30 day film challenge: Day 4

A film that starts with 'The'...

There are literally SO MANY films that start with The, Jesus could Cineworld have given me an easier one. I can't choose just one.

So I'm going to go with The Dark Knight.

Heath Ledger was the ULTIMATE villain and there will be no other Joker but him. Jared Leto was shocking in Suicide Squad and I'm glad he won't be returning. Ledger captured the spirit of what and who the Joker really was... a person who just wanted to watch the world burn.

But in the spirit of films starting with The... I also like THE Departed, THE Prestige, THE Lord of the Rings (all 3), THE Hobbit (also all 3) , THE Beach, THE Fighter, THE Devil's Own... to name but a few.

Going back to The Dark Knight, it's the best one of the three because Heath Ledger was just SO convincing and genuinely one of the scariest villains I've come across, which I think is the point.

But the film itself leaps beyond all expectations anyone had for it. It certainly exceeded my expectations after Batman Begins was so good. It just had everything. Great performances all round, fantastic direction, genius writing, an epic soundtrack and just a superior technical quality of the entire production that pushed it high above what Marvel had to offer at the time (and that's me saying that, the biggest Marvel fan of all time). I feel bad for the fact Batman Begins and The Dark Knight blazed such a tremendous trail, only to be followed up with flops like Suicide Squad and Justice League.

But what I love is that it isn't just a simple good vs evil tale either... Batman is good, yeah, and the Joker is wholly evil, yeah, but Batman isn't the hero. He's still not trusted. He's feared. And he has Gotham in an uproar, calling him a vigilante, blaming him for the death of policemen and others. But the Joker... The Joker is there to pose even a moral dilemma for even the baddest of Batman's foes. Bad guys fear him. And by the end, the whole moral foundation of what Batman stands for, and his legend, are threatened to the point where Batman and Bruce Wayne go into hiding...

Christian Bale is the Batman of my generation, just as Heath Ledger is the Joker of my generation. And although Joker - Todd Phillips' dark and depressing back story into how the Joker became the Joker - was frickin' incredible and won big at the Oscars all around, Heath Ledger will always be the reason The Dark Knight will categorically be my favourite... and no one will ever convince me otherwise.