Dark Knight: Why so excited?

I finally got round to watching The Dark Knight and had a moderately good time. I think that it was a pretty good package overall: a fun time, good continuity with Batman Begins, good acting, and a script with good themes and dialogue.

To address the question that everybody apparently has to answer, yes Heath Ledger was good as the Joker. But I do believe he could have done the role without putting himself into a headspace that would require antidepressants and sleeping pills. And it certainly wasn’t worthy of an Oscar. My two cents, anyway. I’m probably a heretic now.

From here on, there are potential spoilers, so click through…I did like the take on the Joker as a priest of Chaos. That makes more sense than the Burton/Nicholson interpretation, and I found it much more interesting to watch.

The only thing that really bothered me about the whole thing was endgame. The movie felt at lest 30 minutes longer than it needed to be. I’ll need another watch through to find what I’d edit out, but it kept on hitting points where the movie could have been wrapped up, but they kept on going on.

People have complained about  Return of the King, but that had a lot of story threads to tie together (and had already edited out plenty). Sheesh, do you think Christopher Nolan could have spared a thought for those people that like to drink when watching a movie? The only tension I was interested in was the one holding my bladder in check.

Anyway, I did have a good time, and found the movie more than acceptable both as an action-adventure flick, and deep-and-meaningful exploration of the different roles that heroes and villains take in our society.