I saw The Dark Knight at the midnight showing last night and have to say....I am freaking dragging this morning.
After watching the coming attractions(which included a 30 second, not too much detail trailer of the next Terminator movie), watching the movie for an hour and 45 minutes, at which point the theatre had a malfunction and the movie got stuck for about 10-15 minutes, had the air conditioning go out in the theatre, and then watched the rest of the last 45 minutes of the film while sweating to death and then drove home, ...I'm really tired.
The film itself was an excellent story with some pretty predictable twists and turns but entertaining, for a total of 2 hours. Unfortunately the film was 2 1/2 hours long. It was just too long and for periods lost my attention because it was too long.
ATTENTION: Spoilers coming go back if you don't want to know!!
The whole Batman having a massive spying computer was not necessary to good storytelling and the entire two ships on the harbor, let's see who blows up who, stunk. Just boring stuff that didn't need to be in the movie in order to just turn Harvey into Two-Face.
I do have to give credit that Heath Ledger and Christian Bale did not disappoint. There's something about that Joker role that brings out the best in actors, or maybe the worst, and Ledger was brilliant. Sociopathic, psychotic, intelligent, humorous, and entertaining to watch all roled up into a single package. Bale is also the best Batman ever and was great once again.
Ledger's walking out of Gotham General Hospital in a white nurse's dress, makeup, and playing with the malfunctioning explosive switch was unbelievably funny. He also had some typical Schwarzenagger one liners that were of the charts. My favorite was "You won't kill me because you can't and I won't kill you because you're too much fun." Excellent.
Couple of last points.
They didn't bring Katie Holmes back and Maggie Gyllenhall is without a doubt one of the most unglamourous, ugly actresses in Hollywood. And it showed. She was worse than Holmes was in Batman Begins and parts of the theatre kinda cheered when they killed her off.
Two-Face's make-up job was unreal.
I thought another great comedic spot in the film was when a Wayne Industries employee discovers who Batman is and goes to Fox demanding $10 million a year for the rest of his life. Fox retorts with "It is your belief that the owner of this company, a billionaire playboy, is an outlaw vigillante who enjoys going out at night and beating up deadly criminals with his bare hands and it is your desire to blackmail him? Let me know how that works out for you." Or something to that effect.
Overall 4 stars out of five. Kill 20-25 minutes with good editting and a script change or two and it was 5 stars out of 5.