved inside the victim’s mouth and pulled from one side of the face to the other, the blade ripping a smile across the cheeks. The victim is petrified, frozen in terror, paralysed into powerlessness, and then the blood flows. This is a scene from The Dark Knight….

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/camila-batmanghelidjh-not-in-my-name-these-batman-ethics-are-repellent-889634.html

Anyone say biased reactionary nanny state B/S…..

Harvey Dent. This guy didn’t like how Harvey Dent was written into this story. I have my complaints too (which would involve too many spoilers to go through). But this reviewer brings up the philosophy angle? In my opinion his character was used as the perfect analogy of what could happen to any one of us in that situation. It is the classic “When in Rome situation”. When you are faced by overwhelming odds, going against the norm, having to stand up for what you believe in, its rough. Sometimes it is just easier and more satisfying to give into the mob mentality and become one of the bad guys. This in fact mirrors what Batman goes through and hints at any moment what Batman can become. It shows the evil that lurks within anyone if the situation is right. It shows what happens when your morals are stuck between a Joker and a hard place. If there is no hope of being right then you might as well be wrong.

As for the spatial challenges. I didn’t find it hard to follow at all. I have divided my comments into the challenges Dave laid out for us.

Challenge 1: Early scene with the Scarecrow. Its a parking garage… there isn’t too much to this scene. There’s the ramp, and there’s the parking spaces and some cars. Its like this reviewer is scared by fast movement because its confusing and too hard to follow in between naps at the old age home.

Challenge 2 (Level 2): This one is a little bit harder as you are like… hold the phone… is Batman shopping? This is no time for the mall Batman. But then once it gets to the end of the chase you are left there assuming that the Dark Knight that prowls through the city at night knows the streets fairly well. Its not that far of a leap anyway as there are no large twists and turns in the chase.

Challenge 3 (Ultimate): Firstly, when were there more faux Batmen in the climax? What movie did you see? And how does faux batmen make spatial sense harder to comprehend… they were in a building that they gave you tons of views of… Batman moved up a couple of floors, that’s it. Just pay attention to the movie instead of writing in your journal about how tragic Heath Ledger’s death is. That should never even come up in this review as it has nothing to do with the movie.

Which brings up your next point about Heath Ledger’s acting. You have a huge paragraph on it and say absolutely nothing about it other than the Joker didn’t play many pranks. Which is a valid point because maybe you were let down by this portrayal of the Joker. He wasn’t the Joker you wanted to see. He didn’t have a buzzer hidden in his hand and a flower that spit acid. And when he was punched in the face his hidden false teeth didn’t go chattering away. Its definately not the same Joker as Jack Nicholson or the same Joker that was in The Animated Series or the one from the Adam West’s era (no mustache). For my opinion, he was the best Joker I have ever seen. He made Batman think, and made the audience think too. He made you realize that the joke’s on us. He doesn’t have to make the jokes because society itself is the joke. He was a sociopath and I think he played it well.

All in all this reviewer seems to be working so very hard to fill the void, writing a lot of words that do not add anything to his point–trying to find the center of a review without a critque.

I Loved the first film and wanted to love this but felt toward the end it was becoming a bit ridiculous with the mobile phone based sonar system. I’m sure they could have just explained that with another military gadget from the Wayne labs.

Please let’s not have Tommy guns with red lights on them in the next film!

Also Funny, how you like Speed Racer. Which majority of the people hated and it died a ugly death at the box office.

But I thought the same about “Speed Racer.” I liked that movie OK, and it wasn’t the supposed crazy seizure-inducing action that was a negative; it was the overdose of long, talking scenes to make it a more “serious” family movie.

I give the movie 5 stars for action 2 stars for plot no stars for being so twisted and sick.

The only reason that ‘Wormy’ goes on the news to reveal Batman is because it is only after his first blackmail attempt that Joker threatens Gotham unless Batman ‘takes of his little mask’. This is why he attempts it a second time; this time, the only benefit is a possible cessation of chaos.

I will agree on certain points, however;

A) If you remember correctly, the Joker did not overcome the officer at MCU with a knife. He weilds a broken piece of glass that he nicked from the mirror Batman smashed him into.

B) Had Gordon remained alive, it would have given the Joker even more leverage over the police force; I think there was enough when Ramirez and Wertz came into the picture.

However it is true that the editing was a little awkward at points. Continuity errors abound, especially in the beginning, with characters facing different directions and with faces in different positions, such as Bruce Wayne’s facial position as he converses with Alfred in the first ‘Bat-Cave’ scene.

