Movie Review of the Dark Knight ---- Christian Bale Returns with Heath Ledger as the Joker

The excitement level for The Dark Knight had just about reached a fever-pitch when it finally made it to theaters, and midnight showings were placed on the schedule all around the country. Picking up where Batman Begins left off, this is the continuing re-birth of the franchise, through the eyes of Director Christopher Nolan. Taking the franchise to a different place than prior directors, he helped re-create the franchise, and indeed make it relevant again to movie-goers. With Christian Bale cast as the new Batman, the story was able to take a much darker approach than the cartoon versions of the character that Joel Schumacher almost ruined the whole franchise with. After dealing with a host of bad-guys in the first film, Batman returns to face off with The Joker in The Dark Knight.

The film starts off much as you would expect, with Batman going up against some bad guys, but evolves into much more than that, as the plot really starts to unfold. Though the mob is striking back against Batman's attempts to put them down, there are some criminals on the street that are really going to test Batman's resolve and methods as he tries to do battle with them. Led by The Joker, they are taking crime to a new level, and with it comes violence and deaths of the innocent. Gone is the laughable character that we have seen in the past, and in his place is a psychopathic mad man that would rather see the world burn than anything else. How do you stop a man that wants to destroy everything? It's not going to be easy.