Becasue I'm the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now - so hunt me, because I can take it

No... actaully Batman is those things.

Spoilers - nothing but spoilers here.

Okay, the best parts of this Batman:

1) The Batman's Jawline.
2) As in the last one, the Batmobile. Steals the show every time it seems to me. i'm cuckoo for the Batmobile. It makes me squeal.
3) Heath Ledger's performance

Why I love Batman above all superheros and also superhero movies: (I think most people do. Who compares? Do not say Spiderman because puh-lease, and sometimes you find someone who likes Superman - that's adorable and quaint but that's also patently wrong.)

Batman is so great, and it's particularly exemplified in the Dark Knight, because he, he and Gordon, he and Dent, he and this Morgan Freeman character "Fox", are continually trying to be clever, out-smart, get a step-ahead and failing - not just failing but actually making things much worse, resulting in innocent deaths and guilt that makes life, really, infinitely, harder for them. Interestingly, when characters go "villain" it's not because of guilt. We let Batman shoulder that, becasue Batman's whole deal is that he's the superhero of guilt, can take on more guilt than others -- since he's had a lot of it since back when his parents were shot -- thus he chooses to become Batman (see Batman Begins)- no, they turn villain when they are so hurt they want vengeance. The "good guys" in Batman are carrying wretched amounts of guilt - and they just continue trying in these second-hand-is-ticking scenarios to outsmart the evil mind (Joker Batman movies are the best because Joker is such a comprehensive "evil mind"), and they keep failing. It's so true to the largeness of the idea of a battle between good and evil, Batman is, with all the fuck-ups there-in and all the nice people getting killed. Like even when characters do stupid things, I'll take it because Batman movies are all about these weird moments when your character is tested and you're surprised by the weird result.

Like okay, they leave the 20 year cop w Joker w his handcuffs off. But I thought, well, okay, they figured this is the guy they can leave here -- and they only had two and half second to try to get to the oil-barrell warehouses and had to split up the rest of the force so i can forgive them a split-second best-they-could-do decision - he's not a hothead - so w/ less than 2 seconds, they thought, he's got all this experience and he would not let this guy get away.

But as it turned out -- Joker was a step ahead with the taunting and got under his skin.

I shoud stop - nerding out on Batman. I really want to see it again.

You can find me this morning searching the internet for how it is Commisioner Gordon isn't dead though -- I get the hoax, but I don't get how we saw Joker & his men, turn and shoot at the mayor, and saw C. Gordon jump in the line of fire, and then a little while later he was totally fine. I guess it just grazed him. But since Batman only discovered seconds before that the officers were actaully tied up upstairs and the officers down below were actually joker & co. I don't understand where there was time for this conversation about faking Gordon's death. I guess after the grazing? I guess. I don't mind the story line but that wasn't fair how they wanted me to accept a reversal of what I'd seen without any flashback or anything at all. I'm the most prone to go along with crazy Batman shit of anyone but I just didn't get that which is a bad sign.

Also I thought it was hard to accept so late in the story that Ramirez and that other officer had given up Dent and Rachel to Meroni. As I said, I love Batman the mostest because people aren't who you expect in the moments when their characters are tested but they really didn't show any of the conflict for this and just used it to explain the plot after the fact and that was weak. They should have worked on that to have a more near-perfect movie.

Heath Ledger was so good that it makes you sad. I know we all would have given him lots of massages - we all would have teamed up to give massages 24/7 - so he could get some rest and get his head clear - if we had known it was all so rough on him. Poor Christian Bale is so torn up about it, he apparently beat up his mom.