I seem to be the only human being in the world, but I was kind of disappointed by the Dark Knight. It was still a good movie, but definitely wasn't as good as Batman Begins. I don't know if it tried to do too much, but midway through the movie, I kept thinking that there was just too much plot going on here. I thought that truck flip scene was going to be the "final standoff" but there was still like an hour left in the movie.
It wasn't so much that there weren't good parts, but there were too many things that bothered me for this to get anything more than a 7, whereas the first one was close to a 10.
Here's what I didn't like:
1) Who is the Joker? In the original movie, we get the Joker backstory. The Joker was Jack Napier--an ambitious thug who falls into a vat of chemicals and gets a backalley hack to try to fix his face--only to leave that ridiculous smile on him. This time, we get nothing but the Joker keeps asking people "Wanna know how I got this scar?" and keeps coming up with new versions of the story. That's completely annoying because these new movie versions are all about the backstory. I wanted to know.
2) The whole Rachel Dawes character is a failure. What exactly did she do to warrant the love of two great men? Why does Bruce Wayne love her? Because they played together as little kids? She's kind of vapid in this one--barely even caring that Harvey Dent nearly gets blown away in the courtroom. (The gun just happened to misfire right? Am I the only one that thought everyone should have reacted a little more to that?) I didn't care at all when she died. Not only is she no MJ from Spiderman, who I think we all fell in love with, but Maggie Gyllenhaal looks distractingly like Kirsten Dunst.
3) I really hate the Batman voice. Why is Christian Bale doing his worst Al Pacino impression under the cowl? It didn't bother me so much in the first one, because Batman doesn't really have a ton of dialogue, but in this one, it just gets silly.
4) The Batcycle is Bat Feature Creep. I was waiting for the back wheel to get blown off so it could get converted to the Bat Segway.
5) Too much obvious foreshadowing. How many "face" references to Dent were there? Face of Gotham? Hmm... I wonder if he becomes Two Face at the end? Lucky for him that Two Face was already his nickname!
6) Phone sonar: We've seen that effect before--in DareDevil, when it rains.
7) The Bat copycats expose us to the silliness of the idea of a guy running around dressed as a bat. What I thought was amazing in the first one was how believable the origin story of a guy in a bat costume was... Like I could actually see it happening and not being silly. When the copycat asks Batman what the difference between him and Batman was "I'm not wearing goalie pads" can't be the answer, otherwise Batman really is just a guy with a boatload of cash and military equipment.
8) Since when do all of the killings in a superhero movie have to be accounted for? I hate the idea that Batman has to take the blame for Dent's murders. Did he really kill 5 or 6 people? I wasn't counting? Are they counting Morone's limo driver, too? Who cares who killed a mob limo driver? Can't they sweep that under the rug? Leave it as a cold case?
9) His death was tragedy--no doubt. But, just in terms of his performance, I honestly thought it was kind of understated. When I think psychopath in clown makeup, I'm thinking REALLT creepy. Robin Williams was once mentioned as a potential Riddler before Jim Carrey got it, and his performances in 24 Hour Photo and Insomnia were beyond creepy--they were downright disturbing. I just didn't feel like the Joker was really that unpredictably nuts in this one. I did get my hopes up in the beginning, though. Between the "What busdriver?" line and the amazing disappearing pen, I thought we were in for a real sicko... in a funny kind of sick way. Didn't get him again until he walks out of the hospital in the nurse outfit...not much in between.