Lawful Stupid: The Movie

Rating: 1/10 (23 November 2019)

To start, I'm gonna just quickly vent.
The Dark Knight is overrated. And chock full of plot stupidity.
All Batman had to do was kill the damn Joker.
Thou Shalt Not Kill rule be damned.
End of problem. End of story.
He also gives up his moral high ground reasoning when he lies about Two Face (who he killed with his own actions, by the way).
Now that that's done, time for the substance behind the (dark) magic.
As many others have said before me, there is more (over)emphasis on exploring symbols, ideologies and themes rather than the characters who are supposed to embody these ideas and ideals, leading to the characters feeling cut and dry due to half-baked writing.
Batman swings across the Lawful spectrum so much like a pendulum that he just becomes annoying to watch. From disregarding other people's vigilantism (yeah, because having the training and the money automatically makes you all set, right?), to brutally smashing criminals' faces in, to refusing to kill any criminal no matter how dangerous they might be, to lying to the public, this Batman is one that lacks any charisma and doesn't give me any real reason to root for him.
Not to mention that Bruce kills Harvey (inadvertently, but since this is Batman, the point still stands), who is a traumatized Tragic Villain driven to insanity, while leaving Joker alive in captivity. Moral inconsistency much?
Speaking of which...
Joker is just a Straw Nihilist with no profound reasoning or understanding for his motives. You want a sympathetic nihilist? Look at General Shepherd from Modern Warfare 2. Back to Joker, the film doesn't even have much logical explanations on how he can pull off his outlandish criminal stunts - which is detrimental to a film that wants to deconstruct and add realistic grit to damn well everything.
Also, 3 hour blockbuster movies becoming the norm can be a standard that can rot in hell.
To sum up, this is not The Dark Knight.
It is Lawful Stupid: The Movie.
An overrated and overhyped film unfortunately brought to the world by an overrated and an overhyped film director.