Hmmm. Well, I saw the movie a couple of days ago, and my reaction to it is neutral.

As a Batman movie, it's a very good one...I figure it gets 9 out of 10 strictly as a Batman movie.

As a movie that I personally enjoyed seeing, however, it barely rates a 5 out of 10. I just don't identify with the story, I don't find it moving or believable, I am not attracted to the extremely dark viewpoint of the film, I could not think of the characters as real people or identify with them...despite some quite good acting.

Of the Batman movies I've seen, I only liked one of them, frankly, and that was the one previous to this one ("Batman Begins"?). I actually did enjoy that film as a fine and entertaining piece of adventure fiction.

The Dark Knight was well filmed, well acted, well done for what it was, but it left me cold. It was the sort of movie I was already forgetting as I walked out the door, and I certainly have no impulse to ever watch it again. What for? Nothing there I would want to see again.

I note, however, that the critics are wild over it. Why is this? Is it because Heath Ledger died, thus giving the critics all a chance to wax lyrical about his bravura and necessarily last performance? I think that probably has much to do with it.

Was it an interesting study of the dark and tortured side of the Batman character? Yeah, I guess so. But for some reason I just didn't care. Like I say, this movie left me cold (as have most of the Batman films).

As for 911, there was one thing definitely done to evoke 911 in people's subconcious minds and get them to see the movie: the movie poster showing the Joker's crooked grin as a flaming, jagged, long hole in the side of a skyscraper. That visual image was meant to link in people's minds with their memories of the flaming, jagged holes made by the 2 airplanes that hit the Twin Towers. It seems like a rather manipulative way to advertise a movie to me, but it doesn't surprise me that they would have done that. After all, they want to sell tickets, right?