I disagree with your response to Ledger’s performance. I really believe that he brought this role to a new level. It is dark, it is terrifying. Nicholson’s joker was more of a boss character; he is the kind of person that you allow to fall off the building in the end. However, he seems untouchable.

Ledger’s Joker is creepy and morbid. He is not trying to attain money; he proves that by burning both Lau and his share of the loot. He is truly after chaos. He doesn’t care whether he lives or dies, while Nicholson’s character was totally about self-preservation. The new Joker is screwed up in the head. He is a morbid curiosity. You feel like you shouldn’t enjoy it, but you can’t look away. I felt awkward laughing at the beginning, when the Joker shoots the bus driver without even a backwards glance, but I did.
I laughed because of the sheer absurdity. The lack of deference, of pity, of guilt.
I laughed out loud but i didn’t mean to, and I think everyone had the same reaction.
His performance was unexpected and outrageous, and I think he did a great job.

In my opinion, this is untrue. I was skeptical of Heath Ledger as Joker, but I was blown away. This movie is a must-see.

All the characters have to be stupid in order for the Joker to do what the screenwriters want to see. When the characters are dummer than the audience, you’ve got a bad script…

“Powerful” gangsters don’t even try to frisk him when he appears.

He promises the gangsters he’ll kill Batman, but when he doesn’t and switches to wanting to unmask Batman, they do nothing in reprisal even though Joker’s outfit is small at that point. Batman threatens the gangsters for Joker’s whereabouts, but the gangsters would have killed him themselves.

Police truck driver doesn’t try to evade Joker’s 18-wheeler and allows him to drive parallel to fire rockets at him.

Officer gives in to obvious anger ploy in jail cell to allow Joker out (although how he got out and got a knife is a mystery due to incompetant editing).

Comm. Gordon is stupidly going to shoot hostages at the end of the movie, after he shoul dhave well-known by then it’s a ploy.

Everyone has amnesia that Harvey Dent is in a hosp., so they leave him for the Joker.

Dent lost his brains as well as half his face, I guess, because he suddenly trusts Joker? Come on. The audience was treated like they’re in a trance, and most reviewers of this film were.

What exactly did faking Gordon’s death accomplish, other than put in a forced twist?

Who says, “That’s not good. That’s not good” when a helicopter is crashing? That’s Joey from “Friends” dialogue.

Who was piloting the huge C-130 that picked up Batman in Hong Kong? Alfred? Morgan Freeman? Whomever it was had to see Batman enter the back hatch and exit later.

Wormy guy is gonna blackmail Bruce Wayne on Batman’s ID, but Morgan freeman supposedly puts that down to good effect. Then wormy guy shows up again making that scene irrelevent.

Clunky, clunky.

Here are some duh, non-brilliant moments that seemed OK in the script and were never corrected and are now preserved forever in the IMAX format:

Bank manager in the opening can spit out and throw away the grenade in his mouth at any time.

Dawes gives Alfred that note as though she knows she’s going to die. She had no prob talking to Bruce directly before.

All hospitals are evacuated, except for the number-one DA patient in the city, Harvey Dent, who everyone knows but is left alone, so Joker can talk to him. Then Joker waltzes slowly out of the hospital, which is watched by the TV news while it blows up, and no one sees him. Plus, he somehow kidnaps their top correspondent. Moviemakers in a vaccum.

How did Joker load two huge, popular ferries with all those gas drums? Movie “magic.”

Dent shoots gangster’s driver while at full speed, car crashes, Dent not shown exiting the car, so is he dead too? Nah. But the gangster, it being his car, could have escaped just as easily.

The elevated train that figured so prominently in “BB” doesn’t exist now evidently.

I think David S. Goyer’s thematic cohension was missed.

I lol’d at “sonar for retarded monkeys.”
Yes, I love NPR, but sometimes (and most of those times it’s with the mainstream “low-culture” topics) they just miss the point.

That said, I agreed with some of the things he said in his review. The action sequences were disjointed (I really was a little baffled during that first one), and there were overlong stretches in the middle too much psychobabble and too little productive plot advancement.

I did, however, enjoy the movie overall. It was expertly cast and visually exciting. Heath Ledger? I agree with the poster above who said it looked like he was having a blast with the scenery-chewing - he owned every moment he was onscreen.

So… good movie? Yes. Great movie? Maybe. Earth-shattering masterpiece undeserving of and/or impervious to criticism? Hardly.