Saw it in the theater, thought it was ok for what it was. Kind of demonstrates the shortcomings of confining yourself to a "gritty, realistic" telling of what is essentially adolescent empowerment fantasy. Much as I'm apathetic toward the actual character I must admit I think Iron Man has since demonstrated that you can have more blatant, even lighthearted, fantasy and still get a general audience to suspend their disbelief with this kind of "my superpower is lots of money" character. Now that Nolan and Bale are done with Bats I'm interested to see where Warner Bros. takes him next, but Adam West will always be my favorite Batman.
PS- One also has to remember that the film was originally intended to have the Joker in it, who knows how this might have affected the re-write. Though he could have just been intended to fill the same cameo role Scarecrow wound up filling, dunno.
It wasn't a problem of being realistic or gritty, really, it was that it was essentially fanservice, and thats it. "oooh look, It's like Dark Knight Returns, with Bruce coming out of retirement and staging his death!" "oooh look, it's totally knightfall with Bane breaking Batman's back and Bruce having to learn to walk again!" "Oooh look it's Talia! She was in this! WHAT A TWEEST!" It was pandering, and as a result, suffered for it. It just had shitty pacing because it tried to crap too many elements into it's story, without accommodating the run time of the movie. Joker's absence really doesn't mater too much. Bane broke Blackgate open, not Arkham.
And even in the novelization, which references Joker, they mention him as having stayed in Arkham as it's lone inmate. Which actually kind of works. I would expect Joker to do creepy weird shit like decide to live in Arkham when everyone else gets sprung, and only escape when everyone else gets put IN.
I also saw "The Others" on TV the other day. Haha, what a GREAT ending. that was truly surprising.