Or is it Batmen? Plurals in super hero world are never easy.

Anyway, continuing our look at the many incarnations of Gotham's Darkest Knight through the decades, let's take a look at just how timeless a Batman flick The Dark Knight is with the below vids. (or atleast, how timeless the trailer is).

Each of the following trailers are streaming goodness of the many incarnations the Joker and Mr Wayne have gone through thru the years, but dubbed over with their Dark Knight voices. Which one wins?

The Dark Knight, 1989 style



The Dark Knight, 1966 style (my personal favorite)



The Dark Knight, 2008 style (for good measure)


And once again, July 18 cannot come soon enough.

Let's face it Batman, we make better kid action figures than movies.

Remember the days when George Clooney was Batman? When director Joel Schumacher had actually descended the Batman movie franchise into a campier universe than the 1960s sitcom starring Adam West?

Batman, the most twisted noble hero of comic lore had become a terrible joke (rather ironic considering his arch nemesis, yes?). The franchise was raking in big name stars like the Governator, Val Kilmer, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones, and so on, but these actors were playing CARTOON characters, not the deeply disturbed personas created in the shadowy comic. Don't even get me started on the dialogue of those movies. Ick.

So many of us utterly lost all faith in the Batman franchise, when it once held so much hope. It almost seems like Alicia Silverstone and Chris O'Donnell were so embarrassed they went into hiding.

But then Batman began, again.

The joke, it seems, was on us. Or atleast, Joel Schumacher's vision of a Gotham City that looked more like it had come from The Matrix.

So here we are, nearly 2 weeks from the release of "The Dark Knight." And we're talking about how Heath Ledger's re-invented Joker is the most brilliant chaos to ever fire a bazooka on a big screen. He's an atomic bomb of a character that quite literally surprised everyone who knew him mostly as "that aussi who played a homosexual in a controversial cowboy movie" (Brokeback Mountain).
There's even Oscar talk.

Suffice it to say, we've come a long, long way from Poison Ivy's cringing persona in Batman & Robin.

There really isn't even a point to this particular blog, other than the fact that July 18 can't come soon enough. And I'm glad the past is behind us.

After endorsing Mr. Dent in his campaign to clean up Gotham last week, our Scene & Heard offices have been absolutely FLOODED with campaign propaganda and press materials from Dent's team. Posters, buttons, stickers. The whole cow and a carton of milk, if you will. We actually have Mercury employees trying to hop their carcasses on our Save Gotham bandwagon and clawing some of these Dent items from our possession (someone tell them to follow reality's campaigns please. We got the comic book elections covered, thank you very much!)

Well today, a new newspaper was brought to my attention, and I'm gonna send them my resume off to them today, see if they could use an entertainment writer or promotions guy. I'd be happy to help Dent in his bid to clean Gotham up! Not to mention, I'd do anything to see more of Heath Ledger's Joker right now. If that means walking into the storm, so be it.

So don't mind me, I'm just going to now post the trailer for The Dark Knight for about the 3rd time I've done on this blog now.

The best part about this weekend's release of "I Am Legend" wasn't the Gollum-meets-Frankenstein zombies. Nor was it Will Smith's graying hair or odd fascination with Shrek. It was the new trailer for Dark Knight featuring lots of tasty footage of the new joker, Heath Ledger.

Doubters, prepare to hate yourself. Ledger masters a wildly manic and deranged villain that is sure to color the revamped Batman film series the way Jack Nicholson colored the first Batman. Dark Knight has become the most anticipated anything for me in 2008. Peep the trailer below, and let me know what you think.

I Am Legend looks awesome enough as is. But if you catch it in theaters (starts Dec 14), you'll be treated to a new trailer for The Dark Knight, featuring some footage of Heath Ledger masquerading around Gotham City as The Joker. Word is he's surpassed all expectations, which says a bit considering he plays the same character that Jack Nicholson nailed in Tim Burton's Batman. And I imagine he won't be prancing around to Prince tunes like Nicholson got to either. So it must have been a totally uphill battle for Ledger. But if director Chris Nolan did even half as good with this sequel as he did with "Batman Begins," we're all in for a treat. PLUS my favorite Hollywood cutie Maggie Gylenhall has taken over for Katie Holmes' role. This movie couldn't bomb if it TRIED to!

Of course, it isn't hard for a Batman movie to be good after that "Batman & Robin" movie with AH-NULD as Mr. Freeze. "MY NAME IS FREEEEZE. Learn it well, for it is the chilling sound of your doom!"