The Dark Knight by Craig Byrne, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer

"The Dark Knight" was the sequel to "Batman Begins", and stars Christian Bale as the titular hero, going up against the new foe, the Joker and making a new enemy, ally turned villain Harvey Dent, who gets part of his face burned off and becomes the Villain Two-Face.

This book covers both the new look of the movie, both in vehicles and costume for Batman, and the entire shooting script. For those who haven't ever seen or read a shooting script, it's not like reading a book. It's a very cut down version of a story, with the visuals and words, and not much else.

It becomes much easier to visualize what is going on if you have already seen the movie, but the better scripts still give you a good idea of what is going on. But only visually or physically. You don't find out what the characters are thinking or feeling unless they say it aloud. And that is what the actors are for, to bring the script to life.

In this book, the script is enlivened with pictures from the movie, every character from Bruce Wayne to Lucius Fox, to Harvey Dent and the Joker. But even so, the story comes across as rather choppy and is still hard to follow in some places, because reading just a script can be rather boring.

I just wish there had been more stuff on the pictures and art of the story and rather less on the script. On the other hand, it's a nice, solid script, even if I started to drift off in places reading it. It tskes a lot to take the script, even in pictures, and make it work in your imagination.

For those who completely loved the movie and want a copy of the shooting script, this would make the perfect, if somewhat expensive, gift. But otherwise, save your money and get an "The Art of the Dark Knight" book instead, if it exists. It's a better use of your money and time.