Yesterday marked thirteen years since The Dark Knight hit theaters, and it would be an understatement to say that almost every superlative under the sun has been thrown at Christopher Nolan’s modern classic since then. If it isn’t the greatest comic book movie ever made, then it’s definitely damn close.
On top of that, it was the first superhero blockbuster to ever earn a billion dollars at the box office, the second to be inducted into the National Film Registry after Richard Donner’s Superman, and influenced the way Hollywood approached its big budget efforts for the following decade, with countless filmmakers and franchises evidently and often very obviously indebted to the middle chapter of Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
It even recently underwent a bizarre reappraisal as a rom-com, which caused the film to go viral on social media all over again, proving that The Dark Knight never strays too far from the cultural conversation. To mark the 13th anniversary, fans took to social media in their droves to pay tribute to an all-time great, and you can check out some of the reactions below.
Such is the impact that The Dark Knight had on both the subsequent slate of DC projects and the genre as a whole, it’s regularly used as a byword for the next big thing in the world of spandex cinema, while every movie featuring the Caped Crusader is inevitably going to be compared to what Nolan brought to the table, and the same also goes for each new actor to slap on the Joker’s face paint thanks to Heath Ledger’s instantly iconic and Academy Award winning tour-de-force as the Clown Prince of Crime.