War of Terror allegory

Rating: 6/10 (18 August 2008)

It appears that The Dark Knight, like Casino Royale, is one of those films that fanboys go overboard for. It's okay. I enjoyed it, but it does seem like we're going over the same old ground. Here's the Joker again, played early on in the game as usual. Will any of the later villains be as entertaining? Probably not.
Hedger is good but there's no glee or joy in his villainy. Still, you get many different interpretations of Hamlet I guess.
The allegory for the war on terror seems hamfisted and is the spin to make this Batman movie a bit different to the usual, to stop it going through the motions. I'm not sure if having Hong Kong in the film helps - shouldn't Gotham be a self-enclosed city, in a parallel universe? It's like Batman referring to Ted Bundy in Batman Returns  should he know about that?
I find Nolan to be a charmless director, though he has good intentions. The visual flair imperative for a comic book adaptation isn't there and The Dark Knight, while enjoyable, is too heavygoing for my tastes.
Then again, if you want to replicate the experience of buying your weekly comic from the newsagents, comic book heroes are better as weekly episodes on the telly. An update of Batman in a long-running series like The Wire would allow one to get involved in the various relationships between Wayne, his babe (Waynetta?) and Harvey Dent. As it is, even with a long running time, it gets a bit shoehorned in. Nolan would be better with a serial.