I agree! I thought the make up/effects looked great and scary. The one used with Tommy Lee Jones looked a bit funny compared to this one.

Just saw it earlier today, and I absolutely loved it.

Aside from what I'd seen during commercial breaks on TV, I'd made a point not to watch any trailers/clips, and had only a vague notion about the storyline. So when I did see it, I was completely blown away.

Some of my favorite bits:

- The hospital exploding (really shouldn't have found this as amusing as I did v.v)
- The entire Hong Kong sequence
- When What's-His-Face found the plans for the Tumbler, and Lucius Fox says something along the lines of, 'You think that your client, one of the wealthiest, most powerful men in the world, is spending his nights running around the city beating up criminals with his bare hands. And your plan is to blackmail this person...? ...Good luck. '
- Scarecrow
- The Joker standing in the middle of the road, yelling for Batman to 'Hit me!'
- Nearly any scene the Joker was in, really
- Oh! But I also really liked the one where he was explaining how he got his scars for the first time. That scene had me pretty thoroughly freaked out.

Also, let me just add my name to the list of people who did, in fact, like Katie Holmes in BB, and really didn't care for the change in actress/rewriting of her character.

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Gun-toting vikings? That's your theory?</center>

I think you both misunderstand me.
I'm not saying your complaints are against the actual effects. But how they looked and there realism.
It's a comic book movie, realism only extends so far.

Harvey's look in the movie is very much in line with this


Which for a comic book geek like myself, is infinitely better than realism. I want a comic book movie to stay as faithful to the source as possible. I mean you wouldn't complain about X-Men being unrealistic....would you?

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Lol, my complaints were against the actual effects. I'm going to go watch it again in a few minutes, though, so hey. Maybe my opinion will change.

EDIT: So, I watched it a second time, and what do you know...my opinion changed. ^_^ I now share Phoenix's opinion. Upon closer observation of the CGI, I realised that it wasn't as poor as it seemed at first, so that flaw is out of the way.

The music seemed even cooler this time around, the characters all seemed much cooler this time around, and I really loved the action. The Batpod is still the sickest thing, though. ^_^

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Hmm...But Batman is pretty different from the comic books, isn't it? I haven't read the comics, just heard people talking about them, but I thought in comics, the Joker had an actual backstory (I prefer the movie's not explaining) and there was Robin, and a Batman wasn't as edgy as he is in the movie, etc...

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They basically took the comic-book Batman and made him a whole lot cooler, darker, and awesomer. And they didn't (thank goodness) bring in Robin. I might just have to commit seppuku if they did that.

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I'm pretty sure Joker didn't have much of a backstory till The Killing Joke storyline. Even still the characterisation of his character is pretty much spot on thanks to Heath's amazing performance and dedication to the role. That's faithfulness to the source.

Batman is still Batman. Billionaire playboy that masquerades as a giant bat vigilante. Batman Begins and TDK are the closest incarnation of him to date, the cartoons not withstanding. The only of the older films that comes close is Batman. But Michael Keaton's version of Bruce Wayne was sadly lacking imo

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I've only watched the 1966 Batman: The Movie with Adam West, the 1992 Batman Returns with Michael Keaton, the 1997 Batman and Robin, and then Nolan's films. Nolan's were the only ones that I liked. The others I laughed/cringed throughout, just because of the way that they handle everything. I mean, in Batman Returns, Batman kills criminals. That's a violation of his cardinal rule, and I really hated the movie because of that. Nolan's films were the first to really get the characters straight.

TDK's Joker, according to Christopher Nolan, was largely inspired by The Killing Joke, which is quite understandable. A lot of the plot from TDK was drawn from that story.

I'm still not sure whether I liked Batman Begins or The Dark Knight better, since they're both different in such crucial ways, but still amazingly good. The lack of Liam Neeson in TDK was sad (but of course, necessary), but the inclusion of Ledger and Eckhart sort of made up for it. One lamentable fact that I noticed about TDK, though, was that Gotham was a much less grungy place (I would have appreciated at least some tribute to The Narrows), and that Batman had only one fight in actual darkness. The rest were all in half-lit or fully-lit conditions, which removed a bit from his mystique.

