Aside from the final thirty minutes, I could have taken a nap.
The first Batman movie from Christopher Nolan, Batman Begins, changed the way I felt about superhero movies. I always had huge crushes on titular characters (or sidekicks), but the very tone of the film was just as dark and moving as the comic—for the first time in my lifetime. Suddenly, the bar rose for every film to follow.
Like most people, I found The Dark Knight even more amazing and enjoyable—heavily dark yet moving, pushing the envelope for both dramatic and action film genres. I still wonder if we’ll ever have a villain as terrifying as Heath Ledger’s Joker. When The Dark Knight rises was announced, I wondered how Nolan would ever be able to top the previous to films.
