The Peculiar Position of Game Trailers: A Critical Perspective

The video game trailer occupies a very peculiar place in media consumption. Whereas a preview for a movie gives the audience a glimpse at what the movie offers, a video game trailer is always external to its own medium. A movie trailer works because cinema is a passive, visual medium; the viewer sees a bit of what he/she will see in the movie proper. Similarly, reading the back of a novel or a sample of the novel in another book serves the same purpose--it advertises the novel through the medium of the novel. Game trailers to not have that luxury. They operate solely within the spheres of the visual and aural, but gameplay requires the physical touch and feedback of inputting commands on a controller (or waving your arms like a lunatic, if you're into the whole motion gaming thing). Game trailers cannot communicate the ludological sensation of gameplay, hence the necessity for demos--a far more relevant method of advertising a game than a trailer could ever be. It is because of these limitations that I always approach game trailers with a fair degree of skepticism. Don't get me wrong, trailers serve a fundamental purpose of hyping the company's product and introducing it to consumers. After all, we can't all attend Gamescom or E3, and sometimes demos can be a little slow at hitting the download scene. As bafflingly illogical as game trailers are on a fundamental level, they are absolutely essential to the industry, and as such, warrant discussion about how best to accurately and honestly advertise their products.

I find that the best trailers fulfill a few certain criteria. The trailer should first and foremost always provide an accurate introduction to its game's mechanics. If I'm watching a trailer, I want to see how I'm going to be playing the game. Whether or not this takes place in-engine is negligible compared to the importance of showing the ways in which the player will manipulate the game's world. Second, a trailer should give the viewer a glimpse of the game's world in terms of its atmosphere while maintaining a certain degree of mystery. If the game will be funny, provide a funny trailer. For a horror game, instill a sense of dread and gloom. If it's a story heavy game, focus on narrative--without giving too much away. Lastly, the trailer better damn well be entertaining and memorable. We're all so plugged into the world of mass media devices and viral videos that it's easy to see a trailer and then immediately forget about it. A great trailer has staying power. Since trailers operate in a visual medium, I'll turn to a few examples of trailers that have created significant buzz this generation.

Gears of War: Mad World Trailer

When I saw this trailer for the first time, I finally grasped what this new generation of gaming could produce. I like Gears of War well enough, and when it hit the scene as one of the premiere flagship titles to sell the Xbox 360, this trailer was a bit of a risk. It's heavily atmospheric, hauntingly lonely, and bizarrely reflective. I'm a sucker for dissonance. I used to play a lot of games by turning down the game's music and providing my own soundtrack, often playing shooter games while listening to serene music to provide bizarre contrasts. This juxtaposition of the hyper-masculine soldier with the dreamlike melody of Gary Jules' "Mad World" makes the trailer certainly memorable, and this contrast emerges in the game's aesthetic. The game's setting, planet Sera, teems with ruined Hellenistic architecture, creating a world of apocalyptic beauty. Some gilded age has fallen to ashes, and the game's art direction makes destruction quite beautiful, providing a similar contrast evoked by the trailer. The gameplay, though, never quite reaches the thematic sophistication of the trailer. Sure, the game controls like a dream, and its violence is almost operatic. I nevertheless can't help but feel a bit misled by the atmospheric sense of isolation and terror in the trailer. I never feel as vulnerable as the trailer makes Marcus Fenix out to be. This is certainly a good thing for gameplay because its a game that lets you feel like a badass, but there is a slight disconnect between the promises of the trailer and the game--though the trailer is still remarkable.

Killzone 2: E3 2005 Trailer

I remember how this trailer was met with both excitement and incredulity. Some people thought it heralded the new age of gaming while others called shenanigans and claimed that such gameplay was impossible. Whichever side won out (and I'm inclined to think the former), the trailer certainly had people talking until the game's 2009 release. The trailer showcases the gameplay through a fully-rendered CG sequence, making some onlooker wonder if the game could possibly ever look as great as the trailer shows. Killzone 2 looks sharp, to be sure, but the trailer was way before its time. Releasing it four years before the game's publication date built expectations that could not possibly be met.When critics finally played Killzone 2, they couldn't help but compare it to the trailer revealed in 2005. For me at least, the trailer spoke true--others had dissenting opinions. The trailer captures the chaotic atmosphere and dynamic combat in Killzone 2, and I can't help but speculate that the team at Guerilla needed the four years to catch up to their own advertisement. Even if they did bite off a bit more than they could chew, the time spent paid off by delivering one hell of a game.

Dead Island: We've all seen it...

