The Most Overhyped Superhero Movie of All Time Is a Streaming Smash Hit 17 Years Later

The summer of 2008 permanently rewired superhero cinema. Within months of each other, audiences were hit with Iron Man and The Dark Knight, two movies that sent Hollywood sprinting in very different directions. Jon Favreau’s Iron Manlaid the foundation for the colorful, quippy Marvel Cinematic Universe. Christopher Nolan’sThe Dark Knight, meanwhile, convinced an entire generation of filmmakers that every superhero movie needed to be darker, heavier, and vaguely ashamed of being about superheroes at all. Let’s be honest, the film is fantastic, but that’s down to Nolan and not the source material. The gritty tone of it is also squarely to blame for what we got from Zack Snyder years later.

Seventeen years later, Nolan’s Batman sequel is back in the spotlight — and back on top. According to FlixPatrol, The Dark Knight is currently one of the most-watched films on Netflix globally, proving that even after endless discourse, memes, think pieces, and imitators, people still can’t stop pressing play.

Starring Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, the film also features Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, and Aaron Eckhart, but let’s be honest: this movie lives and dies by Heath Ledger’s Joker. Ledger’s performance — anarchic, unsettling, and completely untethered from comic-book camp — became instantly iconic. His death just months before the film’s release cast a long shadow over its reception, and his posthumous Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actor cemented the Joker as a cultural milestone, not just a villain. A synopsis for the movie follows:

“The Dark Knight picks up where Batman Begins left off. Bruce Wayne between mansions, but continues his one-man crusade for justice. Former flame Rachel Dawes makes time with the hot new Gotham DA Harvey Dent. Harvey Dent’s no-nonsense push to clean up the streets of Gotham leads Wayne to believe his time as Batman might not have to go on forever. Unfortunately, also new to the picture is enigmatic anarchist the Joker. The Joker allies himself with the mobs that have come under fire from Batman, Dent and James Gordon (head of Gotham’s Major Crime Unit). The Joker agrees to kill Batman for the mob and goes on a killing spree to draw out the Bat. Batman and Dent’s war on crime butts heads with the Joker’s efforts to create chaos and no one comes out unscathed.”

Is ‘The Dark Knight’ That Good?

Critically, the movie remains bulletproof. It holds a Certified Fresh 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and sits at #3 on IMDb’s Top 250 Greatest Films of All Time, rubbing shoulders with The Godfather and The Shawshank Redemption. Whether or not it actually belongs there is… a conversation that will never end.

For now, The Dark Knight is prowling the streets of Netflix. It’s the movie we deserved, but perhaps not the one we needed.