I guess my perspective might be a little unique. For the most part I've been a DC/Batman person for most of my life. I still consider my self a fan. If you were to ask me a few years ago I would say with certainty that my "holy trinity" of action/adventure cinema would be James Bond, Indiana Jones, and Batman. Now it would have to be the holy forefathers. Cap has made my act/adv holy trinity knocking out Batman. And for the most part I love the Nolan films. I saw BB over 10 times on the big screen. It's still one of my favorite movies along with TDK. I'm a little biased in that I kinda like the who secret agent spy game kinda stuff and I happen to have a strange liking for the more creative cliffhanger serial style kills present in the Bond and Indy films. That's that Nolan needs to improve on. He's doesn't know how to give villains a satisfying demise. That's he needs to master before being allowed to direct a Bond film.
Story wise I think Nolan has the edge overall and TDK is a modern classic. Action wise TWS has a lot of stuff beat right now in my opinion. Storywise I think TWS is a bit stronger than stuff like Skyfall and it's trumps it action wise. I still think Casino Royale has the best action in the Craig era and it's my favorite of Craig's Bond films. I bring up Craig Bond because his films for me kinda of compliment Nolan's Bat trilogy and it feels like there's a bit of mutual inspiration going on. TFA changed things for me. I still love my Bond and Batman films, there's Bond 24 in '15 to look forward to but Nolan's run with Bale has ended, and it's not that I'm not interested in BvS but I feel like I'm kinda satisfied on the Bat front for the time being, perhaps when we see a bit more of what the new film will look like then my interest will pick up more.
Like I said earlier TFA changed things for me. Until then I was pretty much just DC. I wasn't as interested in Marvel at that time to be honest. I actually didn't see TFA the first time on the big screen, only recently with a TWS 3D double feature, but when I first saw TFA on dvd I knew it was a favorite of mine. Favorite doesn't always mean best made, I think BB is the better movie when placed against TFA, and while both favorites it's things like the propeller scene in TFA that's a throwback to Raiders that makes it my favorite if I were pressed to choose between the two. Since TFA I have read pretty much the whole run of Cap stories. I'd read a good deal of the major Bat arcs from the comics, all the usuals before ever reading Cap. Honestly there's some Bat stories I really love, but overall I was able to connect with Cap more, maybe because my Grandfather is a WW2 vet and Cap came across closer to the James Bond style of action/adventure plot more often than Batman stories although I really enjoyed a lot of the Ra's Al Ghul stuff the Denny O'Neil did.
Now with TWS and TDK, I would say storywise they are about on par with each other but TDK has the edge. TWS is still on par with the TDK for me storywise and on the emotional level. For me the scene with the prisoner on the ferry and the ending with Dent had the same kinda of effect as the confrontation between Steve/Bucky "end of the line" and the ending montage. The action and fight scenes at least for me, TWS wins against TDK. Lots of fun battles. Honestly if you were to ask me my three favorite movies from the last 10 years, they would be Casino Royale, The Dark Knight, and now Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
The one thing I take issue with that I have seen is the notion that aside from Fury, no one had much a of character arc in TWS. I disagree with that and if that's how one see's it then perhaps they need to view the film again and reexamine things. Nothing wrong with that, a good excuse to see TWS again. I would argue that character's like Pierce and Bucky had far more significant arcs than Joker. I know, I know...but if you really think about it, a lot of what is said to try and demonstrate that Joker had some kind of transformative arc in TDK kinda contradicts the very intention of that character as depicted by Nolan and Co. He's intended to be a force of nature, an extreme. If you think Joker was somehow interested in Money or taking over the mob at the start then you're missing the point of the character all together. If was never about the money. The money just allowed him to expand the scope of his madness. The beginning bank heist and the finale with the ferries has the same idea going for it, just a far larger scale, trying to prove the whole dog eat dog chaos theory. Nothing really changes for Joker, he is a constant. It's the same message at the beginning as it is at the end, just far louder. He's a textbook psychopath and that's what his "arc" was all about. Nothing wrong with that. He played it perfectly. However aside from the fact that he's caught and his clothes are little more expensive he doesn't really change, nor is there a great revelation. Joker is what he is, that force of nature, chaos. To claim that he's some guy who wanted money, to rule mob, and kill batman as a significant transformative arc is a little silly from my perspective.
It's not like TDK doesn't have some well done character arc's for Bruce, Dent, Rachel, even Gordon. To say that TWS doesn't have a significant arc for Steve, Natasha, Falcon, Bucky, especially Pierce doesn't make sense at all to me. None of them are the same at the start as they are at the end. A big part of the plot involves character's entire status quos being upending. I mean if you can't remember or didn't see the significant arcs for Natasha, no longer a secret agent and Steve dealing with his guilt over what happened with Bucky all those years ago and that reaching some climax/resolution not to mention Bucky himself although seemly underused has a very significant arc. I mean he's back from the dead, now a brainwashed assassin, trying to regain fragments of who he was. Don't think I'm forgetting Pierce. I'd argue that his arc is far more revelatory than say Joker's in TDK. And that in no way is a slight at TDK. Just stating the facts of how the characters are portrayed. If anything the revelation of Joker happens in the opening scene, and the fact that Nolan and Ledger pulled off selling everything about their Joker in that one opening bank heist is in and out itself all kinds of wonderful. What I don't like is seeing people using bogus arguments to bring down a film I happened to really like. My perspective is that statements like "aside from Fury, no one had any significant character arc in TWS" are bogus and untrue.
