DARK KNIGHT review

This is a movie about a guy in a bat costume who fights a guy who wears clown make-up. I find this movie highly overrated. USA Today gave it four stars. FOUR STARS? Are you kidding me? A four-star review should be for ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST or GOODFELLAS. Not for a movie that is essentially a two-and-a-half hour fight scene.
There has never been a super-hero movie that was as good as or better than the comics it is based on. I think Alan Moore is right when he says that comics are comics and movies are movies, and comic book fans don't need to see their favorite super-heroes "validated" by putting them in big-budget movies.
While it can be interesting to see how the special effects department translates the hero's super-powers to the big screen, I have never seen a super-hero movie where the plot warranted a two-hour (or more) running time.
There is a story running in the Batman comics currently, entitled "Batman R.I.P." The story is written by Grant Morrison, and it involves the Joker unleashing his greatest plot yet against the Batman. It is better than anything I saw in THE DARK KNIGHT.
The DARK KNIGHT movie is too long by at least 30 minutes. As in all super-hero movies, there is no real plot, just a villain causing random chaos and an anguished hero trying to stop him. There is a lot of talk in this movie, and you keep waiting for it to end, but there is one false climax after another. There is one surprising death of a major character, but other than that, the movie has nothing we haven't seen before. The movie follows the premise of the graphic novel The Killing Joke, that Batman and the Joker need each other, that each one would be lost without the other. Christian Bale plays Batman with an annoying raspy voice. Ever since Michael Keaton first donned the bat-mask back in 1989, actors have been doing that hoarse whisper for Batman's voice, and it has always bothered me. A hero should have a voice that is confident and strong, not a whisper.
Maggie Gyllenhall replaces Katie Holmes as the love interest, Rachel Dawes. Gyllenhall bears an uncanny resemblance to a less-good-looking version of Katie Holmes, but ultimately, Gyllenhall is not pretty enough to be the love interest in this movie. She just does not look like the type of comic book heroine that two men would fight over.
Heath Ledger is very good as the Joker – much better than Jack Nicholson hamming it up in the '89 movie. Ledger does a good job conveying the creepiness and sense of menace of the Joker. A couple of times he even laughs just like Caesar Romero from the Batman TV series. I just wish Ledger had a better script to work with.
Maybe I am missing something, but I really didn't see anything in the DARK KNIGHT that impressed me. It is marginally better than BATMAN BEGINS, only because the JOKER is a better villain than the SCARECROW. I guess the one good thing you can say about the new series of BATMAN movies is that they no longer kill off all their best villains at the end of every movie.
To me, the best comic book movies are not the ones adapted from the comic books, but the ones that are inspired by them. I would say the best comic book movies are ROBOCOP, TERMINATOR 2, and ALIENS. Those are movies that have just the right blend of action, originality and humor, with characters that you care about.
I am a lifelong comic book fan, but I actually wish Hollywood would stop spending so much money on super-hero movies and go back to making real movies again.