By the time you read this, the sequel to Christopher Nolan’s Batman prequel will have made the largest opening-weekend haul in movie history. (I suppose it helps that it also had the widest release in movie history). In year already littered with the carcasses of marginal superhero flicks, The Dark Knight is unquestionably the biggest and the baddest. Despite being less compelling and well-plotted than its predecessor, as well as excessive on nearly every level, the newly-crowned Highest-Grossing Movie Ever keeps Nolan’s Batman franchise in an entirely different class.

It will be incredibly difficult to say anything about this movie that hasn’t already been said to excess: it’s visually lavish, a bit over the top on most fronts, Heath Ledger is fantastic, and it feels like it burst into our lives from this morning headlines (terrorism, torture, wiretapping—the bases are good and covered). Critics have even widely noted the brilliant manner in which The Dark Knight upends the comic book world’s cartoonish, speechifying caricature of morality with its own brand of speechifying morality. That is this movie’s true genius, and possibly worth a few more words.

In this chapter of Gotham’s history, the philosophical horizon has grown substantially direr: the heroes invoke the “darkness before the dawn,” when there is clearly no dawn in sight (or as one character puts it, “Tell your son everything will be alright! Lie!”). No tidy, happy ending, no letting us escape without having felt the pain and wrestled with the insanity of a world has forever lost its mind. Batman hangs his head at the realization that his ruse is becoming his reality, and that he will only succeed as long as he’s hated and hunted. The fact that Americans love and get a movie like this is abundantly encouraging, no matter how tiresome the gratuitous pyrotechnics it took to get them there.

Rarely do films this massive make pointed political observations so deftly—by showing, not telling. Even Wall-E, from the famously illustrative, non-sermonizing Pixar, began to feel a bit sanctimonious. The Dark Knight certainly has not jettisoned the grand superhero tradition of eloquent utterances on the crushing moral implications of the moment’s scuffle: the concept of “the right thing” is batted about, and words like dark, light, good and evil are prominent members of the cast. But as the issues of our time weave in and out of the plot situations like Batman’s ziplines, we get an unsettling reminder of 21st-century political morality’s uncomfortable complexity, and a disturbing picture of who we’ve become.

The fickle, emotional Gothamites, for example, embody the good old tradition of weary citizens turning, with an entitled, weak-willed shallowness—against their protectors and their own better judgment. They’re unwilling to stand behind the one who is sacrificing everything for their survival, sending up the classic, literally old-as-Moses howler: “we’re worse off now than we were before you came!” Where have we heard that recently? The Gotham press majors on minors (“but cops are dying!”), obtusely refusing to understand Batman on any level that requires patience or complex thought.

The Dark Knight is even more up-the-moment in its depiction of coercive interrogations. Rather than make any specific prognostication, it shakes its head in general disbelief. The characters who obstruct the most justice do so in the name of narrowly applied “law”—a blank that works just as well filled with the Geneva Conventions—and do so as much to demonize their political enemies as to uphold ethics. As America straight-facedly wrings its hands over the rights of terrorists, Nolan illustrates the patent absurdity of asking such questions when murderous insanity is nestling its chaotic barrel against one’s temple. When Batman pounds the Joker to a (PG-13) pulp in the interrogation cell, it is pretty obvious he’s going overboard. But his “titanium tri-weave” fists are punching, right in the war paint, a man who has crusaded for the deaths of thousands. Who really cares?

“You’ve got rules!” a beaten mob boss cackles at Batman, explaining why he’ll never defeat the Joker. The film’s most important subtext thus lies low, unspoken: when the enemy is irrational, fear-mongering hate, those who aren’t willing to hang the code will end up dead. Further, it takes a long, hard look into terrorism’s eyes, and is willing to recognize that some human beings have ceased to operate as human beings, and deserve only to suffer the same fate they have inflicted on thousands.

As clumsily thought-provoking as it is, The Dark Knight closes my book on Batman. I’ve had enough. Another two hours of this visceral moralizing would be two too many. But as long as my countrymen are getting this sort of intellectual workout from their summer action flicks, I will patiently oblige.

David Sessions is the editor of Patrol. He may be reached at editor@patrolmag.com.