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

6. It Transcends The Genre

batman joker
Warner Bros.

Comic-book movies, as entertaining as they can be, come packing quite a few expectations and cliches. There's usually a world-ending threat in the third act, there'll be an after-credits scene, the action will be tame with little to no blood, and the story will be simple enough for youngsters - whom all the tie-in merchandise is aimed at - to enjoy.

These expectations can cause the films to be rather predictable, trapped within the very genre they're trying to represent. Comic-book movies are written as comic-book movies, and that means they're limited in what they can do. The Dark Knight was able to smartly dodge this effect by making all the 'comic-book elements' - the costumes, the character names, the gadgets - stylistic elements, rather than story elements.

As a result, it isn't just a comic-book movie - it's a crime drama, it's a thriller, and it's an action-adventure. Because it wasn't definitively linked to one genre, all the tropes associated with that genre vanished. Director Christopher Nolan hasn't been coy about the influence that 1995's Heat had on his film, and you can truly see it - The Dark Knight isn't a solid Batman movie, it's a solid movie with Batman in it.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!