I believe in Gotham City. I believe in Harvey Dent.

Coming off of the hugely successful "Batman Begins," Director Christopher Nolan, his brother Jonathan, and screenwriter David S. Goyer set about to craft a sequel that would continue the theme of "Things have to get worse before they get better."

Taking inspiration (and even at times direct lifts of dialogue) from classic Batman stories "The Long Halloween" and "The Killing Joke," the three set out to tell the stories of The Joker and Two-Face without devolving into camp like in previous films (the 1989 "Batman" as well as "Batman Forever"). The result was a Joker who thrived on chaos, thought nothing of the lives of others, and, in the words of Alfred, just wanted "to watch the world burn." Likewise, Two-Face was a very flawed man, deeply hurt by the injustices that surrounded him, seeking to set things right by the luck of a coin toss-- in his words, "the only morality in a cruel world is chance. Unbiased, unprejudiced, fair."

The inspiration from other work didn't stop at just Batman stories. To tell the story of a city beseiged by the mob, the writers took note of many other gangster movies, citing the movie "Heat" in particular.

This fresh take on the story of Batman has found a large audience. The movie reviews aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes shows 95% favorable reviews for the movie (see here for details). Not to mention, "The Dark Knight" is only the second movie to ever pass $500 million at the box office.

With a movie as successful as this one, speculation on a third movie has already begun to surface. While Christopher Nolan has yet to announce if he will do a third movie, when David S. Goyer wrote the script for "Batman Begins," he wrote an outline for a three-movie series. Whether that third movie will be made, only time will tell.

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