[WhisperOfOblivion]

Spoilers ahead. Stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled ;P

Odds are, Harvey is dead -- otherwise Batman's sacrifice here would be worthless. The whole idea here is that they can't "let the Joker win." As cool as Two-Face was, they are likely going to keep him dead if there is ever a third movie. A lot of his motivation derived from the events of the movie pertaining to Rachel, and it just doesn't seem to make sense to keep that going for another entire sequel. Not all dead characters come back to life, despite what you may think -- I think Harvey's dead, dead, dead. They wrapped up his story nicely, and I think that's indeed the end of it.

I find it really interesting that, even though Joker says he never plans or schemes, his brilliance at predicting how people will act makes him a mastermind at scheming. Joker's strength lies in his ability to cause chaos in his favor, while screwing over everyone else's plans at the same time, and I love that they showed this side to him. I felt that Nicholson's Joker from the first Batman movie didn't quite make this obvious. Joker is supposed to be a crazed psychopath known for his cunning, lack of empathy, and overall creepy/disturbing demeanor, and I absolutely love the way Ledger pulled this off. I'm extremely upset that we won't be receiving any further performances from Heath... I honestly don't know how you can replace such a well-crafted character.

The scene where Batman is "interrogating" the Joker gave me hard chills, because you could really feel the brunt of the Joker's wrath. Even at Batman relentlessly beats the **** out of him, he just laughs it off, because, as he says, "[Batman] has absolutely nothing to threaten him with," while the lives of two others are in danger of being blown to bits in minutes. That scene, I think, is very classic Joker, and call me crazy, but I was like tearing/smiling like mad during that scene from its sheer awesomeness, haha. It was absolutely perfect. You could really feel Batman getting pissed the hell off at this crazy dude, who's able to orchestrate madness, even when locked up.

I also liked the downfall of Harvey Dent. For someone so dedicated to justice and locking evil up behind bars, it's amazing to see that he was capable of madness. The scene where he's flipping his coin/threatening to kill the schizophrenic guy was pretty intense.

Gosh there are just too many things about this movie I could go on and on about. I just thought so many things were done so perfectly. The character development, the action, the music, the stunts, the plot, the comic relief... it was all so great. Gordon's speech at the end was also very well done.

This movie deserves a 10/10... easily the best in the Batman series so far. It's going to be extremely hard to top if they ever make a sequel.

As for villains, I doubt we're going to see people like Mr. Freeze or Clayface. A trend among the villains so far is that they carry a certain element of realism. R.A.G. was believable, as was Scarecrow (simply using biological/chemical warfare, in a sense), and Joker is believable as an extremely intelligent/crazed criminal. The least realistic so far is Two-Face, but only because of the physical injuries involved, but it's still a relatively minor point. All of the villains so far still "fall within the reasonable realm of reality," but guys like Clayface and Mr. Freeze really would not, and I think it'd cheapen a lot of what makes Nolan's Batman movies so great. Besides, I don't think I could handle another movie where Mr. Freeze cracks ice jokes/puns every other sentence.

If there were indeed a sequel, it'd probably involve villains like The Riddler, Deadshot, Bane, etc. The problem is that the more well-known villains of Batman are few in number -- outside of those, the villains become a bit lamer and lesser known. But regardless of whatever Nolan does, if he does indeed make a sequel, I am confident he'll do it correctly.