We went to see The Dark Knight on Friday, but I was too lazy to write about it until this morning, mainly because I watched Dr. Horrible several times in a row, and I was so gorged on Whedon that I couldn’t function. And I was going to talk about Dr. Horrible, the blog sensation that broke the Internet, but I figure everyone else already is, and we all know it’s awesome, so why preach to the choir?

Now, if you haven’t seen the movie, and you don’t want to be spoiled, you probably shouldn’t read on, because I am going to talk about some of the key plot things that happened, and you might want to watch those unfold on your own. I just thought I would warn you.

Basically, I don’t know a lot about the Batman mythology, so I go to the Batman movies because I like fast cars and things that explode. I happened to rather like The Dark Knight, as did many of my companions, and we stood around outside the movie theatre talking about it for a good 45 minutes afterwards, which I think says something.

As someone pointed out, the movie isn’t really about Batman. He’s more like “the gun that everyone uses,” as Petey put it. It’s about the fall of Harvey, and that’s what made it great, was the exploration of how far someone needs to be pushed to fall. It’s something I muse over a lot, so it’s a theme I like to see played with. To see Harvey go from a force for righteousness to, uhm, a bad guy, was basically awesome.

I also love, love, LOVED that they killed the girl. Not just because every time I see her, I think of Secretary, but because it was so right for the movie, because it also becomes an exploration of the fall of Batman, and his ultimate decision to fall on the sword, now that he has lost everything. It just needed to happen, so I’m glad it did.

It was a dark, fast-paced movie with a lot of stuff going on. Heath Ledger as the Joker was fucking brilliant, and I don’t just say that to idolize the dead, because he was just that good. As Baxt said, the scene where the Joker is in the semi and he says “hmmm,” while he’s trying to figure out what to do…that was awesome. As was the freaky tongue thing he did. He inhabited the character in a way that I don’t think the other actors did, and he really did become an agent of chaos and evil. Nicely done.

I know that reviewer responses were mixed, but that’s usually how it goes. I liked it, and that’s what matters, to me anyway.