Determined by "many". Granted, that's vague, but certainly among people I know, The Dark Knight is considered the high water mark of modern action films. And

Determined by "many". Granted, that's vague, but certainly among people I know, The Dark Knight is considered the high water mark of modern action films. And while this still is just more anecdotal data and not scientific proof, the movie sits at #6 on imdb's list of top 250 movies of all time: http://www.imdb.com/chart/top?ref_=nb_mv_3_chttp http://www.imdb.com/chart/top?ref_=nb_mv_3_chttp Which suggests strongly that this view is shared more widely in the general movie-watching population.