The Dark Knight

Batman is a peculiar character in comic-book mythology. Unlike most superheroes, he is merely a very well-trained fighting machine with nifty gadgets, a sort of James Bond in a suit. He has no superpowers, just a tragic backstory about a boy who saw his parents slaughtered by punks and grew up to be a playboy billionaire who moonlights as a bat.

Tim Burton more than a decade ago gave us his vision of Bruce Wayne/Batman, full of Gothic stylings and over-the-top acting by Jack Nicholson as The Joker. The movie was light and heavy at the same time, the idea that Bruce Wayne might be off his rocker lurking beneath.

But when Christopher Nolan got a hold of the Batman franchise (after director Joel Schumacher ruined it), he gave us less of the Batman and more of Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. Wayne became flesh, flawed yet noble as protagonists tend to be in tragedies.

Nolan gave us an imaginative reinvention of a beloved superhero. In The Dark Knight, he gives us so much more.

Much has been made about the performance of the late Heath Ledger as The Joker in this film. Some say it's Oscar-worthy. Others wonder if the praise is coming simply because Ledger died a young age.

Well, the performance is all that. Ledger's Joker is much scarier, more twisted and just plain creepier than Nicholson's 1989 version. The make-up is smeared, and The Joker licks his lips and talks in the skin-crawling voice of a man rotting from the inside out.

He is the perfect villain for the Batman. The Joker is an agent of chaos, a madman whose only purpose in life is to watch the world burn. In Burton's Batman, we know how The Joker got that smile. In Nolan's version, we're not quite sure. The Joker tells two different stories, both equally creepy. He is a villain allergic to rationality. He lives by his own twisted logic.

Batman is Gotham City's guardian. He wants to restore order. The Joker wants to blow it up. How does the good guy catch a criminal who revels in anarchy, who ups the ante at every chance?

What makes Nolan's recent venture into the Batman franchise is that this doesn't feel like a summer blockbuster. Yes, we have the elaborate action sequences that look authentic and not CGI'ed to death. We have kung-fu fighting (or whatever martial arts Batman uses in this film). We have romance. We have all the elements you want in a superhero movie.

But we have something more. We have a director interested in the spaces between black and white.

There are no easy answers in The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne wants to give up being Batman, let hard-charging DA Harvey Dent be the white knight, and maybe he can get his girl, Rachel Dawes back.

Life is never that easy, doesn't operate that way, and even though this is comic-book fantasy, it feels more than any recent super-hero movie like the real world.

Dent says this in the middle of the movie: "Either you die the hero or you live just long enough to become the villain."

That applies not only to Dent, who eventually becomes the scarred villain Two-Face, but to Batman himself. The idea of doing the greatest good for the greatest number is fully explored in this film. Batman is not Superman saving some damsel in distress, and The Joker isn't some villain with plans for world domination. As Alfred says, some men just want to see the world burn.

The Dark Knight lives up to 1/3rd of its title. This is one dark, near-depression levels super-hero movie. Not that there isn't fun. The Joker is a lot of fun. He's just not fun to be around. Neither is the Batman.

We have here a movie with layers, pulp with Shakespearean aspirations, a superhero who has both physical and psychic wounds that are not easily healed. And we have evil that is hard to defeat because it becomes bolder the more Batman fights it.

Heavy stuff for a summer blockbuster, indeed. Oh well, why so serious?