10 Reasons The Dark Knight Is Still The Best Comic-Book Movie Ever

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.