Look, I thought The Dark Knight had a lot of strong selling points: Combine a deft pace with thoughtful characterizations and a whopping IMAX design that turns the entire experience into a plot-driven theme park ride, and you've got one hefty dose of Batman adrenaline.

Still, comparisons to The Godfather Part II notwithstanding, The Dark Knight isn't foolproof -- in fact, no single movie in history is foolproof. The subjective experience of movie watching ensures that nothing can be universally liked by everyone, and rules of civility insist that humanity respect that truism. It's acceptable to feel passionately about a great work of art, and defend that perspective with rigorous argumentation, but much of the outrage over the minority perspective that The Dark Knight isn't any good has made such practical thinking impossible.

Deemed the first critic to pan the movie, New York's David Edelstein went out of his way to list the allegations against him sent along by various Batman fans. The House Next Door editor Keith Uhlich, meanwhile, fielded over a hundred rants in the comments section following his astute critique of director Christopher Nolan's questionable portrayals of violence. What's particularly shocking about this frightful deluge of negative responses is that many of these people began posting their disapproval before they even saw the movie.

There are many ways to anticipate The Dark Knight. You can assemble a fake plot out of the numerous clips circulating the web, you can stitch together adorable bat-toys, or just rewatch Christopher Nolan's first entry in the Batman franchise. However, there's a lot more to this sprawling, nearly three hour rush of furious confrontations and haunting corruption. The greatest Batman stories emphasize the character's shadowy nature, and Nolan pulls from many of them to create the intensely moody aura of the latest film. You don't need to know anything about the character to enjoy the movie, but it certainly expands the experience to do some research -- and allows for a greater appreciation of the filmmaker's efforts to honor the nature of the character.

Here's a look at some antecedents to the current interpretation from the last two decades.

We've already asked who your favorite Batman is (and Christian Bale is still winning that sucker by a mile), so now it's only right that we take a look back at all the Batman trailers to decide which one we like best. Watching some of these brought back good (ah, Keaton ...) and bad (Batman & Robin trailer = yikes!) memories, but I believe they are all required viewing before taking in a screening of The Dark Knight. Below, we've compiled all the live-action, big-screen Batman trailers (and Catwoman!) for you to sift through in one window. Check them out, then head after the jump to participate in our poll. Sound off Bat-geeks!

I was recently enjoying a fast-food lunch with my old friend Josh, and we were discussing the film we'd just seen. (A little something called The Dark Knight.) And in the middle of my ramblings I accidentally said something slightly insightful. It went a little something like this: "The thing about superheroes is that, on the outside, what with the costumes and the nifty gizmos and all the punching, they're kids stuff, which is great. But once you scratch the surface just a little bit, you're dealing with acres of subtext that kids can barely comprehend."

And then Josh asked me what my point was. It's this: We finally have some filmmakers who aren't afraid to handle superhero movies for grown-ups. I'd hardly call Hancock a family-type flick, both of the recent Marvel movies (Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk) managed to treat their "older" audiences with respect, last weekend's Hellboy 2 is chock-full of dazzling ideas, and now this: The Dark Knight. Dang. My review will arrive later this week, but I won't be the only one calling it the Godfather 2 of superhero movies. (In a lot of ways it's also a bit like The Empire Strikes Back! Tonally, anyway.) Best of all, the movie is a big meaty DRAMA, and I don't mean "drama" as in "masterpiece theater."

The pop-culture appetite for Batman seems inexhaustible; thousands of comic books, several movies, endless animated iterations, some of which are quite good and some of which are rather bad. Is there any real need to return to the character beyond the profit motive, though? After the financial and critical success of Batman Begins, the powers-that-be behind The Dark Knight could have made a safe bet of a sequel; a little more action, a few more actors, more of the same and a few extra explosions.

What's telling about The Dark Knight, though, is how risky it is -- how it's bold and brave and truly exciting, full of rich and strong performances and some real ideas along the way. Why return to Batman? It turns out that for Christopher Nolan, the reason to come back is that there's something to say about, and with, the character even after decades of stories and multiple reinventions. I was hoping The Dark Knight would be good; I had no idea that director and co-writer Christopher Nolan was going to make a film that not only addressed the philosophical and political conflict between the rule of force and the rule of law but also takes on the timeless clash between order and chaos ... and, along the way, evokes everything from Michael Mann's Heat to John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. ...

This summer may be confusing to some less blog-literate moviegoers thanks to two recast roles. In both The Dark Knight and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, a prominent character is played by a new actress. In the former sequel, "Rachel Dawes" will be played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, replacing Katie Holmes, who had the role in Batman Begins. In the latter, "Eveyln Carnahan O'Connell" will be played by Maria Bello, subbing for Rachel Weisz, who appeared in both The Mummy and The Mummy Returns.

This certainly isn't the first time characters have been recast with different actors, and over at The Onion, the A.V. Club has listed 20 such memorably jarring switcheroos, which they're calling The Darrin Effect (after the famous character replacement on TV's Bewitched), in television and film. Surely everyone recalls when Sarah Chalke took over the part of "Becky" on Roseanne; the writers even occasionally even slipped in some reflexive jokes about it. And let's not forget the glaring problem of recasting Jodie Foster's Oscar-winning role of "Clarice Starling" -- Julianne Moore played the part in Hannibal. Or the tragic yet surprisingly respectable replacement of Michael Gambon for a deceased Richard Harris in the Harry Potter movies.