This trailer for Dead Island is a textbook example of how not to make a game trailer. When it hit the internet, it absolutely blew up; people who didn't even play games paid attention to it. It's an emotional, artistic and atmospheric mini-movie. It's extremely well done. The music helps facilitate this family's tragedy perfectly, providing a different spin on the zombie horror genre in a way that I thought was just reserved for The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later. The trailer is a remarkable piece of CG art, and on that level it excels. Dead Island was in development hell since its 2006 announcement, and this trailer announced its resurrection, building audience anticipation and undoubtedly resulting in a massive surge of pre-orders. But the game it advertises is not the product on the shelf. After being underwhelmed by seeing gameplay footage, I gambled on a rental, and I sadly found my misgivings to be true. While I'm sure there's plenty there for others to enjoy, I don't think anyone can seriously make the claim that the trailer captured the essence of Dead Island. Dead Island is not a game about tense, emotional situations. It's not a story-driven survival narrative. I never felt any connection to people I protected. And at no point did I throw a child out the window. Other than the resort setting and the zombies, the trailer has little else to do with the game. The game is nowhere near as good as its trailer. The trailer is a well-made movie, challenging narrative and genre; the game is a bit of incoherent mess. And never the twain shall meet.

BioShock: Near perfection

BioShock was a hard sell. Combining a bizarre environment, Objectivist philosophy, and intelligent first-person shooter gameplay looks just as strange on paper as they do in theoretical practice, but this trailer reveals only what is necessary to build excitement while maintaining mystique. We see the combat in the way a splicer fights against a Big Daddy. We see, from a first-person perspective, a deeply disturbing scene with a man forcing himself on a helpless child, the camera's position mocking the viewer's passive complicity in the grisly pantomime. We hear a synopsis of Andrew Ryan's Randian philosophy. We catch a panoramic view of the underwater, ruinous dystopia. We see strange powers, a vita chamber, a shotgun, a monster with a drill, a pipewrench. All the key elements of the game's mechanics appear...yet we're left wanting more because we don't know how they fit together. It's unlike anything we've seen before, even those of us who have played Ken Levine's System Shock 2, BioShock's spiritual predecessor. The trailer tells an ambiguous story with provocative gameplay elements on display all while building a sense of atmosphere and keeping the audience engaged. We're left wondering what the hell we just saw and wanting to discover--and play--something more in this weird world.

There are most certainly others that work just as well as these. The Dark Souls trailer set to The Silent Comedy's "Bartholomew" combines mood, mechanics, and an awesome (and relevant) song. The gameplay trailer for Dishonored works well, too, though it has its flaws--mostly due to its making the game look like a throat-slitting simulator. I love the atmospheric short film trailer for Metro: Last Light, but it provides nothing useful in terms of describing gameplay, unlike the short film for Halo 3: ODST, which worked in the mechanics through the combat sequence.

A video game trailer must accomplish more than provide a fun little video. It must accomplish more than a film preview or a sample of a novel. The most successful game trailers break the constraints of the visual to offer aspects of the ludological. We interact with games in much more complex (or at least different) ways than we do with film and literature, and trailers should acknowledge this fact by accurately portraying the ways in which the consumer/player will interact with the digital world on display. As silly as I think trailers are, we need them, and the industry needs to get the word out somehow. But they can only take us so far. Otherwise, we wouldn't rely so heavily on sites like IGN to keep us informed. We, nevertheless, should always approach the videos we see with critical and analytic eyes--and then forget them completely we play the demo.

Cheers,

--David

Film Thoughts: The Dark Knight Rises and the Post-Nolan Era

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."

Film Thoughts: The Amazing Spider-Man

Obligatory Spoiler Alert!

It did not take long for me to figure out where this film was going from its very beginning. I've played and given my thoughts on the game, I own copies of the Raimi trilogy, and I've read the comics (albeit over a decade ago). So, like damn near everyone else, I knew what was going to happen. But as the end of the first act approached, even though I knew it would happen, I was still shocked and hurt when Uncle Ben died in the street. I don't know whom to credit for my reaction. Perhaps it's director Marc Webb's ability to throw an emotional punch. Maybe it was Martin Sheen's pitch perfect performance as Uncle Ben (whoever cast him deserves credit as well). Or it may have been the argument between Sheen's Uncle Ben and Garfield's Peter Parker, just before the incident, when Uncle Ben completely tears into Peter the way I could see my own father do to me when I was a teenager. Whatever the reason, I saw Uncle Ben die for what seemed to be the three-hundredth time in the past decade, and it still felt tragic and powerful.

