Adding A Completely Unecessary Voice to the Chorus

Friday night I did something I have never done and really never thought I would do: I waited, with ticket already in hand, in line 3 hours for a movie. Oh, and it was in Washington D.C. in July. Which means it was (according to the bank on the corner) 92 degrees during that three hour wait, with a humidity level of roughly 1,946,833%.

But damn if it wasn't worth it. I can only say that pretty much all the reviews were correct. I went into this movie with ridiculously high expectations and yet somehow still feel the movie exceeded them. After the movie, all I could pretty much do was sit there and mutter "wow" to myself. And, of course, like everyone else, I was so blown away by Heath Ledger's iconic joker performance that I found myself incredibly bummed out that he could never repeat it, though in a way I think it serves to cement its iconic status.

What really resonated for me in the story were the none-too-veiled references to the war on terror. As Batman so eloquently demonstrated, if you lose your ideals in attempting to destroy evil, you've completely failed, because your no longer fighting for anything. It's almost as if the movie was trying to tell us that, say, invading a country because its ruthless dictator tortures all those who disagree with him in these horrible chambers of death and then using those same chambers of death to torture all the people that disagree with you is not doing any good for the world. But that might be me reading too much into it.

Anyway, go see the movie. It's fucking brilliant, and proves what the overweight outcast in middle school knew all along: that comic books really do tell great stories with intricate morals that are both moving and relevant. And as a former overweight middle school outcast who loves comic books, it's really gratifying to see the rest of the world finally catch on.