The problem with The Dark Knight is the exact same problem with V For Vendetta - hand-holding. Both movies set up specific push-button pins to be knocked down at the conveience of the writer and not the story. "Show, don't tell" Mark Twain famously said and The Dark Knight breaks that rule many times over.

Its greatest fault is exposition. The first scene is a set-up, not for character but for character *naming*. By name, the Joker is mentioned several times over in the most blatantly awful way possible: several of his cronies rob a bank with dialouge in the following...

ROBBER #1: Boy, whats up with that clown looking guy that hired us?

ROBBER #2: The Joker? That make-up scares me!

ROBBER #3: Yeah, I hear he paints his face and his hair is green!

ROBBER #4: (Other room) Boy, I better not fuck with my boss, the Joker!

There is no need to know why these people work for him - they're wearing clown masks as they rob the bank. We get the connection before a word is spoken. One mention would have done, even an insinuation - not enough expository detail to make a police sketch out of.

However, the exposition of character motivation is even worse. Instead of leaving moral judgements to the audience to interperet, we're brow-beaten with huge, long scenes of talking as characters discuss things like crime, the nature of chaos and mythos with the same dry, literal sense of a Jane Austin novel. The last scene in the movie involves Batman being chased out of a Gotham building, through the city streets and into the "daylight" above. As far as symbolism goes, thats on the level of Superman / Jesus or Hal 9000 / Humanity. But then add to it a huge, long voice over by Jim Gordon, explaining to the audience the great sacrifices made by Batman to uphold a greater ideal of justice and personal commitment.

Another astonishing idiotic twist that was pulled out of the hat pretty frequently was the long winded "character motivation" essay. I assume Nolan realized too late that no one was doing anything with all this jumping around and fighting police officers, so instead of leaving the audience to think for themselves on any moral subject, he decided what you should think. To again quote Twain, this time about James Fennimore Cooper's novels - "Every time a Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a hundred other handier things to step on, but that wouldn't satisfy Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if he can't do it, go and borrow one." Nolan creates similar problems by attempting bad comedy through worse Greek Theater. BATMAN MUST MAKE A CHOICE IN A DEADLY GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE - WHICH PERSON WILL HE SAVE? Of course he saves the obvious one because that sets up the second half of the movie! Leave no stone unturned, eh Mr Nolan?

The shining example of this is the scene where Gordon is shot dead, brought back and then Batman's girlfriend is killed. You don't jerk your audience around like that; you can't kill someone, bring THEM back and then actually kill someone else. Thats BAD writing and creates a giant hole in terms of pacing. Stop fucking with your plot developments, Nolan.

Heath Ledger's performance is amazingly bland. I should note I never found him much of an actor but the talk about his role in this movie is beyond overblown. Half of it is his fault - theres no sense of character motivation nor is there any exposition toward such (though I'll give them credit for avoiding any origin explaination), so now we have this "crazy" running over half the movie.

Yes, the Joker introduces himself as "an agent of chaos". For a guy who's suppose to be chaotic, you sure do have a lot of elaborate set-ups. Isn't that contradictory? More over, it makes less sense since its never bothered to establish WHY hes this way. So we're left blowing in the breeze. More over, every set-up the Joker does is something I've seen already. Calling a pager to set off a bomb has been done how many times? Using knives to make repeated copycat attacks is from how many other movies? For someone that everyone talks about with the same breath as Academy Award, the character carries absolutely nothing at any point in the movie.

I enjoyed Batman Begins immensely, but this movie is a fucking awful mess made to pander first year college students between drinking games.

Who didn't love the 'white eyes' with Batman.