Anticipating the Dark Knight premiere felt like Christmas. It included a countdown, excitement the night before, and lots of hype. The night finally came and I met up with my friends. My boyfriend made me a shirt! That was the first exciting part of everything, not to mention all the great snacks that accompanied it. The movie was incredible!

Then in the following days I woke up to the terrible news. Someone disturbed and filled with great sadness made a terrible mistake and hurt lots of people at a theater during the Dark Knight Premiere. This happened close to the town I was born in. A state that I have this crazy love for, and in the small world that we live in, affected someone I know.

It took the high I got from Batman and made me confused and sad. How could someone interpret the movie that way? How could they see the darkness and not the hope it means to instill?

This article is really wonderful, How to have hope in a broken world

Here is an excellent critical review of The Dark Knight Rises,

Emerson states, “ In the end, what really interests me is the notion the trilogy began with, that people can be inspired by (and lawbreakers will fear) a legend, a symbol, an abstraction, in ways they can’t respond to a mere human being. “TDKR” is a superhero movie that acknowledges “heroism” is primarily a form of public relations, of marketing and branding. When Batman decides to take the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes at the end of “TDK,” Jim Gordon delivers the movie’s closing soliloquy: “… he’s the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. So we’ll hunt him. Because he can take it. Because he’s not our hero. He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.” And yet, of course, Batman promptly disappeared — not at all a silent guardian or watchful protector. Dent became the hero, even though his heroism was a lie foisted upon the public by Gordon and Batman, ostensibly to preserve civic morale. (That never made much sense to some of us: I guess it was because Batman didn’t want to give the Joker credit for destroying Dent, feeling that might be too demoralizing and dispiriting for the general public. But is it too much to show the citizenry why they have been wrong about Batman? Couldn’t Batman have played the role of hero, having foiled the Joker, and Dent become the fallen martyr, his crimes pinned on the Joker?”

In today’s disapproving world do you think this is possible?

We waste so much time judging one another and spend little to no time trying to understand each other.

The current election is proof of this. Why does American culture (not unlike others) have this desire to pick one another apart?

I would like to hear your thoughts…