Review: The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises. The Dark Knight Descends. The Dark Knight Trilogy is over.

No, it wasn't the best of the three films by far and indeed, it may have been the worst. That's not to say that it was "bad," just that it didn't amaze and enthrall me like the first two films.

Batman Begins (2005) amazed me just because I've always been disappointed with all of the live-action Batman films prior to this one. Up until "Begins," I thought the best screen version of Batman was the WB animated series from the 1990s. After seeing Bale's Batman, the animated series (still quite good) seemed like just a cartoon.

"Batman Begins" showed everyone that superheroes could be "adult fiction" and reminded us all that Batman was supposed to be "dark".

The Dark Knight (2008) totally blew away "Begins." Part of it was the more realistic cityscapes. Chicago was used instead of a fictionalized Gotham and I absolutely loved the Hong Kong sequence. Nolan totally expanded Batman's universe from his first film and the Dark Knight became infinitely more "real." Of course, Heath Ledger's "Joker" completely stole the show, making his performance and this film a legend in fantasy film making.

That's quite a build up to "Rises" and there's always the danger that when you fly so high, there's a big fall is coming.

I wouldn't say "Rises" crashed and burned, but it had really big boots to fill after "TDK" and it didn't fill those boots.

I was worried that in trying to include Catwoman, Bane, Talia al Ghul and (briefly) Ras al Ghul, the film would suffer from too many villains and not enough development. That really wasn't the problem here and except for how Ras was handled, I thought the balance between all of the main "bad guys" was handled fairly well. It was just that all of the little puzzle pieces didn't quite fit together.

In TDK, all of the story elements, the characters, every little detail, fit hand and glove. Everything was in place. Nothing was wasted. The film was very "organized." That's not another way of saying "predictable" or "boring" but "efficient" and "seamless". I didn't spend any time analyzing the film while watching it, I just watched and enjoyed.

Not so with "TDKR".

All of the jumping around from place to place to place, and from flashback to flashback to flashback was distracting, distracting, distracting. I think I managed to keep up, but it was an effort and watching a story shouldn't be about trying to figure out what the filmmaker is saying, but allowing the narrative to flow over you like a dream.

The film is watchable. It's good. It just could have been better and maybe even a little shorter.

Stuff I liked (warning: Spoilers): 

Anne Hathaway nailed it as Catwoman/Selina Kyle. Smart, agile, sexy, edgy, and even just a bit vulnerable.

Marion Cotillard played Talia al Ghul after all. Good. She needed to be part of the trilogy, though I'm sorry she and Bruce couldn't have forged more of a history before the end.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake. He's the obvious heir apparent to the "Mantle of the Bat" and even if I hadn't read other accounts of the film before finally seeing it, this would have been obvious from the start. I think we all knew that Batman wasn't going to survive the end of this film, but the hope of a "Dark Knight" type character had to be kept alive. There is no Gotham City with out a protector in black.

The Bane/Talia connection. I more or less liked this because I didn't see it coming. I also didn't like it because the explanation of Bane, Talia, Ras, League of Shadows, and why Gotham was brought to the edge of total destruction was not only rushed and forced, but it didn't really make a terrific amount of sense.
And yet, the weirdness of this "love affair" between two cold-blooded killers abruptly made them both less than monsters and almost human.

Bruce's secret isn't invulnerable. Blake figures it out just by seeing Bruce's face and knowing there's a Batman. Of course it was also because Blake's history parallels Bruce's, so one lost, hurt, and angry child recognizes another. Bane also figures it out which is terrifying. It's one thing that Blake knows because the guy just oozes "trust me" and "I'm a good guy," but Bane! It's a horrible thing when your worst enemy knows your every secret, turns you into a cripple, and then tosses you into the pit of hell.

Stuff I didn't like: 

Ras al Ghul was a hallucination that lasted a couple of minutes tops. So what?

It is true that Bruce's initial return as Batman was supposed to be a failure. Alfred even pointed out that he wasn't actually Batman anymore, just Bruce in a costume. Bane proved this by beating Batman to a pulp and breaking his back (which was demanded because that's what Bane is supposed to do to Bruce). But it's like I didn't believe it. The tragedy of Batman's defeat would have been much greater if he had regained more of his "Batman-ness"; if we could have believed he had a chance against Bane before being destroyed by him.

Heck, the theme of the film is even hope before disaster. There was no hope when Batman first faced Bane. We all knew he didn't have a chance.

