On Sunday I went to see The Dark Knight Rises, before I ended up reading a review or finding out too much about it. My discussion here will CONTAIN SPOILERS, so avoid if you haven't seen the film yet. Also, it'll be a much better read if you know what I'm talking about.
My expectations were high, as I really liked The Dark Knight, but I feel they were fulfilled Getting a superhero film right is notoriously difficult, and the level of difficulty is increased when you've decided to use these archetypes to try and tell a serious story, and give the whole thing enough verisimilitude that you can suspend disbelief about characters like Batman or The Joker existing in what seems very much to be our world. It's a credit to Nolan that he's pulled this off, and has created a film which nicely rounds out the story he wanted to tell.
My favourite of the trilogy is still The Dark Knight, but The Dark Knight Rises is a close second. I feel Batman Begins is easily the weakest of the three. A somewhat weak first film with two good sequels is unusual, but that seems to be what happened.
There are a few comparatively minor things that I don't think completely work in The Dark Knight Rises. Given the running time, more time could have been spent showing us the kinds of inequality in Gotham which allow Bane to take over: as it is, one character tells us that it exists, but we never really get to see it. Similarly, when someone taken to what you've already set up as The Worst Prison In The World, the first thought of the viewer upon seeing it should not be "Oh, that seems all right". Apparently the thing in Room 101 that is the worst thing in the world is Tom Conti talking to you like a kindly uncle, which might be true, but is strange nonetheless.
I'm in two minds about the end. On the one hand, when Chekov's Autopilot finally goes off it seems like a bit of a copout, and makes the line I've used as my title ring a bit hollow. Nolan does deserve credit for making me think that he might actually Kill The Batman, though. Doing that would have left Michael Caine's Alfred with an unhappy ending, but maybe that's part of the price for saving Gotham? The ending which they went with is perfectly good, if perhaps a bit conventional.
Anyway, I really liked it. I still haven't read any reviews, so I can hunt those out and be told why I'm wrong, now.
3 comments:
Also saw it having avoided reviews and liked very much; agreed. I like what you say about the reality of the thing. Although there are clearly some unrealistic things going on I like that it makes an effort to seem like things are really happening. My memory of 90s Batman is of him having a magic cave with every gadget he might need developed and tested and ready to go. I like that in this they are repurposing military tech and Bruce has to go to Fox and ask for redesigns ("You want to be able to turn your head") and plan set pieces (like the plane out of Hong Kong) that seem to be pushing at the edge of what they are able to do.
Since we're spoiling:
As we came out the person I saw it with (I don't think I should put people's names next to opinions in public without permission) said that the ending was rubbish and that it could have ended with 'the autopilot has been patched' without all the mucking about in Florence.
Ah, I said, but then the autopilot line with the scene with Alfred might seem like the conventional way that such films leave themselves open for Batman 4: Dark Knight Returns*.
Okay then, they said, so there was no need for the autopilot business at all either. He could have just flown away and died. I think you're suggesting something like this would be less conventional.
My issue with this is that that makes it a film about making the ultimate sacrifice to save the world (city) - your title line, as you say. Instead it was about escape. There's a line in the Dark Knight where Rachel says she is happy to wait until Gotham no longer needs Batman but "now I'm sure the day won't come when *you* no longer need Batman". Just like how in Batman Begins Gordon talks about escalation ("we start wearing Kevlar, they buy armour piercing rounds, and *you're* wearing a mask and jumping off rooftops") and the second film gives us the Joker, in the third we open with a Bruce Wayne who can't find his place in the world without The Batman. An ending where he dies to prevent the Bad Thing happening would just be a natural conclusion of this story - he never learned to live without The Batman. The ending we got, in that sense, broke the mould.
(* of course, Robin finding the batcave does leave this open but in a Batman is a symbol, could be anyone, "Don't you want to know who he was?" "I know exactly who he was. He was the Batman." way.)
Flying away and dying is another type of conventional ending - but not so much in superhero films. Has any superhero film ever properly killed off the main character?
Your point about the film being about escape is a good one. In that case, Bruce Wayne dying without ever learning to live without The Batman gives you Batman as *tragedy*, which is also pretty interesting.
Oh, and something I forgot to put in the main post: early on in TDKR, Michael Caine says to Christian Bale that Gotham doesn't need Batman any more, it needs Bruce Wayne. As Bruce Wayne is apparently someone who secretly builds an experimental fusion reactor directly beneath a major population centre, Gotham can probably live without either of them.
I saw this recently, thought it was a good superhero film, I was pleased with the general return to self-contained storytelling after the confused contempory moral moralising of The Dark Night. We didn't escape the Nolan's view of the "Occupy" protesters though: apparently they're a bunch of jealous nihilists who want to destroy society. Thanks for your analysis, dickheads!
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