The Dark Knight

I saw the new Batman movie today and am going to share some of my honest thoughts and opinions. If you have seen the movie, I would be curious to hear your thoughts and if you haven't, you may not want to read much further as I share some things from the movie and would certainly not want to wreck it for you.

I have read reviews and heard plenty of hype about this movie and also the performance of Heath Ledger as the "Joker" and so unfortunately for me, I went in with fairly high expectations. I am not going to try and write this as a "formal" movie review but instead just share some thoughts in more of a list form...

1. The first thing I noticed before I even got to the theater was that the movie was 2hrs and 40mins long. That is a long movie.

2. There are waayyyy toooo many plot lines going on in this movie. You've got Batman vs. Joker; Batman vs. himself; the love triangle between Rachel, Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent; the moral dilemma Batman faces with whether or not to use cell phones to spy on people for their safety; the story of Harvey Dent as he becomes "Two Face". I believe this is most of them or at least the ones I could somewhat keep track of.

3. Not enough Batman. For a movie that is 160mins long you don't see much of the hero. It is unfortunate that we were not given the opportunity to see Christian Bale play the arguably best Batman character in more dynamic scenes, or just more scenes period. I think he looks the part, acts the part and even sounds the part but I know that more from Batman Begins than its sequel.

4. I know that Heath Ledger has passed away since the release of this movie and of course I am sad to hear of someone's passing but I don't think his performance is Oscar-worthy. Personally, I did not find him to be particularly scary and thought that Jack Nicholson played a much better, more convincing Joker. Maybe there is something major I am missing about this flick but I could almost swear that this movie was centered around the Joker and had little to do with anyone else. I can see why critics have talked about Heath Ledger's performance so highly because his performance is the one we spend the most time with.

5. The "new" Rachel Dawes played by Maggie Gyllenhaal is TONS better than the previous one in Batman Begins.

I left the movie not really sure what just happened or what the movie was about. There were so many things going on in the movie that it simply became too much to try carry through for almost 3hrs. Overall I would give it a 'B' and would say wait to rent it unless you can catch it at an IMAX theater, that would certainly add to the entertainment factor if for no other reason than those theaters are cool.