Joseph Susanka

The Dark Knight

The Batman franchises have long struggled to find the correct balance between good and evil. In the original Batman, Tim Burton's love for the visually (and emotionally) bizarre, combined with Jack Nicholson's apparent inability to control himself, produced a film whose focus quickly shifted from Michael Keaton's mildly-tormented title character to Nicholson's wildly over-acted Joker. As the franchise moved from Batman to Batman Returns, from Batman Forever to Batman and Robin, the villains began to play a larger and larger role in the creation and marketing of the films, while the plastic suit-filling hero grew increasingly bland. (Warner Brothers' inability to retain their stars throughout the series almost certainly contributed to this blandness; the Keaton/Kilmer/Clooney tag-team sounded good on paper, I'm sure. But it failed miserably on celluloid.)