Yes it's overrated, but it's better than a lot of crap out there.

Rating: 8/10 (19 September 2008)

Sorry to whoever thinks this movie is the best movie of all time, but I found a lot of it to be dull. The first hour and a half were so boring I was ready to walk out. Batman himself was literally like nothing but a black piece of cardboard that walks around and says "Stop bad person!" every time a crime happens. The Dark Knight proves that Batman really is the crown jewel of flat, cliché characters devoid of any personality whatsoever. Add the hour of boring, pointless conversations that is all that makes up the first hour, and The Dark Knight seems just like every other lame action movie. Maybe in the end it really is nothing but a lame action movie, but one factor kills that and raises my score from a "Meh, whatever . . ." to a "That was pretty nifty!": Heath Ledger as Joker.
I've seen a lot of action and horror movies in my life, and I can guarantee I've seen just about every villain who was worth watching. On one website I was on, people were even debating if Hannibal Lector was better than Joker, to which all I can say is: Hannibal is an emo pretty boy who would have turned out fine if he got more attention from his mother, but Joker is the real deal. Joker doesn't have any cliché motives, he's a complete nihilist, and Heath Ledger plays him to such an amazing degree it's scary. If this movie had have been allowed an R-rating, and Joker's carnage could have been fully shown on screen with blood, he would have almost too godly for my mind to process. Joker is flawless, and puts every single villain I have ever seen to shame.
Sadly, as I said in my first paragraph, the rest of the movie doesn't follow that example of perfection. Every other character was dull and uninspired, and used for no other reason to fill the screen with an hour and a half of pointless talking scenes about the plot that we've known since the first trailer. I've said it before and I'll say it again: ACTION movies do not need CONVERSATION about what is going on. The audience knows what is going ongive us at least that much credit. Conversation BORES us, and if directors don't stop using it so copiously, we'll stop giving them our MONEY. That's why The Dark Knight was so dull: conversation between boring characters that amounts to nothing. If they had taken that out, I would have given this a perfect 10 and seen the movie five times just to support a director who understands his audience.
The good. The plotting was great, Joker was godly, a lot of the decisions the characters made flew in the face of the obvious clichés, there was a lot of diversity in scenery, the action was godly, and the morality wasn't cliché and actually had a decent point that could be applied to everyday life. This is something that has always annoyed me about movies with social commentaries/morals: they're never something you can apply to your life. Either their something cliché like No Country for Old Men's pathetic, "We all die!" or just impractical like Sweeny Todd's, "Don't kill people or you'll end up dead!" The Dark Knight is more intelligent that than, and uses its morality in a way that is left up the viewer to decide/think through. Directors/writers, please take note.
Overall, some of the action scenes were some of the best I've ever seen in my life. The main problem with The Dark Knight, however, is how dull it is at times. When you try to take something childish and make it dark and mature, it almost will always end up dull, and it's sad that the director/writer didn't notice this.
But everything bad I said just pales when I think of how cool Joker was, or how amazing some of the action scenes were. I can forget I just sat through a boring hour of talking. I can forget Batman is a cliché, pointless character. If I were to focus on those things I'd be looking at the movie the wrong way. This is Joker's movie. And, dear God, he puts on a good show.
7/10