Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I'll talk about the horrific events surrounding the movie's premiere another time. I need a little time to process that first. Right now, since I just saw the film, I'll take it on as a work of cinema first.

What does one say about Christopher Nolan's third Batman film? Well, it lives up to the tone of the other movies in the series: it's violent, it's loud, it's dark, it's brooding, it's the whole Batman schtick as writ for the 21st century.

Okay, so what's the story? Well, we start with a James Bond type of opening and a new bad guy getting loose--Bane. And who's that? Well, Rush Limbaugh's claims to the contrary, he was not an invention to connect the "bad guy" with Mitt Romney--"Bain Capital," get it?--Bane (as in the bane of your existence) was created and named in the early '90s. Read enough comic books, as I do, and you learn a few things. Anyhow, Bane the bad guy is bald, muscular, and wears a Darth Vader-type breathing mask that gives him a voice that is utterly incoherent about 50 percent of the time. Drove me crazy. Bane and his thugs start letting loose on a Gotham City that had been relatively pacified and Batman-free for eight years. Batman has been missing since the death of Harvey Dent and the anti-crime act that bears Dent's name--the events of The Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne is a recluse and the people and organization around him are falling into disarray. All it takes, of course, is for a serious bad guy or two to appear and Wayne decides to resume his role as the Caped Crusader. And then, as my pal Widge would say, hijinks ensue.

This movie is a graphic novel writ large, as are the other two Nolan Batman stories. By the way, if you're not a comic book fan and are wondering what the heck a "graphic novel" is, it's a high-prestige comic book, often using familiar characters, better artistic quality, and better binding. Graphic novels, as opposed to the average comics you can find on the magazine rack, are complete stories and are meant to provide Deep Insight or to deal with Serious Issues in a literary field that usually focuses on super-villains with crazy plans for screwing up the world. The Dark Knight Rises addresses serious issues while telling a Batman story: about contributing to a civil society, about trust, about alternative energy, about vicious populism against "the 1%," and yes, it's about heroes and our need for them.

Along the way, this movie features some really good characters, some familiar, some new. Familiar ones would include Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman; Michael Caine as Bruce Wayne's faithful guardian and butler Alfred; Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, CEO of Wayne's corporation; and Gary Oldman as Police Commissioner Gordon. New secondary characters include Joseph Gordon-Levitt (who, a friend reminded me, starred in Nolan's Inception) as a "hothead" policeman named Blake and Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, a.k.a., Catwoman.

Oh my, yes: Anne Hathaway.

This is the first time Ms. Hathaway has appeared in a movie I wanted to see, and she's just darling. Kyle/Catwoman has always been an ambivalent character in the Batman universe because she was a love interest for Batman but also a clever, witty, violent, acrobatic, and notorious kleptomaniac. Hathaway nails the character and provides a light touch this very dark film needs. Okay, and she looks great and moves gracefully in a black catsuit.

Dark Knight Rises is certainly a long movie for the genre (make all necessary stops before entering the theater because it's easy to get lost). A scrupulous editor could probably have slashed 20 minutes from the story, but then I thought the same thing about The Dark Knight. If you don't like violent, loud, complicated movies with costumed heroes and villains, this film isn't for you. If you have a problem with Michael Caine crying a lot (and yeah, one spoiler: he does), this might bother you.

All that said, for me this was mostly a fun film, and it ends well. What more do you want from a superhero movie?

[Oh yeah, speaking of which: the trailer for the reboot of Superman, Man of Steel, was shown prior to this movie. Looking forward to that!]

Movie Review: The Dark Knight

I've been a fan of Batman since I was probably 6 or 7. Bruce Wayne didn't interest me, nor his sidekick Alfred, nor his loyal friend Commissioner Gordon. I can't even say I was particularly impressed by his villains. For me, the shows, comic books, and movies were always about Batman and his never-ending quest to fight evil. The Dark Knight is quite possibly the best Batman movie ever. Heck, it might be the best Batman story ever. Why? Let this Bat-fan count the ways.

The nice part of this second film with Christian Bale wearing the cowl is that it's past all the "origin" stuff--how Bruce Wayne became the Batman, how he got his cape, toys, Batmobile, etc.--and just focuses on the hero in action. And the action and villains here are brooding, diabolical, and morally reprehensible. There are moments when Bruce Wayne/Batman starts to step over the line when it comes to monitoring the citizens of Gotham City too closely, but the movie drops that line of inquiry almost as quickly as it starts it. The Joker, after all, is almost a force of nature unto himself, unable to be coped with by normal means. The late Heath Ledger, whom everyone desired to see if only for his last performance, managed to capture this role perfectly. Instead of some overly jovial dandy, like Cesar Romero, or some damaged, wisecracking hood like Jack Nicholson, Ledger's Joker is a mentally and physically damaged psychopath: the kind that probably got started cutting up little animals in his neighborhood. We might all pause happily and reflect that the Joker is, in fact, only a fictional character; because if he were real, we would NEED a Batman to stop him, and then some.

There are things one may quibble about with this movie. It's too long by about 30-45 minutes, though the two and a half hours flew by for me by the rocket pacing of the action; Christian Bale's Bruce Wayne takes a back seat to the Joker, and his sidekicks have very little screen time compared to the first movie. But they're not the focus of the movie. And despite all the raves about Ledger, the movie is not about the Joker. It is about Batman. People are giving Christian Bale too little credit in this film because I think he nails the Dark Knight perfectly as well. Bruce Wayne is a brooding, airheaded fop, like Don de la Vega in Zorro. His true face comes out when he puts on his mask, and when Bruce Wayne has the mask on in this film, he is single-mindedly, righteously angry and committed to stopping the Joker. That's what makes him a hero. That's why we watch him. He is not an idealized hero like Superman, but a mortal man, albeit one with superior facilities and resources. Like the Devil in Paradise Lost, the Joker might get the better lines than the good guys, but that doesn't mean he's better. He is the one who must be defeated, and Batman's righteous rage at the Joker as his violent actions escalate merely push him harder.

