The Dark Knight is well on its way to being the biggest movie of the year as it took in a whooping $155 million over the weekend in the US. In doing so it eclipsed Spiderman 3’s previous record opening weekend hall of $151m set last year.

This is a good thing on so many levels.

First, Spiderman 3 sucked harder than the black hole at the centre of our galaxy. A movie without a single redeeming characteristic it failed absolutely to deliver in anyway shape or form on the quality promised by the trailer. I have scarsely been as disappointed leaving a movie theatre and the thought that that steaming pile was a benchmark, in anyway, hurt my heart a little every single day.

Second, I have been haunted for some time now by the thought that either Sex and the City or Indiana Jones and the Kindgom of the Crappy Stink would be the biggest movie of 2008, in terms of hype and/or revenue. This now looks unlikely as Batman is going to save the day. It remains unfortunate that both Sex and the City and Indy did great business in their own right as I believe 2 golden opportunities were missed to send a strong and unequivocal message to the studios, that we as an audience demanded better than such cynical, lazy and cash cow milking tripe.  Instead, blinded by our delight at seeing these two franchises on the silver screen we went all Phantom Menace on it and lapped it up!

Ok, rant over.

Third, its a Batman movie and Batman, essentially a badass Ninja, is a complex and infinitely interesting superhero that deserves to sit on top of the superhero tree.