Nananananananana Nananananananana BATMAN!

God I loved that TV show as a child. Anyhoo, I saw the Dark Knight last night. And...I think maybe I should reserve judgment until I can see it under less extenuating circumstances. First of all, we got there late and had to sit in the front row. Not the best way to watch an extremely long and action-packed film. Also, I had the hangover from hell (and at least partially undeserved. I won't deny that I drank more than I should have, but I didn't drink THAT much.)

Anyway...it was long. It was REALLY long. And I have no problem with long movies (Return of the King, for example...awesome.) However, I think that the killing stroke was the fact that it had too many climaxes and resolutions. One crisis was averted, then the Joker got away and started a new plot, then killed somebody else, and there was a new crisis, and on and on. I honestly expected the movie to end an hour before it did. I think this is why I tend to prefer dramatic TV shows to movies, because the serial nature makes it much easier to create a drawn-out complex plot without boring people. Unfortunately, they also tend to be much lower budget because they necessarily bring in much less profit. (unless they can pick up a cult following and make a killing on DVD sales, like Firefly or Buffy)

Now, the characterizations...priceless. Heath Ledger was f'in AMAZING. Now, I'll always have a special place in my heart for Jack Nicholson as the Joker, but Heath brought it to a whole new level. He's the sort of villain that has no reason, no motivation, he just loves to create chaos. He actually wasn't as frightening as I expected him to be (although somebody in the theater did yelp when he popped out of the passenger seat of a dump truck to shoot somebody) but instead brought a sort of manic creepiness to the role. I think that the difference between the two characterizations can be summed up by their origins: In the original, the Joker was a hired thug who lost everything when his boss turned on him and left him for dead. He had a grudge, and while he was pretty crazy, he at least acted human. In the Dark Knight, the Joker just sprang out of nowhere, with no history, no known motivation, and no discernible emotion except for manic glee. The idea that somebody could be so inhuman for no known reason is what makes him so damn terrifying.