The movie rocked anyway, though. ^_^

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The only good thing, imo, about Batman Returns was Michelle Pfieffer. Though even that version of Catwoman could have been better, but her performance was so charismatic.
Batman & Robin and Batman Forever were just atrocious, horrific movies. I meant to agree with you about the exclusion of Robin, since his introduction to the old movies they went downhill fast. This new version of Batman really doesn't need Robin so I, like you and apparently Christian Bale too, do not want to see any incarnation of Robin on screen.

I never saw the 60's movie with Adam West, but grew up on the series. Back when you're 8 it's awesome and fun but you get older and look at it and it ages so badly. It was camp, Batman should never, EVER be camp.

I really didn't mind him not always fighting in the darker places. The situations that were presented in the movie worked well for me. His final showdown with Joker was just brilliantly done with the sonar.
That and Jokers line.
"You complete me" very unnerving as much for Bruce as it was for us.

I'd rate this above Batman Begins. Batman Begins is like Spider-Man and X-Men, great origin movies that set the tone of the stories to come. The Dark Knight takes that ball and runs the whole field with it untouched.

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Ugh. I wish you wouldn't equate Batman Begins with Spiderman, or even X-men, as the latter was in no way equal to its sequels. Batman Begins was skies above Spiderman in more or less everything. <_<

The Batman TV Show was horrendous. I saw it for the first time when I was 12, so there was no room for appreciation there. The 1966 movie was more or less an extra-long episode of the TV Show, if that gives you an idea of what it was like. Pure horror.

I didn't mean that I didn't like Batman's fights in The Dark Knight, I just wished that he'd had more fights in darkness. I agree that the final showdown was awesome, though. Actually, though, I preferred him taking down the SWAT team to his actual 'fight' with the Joker, since it wasn't much of a fight, actually. The dialogue was awesome, though. The Joker and Batman have the coolest 'relationship' of any villain and superhero, IMHO. ^_^

I also really liked the ending. I felt bad for Harvey, of course, but I really felt bad for Batman and Gordon. Both are awesome, heroic/noble characters in a dark and corrupt city.

And you know what two of the highlights of the movie were for me?

a) Reese trying to blackmail Batman through Fox. "Good luck." ROFL! I laughed so hard.
b) The dialogue between Wayne and Gordon. "You don't pay much attention to the news, do you, Mr. Wayne?" ^_^

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I'm not saying there the same not like that anyway. Just in the sense that all those movies are great origins, great starting points for fans and non-fans to get on board. Each first movie set the precedent for what was to come in terms of look and how each character would be portrayed.

Like the series? Oh I'm so glad I missed it then

I felt so bad for Harvey. I'm having a very strange <s>obssession</s> relationship with his character at the moment. It's all Aaron's fault for making him so real and helping me forget all other incarnations of him and taking him back to basics.

The ending with Gordon and Batman was great too. Very poignant I thought.

Another of my highlights was when at the gangsters meeting and they asked Joker if he thought he could just walk in there and take there money and he just looks at them straight faced and said "Yeah" I ROFL'd

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I really liked Batman: The Dark Knight My favorite character would have to be The Joker. =) I liked when he broke out of his cell and pointed the gun at the one policeman and they asked what he wanted and he replied "I want my phone call."
Batman Begins was fine for me, but I really liked the Dark Knight. 'Cause of the Joker.
And the whole 'Pencil dissappearing act' at the beginning.

I've been watching the pencil trick on YouTube for nearly 10 minutes straight
That is never gettin' old.

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O_o I find that very strange and slightly sadistic, Phoenix. Which is to say, I thought that the pencil trick was far more sadistic than funny. <_< My dad and I were the only ones in the entire cinema, so it seemed, who had that opinion, though, since everyone else laughed.

Perhaps the humour could be explained to me? o_O

I wonder what's going to happen with Reese. Or rather, what was/is planned to happen with Reese. He's a would-be Batman-blackmailer, and he survived. I find that very interesting. <_<

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That's really funny... because everyone in the cinema that I was in either gasped in shock/disgust or said "omg"...
I just blinked; it was rather unexpected hahhah.

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xD That's cool! =)