Dark Knight Rises... And then falls.

Taking a quick right hand turn from talking about games to talking about a movie.

First off, let me start by saying Dark Knight Rises is NOT a bad film. It’s actually a good film and in parts, a very good one. I think there are two things however, that disappoint.

1.       The dark Knight (movie 2) was just so stupidly great that expectations for #3 were through the roof. Those expectations have not been met

2.       It appears that Christopher Nolan has made several schoolboy errors with DKR. Errors that, had they been avoided, would have made the film much better

So here, in bullet point form, are reasons as to where and why DKR got it wrong where TDK got it so right!

Let’s start with a quick nod to TDK’s greatness. For me, TDK was such a good film for one major reasons that had knock on effects to make the entire film great – TDK was not a movie about Batman. TDK was an action suspense thriller. It had everything that a movie of that genre has – action, suspense and it thrilled! It kept me guessing from the beginning and it made me guess wrong till the end. It helped of course that Heath Ledger put in the performance of his life that raised the movie tenfold, but the important part of this was exactly that – it was not a film about Batman – Batman just happened to be in it!

The litmus test for this statement is this: if you remove Batman from the film, does the film still work? Is it still a great film? I think the answer, is yes. Now take Joker out of the film. Does the film still work now? I think the answer is no.

So that, in my opinion, is the root of what made TDK such a great film.

Now onto DKR:

1.       Chris Nolan tried to make a movie about ‘Batman’ – a Batman movie. He should have made another action suspense thriller – like TDK

2.       Bane is not a great bad guy – certainly, the character is not strong enough to carry a movie! Joker? One of the truly great villains who can carry any show. Bane? Not so much. Even in the comic books, Bane is not a great villain – he has his moments (breaking Bruce’s back being one of them), but apart from one or two books written by exceptional talent, he’s not that great.

3.       That mask. It doesn’t work. It didn’t work for me from the moment I saw it in the trailer. Here’s why:

4.       You can’t understand what Tom Hardy is saying. If you can’t understand what a main character in a movie is saying, you’re on dodgy ground

5.       Tom Hardy is a fine, fine actor. There is no question of that. But that mask stopped him from acting. You could only see his eyes and nothing else. This meant 80% of his performance is lost. They should have spent more time in solving how he could get an emotional performance across through that mask (which was quite ugly and basic looking anyway).

6.       You want to see how someone who talks through a mask can be done to perfection? Just watch any of the three Star Wars films (there are no prequels – they don’t exist). They should have looked at Darth Vader to see how a villain can give a performance through a mask – commanding, chilling, scary and cool – all at the same time!

7.       On to Catwoman. Hang on. Catwoman was in the film? I didn’t see her! I’m being facetious of course, but it’s almost true. Hathaway, like Hardy, is a fine actress. She can take credit for looking stunning in this film and her performance is actually very good. But she wasn’t Catwoman by any stretch of the imagination. She was just a sexy thief in a sexy outfit that struggled with her place in society and trod the line between good and bad. But where were the cats? And did anyone over the age of 12 genuinely think she wasn’t coming back at the end? Of course not.

8.       I’m not sure who came off as the sexiest between Hathaway and Pfieffer (from Batman Returns) and the quality of acting was probably shared evenly too. But character wise? Pfeiffer wins hands down. A clumsy, clutsy dozey girl who treads a line between sanity and delirious. Pfeifer was a great Catwoman – probably the best in Batman history. This was a pale shadow of what the character should be for me

9.       Batman? Where was Batman? Ok, he was obviously more prevalent than Catwoman, but the fact is that we were starved of seeing the dark knight in this film. I’ll have to wait until it comes out on Blue Ray, but I counted his appearances in two parts. He appeared for a 15 odd minute section about half an hour in. Bane breaks his back, then he appears for the last twenty odd minutes after another half an hour of being MIA. The film concentrates too much on Bruce Wayne and Bane. Traditionally, this doesn’t work in superhero films, Case studies:

a.       Hulk. The film directed by Ang Lee had some superb scenes and was a pretty decent film – once the Hulk actually showed up that is! If memory serves, the first hour of the film was all about David Banner and how he got to be the Hulk. The last 45 minutes was full of Hulk awesomeness. The first hour spoilt the film.

b.      Spiderman 2. Ah, that staple plot twist of writers who don’t know what to do with their superhero – make him ‘quit’. In Spiderman 2, Spidey went missing for something like 45 minuets! Making this the weakest of Toby McGuire’s Spidey films.

c.       Why is this then? Well. The comic book medium that has a new book released every month has the luxury of being able to pull off slow pace and deep character analysis. Whilst this can work in movies in general, super hero movies don’t. Maybe this is more to do with the anticipation and expectation of the audience? I’m coming here to watch a film about Batman – I want to see Batman in all his coolness and doing cool stuff with cool toys. I don’t really want to see a brooding Bruce Wayne, limping with a gammy leg and taking half an hour to decide he wanst to be Batman again!

Chris Nolan is a fantastic director. There’s no question of that. But he made schoolboy errors on this film IMO. My assumption is that he now suffers from what I like to call ‘George Lucas-Itas’. This is an affliction that many creatively successful people suffer from where not a single person around – employee or friend – has the balls to say ‘nah. That’s a shit idea’. This is one of the worst things that can befall a creative person. It’s a killer. Creative people NEED those around them to tell them something is crap. Without that input. They suffer.

On a side note. I’ve been out of the comic book continuity for several years now. Was this retelling of Bane and Robin first shown in the comics or are they Nolan’s own?

Thanks for taking the time…

GigiFusc

J