In pretending to be a movie critic, I’ll straight up agree with all the rest of them and say the Joker was every bit the hype we’ve all heard.

Not that you didn’t already know that. In my fair city, the Dark Knight is sold out for the next five days, which means everyone has seen it three times by now. On IMAX.

I went into the theatre thinking, yawn, here he comes, I guess I’d better get ready to be wow’d. I also went to the theatre with this flask that looks like a cellphone, but the "antenna" unscrews and you can pour in vodka. Or whatever you like, which I’m sure will be vodka. It’s even got a belt holster. Anyway. Heath Ledger did not disappoint, delivering a strong presence in every scene, finishing it off with his tics of speech and body language. Solid acting performances all around, along with a plot that kept Batman moving and being amazing, made every minute in that dark theatre fully worth it.

The only thing nobody likes about these movies is Rachel Dawes.

Batman deserves someone with style, with understanding. Katie Holmes made me groan every time she Expressed Disapproval, pursing her lips and doing that thing with her dimples. You just get tired of it. Wouldn’t it be a shame if something were to happen to Rachel Dawes, you think, empathizing with the bad guys (ha ha, spoiler). She was more of a downer than Batman. But you could console yourself, at least, knowing she was pretty. So another groan: finding out that Maggie Fucking Gyllenhaal was going to play this role that was already overbearing, uptight, and hands-down just unappeasable.

Gyllenhaal pulled it off so much better than Holmes. Rather than just berate Bruce, now she’s an unwilling collaborator to Bruce Wayne’s exaggerated, foppish persona. Bruce strides into a party with a famous superhottie. And another one. And another one. Gyllenhaal’s lips curl up ever so slightly at the ends — you’ve gotta be looking for it to see it — wryly, smugly. How far will Bruce go to pull this off, she wonders. And so we see Bruce Wayne through Rachel’s eyes; she’s still huffing with indignation, but she remains, like the rest of us, entertained. One might believe, for a second, that there is a side to her that is a bit glib, a bit saucy, that she doesn’t have such a huge metaphorical pole up her behind (insert obvious anal sex joke here, but do it slowly and lovingly, the way I like it).

To boot, it did look pretty cool when she gut-checked the Joker (Ha ha, spoiler).

By slant and inference, you can see Bruce Wayne losing himself in "Batman." There is one part where you see him shirtless, from the back (settle down), and there are some pretty vicious bruises and scars. In fact, when he’s not in costume, he does look skinny, small; and even his face looks a bit dark and hollow, like he spends his nights being rode hard and left wet, and it hurts, but he likes it. He’s not really there until he puts on the cowl. What brings this out is, when he’s Batman, that way he looks at at the camera when someone is telling him something Really Important; his eyes narrow, focusing on the speaker, and he turns his head a few degrees to the side to hear better.

Speaking of which, that thing they did with the eyes — you’ll know what I mean when you see it  (just kidding, they made them glowey. ha ha, spoiler) — was just super kewl.