Reasons Why "The Dark Knight" Is Nearly A Perfect Movie

Why The Dark Knight is almost a perfect movie

Those people who know me pretty well have heard my ridiculous rant about The Dark Knight. The Oscar snubs, except of course for the posthumous win for Heath Ledger, and the general chicanery surrounding people who try to elevate other comic books to its level. I loved Avengers and Joss Whedon is mostly certainly one of my favorite directors, but these two movies are not even on the same planet. Avengers was a phenomenal comic book movies; The Dark Knight was a phenomenal movie.

Period.

Since I inevitably have this discussion over and over again, I have collected a few reasons why The Dark Knight is superior to other comic books movies and is, in my opinion, just a great movie regardless of genre. If we ignore for a second Christian Bale's Batman voice (really the only sticking point in this movie despite criticisms of Rachel Dawes - though I think Maggie was a step up from Katie), this is a brilliant crime drama with one of the greatest villains ever.

Without further ado, my reasons:

The Opening Scene

 The End Scene

 The Score

 This Part Right Here

And This Part

Can't Forget This Part

Enough with the visual evidence.

Heath Ledger created a villain so good that he dwarfed Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine. You read that right, Heath Ledger's Joker was so good that he beat three world-class actors with a character who wears make-up for the entirety of the movie. I can remember when trailers were first circulating for The Dark Knight.

"Nicholson is the only Joker as far as I am concerned," voiced quite a few people I knew. 

First things first, before this movie ever came out, Nicholson was not the best Joker by any stretch of the imagination. Mark Hamill's cartoon-ish incarnation was more Joker than Nicholson could ever be. Caesar Romero in the classic Adam West version was a better Joker than Nicholson. Nicholson was playing Nicholson dressed as the Joker, in my opinion. Ledger was so good in fact that Aaron Eckhart was completely buried despite turning in a fantastic performance as D.A. Harvey Dent. Christopher and Jonathan Nolan came together and penned their very best story to date (and that is saying something considering Inception and Memento). 

I guess I should have called this "Why the Joker made The Dark Knight a nearly perfect movie."

Stay Frosty.