The Dark Knight — I just don't get it

I'm still trying to figure out how and why The Dark Knight was so popular and well received. Then again, Jim Cameron's Titanic...

My main beef with The Dark Knight is similar to my problem with Poseidon. It promises to be a gritty real-life drama and yet sidesteps some fundamental concerns. To me, the underlying question of TDK is this—what would stop you from killing someone? In other words, why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker? He has a lot of chances. The question is one with a lot of political ramifications. Do you have to wait till someone commits mayhem? How much mayhem is enough? Is a preemptive strike ever justified? The problem with the Batman character is his ambivalence. On the one hand he works outside the system. But on the other hand, he is beholden to the system. And it is his inability to reconcile these two conflicting halves that leads to the Joker's run on Gotham City. This is the same morally weak Batman as the one in Batman Begins, the one who says (ridiculously), "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you." Just kill him or don't. The Darker Knight.

Also—Heath Ledger's Joker. The performance was fine, but I would have preferred if it were more transparent. I can practically hear his development work on the character ("I'm a rat, a fidgety rodent"). But the main problem is the way The Joker was written. The Joker is a bit of a throwback to the eighties that brought us films like Robocop. Then, the overriding fear was randomness, the idea that you might get robbed or killed for no good reason. The Joker is capricious, and, as the film reminds us many times, playfully, frighteningly insane. No doubt Chris Nolan learned one thing from 9/11. The question "what do they want from us?" doesn't always have a logical answer. But that's where Nolan's understanding of The Joker ends. For a film that aspires to address big issues, the idea that The Joker just wants to have fun is not enough.