It ' s difficult to fully comprehend just how much The
Dark Knight changed movies . It legitimized the
superhero film as a serious dramatic vehicle . That ' s a
fancy way of saying that it made audiences believe that
a story about a guy in a bat suit could be as emotionally
engaging , nuanced , and as compelling as any other
movie released that year . There were successful comic
book adaptations before , but The Dark Knight was the
revelation .
The film being denied a Best Picture nomination set a
series of events into motion that doubled the amount of
potential nominees. It was a box office behemoth that
raised an already substantial financial bar . While the
impact of the movie will be felt for decades to come ,
nowhere is its influence felt more than the trans
formative effect it has had on cinematic villains . It gave
creators a new kind of connectivity between hero and
villain. Not a villain linked by shared history or
narrative, but a bond formed by the ideas that heroes
and villains represent . The Dark Knight wasn ' t the first
movie to introduce the villain as the antithetical ideology
of the hero. It is however the most successful
cinematic interpretation of the concept , and it ' s
popularity has created a legion of clones.
The Joker had been done before . Jack Nicholson had
done a cartoony take on the character in Tim Burton ' s
highly successful Batman adaptation , the film that
started the modern comic book movie revival . Heath
Ledger took it to another level . His Joker was a bastion
of anarchy and Ledger carried a fantastically written
character and delivered an Academy Award winning
performance. Since then , movie villains have taken a
decidedly deconstructionist tone and have borrowed
heavily from one of the most iconic screen villains of all
time .