And we mustn't forget the edgy District Attorney Harvey Dent who (minor spoiler here, only if you're not a regular reader of the comic books) eventually becomes a "two-faced" character in his own right. He too is played with by the Joker, and he too reacts aggressively to stop the menace while facing his own horrors. The Joker is not skimping when it comes to inflicting damage on the good guys, regardless of their level of goodness.

There are some non-action moments, some hints of romance and some occasional moments of dry wit; but again that's not why one reads or watches a Batman story. His relentless pursuit of the Joker, even as things get worse and worse, provides some tense moments, great escapes, and surprising personal twists for Bruce Wayne and "Bat-fans," and all of those things together combine to make this my favorite Batman movie, period.

Movie Review: Gotham Knight

As I noted in an earlier posting, my purchase of Gotham Knight was delayed because Barnes & Noble had sold out of it. However, when I returned today, the movie was back in stock. Shazaam! Whups, wrong hero. Anyway, as might be guessed, Gotham Knight is a Batman tale. More to the point, this direct-to-DVD animated movie is a series of six Batman tales, all loosely connected by characters, if not theme or style.

I must confess to being a Bat-fan from way back, probably back when the old Adam West TV show was in its first or second syndication run. Bats was cool and more easily understandable because he was human (unlike, say, Superman). He has to rely on his brains, toys, and merely human abilities to help him win the day. I thoroughly enjoyed the Tim Burton Batman movie made in 1989, as well as The Dark Knight Returns, the Frank Miller graphic novel that brought a new maturity--and violence--to the Batman. I was somewhat less thrilled with the later Burton films, which were uneven. The film with Val Kilmer was almost decent, though the movies had started heading into homoerotic even then (nipples on the Bat armor, f'r gosh sakes?!?).

The Christian Bale incarnation of Batman was again a refreshing turn in the franchise. Bruce Wayne, the millionaire playboy with serious anger issues, comes across as slightly unhinged and very dangerous. His supporting cast, bolstered by big-name actors like Gary Oldman, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman, showed that Hollywood was willing to treat the live-action versions of these comic-book movies seriously.

And along the way, Warner Brothers was releasing a rather stylized animated series of Batman, as well as Superman, Justice League, and other DC Comics properties. I've watched the TV series on occasion, and it's been pretty good, though more in line with the spirit of the old '60s ethos of a "clean" Batman, simple moral fables, and no killing. So what happens when the edgier Batman depicted in Batman Begins meets the Warner Bros. animated series? What you get is a set of seriously violent cartoons. Gotham Knight is not for kids. It is for people 13 and up who are a little more used to the blood-and-guts of the graphic novel world.

For the uninitiated, a "graphic novel" is a comic book that attempts to deal with more adult themes, serious crimes, serious violence, and yes, death. It is, in short, a kids' genre attempting to go legit, and it generally succeeds. The recent spate of super-hero movies is the most elaborate extreme of the graphic novel ethos: they are an attempt to treat these costumed heroes on their own terms, as if they were people, not glossy images on the cover of a comic book.

This is interesting, as the voice actors used in Gotham Knight, according to my comics-geek buddy, are the same ones used in the tamer cartoon series. While I haven't heard of Kevin Conroy, who apparently did the Batman voice for most of the animated series, Gary Dourdan, who voices one of Gotham City's detectives, is known to me as one of the impressive actors making up the original CSI. It's as if the comic book TV show has similarly reached for adulthood. Again, this is not quite for kids. We've got violence, shootings, blood, etc. I might have to re-watch it; I don't recall a lot of "language" in the stories, but the graphic nature of the stories made up for the lack of profanity.

So, what about the story? In truth, this is a series of vaguely related vignettes--days-in-the-life of Gotham City's winged vigilante--in the days after Batman Begins. I can't say for certain that there is any resolution to any of the individual episodes, or the story arc in general. But then the comic books are much like that now, too: Gothic soap operas for geeks. Much like the Animatrix cartoon, which provided some narrative side notes to The Matrix movie series, Gotham Knight seems to be more about setting up the transition between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, coming out next week, than telling a complete story. One villain is bagged, others are let go, and one is left to wonder how much of this will play out in the new movie.

The visual experience of the six stories is something else again. The six vignettes vary greatly in animation style. The first episode looks like something out of Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Others look like the animated series. Another looks like something out of Legends of the Dark Knight. Another looks like it was all or nearly all CGI-based. The consistent voices of the voice actors give the audience cues on who is who, given the widely varying appearances of some of the characters. This DVD is interesting, if only to show the many different ways the guy in the big black bat suit can be portrayed graphically. In one, he's anything from a slithering shape-shifter to a man-sized bat; in another, he looks like an animé pretty-boy; in another, he's a lantern-jawed adult. My guess is that there are as many conceptions of Batman as there are artists willing to draw him.

Can I recommend this DVD? To Bat-fans, sure. And to people who are likely to see the new movie. Otherwise, if you're not a comic-book reader now, you might be put off by this series of episodes, especially if your primary exposure to Batman was Adam West or even Michael Keaton. The Dark Knight has finally become the character he always was: mysterious, dark, and slightly off the wall. Enjoy, but don't bring the kids.