The Dark Knight phenomenon

Let's start with the basics. The Dark Knight had what was recorded as the biggest opening weekend of all time, bringing in $158 million to the box office in these three days and surpassing 2002's Spiderman ($151 million).

According to the Internet Movie Database it set a new record for the biggest opening-day with $66.4 million and a weekend record for IMAX venues with $6.2 million.

Something about the film is drawing fans to see it again and again, and that same something has delivered it into a new realm within the public consciousness.

Just as Batman Begins, the film already has a strong force behind it with a stellar cast and crew, but the Dark Knight has drawn a far bigger reaction.

Sequel it may be, but this is a film in a league of its own.

Comparisons have been made left, right and centre to the film's apparent references to 9/11.

Dana Stevens of Slate Magazine asserts that "Nolan turns the Manichean morality of comic books - pure good vs. pure evil - into a bleak post-9/11 allegory about how terror (and, make no mistake, Heath Ledger's Joker is a terrorist) breaks down those reassuring categories...".

Quite a statement, but these parallels are not entirely unfounded.

Chicago stands in for Gotham City and this has inevitably led to links to New York.

As the film opens, the camera pans towards a skyscraper before a billow of smoke issues from inside it; buildings explode and Gotham is plagued by the Joker's menace.

But is this perhaps the result of reading too deep by a society of viewers firmly set in a cultural anxiety?

The tone of the film does fit in unnervingly with the post 9/11 outlook.

Batman's decision to create a vast wiretapping network is discomforting; there are moral conflicts both among civilians and within the police force; confusion and distrust in authority and the question of prisoner's rights.

The film offers no resolution to its audience and the tagline of "why so serious?" is chillingly ironic.

Jessica Shapiro, a recent graduate of Leeds University, feels that the film's portrayal of Gotham makes it hard to remain objective, noting that it "fits in well with the current zeitgeist of panic in the western world, a declining world portrayed daily in the media".

The tangles of moral conflict all envelop the film in its own philosophy.

Batman himself is an ambiguous character, burdened by the position he holds within his city.

The last films to unite action and philosophy and to hold these elements as its keystones was the Wachowski brothers' Matrix trilogy which brushed upon several religious beliefs as well as the concepts of reality and truth.

The first film, The Matrix, reached $460 million in its worldwide gross, followed by The Matrix Reloaded at $738 million and The Matrix Revolutions at $424 million. The results speak for themselves. 12»