Let’s be honest.

Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008), doesn’t hold up nearly as well as it perhaps should. Sure, Aaron Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Christian Bale and Heath Ledger did well with the material but I’d argue that they’d also do well if they were reading from the telephone book.

My problem with the movie can almost be entirely traced to the writing – and I really want to blame David Goyer though since I can’t trace what he did or didn’t write (Christoper Nolan wrote the story along with him, though the latter has a history of ruining good things) at the end of the day the writing fails the movie.

The issue is that Ledger’s Joker comes off as virtually psychic at points, which makes the character less interesting that overwritten, like his whole plan to get arrested, which somehow results in him taking over the police station.

If this were done as if it weren’t essentially a fait accompli then it might have even been interesting.

It’s not the idea of it, which is cool and very Assault on Precinct 13-adjacent, more than the implausibility of the scenario as depicted in the movie (and sure, we’re talking about a dude prancing about in a bat costume, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done well).

Then there’s Batman’s voice, which is the worst. I don’t know what Bale and Nolan were thinking, but it’s really bad never mind that the physicality of Bale’s Batman is fairly limited, despite not having the restrictions of Keaton’s interpretation.

At the end of the day, it’s just not a great movie. Not bad by any means, but not great either.