I guess I liked the movie a lot more than you did. I liked that they finally came up with a credible origin story for The Joker. I liked that they turned him from a ninny prankster into a totally amoral psychopath whose only motivation is chaos and destruction. I liked the moral ambiguity of Batman and the clever double bind sort of situations the Joker placed him into. I think it's OK that they preserved Harvey Dent's public image (and yes, I think he's dead, he did his villain turn in this movie). I want to see this movie again, although I'll probably wait for the DVD to come out - I was thinking of going to the Imax version, which was too hard to get into at the time. I do think it is the sort of movie that takes more than one viewing to fully appreciate.

Who knows, after a second viewing maybe my enthusiasm for it will fade a bit, but I don't think so. However, I do think that the current superhero movie phenomenon in general says something about us as a society. I lack the anthropological and psychological vocabulary to express it, but I don't think it is particularly flattering. Or maybe Hollywood just tapped out every other source of ideas.