I'm so glad you brought this subject up - I completley agree. I'm a huge fan of the Batman comics and of the Tim Burton movies, but I think that 'The Dark Knight' and 'Batman Begins' were actually pretty boring, 'Batman Begins' especially, was so slow, and 'The Dark Knight' was more like a crime thriller. I thought Heath Ledger did a good performance, but I far preffered Jack's version of the Joker in 'Batman', and I wonder if the tradgedy that happened didn't go along way into everyone saying how amazing his performance was.
With the 'Batman' character, they've got him right, and they've got him wrong - the TV series, IMO, was horrific. Then we had the amazing 'Batman' and the outstanding 'Batman Returns' - and those two movies are the only ones that got the mixture of darkness and comic book combo artistically correctly IMO. 'Batman Forever' was okay, and then there was that terrible 'Batman and Robin' with Arnie destroying the character of Freeze, and Uma Thurman destroying th character of Poison Ivy - but that was because it wen't so camp and back to the TV version of the characters.
These new Batman movie are way too dark - even for me as an adult, it loses all sense of the comics' and the characters and becomes like a Bond, or Bourne movie - I also think the Bond movies are boring now. You go to the cinema to be entertained, not to be forced to see the brutality of life constantly.
Where was the Joker gas??? His acid flower??? His origin smile and bleached skin? These are the Joker - he didn't have his mouth slashed open, he didn't use a knife or gun primarily - the movies have left the comics behind and are making it all about realisim and Batman, when really the entire character of Batman - is that he doesn't want to be the centre of attention - he broods in the dark and does his 'job.'
And what's with that moronic voice Christian Bale puts on when he's wearing the suit??? I spent most of the movie trying to understand him. Michael Keaton started that, but you could hear what he was saying.
It's not so much that the movie's have gone darker - it's that they've crossed out any fragment of the graphic novel, made them into crime thriller's, and pretty dull ones for a large magority of 'Batman' fans, of course you always have fans of the character who will adore anything involving him, but I have been very dissapointed in the recent two movies.
Bring back Burton! He, IMO, is the only director to get the character right, dark but still comic book.