EMPIRE: Top 50 Sequels

An incredible movie. I don't need to waste time telling you why I loved it; chances are I loved it for the same reasons that you loved it. I just wanted to wax political for a moment, and present to you the idea that the main conflict within "The Dark Knight" is actually a pretty strong allegory for the War on Terror. Think about it. George W. Bush is Batman. He uses sometimes questionable tactics to protect his turf from the mad, chaotic threat of the Joker, who represents Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda ("some people just want to watch the world burn"). In the end, the people turn on Batman, and he is forced to wear the mantle of the bad guy in order to allow for the worship of Harvey Dent. Dent, for his part, represents Barack Obama; although Obama is as corrupt and as fallible as the next politician, he gives the people hope for a better world. Personally, I think Obama is a douche, but I guess he's America's "white knight" of the moment, while George Bush flees into the night as the "dark knight", at least able to take solace in the fact that he protected America in the ways that counted most.

This film is decent, but there are a number of problems with it, not the least of which is the amnesia-inducing kiss at the end.

It's a good movie, but it's also an over-the-top dose of Tim Burton's scarred and twisted style. Parts of it skew just too far to the dark side; you can see Burton's demented signature in everything. Like the dreadful "Batman & Robin", "Batman Returns" is guilty of excess, albeit in an entirely opposite direction (the Penguin is born a deformed monster whose parents throw him into a river; his evil scheme involves kidnapping and murdering the children of Gotham City; Catwoman takes multiple bullets from Christopher Walken's character before electrocuting him with a taser-powered kiss). One gets the feeling that, after the overwhelming (and well-deserved) success of Burton's first Batman movie, Warner Bros. allowed him more artistic expression with the sequel. But, as I said, it's not a bad movie. It's fun, with several particularly good bits, and is certainly better than either of Joel Schumacher's efforts.

The only one of the three Spider-Man movies I would rank above mediocrity. It's by no means free of the groan-inducing cheese and cliche that infects the entire trilogy, but the movie's better elements manage to make up for that.