To preface, to say something is overrated is not to say that it sucks. There’s an important distinction there.
After what we had in the late 80’s and into the 90’s with the Batman franchise, I was definitely a very big fan of what Christopher Nolan did with Batman Begins. It gave us the character in a modern, grounded but engaging way that had some nice twists and turns along the way as it provided an origin story for the new world. So when Nolan came back for a sequel, a first for him of course, what we got was something that was an unfortunate perfect storm of events due to the death of Heath Ledger. The teasers, the marketing, the performances, all of it is spot on and definitely the kind of interpretation you want for them.
I really do enjoy the film.
But the praise heaped upon it is just far too much when you get down to it. There are some terrible turns that things take where you have Bruce looking to quit as quickly as possible because one DA could take over for him and protect the city. You get the awkward sorta-kinda romantic triangle issue coming into play. You get the double villain aspect which always stretches things for films like this because it turns one of them into the A player and the other into the B player and one or both end up coming up short.
Both could have been spot on for their own films as primary villains with some good exploration of their character, motivation and the different kinds of madness that the Joker and Two-Face represent, which in turn holds a distorted mirror up to Bruce as well with his own madness that he express as he does.
But labeling it as the best of the comic book movies out there is just cringe worthy, since it should have been shorter and more focused, a tighter mix of events and storytelling.
But at least we didn’t have the Joker taking down the Batwing with a single shot.
