Update: I am wrong. Jonathan wrote the screenplay for DKR too.
I finally watched Dark Knight Rises today and I left the cinema feeling so in awe, not just because of the movie but really of the whole trilogy. I sense that is probably the awe that the other people who are going "BATMAN WAS GREAT!" on Facebook feel as well, whether they know it or not, and those who thought DKR was "only okay" probably wasn't affected by the Christopher Nolan's remaking of Batman that much. But that's just my guess.
Spoilers alert.
I am one of those people who are affected by Nolan's Batman trilogy. Christopher Nolan has a very special place in my heart. He is one of those people who are really good at what they do, and I have immense respect for people like that. His movies have enchanted and riveted me to my very core. He makes very simple but very psychologically structured movies. His purpose as a film maker is simple - to make good movies. I don't think it was ever his intention to have political messages in his movies, or extremely surprising twists (people who come out of Inception saying they saw that coming and hence didn't enjoy the movie...are missing the point), or anything beyond what a great movie should do to its audience. That is to keep their eyes on the movie the whole time, for their faces to reflect what is going on the screen, whether it's bliss or fear or sadness, to feel for the characters what they are feeling, and come out of the cinema feeling like their money has been well spent. I cried when Alfred cried. I furrowed my brows when Bruce repeatedly failed his escape from the prison. I look genuinely worried when Bane was taking over Gotham. I was a viewer holding my breath along with the Gotham citizens, because in that two hours and a half, I felt like one of them. I couldn't be more relieved or more uplifted (I swear there was all this energy coming up from within me) when Batman first made his appearance after his 8-year isolation. I felt intense jealousy that I dug my nails a little deeper into my seat when Miranda Tate kissed Bruce Wayne (but that could just be me and my trinity love for Batman-Bruce Wayne-Christian Bale).
This is what you pay to watch a movie for.
Of course, the movie was not perfect. In fact if I could rate it I would put it in one of the lower tiers of Nolan's movies, but that's only because his other movies are just so damn good, and I will explain more later why it's not totally Nolan's fault. Few movies in history could match The Dark Knight for me in terms of its plot, characters, character development, writing, emotional chord, music score, cinematography, everything. I suspect it's because Jonathan Nolan (Chris' brother) had a hand in writing it. The Nolan brothers work so well together. The Prestige was also really good, and I liked Inception. I would probably place DKR above Inception.
Now, on why it wasn't perfection. He was, after all, making the final movie of a trilogy. And that's tough to pull off. He wasn't just making another movie in the Batman series but continuing a legacy and simultaneously wrapping things up so we'd have proper narrative closure. And boy, does he have a lot of things to wrap up. At some parts I feel like we were paying for our enjoyment of The Dark Knight because things were happening everywhere. Some parts I felt like Nolan was cornered into tying up loose ends, while ensuring DKR had a life of its own. Fresh characters introduced into the movie did that trick, but there were still the ghosts of old characters - particularly Rachel, Harvey Dent, Ra's Al Ghul and Bruce's parents. And honestly, the parts where the tying of loose ends were executed really well made the whole movie worth it. How Batman finally reveals his identity to Gordon was such a tearjerking moment, that invokes history and emotion...even as Batman is speaking in that ridiculous voice of his. And the fact that he's called Batman. I cannot believe I am writing a post about a comic book character, who runs around in a bat mask, but Nolan made that come to life for me. I left the cinema thinking, "If comic book heroes inspire in kids what this movie did to me, wow." Before I can't say the likes of Batman and Spiderman without feeling frivolous, but post-Nolan, Batman became something more to me.
That is not to say I saw in Batman what I saw in every person, or what I saw in myself, or crap like that. This is what's weird about my enjoyment of Nolan movies. I usually don't feel like I could relate to the story or the characters at all - my fantasies about playboy billionaires notwithstanding (judge all you want). It was total escapism, magical realism, cinematic feat. Nolan created a world that we could all enter into, so it was borderline familiar to us, but still the wall is up. There will be many moments of realness, like the football match, police-protesters clash, talk of revolutions, the line "we don't negotiate with terrorists" and fear of death that gets mentioned quite a bit in the movie (getting quite philosophical there, Nolan).
Nolan humanized Batman, but still to the extent that we could enjoy him as a movie character. It was dramatized and tragedized real life, which I suppose is what made the wall for me. (Definitely not a complaint.) Despite all the other directors who remake comic books and their efforts to humanize the heroes (see: Amazing Spiderman and Captain America) it is Nolan who succeeds at doing this the best. We barely see Batman in DKR, and more of Bruce Wayne and the other characters that revolve around Batman. Yet when the bridge lights up with the Bat signal, we all lit up with hope.
The movie is also extremely long. I have to admit, at the start I thought Nolan might have overstretched himself here, but it was because of the length of the movie and the time it took for stories to develop, considering how The Dark Knight left off (The Dark Knight could develop a lot faster because of how Batman Begins ended - you see the pattern). The ending did it for me. It was so Nolan-esque and kickass. It tightened up the plot, and if before the movie was just strands of spring floating fluidly in water, the ending gathered them all up into a coherent and cohesive bunch. It was so fast-paced, jampacked with a multitude of emotions, and the world made sense again at the end of it. We find out Blake, whom the whole time we thought was this ordinary cop/character in the story, is a really pivotal character to Batman himself -- Robin. We see Alfred who has been through a lot in the movie finally get his wish in Florence, exactly as it's planned (again, something else that can only be done in cinema, but we lap it all up). We see the people who needed to know that Batman/Bruce Wayne was still alive, knew in the end. And alive and kicking he was! Hot damn I want to fuck Bruce Wayne. And now you find out at the end of this blog post that all this was probably driven by that primitive desire of mine.