How hot is The Dark Knight? So hot that we've done eight (8) posts about it in the last nine days. So hot, moreover, that in some markets, a frenzy of sales for July 18th midnight shows have prompted theaters to add 3am shows and -- I kid you not -- 6am shows.

Why would anyone go at six in the morning instead of just waiting for a freakin' 10am show? I can think of two reasons: 1) they can't get into the earlier shows, have to go to work on July 18th, and refuse to wait until the weekend, and/or 2) the rest of Friday's shows have already sold out. The latter is certainly true if you want to see the film in IMAX -- the New York Times reports that tickets for all of the first week's showings in Manhattan's Lincoln Square are gone, with the exception of some 6 am shows. Chris Nolan, what hast thou donst?

Though I'm usually itching to participate in fan frenzies, the funny thing is that I have no desire to see The Dark Knight in IMAX. What's more, I'm surprised that people who are familiar with Batman Begins are this eager to do so. Does no one remember the quick-cut visual assaults that were that film's action scenes? Are people dying for a ride on the Vomit Comet? No thank you. Anyone with me?

UPDATED: Okay, okay! I admit I hadn't read (or maybe read and forgot) about Nolan making IMAX-specific adjustments for The Dark Knight. I stand by my comments to the extent that I think seeing any movie for the first time in IMAX is often a nauseating and confusing experience. But by all means have fun.

Batman: Gotham Knight
Like the Animatrix, Batman: Gotham Knight is a collection of filler stories. Created by the hands of different writers and animators, Gotham Knight was made to bridge the gap between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. But it's not just a collection of adventure stories -- these blips into Gotham take the story from all sides -- the villains that wreak havoc, the police whose work is interfered with, the kids who spot him in action, and even Bruce Wayne working with Lucius Fox on gadgetry. Be prepared for the look to be different -- this isn't your ordinary looking Batman -- but there are also nods to the past. Kevin Conroy voices Batman in this collection, just like he has for many years now on the animated series.

Of course, no true special release can be free of features, and Gotham Knight is no exception for this 2-disc release. On the first, you get a disc-wide commentary with Kevin Conroy, Dennis O'Neil, and Gregory Noveck (it pours through each episode) and a good preview of the upcoming animated Wonder Woman. On the second, you also get a long documentary called "A Mirror for the Bat" that discusses the character and the villains he fights, another called "Batman and Me, a Devotion to Destiny: The Bob Kane Story," and some final extras that focus on Batman: The Animated Series.

Further information on this release can be found, in-depth, at DVDTalk.

Buy the DVD

As Scott pointed out in his review, you need not fear that this week's Superhero Movie is another brainchild of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, whose satanic perversions of the parody genre -- Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans -- have been terrorizing unsuspecting audiences every year since 2006. Superhero Movie was actually directed by Craig Mazin, a protégé of the Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker dream team responsible for Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and produced by David Zucker himself. But it, too, is plagued -- albeit to a much lesser degree -- by what's turning out to be the problem with the entire modern generation of spoofs going back to Scary Movie: relentless pop culture specificity.

The basest incarnations of this, of course, are the Friedberg-Seltzer monstrosities, which may be worthless as comedies but which could prove valuable to historians because they indicate precisely what dominated the American zeitgeist in the few months before their release. It's too generous to call these films' vulgar spasms "jokes," but to the extent that's what they are, they depend entirely on either audience members' awareness of US Weekly-type factoids such as Britney Spears' shaving her head or their recall of particular scenes and characters in recent box-office hits. That's not to say that these kinds of jokes can't be funny -- the problem with Friedberg and Seltzer, as others have pointed out, is that they think throwing something current on the screen ("Look, Paris Hilton!") constitutes humor. But they do limit comedies' universal appeal and staying power.

Christian Bale was on hand at ShoWest to promote some footage from The Dark Knight, and gave a revealing interview to Entertainment Weekly. The magazine immediately pumped him for Batman information, and Bale was forthcoming -- but noncommittal.

When asked if there would be a third installment, Bale wouldn't confirm or deny. "Um, look, let's wait and see." When the magazine "mistakenly" referred to it as a sixth installment, Bale was quick to correct them, and elaborate on the possibilities of a trilogy. "No, no, no, no, no. Part 3 is what I'd consider it, yeah, I don't say part 6. Batman Begins - that was the beginning there, with all due respect to the others. We are re-creating this. You know, obviously the decision is out of my hands. I would, knowing the Dark Knight story, I would like very much to complete a trilogy. And I think that knowing the story of The Dark Knight, it leaves you anticipating something that really can get very, very interesting for a third. Now, the question would be: Is Chris going to be doing it? Because to me I find it tricky to imagine working on it without it being a collaboration with Chris."

So, can we safely assume that Heath Ledger's premature death does not affect the trilogy's storyline? That has been the biggest question on everyone's mind. If you combine this interview with Aaron Eckhart's latest, I am still of the belief that Joker ends up in Arkham, and Two-Face could be the main villain in a third film. I can't imagine they didn't leave Joker's fate open ended, considering the villain's place in Batman's world, but no one from the film seems to feel the storyline cannot continue. Perhaps a bigger question is why Nolan isn't confirmed to continue the series.