Let me be honest here: I still think it's too soon for a Spider-Man reboot. Sure, the gritty real-world aesthetic of Nolan's Batman trilogy reinvented the way we think about superhero films, and, on the surface, it would seem that Webb strives for the same type of aesthetic. But Batman Begins released a decade after the visual abortion that was Joel Schumacher's Batman and Robin, and it's only been about half that time since Raimi's Spider-Man 3. I think Raimi's trilogy still holds up fairly well, though I'm willing to admit my own nostalgic connection to it. So it came as a bit of a surprise to me that Hollywood wanted to revisit the franchise so soon. Sony, it seems, pushed the movie out the door because they wanted to keep the movie rights, and they should, considering how they need the capital.

I know you do, buddy.  I know you do.

I'm obviously not an economist or a marketing pro, but I predicted they would sell the rights back to Marvel so they could roll Spidey in with the Avengers universe. I don't know if we'll ever see that happen now. Instead, the Webslinger will be subject to things like this: 

Headline: J. Jonah Jameson Is a Jerk

Anyway, here's the bottom line: Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man is much darker than Raimi's camp-fest; however, it is certainly no less fun. It's a much more patient movie, willing to build up the scenes with Peter and Gwen (played by the always charming Emma Stone) before delivering with the action sequences we all paid good money to see. Peter doesn't even get bitten until about twenty minutes into the film, and watching him develop his powers delivers some of the best entertainment in the whole movie. I think the first-person web-slinging section could have been a solid minute and a half because it was an absolute blast. And here's where I credit Webb's directorial skills. The movie is patient, but never slow. The characters are charming, but never impossibly cheesy. The action sequences are fast and acrobatic, but never so busy that it impedes the viewer from understanding the action. Stan Lee's cameo was hilarious, but not...eh I got nothing--it was pretty awesome. If I had not known going in, I would have never guessed that the same man who directed (500) Days of Summer also directed The Amazing Spider-Man. Webb really has an eye for clear, precise action scenes that I could not have predicted. I left the theater pleasantly surprised.

Returning to the question of acting, everyone seemed right for their respective rolls. Aside from Martin Sheen, Dennis Leary gives an excellent performance as Capt. Stacy. His gruff demeanor matched the character perfectly, and, even though I knew what would happen to him, his character arc served as, arguably, the most interesting. Rhys Ifans fit the Kurt Connors/Lizard's scales, but the villain had nowhere near the bombastic fun of Willem Dafoe's Norman Osborne is Raimi's 2002 incarnation. Garfield's Peter Parker outshines Tobey Maguire's, giving a bit more gravitas than his predecessor to the titular hero. He and Emma Stone really make the non-action sequences worth watching. Of course, in the great tradition of the information age, we all know where their relationship will inevitably lead.

The film does have one problem, though: it's an origin story. It's a well-told, well-acted, well-choreographed, and entertaining origin story--but it's an origin story, nonetheless. And we just got five (if you want to include The Incredible Hulk, which I am for emphasis, though I probably shouldn't) of those damn things from Marvel. Five. In the last three years. So, while I was watching the movie, I couldn't help but constantly challenge what I saw, demanding, "Convince me that you needed to be made and not tied to The Avengers." I don't think the film can validate its own existence, at least not for me. We don't need this movie because it offers nothing new. Crazed scientist due to chemical enhancement? Check. Teenage angst/love story? Check. Hero born from death of a father figure? Check. The real place this movie differs from Raimi's (besides it's darker tone) is the tension built between the NYPD (and Capt. Stacy) and the overall question of vigilantism. To be honest, I would have preferred more from this arc as it offered something new for Spider-Man. What's there is good; I just wanted more.

Overall, the movie deserves film-goers' attention. I left completely entertained, and I think I like it better than the originals (including the stellar Spider-Man 2). I also think the film will age well, maybe even more so than the Raimi trilogy, but it will have nowhere near the longevity of all the Avengers films. (That's another thing that bothers me; I can't talk about the film without using caveats and qualifiers. It's good, but... I liked the story; however...) As much as I enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man, I can't shake this feeling of deja vu; I've seen it all before, it just happens to be better this time. I don't think that's enough to warrant making the film, but I'd be lying if I said it's not worth the price of admission--even if that means subjecting myself to watching Uncle Ben die one more time.

Cheers,

--David

Opinion: A Longtime Batman Fan's take on Nolan's Batman Trilogy

Note: This is not about video games (obviously). It is, instead a collection of thoughts on Nolan's Batman trilogy.

