25 Greatest Warner Bros Movies Ever
2. The Dark Knight
Is this the greatest ever comic book movie ever made? No, but only because of semantics. The Dark Knight is not a comic book movie: it is a grounded, realistic action movie starring a hero, villains, and all characters who originally appeared on the pages of comic books. But Christopher Nolan set out in the Dark Knight trilogy to unpick what the comic book movie genre had become and to make something on his terms that would sit elsewhere on the genre Venn diagram.
Even with more otherworldly characters like Batman, the Joker and Two Face, Nolan's realism works beautifully. The stakes feel higher, the emotional wounds more real and the grotesque elements more pronounced and more affecting.
The film also isn't about plot so much as it is about characters exploding off each other: obviously the framework matters, but the greatest pleasure is found in watching Heath Ledger's dog chasing cars and throwing grenades, while everything around him - including entire paradigms like morality shift to try and deal with him.