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On a summer night in 1989 I walked out of a theatre in Fredericton in a very bad mood. I had just finished watching Tim Burton's gothic live-action cartoon version of Batman. It was a joke of a movie and a lousy vision of the Batman legend.

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It was clear Burton had little understanding of the Batman character, that his goal was to take the public's perception of the character and turn it upside down, offering his "unique" vision of The Dark Knight.

The Batman movies to follow weren't much better and the less said about Batman and Robin the better.

It wasn't until 2005 and Batman Begins, with Christopher Nolan directing and Christian Bale in the lead role, that we finally got a worthy live action version of Batman.

The sequel, The Dark Knight, opened this weekend, taking in a very deserving $155 million at the North American box office. I saw it twice. Yeah, it is that good.

Forget this being a great superhero movie, it is a great movie — period.

First something must be said for how the film looks. At a time when directors are using CGI to create entire worlds, Nolan shoots on location, turning Chicago into Gotham with real life landmarks clearly visible. When you see Bale standing on the roof of a building, he's really on the roof of a building, not on a studio lot in front of a green screen. It looks real because it is.

All of the buzz going into the movie was about the late Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker. The buzz was worth it. Ledger is amazing. He is the best Joker to ever grace the big or small screen. It's clear in watching it that his is the Joker of Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke. He is demented and insane but also clever and focused. He even provides multiple accounts of how he received his scars (In The Killing Joke the Joker says "Sometimes I remember it one way, sometimes another... If I'm going to have a past, I prefer it to be multiple choice!")

But despite all the talk of Ledger's Joker this is a movie about three men: Batman, Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon. The Joker is the chaos that enters the lives of these men, turning their worlds on end, taking from them, hurting them. It is about how these men deal with that adversity, about how they rise to meet the challenge. Do they stand their ground and do the right thing? Do they crack? What are they made of? That theme extends to the city of Gotham itself, but the focus is these three characters.

The Joker wants to show the world that when push comes to shove, when their lives are threatened, human society will simply break down. He wants to show that without the safety of the police and the health care system, without assurances they will be safe, people will turn on each other, will show their true colours. With these three men, Gotham's heroes, he wants to show how good people can be corrupted. He wants to tear down the symbols that build people up.

Some people do falter — most do not. It is the same with Batman, Dent and Gordon. Anyone who knows the comics knows Dent becomes Two-Face. He falls, Batman and Gordon suffer and endure.

While much of the focus of this film is Ledger, Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon is spot on. He is perfect in the role and gives an award worthy performance. There are times watching this film I wished Nolan would would bring the comic Gotham Central, the award winning series about the Gotham Police Force, to the big screen with Oldman in the lead.

This is not a shiny superhero flick like we've all gotten used to seeing. It's a dark tragic tale and in the end, the bad guy wins.

Go see it

So if you haven't seen The Dark Knight stop reading this and go buy a ticket. Now, People! In the meantime I'm always available at mclaughlin.darcey@miramichileader.com.