Fusion reactor can be turned into a bomb. Yawn. OK, convenient plot device (literally) so Bane could have access to an atomic bomb without having to sneak it in, but first of all, to me, nuclear fusion reactors were just too fantastic for this movie and there was no build up...just Wayne blowing half his fortune to build one, then mothballing it because it maybe could be turned into a bomb (like nuclear fusion wouldn't be dangerous enough anyway). It was just too odd. It didn't fit.

Hardly anyone seemed like themselves. Bruce, Alfred, Fox, Gordon all seemed like they were sleepwalking through their roles. All of the personality, the humor, the "themness" of these characters was missing. It was as if they couldn't wait to finish filming their scenes so they could go off and do something else. The heart of the Batman films was just plain missing.

Robin. Oh for Chrissake, Robin? Blake's "real" name had to be Robin? Yuk.

Change "Blake" to "Drake" and you already have a Robin connection without having to be obvious or dumb.

Occupy Wall Street on steroids was another obvious element that was shoved down the audience's throat. What would happen if the "occupy" movement turned violent? Get all the 1%ers, try them, and kill them. Kill the police or otherwise get rid of them. Return the "power to the people." Really? If it actually worked out the way the film predicts, then we have some idea of why every revolution ends with the radicals becoming "the man."

Bruce has a medical exam before returning as Batman the first time. His body is shot. Given the description of his injuries, there's no way in hell he could have come back as the Dark Knight, especially after his back injury. No amount of "prison workouts" fixes no cartilage in the knees, elbows, and shoulders. Replacement surgery fixes that but he'd still never be Batman again. A Lazarus Pit fixes that too, but I'll get to that in a minute.

I sort of loved and hated the "happy ending." I guess I always wanted Bruce to survive because it creates the vain hope that if "Robin" or "Nightwing" or whoever really needs a hand, Batman would be there to back him up. I also like a happy ending just because the part of me that believes in justice thinks good guys should win in the end and "live happily ever after". On the other hand, it was also kind of sappy and given the knowledge of Alfred's annual vacation plan we are given earlier in the film, we all knew it was going to happen.

Stuff I wished for: 

Ras al Ghul really coming back. Given the plot and direction of the story, the film would have become quite a bit more complicated had Ras shown up alive, but competing with his daughter and the man he hated more than Bruce for control of the League of Shadows would have been an incredible showdown.

The Lazarus Pit. Part of me thought that Bane would actually kill Batman, that it would happen further into the film, and that a lovesick Talia (yeah, the film would have to be a lot different) would take Bruce's body to a Lazarus Pit to resurrect him. It would have been absolutely cool. The movie would have to be completely rewritten but it would have been totally awesome!

I could go on and on about the film. It's a flawed work of art. I'll be bitching for weeks about it. I'm sorry it ended this way. But for better or for worse. it ended. The ride is over.

Nolan used TKDR to try and pull together all of the perceived "loose threads" created in the first two films but particularly in "Begins." He tried too hard.

But if DC plans to make a Justice League film, the Dark Knight must not rise again, but be reinvented. What will he be like then?

The Killing Knight

OK, I couldn't think of a better way to combine Moore and Bolland's The Killing Joke (1988) with the Christopher Nolan film The Dark Knight (2008). This will have to do.

The two stories are only vaguely alike. Sure, Batman, the Joker, and Jim Gordon appear in both works, but that's where the similarity ends. Certainly how the Joker is portrayed in each production is radically different, but wait! There's an underlying similarity. Both Jokers are trying to prove the same point.

The graphic novel's Joker is trying to prove that you can push anyone, no matter how stable and well rounded, into insanity (the Joker's version of craziness) if you just damage their lives enough. To get to that point, he shoots and cripples Barbara Gordon, strips her nude, photographs her body, then runs her Dad through a sick carnival ride where these photos are the feature attraction.

The Joker in this story seems obsessed with nudity, because he strips Jim Gordon down to his skin, too, but then, we all feel especially vulnerable when we're in public nude.

The story's counterpoint is the Joker's origin story (or one possible story bouncing around inside the Joker's rat's maze of a brain) in which a seemingly nice guy with bad judgment, gets mixed up in a crime in order to try to make enough money to support his pregnant wife. Hours before the crime was to be committed, he learns that his wife and unborn child were killed in a freak accident. Comic book criminals are not known for their compassion, and they expect the unnamed fellow to keep up his end of the deal. During the commission of the crime, this guy jumps into some chemical soup (yeah, you've seen this story a million times) to escape Batman and comes out the Joker.

