You're pretty brave for writing this. Professional critics who've given less-than-stellar reviews to TDK were surprised at the "insane" foulmouthed threats they received by the figurative truckload. Of course, you don't have nearly so wide an audience or so strong a perceived authority on movies.
I found years ago that several movies in the IMDb top 250, including some near the top, are too gritty for my taste. I also found with Memento and The Prestige that Nolan is big on antiheroes and philosophically disagreeable to me. I tend to respect his films more than I like them. That said, I think Batman Begins may be the best superhero movie ever and TDK comes close in its own way.
It helps that comic book readers have informed me of Batman's questionable mores. In the comic canon, the Joker has killed uncountable numbers, never spends long behind bars, and shows no signs of reforming. Because he's diagnosed with a mental illness, the courts cannot have him executed. Presumably, the police could legally shoot him in the midst of a would-be murder, but Batman, with his no-kill rule, prevents that from happening. The Penguin has declared that Batman is effectively the Joker's partner. Why does this happen? Because the Joker is too popular with readers to let go, as one fake death revealed. But clearly many readers are questioning Batman's hero status.
This may be in bad taste, but after the couple of times that the Joker indicated a codependent relationship between them, I thought of this: "I wish I knew how to quit you."
It might even be a good thing that Batman spared the Joker this time. After all, how else would he have learned about the Gordons' peril in time to save them?
The IMDb FAQ has several responses to the question of why Batman takes the fall for Dent in the end. Batman has learned that allying himself openly with the police puts other people at risk. Claiming to be a murderer -- in effect, to go by no hard and fast rules -- makes him scarier and less predictable to criminals. Perhaps most importantly, by keeping the chief prosecutor's name clear, he is preventing all the prosecuted criminals from being summarily released.
Actually, I've seen other reasons listed outside of IMDb. As a hero, the only thing Batman could inspire anyone to do was impersonate him, which he didn't appreciate. The idealized Dent, by contrast, gave people hope for a Gotham with a clean police department as well as clean streets. They won't lose all that hope just because he's dead; they might even try extra hard to see to it that he didn't die in vain. (I'm assuming he is, in fact, dead. There are rumors, stemming in part from the fall looking no farther than Moroni's.)
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I found years ago that several movies in the IMDb top 250, including some near the top, are too gritty for my taste. I also found with Memento and The Prestige that Nolan is big on antiheroes and philosophically disagreeable to me. I tend to respect his films more than I like them. That said, I think Batman Begins may be the best superhero movie ever and TDK comes close in its own way.
It helps that comic book readers have informed me of Batman's questionable mores. In the comic canon, the Joker has killed uncountable numbers, never spends long behind bars, and shows no signs of reforming. Because he's diagnosed with a mental illness, the courts cannot have him executed. Presumably, the police could legally shoot him in the midst of a would-be murder, but Batman, with his no-kill rule, prevents that from happening. The Penguin has declared that Batman is effectively the Joker's partner. Why does this happen? Because the Joker is too popular with readers to let go, as one fake death revealed. But clearly many readers are questioning Batman's hero status.
This may be in bad taste, but after the couple of times that the Joker indicated a codependent relationship between them, I thought of this: "I wish I knew how to quit you."
It might even be a good thing that Batman spared the Joker this time. After all, how else would he have learned about the Gordons' peril in time to save them?
The IMDb FAQ has several responses to the question of why Batman takes the fall for Dent in the end. Batman has learned that allying himself openly with the police puts other people at risk. Claiming to be a murderer -- in effect, to go by no hard and fast rules -- makes him scarier and less predictable to criminals. Perhaps most importantly, by keeping the chief prosecutor's name clear, he is preventing all the prosecuted criminals from being summarily released.
Actually, I've seen other reasons listed outside of IMDb. As a hero, the only thing Batman could inspire anyone to do was impersonate him, which he didn't appreciate. The idealized Dent, by contrast, gave people hope for a Gotham with a clean police department as well as clean streets. They won't lose all that hope just because he's dead; they might even try extra hard to see to it that he didn't die in vain. (I'm assuming he is, in fact, dead. There are rumors, stemming in part from the fall looking no farther than Moroni's.)