Why so serious indeed?

I have seen Dark Knight, and I was impressed. I think it is probably the best Batman movie ever made (though, to be fair, Adam West was in a class of his own...what that class is, I'm not sure. But I digress)(one of my true talents). It is not perfect, but we will have to see what the next Batman movie will be before I am willing to say that my biggest complaint is actually a complaint. Also, I can't say what it is specifically because it involves the end of the movie and I don't want to ruin anything for anyone who has not seen it. Something else that kind of bugged me occurred during a scene where Batman is driving his motorcycle thing (which was REALLY cool). It seemed like they cut out some footage from the ride. I know that they couldn't do the whole thing (he had to drive all the way across town and they weren't going to show the whole ride), but the parts that were missing felt a bit jarring to me. It is as though they either should have cut away from him riding on the bike to someone else in the movie for a moment, or that they forgot a bit to show how he got from the previous cut to here. It was not a major thing and I bet no one else will notice or even know what I am talking about, but I did notice.
However, that is a minor complaint. All in all, it was a fantastic movie. It is very dark, appropriately, and packed full of fun explosions, fights, and an interesting scene with a pencil.
Heath Ledger's Joker is much better than Jack Nicholson's Joker. I've always felt that the reason the Joker was such a dangerous villain was because he was completely off his rocker. In all of comicdom (ooh, nice word Darrell) there is no villain as meaninglessly insane as him. He does not want money or power or anything. He just wants chaos and destruction and explosions. Heath Ledger actually made me feel creeped out most of the time he was on screen. I never wanted to laugh because he was so goofy, though I did laugh at times because he was amusing.
Interestingly, at www.imdb.com, this movie is, as of Saturday night, rated their number one movie of all time, based on viewer votes. I'm not sure exactly how you can vote, I think you have to register or something, and I never have, but I do know it is based on viewer votes, not on the opinions of film critics like most top # movie lists. It has an average rating of 9.7 out of 10 from over 20,000 votes. Now, you know me, and you know that I am not one to follow hype (and in fact I tend to roll my eyes and ignore hype. I still haven't read Harry Potter, and I've only seen two of the movies...and not the first one), but I don't have any argument with the ratings. I want to see it again a time or two more. Most movies, I find, don't really show me their full impact unless I see it more than once. That is when I feel able to fully give an opinion. That being said, even after just one viewing, Dark Knight was a very good movie.