In Nolan's the Dark Knight, the Joker has pretty much the same goal: to show society that, when push comes to shove, they'll eat their own young just to survive. He does lots of horrible and scary stuff and finally wires two ferry boats with high explosives and puts the detonators to each on the other boat. "If you don't blow the other guy up by midnight, I'll do you both. If one of you does blow up the other guy, I'll let the survivors keep on living".

In the end, both Joker's fail to prove their point. Despite the fact that the Joker dragged Gordon through the psychological sewer, including shooting and seriously injuring his only daughter, Gordon not only doesn't crack, but he urges Batman to bring the Joker in "by the book". Also, despite the fact that Batman has every reason to beat the Joker to a pulp and maybe even kill him (Batman admits that their conflict will eventually become mortal), he stops at just capturing the Joker who becomes almost incomprehensibly docile in the end. Not the "homicidal-full-of-surprises-kill-till-you-drop" Joker that I know.

Same result in the Dark Knight. In one of my favorite scenes in the entire film, a huge prisoner takes the detonator from the head guard/warden/whatever, and instead of pushing the button as we all expect, he tosses the thing out of the window and presumably into the water, then sits back down and awaits the end. The annoying little button down jerk on the other ferry eventually realizes it's one thing to talk big and quite another to actually, deliberately kill a bunch of other people, even convicted felons. Human nature says that the populations on each ferry should kill each other in order to survive, but in the film's reality, they don't.

Tough luck, Joker.

The moral of the story is that there is a difference between good and bad people; between sane and insane people. It seems to say that the comic book Joker went crazy, not just because bad things happened in his life, but that because on some level, he decided to go crazy. Jim Gordon decided to both stay sane and maintain his values and morals, when he had every reason to demand the Joker's head on a platter.

Batman seems to be the split between the Joker and Gordon. He's crazy enough to dress up like a bat and hunt criminals by night, but still sane enough to know he's Bruce Wayne and sane enough not to kill. He still knows where to draw the line.

The film Joker didn't make things quite so personal, at least for Gordon. He did with Harvey Dent and it worked like a charm. The Joker puts both Dent and his fiancee (well, they were engaged for about five minutes) Rachel Dawes in mortal danger in separate locations. Only one could be saved (well, if Gordon had left five minutes earlier, both could have been saved). Batman saves Dent and Dawes gets blown into a million pieces. As a bonus, Dent is disfigured, like the original Joker, both physically and psychologically.

When Dent has the chance to blow the Joker away, he instead focuses his anger and blame on Batman and Jim Gordon, going so far as to attempt to murder Gordon's son for revenge. In Dent's case, the Joker does prove his point, but that's an isolated occurence. We see earlier in the film that Dent has an unstable and violent side, at least as far as protecting Rachel is concerned. Something inside makes it almost certain that when he's pushed, he'll fall all the way.

What does that mean for us? I'm not sure. These are both works of fiction in which the basic assumption is that most people are stable and good. I say "assumption" because the vast body of recorded human history seems to indicate that people aren't particularly good. If humanity has been progressing from less to more evolved; from less to more moral, then we should be in fantastic shape by now, at least compared to say, the abuses of the Roman empire. Have a look at the latest news. Are we?

I think both of these stories are saying we have to believe we are basically good. I think these stories are saying, if we don't believe people are basically good and can get better, what's the point of living, right?

Fiction, if it works right, is supposed to connect to the audience across a bridge of relatable experience. No, we're not put in mortal peril every day by a madman painted to look like a playing card, but we do make moral decisions every day and occasionally, we make really big moral decisions.

Both stories, and especially Jim Gordon's story from The Killing Joke, says that we make those decisions ahead of time. If Gordon's basic values and morals hadn't been cemented into place decades before and re-enforced by the numerous moral decisions he's had to make as a police officer, he might have cracked under the pressure, but he had already decided who he was and what he was going to do. Someone not as stable, say like Harvey Dent in the Dark Knight film, hadn't gotten that far. Maybe he never would have. When the big moment came when his values, morals, and maybe his soul were on the line, he caved.

If we can take anything from these works of fiction, and let's assume that people are, more or less, as these stories portray, then we can make lots and lots of small moral decisions in our lives, using them as the cement to glue down our personalities and our behavior patterns. So when the "big one" comes along and we maybe have to make a life or death decision, based on this cement, we can be true to what we say we believe in, even when we have every reason to toss it all away and demand the head of the "Joker" on a platter.

Both stories are violent. Both stories are disturbing. Both Jokers are unpredictable and scary, even as we realize they're fictional. But violent, disturbring, unpredictable, and scary things happen every day. One day it might even happen to you. What will you decide to do when your finger's on the button or on the trigger?