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Exactly. No way is this a popcorn film. There are themes running left, right and centre.

Again, it's not about themes.  The conveniences of the plot and the sketchy nature of some characters (who are you, Rachel Dawes?) along with another generic score all stink of popcorn cinema.  Granted this has more depth than your average summer time blockbuster... but it is still a summer time blockbuster and it exhibits many of those trappings.  It's not an insult, it's just the truth.

It's hard for me to fathom how a film like this could be this successful based strictly on fan appeal, or fans seeing it multiple times.  Even families going to see it wouldn't necessarily generate figures like this given the graphic nature of some parts of the story.  Repeat business (beyond the fan community) has to figure in to this somewhere.  People see TDK... and then they bring a friend with them when they see it again.  Also, you can't buy the kind of WOM TDK has.

I think the same thing went down with Iron Man.

Thank you kindly.

A D+/F?  Wow, thats BF and B&R territory.  Its a well written review, but I respecfully have to disagree with its conclusion.  This will probably get my Burton card revoked, but I believe TDK edges out B89 as the best Batman film ever, and arguably is the best comic book film/superhero film to date.  I believe the TDK compexity and depth is phenomenal.  A "popcorn" movie?!? With themes regarding whether morality itself is merely a societal driven trait, whether a society should give in to the demands of a terrorist, how far should a society go to protect itself from a terrorist, whether a man should take the fall for another's failings inorder to preserve a society's trust in a leader, whether there is something more than being a hero, etc., etc..  A simple, thoughtless, "popcorn" movie, I couldn't disagree more.

I personally am not attacking the themes.  I think they're clearly evident in the film and are also clearly intentional on the part of the filmmakers.

By calling it a popcorn movie, I meant to say that I don't think the plot is as hammered out as (by some standards) it ought to be.  The IMDB guy brings a lot of those problems up.  I don't disagree that they are problems, I simply don't let them spoil my enjoyment of the film because I enjoy it in the vocabulary of popcorn cinema.  The scenes work because the larger plot demands they must.  I'm perfectly willing to give Nolan that indulgence but only in the context of action cinema.  If Nolan wants higher criticism, he needs to earn it and I don't believe he has.

In other words, I'm not sweating the small stuff.

But don't make him some total freak raised by penguins in the sewer

He wasn't raised by Penguins.  He wasn't raised in a sewer.

who spits up black bile

The guy clearly had no dental plan.  It doesn't bother me.

and eats raw fish.

He did so in the comics.

nolan has said that burton's biggest mistake was killing off the joker, batman's greatest nemesis.

Illustrating his ability to miss the point.  B89 was Batman vs. the Joker, winner take all.  It was war and only one of 'em could walk away.  Burton made no attempt to set the Joker up as an ongoing character on the 50/50 chance Nicholson might return (of which there was no guarantee at the time), especially since it conflicted with what he and Hamm thought was meant to be all out war between two characters who are so different and, yet, so similar.

In any case, between Ghul and Two Face, Nolan's record is hardly clean.  If he feels that seriously about it, he should take his own advice.

someone said how it was a "complete film" and they didn't know how good or bad it was going to do so they couldn't leave it open for a sequel, but you don't have to leave a movie open for a sequel by killing the bad guy.  just so everyone's clear, the dark knight was almost not made.

It's an action movie clich? to kill at least one villain of a movie... and the reason for that is because it works.

nolan does one movie at a time, and when he was filming BB he has no knowledge of where the next movie would go if at all.

I was under the impression Goyer mapped out a trilogy and Nolan would be working from that.  That impression is strengthened by Goyer's story development credit in TDK.

This is my basic issue with realism.  It works okay for certain Batman villains and (arguably) Batman himself but there's really no "realistic" way to tackle the full scope of the comics.  Characters like Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, Clayface and, arguably, the Riddler can't be easily fit into Nolan's universe.

On the other hand, with, at worst, minor adjustments, they could be made to fit into the Burtonverse.  You could probably go with something vaguely BF'ish (that style, not necessarily that goofy tone) and get away with it there too.

The more realistic you try to make the Batman universe, the more you reveal how sci-fi/fantasy-based it really is.

Frankly, it's refreshing to be on a forum that doesn't think Chris Nolan is the be-all, end-all of the Batman franchise.

You kidding?  Not thinking that can get you banned from some Batman movie forums.

Or so I hear.

Did I not clearly explain myself?

This has nothing to do with your post but I seriously dig your avatar.

[not]

What I find is that Nolan's Batman films work on a number of levels... but one of them is not "serious filmmaking" on the order of what we saw in the Burton films.  Like it or not, the Nolan stuff veers more towards popcorn entertainment with a lot of serious scenes thrown in for a little depth.  Therefore, the plot and characters work only as well as they need to and then sputter to a hault after that.

Even with those minimal expectations, it's still hard for me to get anything out of BB.  However, those parameters work rather nicely for TDK.  In that sense, TDK does everything it set out to do.  It's not really a film that lends itself to "digging deeper", as some of us are prone to do.

Just think of it as big, dumb entertainment and maybe the sight of Batman dragging Lao out of his own office building or Freeman gently making fun of Reese's blackmail plan become more enjoyable.  You're not wrong to rank it as you did, I just think you want something that Nolan isn't going to provide.

Either way, solid review man.  I like that you explain why you were let down by TDK rather than simply saying "teh bAle sux, keeton pwns all, omglolz" or some such.  You did your fellow Burtonmen proud. 

I'd be surprised if it doesn't go beyond $300 million.

Boy, what a stupid guess this turned out to be.  It never occurred to me that TDK would have a huge weekend like it did.

This is why I don't like speculating on box office returns.