At that time in 2008 when "The Dark Knight" came out, it may have topped expectations after the 2005 prequel "Batman Begins". Undoubtably TDK was a major success at the box office. The opening weekend in the USA alone grossed $158,411,483 on 20 July 2008. But in retrospect I find it lacks of a good storyline. If you watch both films subsquently like I did you should look for the differences.

In TDK there is no reference whatsoever about Batman's past and his father issues or his pain about the loss of his parents. The second Batman film of director Christopher Nolan is set only one year after the first one and completely oversees the complicated ties of the fabulous origin. In fact actor Christian Bale doesn't get to present himself at all. He is pushed in the background while everyone else takes over. All that is left is a shadow of his original character with a deeper and raspier voice.

While Michael Caine still has a major role it is Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart who take the lead and both bring very interesting characters to the board. Ledger's performance is one of the greatest moments in DC cinema history and that is the result of his immersive preparation for the role. Aaron Eckhart is to play the "White Knight", as the Joker calls him, and is yet destined to become someone else...

The way the Joker assembles his team of professional terrorists is unexplained. The audience is only blinded by the sound & light of many explosions and before you wonder how all this could happen there is the next action scene to keep you from second-guessing. The story gets insanely ridiculous and can only be described as a paraody of the first film. A comic book in that fashion would have been entertaining but it didn't convince me on film.

Another disappointing sequence of events are the new gimmicks of Batman. While he doesn't hesitate to crash most of his vehicles we get introduced to a futuristic spyware that even Mr. Fox denies to use. Christian Bale moves slowly in fight scenes and obviously they shot it in the dark to cover bad choreography. It's like they saved all the budget for big scale explosions instead of a good story!

There is one mentionable dilemma worth discussing. The Joker brings a new element of randomness into the game. Also he likes to question integrity and thus cleverly plays a game to fool everyone. Other than that this movie feels like watching Matrix II after the first one. It just doesn't catch up. Not even in two and a half hours.