Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But in the context of the scene, it was awkward and a display of mediocre acting, questionable direction, or poor editing (if the editor had multiple takes to cut from, I doubt that was the best possible versions he could have picked).

Are we being warmed up for the appearance of Robin in the next installment of the series?  A return to nipples on the rubber suits?

Yes, “The Dark Knight” is a piece of fiction.  It is a piece of fantasy, based on a comic book.  However, the clear premise of the rebooted Batman series, and the clear goals of Chris Nolan, the director, is to ground the fiction in reality.  Nolan goes to great effort to place the world of Batman into the real world, including: the locations, the characters, the story dynamics, and the plausibility of the elements of the story and plot.  That is the obvious goal. Especially in “The Dark Knight”, extending from the basis of “Batman Begins”, there is a persistent focus on keeping things realistic and not idealistic.  TDK is an attempt at taking something sourced from fantasy and placing it into reality, and also removing any semblance of idealism.

That’s all find and good – it’s an interesting goal and “Batman Begins” pulled it off quite well.  Watching BB, the audience can truly believe the various aspects of the story.  The main problem with TDK is that it fails miserably in that regard.  There are numerous scenes and situations that are completely not plausible at all, and the audience is expected to have a greater suspension of disbelief than what is implied throughout.  It steals from the audience the very thing that is meant to prop the value of the movie up in the first place.  The movie contradicts itself, it cheats itself, and the audience.  To compensate, what the audience is given is a lot of explosions and sadistic scenes, and the masses appear to have bought into it.

Some moments in the movie, the score worked great, in others it distracted.  The disjointed execution of the music scoring was mediocre, which is easy enough to ignore when trying to enjoy a movie, but there were moments that it was simply done so wrong as to be distracting.

Maybe sub-titling could have helped.

I’ve heard some fanatics try to explain this away (“there are no nearby buildings”, “the buildings are too far”, “maybe people would think he’s wearing Batman pajamas”) but then there’s this other dangling question: Clearly in every scene when he’s in his costume, he’s got black face makup all around his eyes.  Where was that makeup if he had just plopped down in the chair to stare so meditatively out the window?  His eyes should have looked like those of a raccoon when Alfred came around to bring him breakfast.

Here’s one:

The Joker crashes a party and clearly is on a homicidal track, bringing along a number of henchmen to help him out.  He threatens Rachel Dawes and then Batman appears and everyone was kung-fu fightin’… So The Joker tosses Rachel out a window and Batman dives for her and, I suppose by the laws of Superman physics, manages to catch her and slow down their fall enough to keep them both from having their bones crushed when hitting a car.  Never mind this physical magic (so magical that even Rachel wasn’t out of breath enough for her to make her singular semi-comical quip in the entire movie), but the next scene we see… Batman standing atop some building looking all… Batman-ish.  Nice shot but, uh, what about the party?  The one with The Joker, some goons, a bunch of guns, and a lot of innocent people whose lives were being threatened.  I supposed Batman just figured The Joker would get bored and leave because we all know the party’s over once Batman leaves.

Here’s another:

The Joker is in the interrogation room, and someone who shall remain unnamed un-cuffed him, and he’s left with a cop standing guard on him.  He’s taunting the guard, obviously to rile him up so he’ll start a fight with him and presumably overpower him to expedite his escape.  The next thing we are shown in that police precinct is The Joker now has that cop overpowered with a sharp object (probably a piece of glass).  So when can the doors in interrogation rooms be opened from the inside?  Who’s genius idea was it to leave a homicidal maniac un-cuffed in a room with a single guard?  Something was missing here and it was a gaping hole which felt that way.

Yet another:

Just before The Joker and some of his goons pour gasoline onto the huge pile of cash, we are shown the Chinese banker tied to a chair at the top of the pile.  The camera pans a bit and we never see him again.  It’s obvious he was set on fire atop the blaze, but it’s never shown or even visually asserted, other than the quick shot of him that is very easy to miss.  Probably there were scenes of him on fire that were too intense for a PG-13 rating, but then why even have him visible in a glimpse in a shot like that?  And why not have the Joker comment later about setting him on fire?  It’s like the editing wasn’t fully thought through for that scene and then it’s quickly forgotten.