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

3. The Use Of Music To Define Character

It's not often we get a truly memorable score in a comic-book film. Because these movies are all interconnected nowadays, a lot of the same music is used and it all starts to blur together. The Dark Knight's composers Hans Zimmer and James Newton-Howard did something very different with their score, however. They started making it before they'd seen a single frame of the film, and that meant The Dark Knight's characters were completely defined by their sound.

The Joker's - a raw, uncompromising, razor-sharp string note - raised the hairs on the back of your neck, even when he wasn't on-screen. It reminded you that he was a force of nature, that he was relentless, and that he could be around every corner. Elsewhere, Batman's bombastic, thundering drums plowed through a scene, drowning out any other noise unfortunate enough to get in its way.

Very rarely does music provide an accurate auditory representation of a character, and what's more, these two sounds are literally polar opposites - just as Batman and Joker are in the movie. It was a clever parallel, and it meant that story permeated every aspect of the film; even its score.