THERE ARE HUGE THE DARK KNIGHT SPOILERS IN THIS POST. BE WARNED!

I WILL ALSO PUT A RANDOM STEVEN SEAGAL MOVIE SPOILER AT THE END OF THIS POST. GET EXCITED!

If you’ve seen it, you’ve talked about it. Maybe you cringed. Maybe you cried out. Maybe it totally surprised you, or maybe, like me, you’d heard a little bit about it, but when it actually happened, it still surprised you, and you still cringed, and maybe you still cried out a bit, but you’d rather not draw attention to that, so you won’t mention it except in your blog.

Because, sure, Christopher Nolan’s latest Batman film is a dark and compelling exploration of the moral hazards of political necessity. It’s a brave reinvention of the superhero genre. It’s a Boffo Box-office Breaking Batnanza (as Variety might put it if they felt feisty).

But mostly, it’s two-and-a-half hour framing device for a really disturbing scene with a pencil.

You know it’s true. Find out what makes the Joker’s pencil so magical after the jump —