The new Batman franchise revived by Cristopher Nolan into a more grown-up alternative to the old very cartoon-like Batman movies of yore has quite simply just worked. It all worked. I do have a few criticisms though of the recent incarnation “The Dark Knight”… I think the Joker was a little bit too serious. Heath Ledger played the part brilliantly, but no doubt it was a dramatic move away from how the Joker was always portrayed in the comics, cartoons and even the previous movies and the twist in terms of the Jokers deformed smile was very interesting. It would be cool for Nolan, in other incarnations of the Batman series, to provide a look into the history of The Joker and his exploits in Gotham.

The change, however, is welcome. Something like this should’ve happened ages ago, since the comics themselves have been regenerated to fit a more mature audience in terms of content. I have to admit though, that even though the previous Batman movies were below par, the Riddler played by Jim Carrey would fit really well into the current Batman Begins and The Dark Knight movies. I’ve already seen rumours that Johnny Depp is being cast as the next Riddler… a move which should be very interesting, given Depp’s performance with odd-ball characters like Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.

The introduction of Two-Face was brilliant and the tie-in with Dent’s previous experience as an Internal Affairs agent was very ingenious. The new bat-mobile wasn’t a re-engineering of sorts, but rather made to fit into the story rather than previous attempts which gave him a new car every time a new version of Batman came about. This new series of Batman movies have made all previous versions look extremely childish and made all those big Hollywood stars who took the place of Batman and his nemeses look like idiots. Good show!