(Fear not, this post is certified spoiler-free.)

Alright, alright, we’ve all seen The Dark Knight by now. Can life move on?

The amount of hype surrounding the film has honestly made me sick. We knew it was going to be a great film from the get-go, as director Christopher Nolan didn’t disappoint with 2005′s Batman Begins. But, sadly, ever since Heath Ledger died, the hype wagon for The Dark Knight has been a juggernaut. Don’t get me wrong; the movie was excellent, and the acting by Ledger, Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart, and the supporting cast was fantastic. But is it deserving of the “masterpiece” accolades heaped upon it by critics and fans alike? I’d say no.

I realize this opinion likely turns me into a fucking social pariah, but I don’t care. The Dark Knight was great, but it had its share of problems, like any other film. The fact that it was obscenely overhyped unfortunately makes these problems stand out a bit more. For one, the film was too long; it ran about two and a half hours in total. There’s no reason why the film’s story couldn’t have been edited down to a more manageable two hours. The plot moved along well, but it did drag at times.

Secondly…we all knew the entire plot of the film before we even saw it. No, we didn’t hunt around on the Internet for spoilers or anything; everything was given away in advertisements, trailers, and other commonly seen promotional material. There was no need to find spoilers; the producers of the film spoiled the entire thing themselves! PvP‘s Scott Kurtz feels much the same way. Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was a colossal hype machine as well, but at least we didn’t know the whole story before we sat down in the theater. (If we had, maybe we could’ve avoided the pain of Jar Jar.)

And last but not least, Batman’s voice. In Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne purposely pitched his voice lower to make it more menacing (and unrecognizable) in his Batman persona. In The Dark Knight, it sounds like Batman’s taken up a very heavy smoking habit. He overdid the grumbling, and the digital post-processing effects added to the voice made it even worse. This may seem like a minor quirk, but Batman was completely unintelligible at times! That’s not good; Batman’s a badass, but he’s not supposed to sounds like he’s been gargling with razor blades. It was almost laughable at times.

So there you have it. A great film, sure, but certainly not the perfect one that too many people are making it out to be. As with most things in life, the hype did more damage than good.