I've always been a Batman fan. Having read numerous comic books and owning over twenty of them, I'm well aware that my knowledge of Gotham's protector extends further than the average Batman fan's (though not nearly as far as the die-hard DC enthusiast, so if I misspeak, please correct me). One semester, I used Alan Moore's The Killing Joke in a freshman writing class in order to discuss how we read comics, and just this past weekend, the groom's cake at my wedding was adorned with the Bat Signal. Needless to say, Nolan's movies stay on constant rotation in my blu ray player, and bout midway through what was likely the twentieth time I watched The Dark Knight, I realized a possible logical terminus for the story Nolan had begun with Batman Begins. Speculation surrounding the fate of the Dark Knight abounds, and, since the first trailer released last summer, fans everywhere have been wondering whether Nolan will kill his titular hero. I must confess, though, don't find this question as tantalizing as most loyal fans do. I cannot wait to see how it all ends, but I don't really care if Nolan's Batman lives or dies or passes the mantle or any other scenario in terms of its narrative importance; the movie's going to be awesome, that's a given. Nolan's said repeatedly that this is going to be his last Batman film. He's explained that he's looking to early film epics like Metropolis or maybe Birth of a Nation in terms of cinematic scope. We know he's going big, also, because the movie is nearly three hours long.. Perhaps a more useful question than "Is Batman or Bruce Wayne or both going to die?" would be "Why would Nolan feel compelled to kill off the Dark Knight?" The key difference is that the latter question broadens the discussion of of the films in dialogue with not only other incarnations of the Batman but also discussions of American ideologies. Nolan's changed the way we perceive one of the most influential and persistent contemporary American icons, and I think it's about time we talk about what exactly that means.

"But They never talk about the mean one. The cruel one. The one who couldn't fly or bend steel in his bare hands. The one who scared the crap out of everybody and laughed at all of the rest of us for being the envious cowards we were." (Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns)

Nolan's movies are not as divisive among comic fans as one might expect. He grounds his project in a reality that asks us to think semi-realistically about what would happen if Batman would enter a real world scenario, and few people with whom I've discussed the films tell me that Nolan's tampering with the Batman universe borders on blasphemy--and we all know how loyal fans can be. I like to view his films as Elseworld's type stories (i.e. Thrillkiller or Gotham by Gaslight), a type of alternate Gotham that gives the auteur a large enough sandbox to play in. The result is a movie that "feels" like a Batman movie even though it's not the same Batman as the one ("ones"?) in the Post-Crisis continuity. The Dark Knight entertains as both a cape and cowl caper and a provocative crime drama. Nolan's films can have their cake and eat it too, so to speak.

Placing a comic book concept in a very serious, real-world context, though, should call attention to how weird it would be for a guy in a costume to swoop around the city and attempt to stop crime, but that rarely (if at all) happens in Nolan's movies--at least not explicitly. Sure, people have discussions about whether the Batman is "doing good" for the city or whether he is simply, as Gordon puts it in Batman Begins, "Just some nut." But the overall seriousness of the film suggests that its world could (or ostensibly does) exist. In this way, Nolan's trilogy offers the best experiment with the Batman mythos I have ever seen, but it yields problematic results. The films are so damn good that casual fans begin to think of Batman as a real character rather than a pop culture icon, and I'm not sure Batman can withstand the seriousness. I think the Joker in The Dark Knight calls attention to this problem directly with his (painfully over-quoted) mantra, "Why so serious?" The famous line is a meta-question not just to his victims but to the fans. Why do we need such a serious hero in a serious movie that deals with serious subjects like murder on massive scale simply to cause societal chaos?

"No, I don’t keep count. But you do. And I love you for it." (Joker to Batman in Miller's The Dark Knight Returns) 

Christopher Nolan's Batman is played seriously because he's in a serious universe that would never involve Killer Crocs, Clayfaces, or have the main hero hanging with aliens, yet fans are willing to forget (or they just don't know) that the universe(s) of the comics contains these characters and incidents. As a comic book character, Batman is no more grounded in reality than Spider-Man or Superman, nor is his origin more tragic--hell, as much as I don't like Superman, he lost an entire planet along with his parents. Nolan, however, draws on the aspects of the Batman mythos that humanize rather than immortalize the Dark Knight, and, by doing so, deceives the viewer into thinking of not just his Batman but the character in general in terms of his realism. Others, of course, have tread this territory before, but they did so by exploring Batman's humanity in an unreal universe. One story that comes to mind is Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth, in which the inmates of the titular madhouse take over, and Batman wanders Arkham's halls, battling inmates and his inner demons. But the difference here is that Batman is humanized in a world where the supernatural (aliens, mutants, Solomon Grundy, etc.) exists alongside the natural, whereas Nolan's Batman attempts to become "more than a man" in a purely natural world. At any rate, it's made it much more difficult for me to recommend Batman comics to friends who just know the Nolan movies...though everyone should read the top five graphic novels in IGN's list.

