Looking back, the whole nolan batman franchise was an illusion, begins was average but gets gassed for being the greatest comic book movie.Simply because joel schu raped the series to such an extent before him
Dark Knight was a simply a plot driven caper that was basic and while good was aided greatly by heath ledger death/performance.
With DKR they were out of gimmicks there was no death or shytty movie that preceded it to make it look better.It had the momentum of TDK and was simply ask to stand on its own merits and it sucked.