I saw The Dark Knight on Friday night with some friends.  It was a very strong movie with a very good script.  Because my friends arrived at different times, we had trouble finding seats and had to sit way up in the second row.  Normally I would find this to be totally annoying, but I was so immersed in the movie that I didn't really pay attention to the terrible viewing location.  For me, The Dark Knight was that good.  I liked how the movie avoided having many standard features of comic book superhero movies.  Batman was presented in a realistic setting.  There were no doomsday weapons or malevolent villains trying to take over the world.  

The script was very dark, brooding, and in many ways somber.  The story had Batman struggling with many moral dilemmas.  It dealt a lot with corruption and how it can bring down good men.  Batman, Jim Gordon, and Harvey Dent form an alliance to clean out crime in Gotham City but it takes a severe toll on all of them.  In the movie, the Joker is very good at taking advantage of people's most basic fears and insecurities, swaying their opinions, and undermining the effectiveness of the city government.  He has Batman, the city officials, and the entire police department running around in circles.  One thing that immediately struck me was that the movie's themes actually didn't feel forced or contrived, but instead felt very well developed.  The Dark Knight may be "just a movie", but it does make me think about how society and civil order can fall apart very quickly. 

The movie was well acted by everyone.  Christian Bale is awesome as Batman and Bruce Wayne.  You get  excited whenever you see Batman cut loose and crush bad guys, the more brutally the better.  It's also nice to see Lucius Fox featured as an important character in this movie series, and Morgan Freeman makes him entertaining to watch.  Heath Ledger's interpretation of the Joker is terrific, very different from past interpretations of the character.  The Joker is usually done as either a clownish campy villain or an outright psychopath.  The Joker from Batman: The Animated Series was a very good blend of the various versions of the character.  On the other hand, Heath Ledger's Joker is more subtle.   He is manipulative and knows how to really really hurt people.  He also has a lot of neat quirks, like talking about his own origin differently every time, licking the scars around his mouth, and the way he generally talks.  The knife scenes are really unnerving to watch.  

The Dark Knight is easily one of the best movies based from a comic book and a great movie in general.  It has a substantive mature storyline and presents Batman in a realistic way.