The Dark Knight

Batman raises the stakes in his war on crime. With the help of Lt. Jim Gordon and District Attorney Harvey Dent, Batman sets out to dismantle the remaining criminal organizations that plague the streets. The partnership proves to be effective, but they soon find themselves prey to a reign of chaos unleashed by a rising criminal mastermind known to the terrified citizens of Gotham as the Joker.

Broadly acclaimed as a landmark superhero film that operates as a genuinely serious crime thriller, The Dark Knight earns most of its praise from Heath Ledger's Joker — a performance critics treated as an event in itself — and from its post-9/11 moral weight around vigilantism and terrorism. Dissenting voices, though a minority, pushed back on the humorless self-seriousness, muddled action choreography, and a reliance on exposition over visual storytelling that made the film feel more exhausting than thrilling.