Erm...really? (may be a couple of spoilers)

Rating: 1/10 (26 July 2008)

Wow. Once again my faith in the rational persons ability to discriminate between depth and breadth, is verified, in that I have none.
The film was long. Not deep. I think there is a misunderstanding. The film had the veneer of an epic film. It had all the right elements to be an epic comic-book adaptation to screen. Yet it faltered, mainly because everyone was so wrapped up in the idea of Ledger giving a career defining performance, they couldn't see past it. It's almost as if they accepted the brilliance of his performance before they entered the theatre, off of the back of the hype and the critics reviews, and all that was left was to actually watch it and be able to validate this belief.
Disregarding Heath Ledgers untimely death, can you really say that he was a better Joker than Jack Nicholsons? I for one, cannot. Others have already said it; he had no back story. A character without a past and a motive - especially when they are a killer - is just not one that is appropriate to a story about good and evil. The things we like about villains is that we can relate to the reasons they do the things they do, whilst asking ourselves whether their reasons are justified. We get into a dialogue, and we ourselves get to decide who we side with - the good or the bad. This villain left me feeling flat and unfulfilled because he had no real motive, - making it impossible to choose which argument, good or bad, I sided with - and left me feeling like I was a voyeur, watching a guy kill loads of people.
Everyone has been raving about the script, which I thought was plain dreadful at points. Others have raised the questions here. What was with his voice? He would make a great nursery nurse. The poignant moment on the boat when the sailor said something to the effect of "They haven't pushed the button yet, because we are still alive" was just plain embarrassing. The fact that Batman kept leaving in the middle of a conversation became irritating instead of cool and enigmatic. Why can't he just hear someone out. And at the end when batman runs home like Charlie, I was nearly dying in laughter. I could hear the music 'I've got a golden ticket'. There were other embarrassing script moments, but because the film was so bad, I can't even be bothered to mention them. The phone device for one was utter...
The rhetoric of the characters in their oratorical moments was again, limp. It was as if the writer had started a sadistic, flowing evil speech, but had not had the tools with which to really elaborate. Because he had decided to keep the Jokers background exclusive, the speeches were neither funny or scary. They were punctured and lacked conviction.
The fact that this is the number one movie is embarrassing. IMDb should take it off out of principle. If this wins an Oscar, I will never watch a Hollywood movie again.