burton might have created a very stylised, artificial looking gotham but i liked the fact it still felt comic book-ish, not just any old action movie. the look of this and the last one isnt really very batman-ish. i suppose everyone has their own idea for how theyd like to see batman/gotham, but why would anyone want it to look standard or just like any other movie?

i dunno if this is the truest to the real spirit of the character (i think) like some people seem to think or not, but i think it takes itself much too seriously. far too earnest. maybe nolan trying to stay so 'true' to the character (as he and other comic book nerds see it anyway) is a reason for that, but i dont know if its made for better films.

i agree with a lot of this review, which is one of the few ive read so far that dont get all caught up in the hype/general consensus about its unquestionable greatness -
http://gentrystyle.com/2008/07/26/this-week-gentry-style-2/

The Film: The Dark Knight

With the slick and pleasantly dour Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan set the benchmark for the ‘serious’ comic book adaptation. It’s fair to say that this next instalment of the franchise is a little too earnest in parts, loading the cart that carries the rather shallow complexities of the narrative with a little more weight than necessary. That said, Nolan has forged a believably troubled Gotham and a Bruce Wayne / Batman with sincere emotion and motivation. Far too long and over complicated by the Harvey Dent / Two-Face subplot (a lacklustre teaser for the next movie, really), there are large swathes of the film that get bogged down in the well-trodden them-or-me superhero dilemma. However, Heath Ledger’s hideously goofy turn as The Joker ultimately makes this film a must-see. He is so wonderfully disturbed, so perfectly skewed and comically diffident. Ledger has remained the character to great effect and if this is remembered as his defining performance, then it’s one worthy of repeated viewing. Neither the prancing Caesar Romero and the prankster gangster Jack Nicholson ever really captured the demented torment of the character. Nolan’s film tells us less than Burton’s but shows us much more about the particular kind of lunatic he really is:

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id have liked the film to zero in more on the joker and batman cos all those subplots were all over the place imo. it was trying so hard to be weighty and serious, it ended up being complicated rather than complex. or both maybe.