Spoilers follow. Seriously. If you haven't seen the movie, watch it, then come back.
If you're looking for a review of The Dark Knight Rises, here it is: go see the movie. Pay for the ticket, watch and enjoy the film, go home and give it some serious thought. Then, go again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Nolan's scope is epic and his project more than ambitious, capping his trilogy in spectacular fashion. From the moment Bane first spoke in the opening scene until the final scene at the cafe, I never felt bored nor did I feel that the movie moved too slowly--which, considering the film's just under three-hour running time, is quite a testament to Nolan's script. In fact, after leaving the theater, my friend and I agreed that we could have watched another solid ten or fifteen minutes of Bruce Wayne's training in the pit. But the most commendable achievement of the film is that it brings Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy full circle, providing closure to his Batman universe in the best way possible. In time, we'll likely come to think of the Dark Knight movies, much like we do the Star Wars Trilogy, not as separate entries but as parts of one grand story.
Earlier this month, I wrote a post about what I think Nolan was doing with his trilogy. To summarize that post, I find Nolan's films to be one of the most interesting experiments with the Batman mythos that has ever been attempted. By putting Batman in a real-world setting, Nolan proposes that the introduction of the Batman to an already complex system of criminal activity and corrupt social structure (Gotham City) would result in unpredictable consequences that ramify in increasingly dangerous ways--the apotheosis of which would be the Joker in The Dark Knight. The only way to reset the system, therefore, would be for Batman to die, the created symbol serving to inspire but no longer actively affecting the system he meant to save. He dares to ask, "Would Gotham have been better off without the Batman?" without providing an all too clear answer. I think what I said in that post still holds weight, so, instead of beating a dead horse, I wish to take a slightly different approach and talk about the film in terms of its legacy. From now on, Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy will (and should) be the standard for how to create a superhero film. In the words of the Joker, "...I know the truth, there's no going back. You've changed things, forever."
The Dark Knight Rises, more so than any of its predecessors, is a film about superhero films. It's comic book elements are more overt than The Dark Knight's, having a very clear act structure that felt like a comic book series. Issue one ends with Batman re-donning the cape and cowl. Another issue ends with the broken Bat, and yet another issue would be devoted to Wayne's training in the pit. The structural integrity of the movie draws clear inspiration from comics like No Man's Land, Knightfall, and The Dark Knight Returns among numerous others. And was it just me, or is the pit/prison analogous to Ra's Al Ghul's Lazarus pits (falling in and climbing out to achieve some transcendence or chance at immortality)? Maybe, maybe not. My point is that this film had much more in common with Batman Begins in terms of its comic book elements than it dead with the erasure of such familiarities in The Dark Knight. I think this is by design.
The character of Bane, for instance, is pure comic book villain, falling somewhere between a Bond mastermind and a tornado. He's fast, brilliant, exact, calculating, and brutal. He's a faceless force of nature and conviction, something straight out of a weekly serial brought to terrifying life. While the Bane of Knightfall is equally brilliant and powerful, the violence of the comic does not match the brutality we see on screen because of Nolan's choice to set his trilogy in a realistic world. A proposed "real" Bane terrifies more than the fantastic comic book monster ever could. Tom Hardy's Bane, while not as interesting as Heath Ledger's Joker, still commands the screen with savage intensity, giving the viewer a comic book powerhouse with just enough realism to make him a threat instead of a caricature. The mask he wears dehumanizes him by obscuring his face and muffling his speech, but when his eloquence emerges, it returns some humanity to the behemoth so the viewer knows that he was a person who became a monster rather than just a hulking pile of muscle.
- Realistic or not, he's still 250 pounds of f*ck you up.
The comic book world seems to intrude into the real world on such a massive scale, though, that the film calls attention to itself. It's easy to point out parallels that exist between the Occupy Movement and Bane's goal of giving Gotham back to the people, and the film seems to have a conservative slant that Mark Fisher points out in his article for the Guardian, saying that "the new film demonises collective action against capital while asking us to put our hope and faith in a chastened rich." His analysis is fair, I think; the connections are there. This interpretation would be fine, for me at least, if the movie were simply holding a cliched dark mirror up to contemporary issues, but the blending of the real world with the artificial (in terms of the comic's relationship with realism in film) seems to turn the issue on its head. The film becomes less about the actual plot because the plot is easy--the film stresses the relationship of the real with the imaginary. The film strives to be, in the words of Alfred Pennyworth (who, by the way, has more pathos in this movie than any other character) "something more."
In Nolan's Gotham, the actions of Bane will have a much more lasting impact than the actions of Batman. The guy blows up half the city, for God's sake! There's no going back from that. If not for the actions of the privileged class's poster child, the mob would have never turned to the Joker in The Dark Knight. This is the same world where the rich are fat cats, the common people are terrorists, and those caught in between suffer while the city falls around them. When the only hope for a real city lies in the hands of a guy in a batsuit, the world will burn long before it gets better. It's the scenario that Nolan had been building since the beginning, whether he knew it or not. He had to provide an answer for how a world with Batman could keep going, and that answer was that the Batman had to die. When the fantasy of the comic book world meets the realism of the actual world, there will be drastic consequences. The binaries of rich and poor, hero and villain, become simple plot points amid a chaotic world of structural collapse. The ending of the film, then, with John Blake's (or Robin, in the most dissapointingly handled bit of fan service in the movie) discovery of the Batcave strikes me with some ambiguity. He hasn't yet learned the lesson Wayne has, but, should he choose to follow him, he will.
I think it's safe to say that in the wake of Nolan's movies, we can all say goodbye to great comic book films for a while. We'll get the awesomeness of Marvel's Phase 2 and maybe some solid entries in the X-Men, Superman, Spider-Man franchises, but I'm putting my money down that there won't be anything that elevates the genre to such heights as Nolan's Dark Knight movies. They make me think deeply about what it is about superheroes that draw us to them. Nolan has cemented himself as an adaptation auteur willing to blend thematic complexity and blockbuster action like few have done before, and it will likely be a long time before we see something like it again on this scale.
Cheers,
--David
P.S. In my last Batman post, I mentioned that I had a Batman wedding cake. Here you go, internet:
- "It's simple. We eat the Batcake."
