10 Reasons The Dark Knight Is Still The Best Comic-Book Movie Ever
Batfleck can't dethrone Bale.
2016 is just about nine months old, and we've already had no less than five huge comic-book movies slapped on the big screen, with a sixth - Doctor Strange - still to go. Nowadays, they're the most prevalent type of blockbuster your hard-earned cash can buy, and that means there are dozens of contenders looking to sit atop the pile.
But, as many critics, online pundits and random people in the street will tell you, there's one movie that's been sitting atop that pile for 8 years - The Dark Knight. In fact, it was so universally acclaimed that it forced the Academy to change the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten, with a lot of people angry that the Bat-sequel didn't receive a nod.
The reason for that anger? The Dark Knight is a fantastic movie. It may have missed the golden age of comic-book adaptations that we find ourselves in now, but there's a reason for that - it's the one that started it.
The past 8 years have brought us many superb movies, from The Avengers to X-Men: Days Of Future Past - but here are ten reasons why Batman's still the best of the bunch...
10. It Took Sensible Liberties With The Source Material
When you're directing an adaptation, do you have to religiously obey the source material? It's a question that has baffled many a comic-book filmmaker, if certain evidence is any indication. The answer is no - not religiously anyway - but you do have to keep the characters intact in such a way that they mesh with the feel of the movie while retaining their essence.
Unfortunately, this mantra has been ignored numerous times over the years - Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor wasn't really Lex Luthor, and Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer's Galactus wasn't a world-crushing cosmic entity, he was... a cloud. The Dark Knight, on the other hand, did what any sensible adaptation would do - it cherry-picked the most suitable elements of its source material and tweaked them to fit the tone and world of the movie.
The Joker and Batman were undisputedly those characters, but they were altered just enough that they fit perfectly into this version of Gotham. Director Christopher Nolan made necessary changes to the characters, not unnecessary ones like Eisenberg or Galactus. As a result, it worked well as an adaptation, but it didn't sacrifice its own vision to accommodate the comic-books on which it was based.