"People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy, and I can't do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I'm flesh and blood. I can be ignored, I can be destroyed. But as a symbol … as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting." (Batman Begins)

So what happens when we introduce Batman to real world besides bad ass action sequences and damn good storytelling (despite the fact that three men can meet on a rooftop while one wears a bat suit and no one takes a step back to say "Wait a minute...what the fu....")? We get a world of consequence. In Batman Begins, the main conflict is about administering justice to preserve balance. Gotham is a functioning system of political corruption and underworld crime, and Batman serves as a destabilizing element. When Batman stops Ra's Al Ghul's League from dismantling Gotham's infrastructure, he does so to give himself time to destroy the criminal structure of the city, but the increased pressure on the mob prompts them to employ a mercenary psychopath who, in turn, spreads chaos through the city in a way that neither the mob nor Gotham's protector could have anticipated. It's textbook chaos theory, in which a single alien element introduced in a system has the potential to ramify unpredictably. By the end of The Dark Knight, Batman understands that in order for the system to be reset, he must remove himself from the equation, giving the police someone to hunt (himself) and someone to idolize (Harvey Dent). Then, eight years later, something ambiguous happens (though the trailer in which Selina Kyle cryptically warns Bruce Wayne has clear overtones of the occupy movement) which awakens the Batman from his eight year slumber--Bane brings hell itself to the streets of Gotham. And we all know why Bane's dangerous...

  

I am Bane -- and I could kill you... but death would only end your agony -- and silence your shame. Instead, I will simply... BREAK YOU! Broken...and done. (Knightfall: Broken Bat)

It's only appropriate that Nolan endshis trilogy with Bane. The Joker essentially "wins" his battle against Batman at the end of The Dark Knight when the Gotham police hunt Batman just as the Joker predicted:

Don't talk like you're one of them! You're not... even if you'd like to be. To them you're just a freak, like me. They need you right now, but when they don't, they'll cast you out. Like a leper. See, their morals, their "code"... it's a bad joke, dropped at the first sign of trouble. They're only as good as the world allows them to be. I'll show you. When the chips are down, these uh, these "civilized people", they'll eat each other. See, I'm not a monster. I'm just ahead of the curve.--The Dark Knight

Since Batman has had his struggle with Ra's al Ghul and the Joker (my two personal favorites in his rogue gallery), the logical terminus for this trajectory is brutal, punishing agony. Bane provides Nolan with the perfect vehicle to kill the Batman, to kill Bruce Wayne, or, on the other hand, to provide the greatest physical and mental challenge for the Dark Knight. Ra's al Ghul strives for order and obedience. The Joker thrives on chaos. Bane utilizes pain with surgical precision to break Batman physically, mentally, and spiritually. He is a brilliant tactician and a juggernaut of hurt. If there is anyone capable of delivering the killing blow to the Bat, it would be Bane, and that seems to be Nolan's goal here: to punish the Batman for upsetting the system that keeps not only the microcosm of Gotham working, but also the macrocosm of the perceived real world.

Thus, my long belabored point emerges: I think Nolan's films illustrate that being Batman in the real world is a potentially bad idea, and we're about to find out if Bruce Wayne's choice to become the Batman was the right one. By that, I don't mean it's a cautionary tale about why you shouldn't dress like a bat and fight crime--that's a terribly obvious lesson. The lesson runs much deeper. Much like Alan Moore's Watchmen, one way to read Nolan's films is to say, "Thank God all we have to deal with in real life is nice, clean organized crime. Because when people actually become superheroes, things...go awry." Batman enters a fragile system as a chaotic element, and we see these repercussions in The Dark Knight more clearly than any other Batman story I've encountered. It'll be interesting in The Dark Knight Rises to see how deep the rabbit hole goes. All in all, I think Nolan's films are about consequence rather than about character. Perhaps people do need a dramatic symbol "to shake them out of apathy," but Nolan proposes a scenario that explores what happens after the system that symbol disrupts fights back. Whoever wins, fans will have a lot to chew on and debate for years to come.

Cheers,

--David