Why So Serious?

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2008)

I read one review on here that says that they couldn't stand the movie because of the way that everyone moves their lips. Others say that it was "painful to watch," and that the script was "cringe-worthy." However, I say that this movie deserves all the hype that it it stirring up. It is, at it's core, just an action movie. But somehow, it manages to come across as a much better Batman than it's predecessors.
Maybe this is due to it's all-star cast (which includes the much missed but praise-deserving Heath Ledger for his role as the Joker), but I don't think that the fact that such good actors are in the film is the only crutch the movie can stand on.
It contains a message that some people, perhaps the people who gave this film bad reviews, are to distracted by something shiny to notice. There are different kinds of villains, and just as there are different villains, there are different heroes. They come in all different shapes and sizes, and yet we need them all for a society to really function.
Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) is the White Knight of Gotham. He is the best kind of hero because he doesn't wear spandex, yet he saves the day, he's a part of society, but he's not afraid to get his hands dirty. It's been three days since I've seen this movie, and I still feel a part of me die when I think of the fictional Harvey Dent being covered with acid while he had to hear the woman he loved say her last words. Before this movie, I knew Dent as Two-Face, and nothing more. But this film added depth to his and many other characters, one of the things that made it great.
The Joker, who we know from the other films as absolutely cuckoo, also gains a bigger back-story. We begin to really see the madness behind that madman in the Dark Knight. And, with much "sorry"s to Jack Nicholson, I must say that Heath Ledger's Joker was much better than I'd expected, and much better than any other Joker. For once, the bad-guy explains his thinking without monologuing! How they did that is even shock worthy.
As I mentioned, this movie doesn't lose all of it's action. The scene where Christian Bale blows up the truck and flips it over had everyone in the theater saying, without shame, "Whoa..." Yet, the action is on a level that no other action movies really are. The bomb triggers given to the passengers on the ferry boats conceal a thinly-veiled message to the viewers. "Are you willing to kill to save?" Of course, I believe that the triggers were really to their own boats.
All in all, the martyr that Batman had to become and the film that enveloped that message, will always deserve the praise that it claims.