This is the future of Cinema. A lot of over the top special effects, lots of violence with a mediocre story at best. A world where special effects and action have now taken precedence over story. I do not know how people can see movies like this one now a days and think they are exceptional. The first of Bale's portrayal of Batman, I thought, was very good. Of course their was some violence and some special effects, but it had a very good story and good character development. This second in the Batman series was nothing but a lot of ridiculous special effects, ridiculous occurrences and a lousy story, full of plot holes, with hardly any real dialog and character development. I could not believe how many times everyone, including Batman, seems to let the joker get away and nobody seems to take him as any sort of a threat. He just keeps getting away over and over again and Batman never thinks to put him into submission when he catches him. Also the thought that Joker could all of a sudden be a criminal mastermind and setup some of the most unbelievable moments in the movie was absurd. I'd also like to know how in the world Commissioner Gordon knew that he would be able to jump in front of Harvey Dent, save his life and have the foresight to fake his death after the fact to get to the Joker. RIDICULOUS!!!!! Another stupid scene was with the 3 ships that were each given a detonator that would blow up the other ship and save themselves. I think everyone with any common sense would just chunk it over the side and assume that someone on the other boats would have the intelligence to do the same. Another thing I found to be far fetched was the whole using of the cell phones as sonar devices. That was so far fetched it insulted my intelligence, as many moments in this movie did. Also the ending stunk. Why in the world would Batman take the blame for Harvey's death when he and Gordon could just say that some of the Jokers men killed him which would have solved the issue. Such a pathetic ending to a lousy movie. I only wish that Hollywood would focus on making good action movies with a 80 percent focus on story instead of a 90 percent focus on special effects that they seem to be shooting for nowadays. You might be able to win over the mind of a teenager who grew up in our video game obsessed society but you won't win over someone like myself who grew up watching classic movies like Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Back to the Future, etc. that didn't rely on special effects to win the audience over but relied on great stories that really drew you into the movie and made you care about the characters and what happens to them. Sorry to say, I didn't care a lick about any of the characters in the Dark Knight or what happened to them.