As many reviews have already made clear, The Dark Knight sets the new gold standard for comic book movies. I think a big reason for that lies in the casting of a new heroine for Batman, Gotham City. Dark Knight evokes adjectives like epic and edgy. It feels like something is really at stake, but what? Writer/director Christopher Nolan crafts a handful of brilliant characters, but the one we’re really gunning for is Gotham City herself.

While it’s easy to say Gotham City is an allegory for society as a whole, in The Dark Knight Nolan intentionally paints a unique urban environment. The film opens with stunning aerial shots of Gotham City (played beautifully by Chicago). A lot has been said about Nolan’s choice to shoot certain scenes of the film in IMAX, and it’s no coincidence that nearly all of them fill the frame with an urban landscape. There is something truly breathtaking about seeing Batman leap from the roof a building and spread his wing-like cape in IMAX, but what’s equally important is what’s below him: an endless grid of streets, buildings, and people.

Nolan really works his magic when he combines sustained suspense, a series of sub-climaxes and surprisingly deft character development in a huge film that doesn’t feel too crowded or choppy. Of course, the movie’s climax is an epic clash between strong characters and the nuanced ideals they’ve come to represent. In many ways it looks as though Rachel Dawes is set to be the damsel-in-distress, motivating two heroes in a tense love triangle. But ultimately, I believe, this isn’t the case. As much as Dawes, Batman, Commissioner Gordon, and Harvey Dent risk their lives to save one another, in the end they’re really laying it all on the line for Gotham City.

Let me make something clear. I don’t mean to say that the character of Gotham City was the best rendered of them all. That honor clearly goes to Heath Ledger’s Joker. No IMAX panoramas can match what that man did with his lip-smacking alone. Rather, I mean to say that Gotham City is the ultimate prize, it’s what every character fights for, either to save or to destroy. The survival of The City trumps even the battle between good and evil as the central conflict of the film.

Why so much love for The City? I think it’s more than just the tradition around Batman. Despite the fact that the Joker is repeatedly referred to as a terrorist, there’s a warrantless wiretapping subplot that boarders on heavy-handed, and the film explores difficult questions about what’s moral when fighting unthinkable threats, The Dark Knight does not feel like a War on Terror parable. I could be wrong, but I don’t think the United States is mentioned in any way in the entire film. Batman is not America’s hero, Batman is Gotham’s hero.

While Iron Man found his origins in the seemingly Osama-infected hills of Afghanistan, Batman only strays from Gotham briefly to apprehend a criminal so that he can be brought to justice by Gotham’s superstar D.A., Harvey Dent. While it could be argued that keeping the justice vs. terror conflict confined to Gotham (as opposed to Baghdad) is simply a way to keep the film from feeling stale, I think it’s much more. If Gotham has suburbs, Batman won’t acknowledge them. Bruce Wayne and his colleagues choose to stay and fight. What The Dark Knight shows is that while there are battles between good and evil all over the world, the ones we should care about most happen in our own city.