If this is as great as everyone tells me, why do so many people agree with my criticisms!

Rating: 4/10 (10 September 2008)

Gotham is cleaning its act up, Batman is a successful crime fighting Legend, Jim Gordon is moving up the ranks and Harvey Dent is a tour-de-force for the city as its high flying District Attorney. Nothing can go wrong, can it? Well that it is except for a lunatic criminal called the Joker decides to bring chaos to Gotham, Batman is faced with a criminal who will stop at nothing to make a point and is seemingly always one step ahead of the Dark Knight, will he cross the line and kill to stop the madman and make Gotham safe, and will Bruce Wayne get to hang up his cape and get the happiness he deserves.
After Batman Begins the scene was set for a bigger and better film to follow and after hearing all the hype I felt that this film could not fail ...I was very wrong. There are a number of issues that I had with the film that I have yet to hear a good defence for. The great films may not be liked by everyone for bizarre reasons but their criticisms are usually swept aside by the faithful. There are far too many errors in this film for it to pass such tests. I will address them one at a time, as one by one these spoilt the film for me.
The first is that the film drags and drags and drags. Around the time of Batman's big decision of who he gets to save seems to be the perfect time to end it, on an Empire style ending, instead it goes on and on and we have about thirty to forty minutes extra to wrap everything up that the film simply doesn't need. End it with suspense, leave me on a high, but if I'm looking at my watch you've failed.
Two, the performance of Heath Ledger is not all that. Yes, he is dead and this is sad, but the Joker we get in this film is sadly not the Joker of "The Killing Joke" or the Joker of "The Dark Knight", sadly it is somewhere in-between and this version is very mish-mashy, added to that the make-up changes from scene to scene when the jokers skin is supposed to be white all the time, also the make-up should make him look like he's smiling, DO YOU GET IT WRITERS, HE IS CALLED THE JOKER. Did he laugh that often in the film, I think not, he hardly smiled at all either, what's that for? For me, the big star turn in the film is by Aaron Eckhart who is magnificent as Harvey Dent and seems to steal every scene that he is in. Eckhart cranks the film up and makes it his own, and this is what increases the rating as it does.
The action sequences that are so gripping in the first film are sadly lacking here as the editing to make it a lower rating and get more bums on seats have cut the films strongest feature to shreds.
The last thing that really trashes the film for me is the end sequence with the Joker's final trap, as there is little explanation of how he has done this, are we expected to believe that the Joker is magic as that is what it feels like the director is saying. I'm all for big surprises but this was just too unbelievable, and I'm saying that about a film that has a man dressing up as a giant bat! Many of the people I have spoken to claim to love the film yet so few have any defence of the errors I speak of here, many of them Jump in and agree, and sometimes even add to the list, which annoys me for two reasons, because it will mean that more rubbish will get churned out that is supposed to be good and also because people's standards by accepting sub-standard films as good are lowering and we should always, as viewers, expect more, and pace, performance, writing and even make-up should all be first rate when $170 million dollars have been spent.
Maybe many people feel that because there is so much hype for a film, and so much critical acclaim that they must be wrong for not liking it, when the truth is that the people who don't like it all that much are the ones who are right and those that just suck up to the critics view are very wrong. Thankfully I have been here before and faced exactly the same backlash 14 years ago for saying I didn't enjoy "Jurassic Park" which had similar levels of hype and got similar levels of public favour at the time of release. I find it interesting that it is now so very far down the rankings as, upon release, it was supposed to be the best film ever, according to the critics.
No film could get a reaction like this on these boards without some element of over-reaction, and in this case it's to Ledger's death, the best time to judge this film will be in a year's time when the hype has died down, and for those who can admit they made a mistake to rethink their over-hyped ratings.
Disappointing.