3 hours of sleep. exhausted.

so worth it.

For obvious reasons, I won't give anything away here, so don't worry about spoilers.

I got to the theatre a little after 6 o'clock. My boyfriend and his youngest brother were already on site; they had been for nearly 2 hours. The saints. There were about 20 people in front of them. Score, I thought. We'll get awesome seats. The logistics nightmare I had envisioned didn't come to fruition. They just stuffed all eight theatres into two lines, divided by the right and left side of the theatre. All those who had tickets for theatres 1,2,3 and 7 waited in one line. 8,12, 13 and 14 waited in another line. It wasn't going to matter which theatre we went into. They intentionally sold 1,200 of the 1,500 seats available so as to avoid a stampede. Smart. Within 3 hours, the line had gone from 30 people to nearly 600. It curved around the building and maybe around the block. I'm not sure. I just know I couldn't see the throngs of people on the other side of the building, and the claustrophobic girl inside me liked this ignorance.

As it got close to that time, we started to stuff ourselves in line like sardines, as usual at these events. There were no more lawn chairs, board games, ice chests. No more space to breathe. It was just 600 people preparing to cram themselves into two small doors. Almost instantly, the weight of those hundreds of people pushed down onto my terribly claustrophobic chest. But I powered through and held strong, refusing to let other people take my place in line. They said 10 o'clock. They were going to let us in at 10 o'clock. But it was now almost 10:20 and I had been packed like a sardine for a half an hour. The moment my ticket was ripped, I turned on the wheels and booked it to the farthest theatre. I had figured everyone else would just run into the closest theatre to the entrance. I was right. When I ran into theatre 3 there was no one else around. But there were 100 people on my heels and only a few of them with my party. I picked the seats without hesitation. You can't hesitate in this environment or you get run over. Literally. Middle of the theatre and we got the whole row. Now we had to wait 90 minutes. It went by so quickly. And then it started.

From the opening scene, I think we all knew we were witnessing something incredible. I have tried to think of the best way to describe this movie, but only one word keeps coming to mind. I keep coming back to the word insane. The entire movie was insane. It's dark and demented and not a children's movie. And I loved it. During the joker's first scene, I jumped so high out of me seat and gasped the loudest gasp of my life. And every time the joker is funny, it made me feel even more creeped out by him. And the few times I did laugh at him, I felt even creepier. Like if I laughed, I was somehow encouraging this character on the screen. The Dark Knight didn't feel like a comic book movie to me though. I mean, it did, but it felt so rooted in something real that I almost forgot I was watching a comic book hero and his villains. That's what I love about Batman though. He's the everyman. Everything about him and the world around him is human. And every struggle is a struggle of good vs. evil on it's purest level. Man vs. Man. No super powers.

It's a great movie. Probably the best movie I have seen this year, and quite possibly the best comic book movie ever. But I am a sci fi/comic book/fantasy movie geek. So I'm biased. See it for yourself though. I'm just one person.