A few flaws to an overall fantastic movie.

Rating: 6/10 (22 July 2008)

I saw this movie on midnight of opening night. To prepare myself for this movie I watched Batman Begins at 9:00 PM and then when it was over it was basically time to get to the theater and watch The Dark Knight. As everyone has mentioned, Bale and Ledger's performances are out of this world, and the supporting cast of Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman make this one of the best acted summer blockbusters I've ever seen.
The flaws for me came from director's choices that I didn't agree with, and one of those choices was to change the feel of Gotham. Batman Begins had a very specific Gotham which really created a credibility and a home turf for Bale's Batman. There were the eerie side streets, there was the disgusting subway which led to Wayne Tower which was a towering monstrosity in the center of the city. There was the prison island, the smoke effects, and a lot of stylistic choices to keep the viewer somewhere between movie and comic book. Gone is that city, in fact Dark Knight feels like it could have been shot in NYC, Philadelphia, or Chicago, and they didn't try to disguise that they did that.
The other major choice that they made that I disagreed with was trying to take Dark Knight and just push the "dark comic book movie" genre a little farther. Batman Begins was a dark movie, as was Spiderman 1, 2, and 3, Sin City, and all of those comic book movies. The Dark Knight simply felt to me like they were trying to make this darker, and would find every way they could to do so. As Iron Man proved...sometimes there's nothing wrong with some laughs and lightheartedness at times. I think Batman Begins toed the line really well keeping it funny at enough times that it made the movie not so overwhelming and heavy. This movie did not do the same, and while the laughs definitely came...I can't say that this movie was as good as the last one, or contrary to some of the belief on here, is as good as the hype made it out to be.
6/10 for the fact that it's a great Batman movie, that unfortunately was unable to keep some of the spirit from Batman Begins alive that truly made Batman Begins the beginning of a franchise which had an original feel to it. My suggestions: Bring back the old Gotham...it made the movie feel much better as a whole.