My reactions to The Dark Knight

So I'm going to have to agree with everyone else and say that the The Dark Knight is AMAZING. I went to see it on Friday night, and although I don't go to the cinema all that often, it has to be one of the best new films I've seen in years.

I'd been hearing very good things about it from all my friends, but I still entered the cinema with a degree of scepticism. By the end of the film though, I had no doubt in my mind that The Dark Knight is a top quality film, setting itself apart from all the other action movie and blockbuster trash that's being made these days. The other day I was trying to come up with a recent 'great' movie and couldn't really think of one, but after seeing The Dark Knight, I believe it is such a film, one that will go down as an important film of our time.

There are a few different sub-plots and themes involved, but the main storyline focuses on the battle between the Joker and Batman, the Joker committing numerous murders in an attempt to force Batman to step down as Gotham City's crime fighting vigilante. And the Joker was the best part of the film for me - a thoroughly interesting character, with methods and schemes that are always really intriguing and unpredictable, almost turning being a criminal into an art form. His plans eventually come to involve the whole population of Gotham too, creating massive, involving moral dilemmas, and really getting you thinking.

Heath Ledger's Joker is a different character to the one played by Jack Nicholson in the 1989 Batman. He's less off-the-wall crazy, and more powerfully evil, but surprisingly, you find yourself empathising with him at times. And I found it interesting that during the film the Joker basically admits he has no real reason for doing what he's doing, other than to cause general anarchy and mayhem, which I appreciated, as it made the film seem more 'real'. Instead of just presenting him as a comic book super-villain, the Joker did actually feel grounded in reality, as did the rest of the film; whereas some other comic book movies struggle to fully integrate their characters into the real world, I found The Dark Knight did this very well.

There are a couple of awesome scenes from the film which stick out in my mind, but the most memorable is one where the Joker is skipping away from a hospital which is about to blow up in a nurse's uniform. It's darkly funny and striking, and I bet it'll become one of those iconic film scenes in years to come.

And I think I'll end there. I won't talk about the rest of the story, as I'd probably give too much away for anyone who hasn't seen this yet, and you DO need to see this. I've heard there's going to be another sequel too, which I'm already looking forward to.