A friend commented the weakness of the movie was writing, and I agree. The lines didn't deliver the punch that The Dark Knight or even Batman Begins did, for some reason (Jonathan?!?!), but I attribute this to the loose ends issue. After all, we all know and love these characters already, what else is there to explore? I thought Blake and Catwoman's lines were pretty good for new characters brought into the movie. I liked the part where Blake told Bruce of his orphan childhood, and how he saw Bruce with the same smile he taught himself to put up. Heartwarming without being too cliche. As usual with Nolan, it was the characters and the execution. I like Catwoman's sharp and witty one-liners, and (this was stated by an IMDB reviewer so I owe that to him/her) how believable her fight scenes were.
Nolan also does this thing where you have this realization at the end of the movie why the movie was titled this way. I'll leave this one to you to figure out why the movie was titled Dark Knight Rises, and it's not just for the obvious reason. Hint: something to do with Batman's speech about heroes in everyone. See, in real life I would have totally scoffed at that idea. I am just not an idealist that way. I tend to see more bad in people than good. Maybe that's why I need this movie. The yin to my yang.
I liked the movie. I really did. I left the cinema wanting to see it again. Needless to say, very few movies have that effect on me. Even great movies can be one-time deals so it's not about the quality. Sometimes it's about whether I want to put myself through the experience again. With Nolan, the answer is always yes.
I finally watched Dark Knight Rises today and I left the cinema feeling so in awe, not just because of the movie but really of the whole trilogy. I sense that is probably the awe that the other people who are going "BATMAN WAS GREAT!" on Facebook feel as well, whether they know it or not, and those who thought DKR was "only okay" probably wasn't affected by the Christopher Nolan's remaking of Batman that much. But that's just my guess.
Spoilers alert.
I am one of those people who are affected by Nolan's Batman trilogy. Christopher Nolan has a very special place in my heart. He is one of those people who are really good at what they do, and I have immense respect for people like that. His movies have enchanted and riveted me to my very core. He makes very simple but very psychologically structured movies. His purpose as a film maker is simple - to make good movies. I don't think it was ever his intention to have political messages in his movies, or extremely surprising twists (people who come out of Inception saying they saw that coming and hence didn't enjoy the movie...are missing the point), or anything beyond what a great movie should do to its audience. That is to keep their eyes on the movie the whole time, for their faces to reflect what is going on the screen, whether it's bliss or fear or sadness, to feel for the characters what they are feeling, and come out of the cinema feeling like their money has been well spent. I cried when Alfred cried. I furrowed my brows when Bruce repeatedly failed his escape from the prison. I look genuinely worried when Bane was taking over Gotham. I was a viewer holding my breath along with the Gotham citizens, because in that two hours and a half, I felt like one of them. I couldn't be more relieved or more uplifted (I swear there was all this energy coming up from within me) when Batman first made his appearance after his 8-year isolation. I felt intense jealousy that I dug my nails a little deeper into my seat when Miranda Tate kissed Bruce Wayne (but that could just be me and my trinity love for Batman-Bruce Wayne-Christian Bale).
This is what you pay to watch a movie for.
Of course, the movie was not perfect. In fact if I could rate it I would put it in one of the lower tiers of Nolan's movies, but that's only because his other movies are just so damn good, and I will explain more later why it's not totally Nolan's fault. Few movies in history could match The Dark Knight for me in terms of its plot, characters, character development, writing, emotional chord, music score, cinematography, everything. I suspect it's because Jonathan Nolan (Chris' brother) had a hand in writing it. The Nolan brothers work so well together. The Prestige was also really good, and I liked Inception. I would probably place DKR above Inception.
Now, on why it wasn't perfection. He was, after all, making the final movie of a trilogy. And that's tough to pull off. He wasn't just making another movie in the Batman series but continuing a legacy and simultaneously wrapping things up so we'd have proper narrative closure. And boy, does he have a lot of things to wrap up. At some parts I feel like we were paying for our enjoyment of The Dark Knight because things were happening everywhere. Some parts I felt like Nolan was cornered into tying up loose ends, while ensuring DKR had a life of its own. Fresh characters introduced into the movie did that trick, but there were still the ghosts of old characters - particularly Rachel, Harvey Dent, Ra's Al Ghul and Bruce's parents. And honestly, the parts where the tying of loose ends were executed really well made the whole movie worth it. How Batman finally reveals his identity to Gordon was such a tearjerking moment, that invokes history and emotion...even as Batman is speaking in that ridiculous voice of his. And the fact that he's called Batman. I cannot believe I am writing a post about a comic book character, who runs around in a bat mask, but Nolan made that come to life for me. I left the cinema thinking, "If comic book heroes inspire in kids what this movie did to me, wow." Before I can't say the likes of Batman and Spiderman without feeling frivolous, but post-Nolan, Batman became something more to me.
That is not to say I saw in Batman what I saw in every person, or what I saw in myself, or crap like that. This is what's weird about my enjoyment of Nolan movies. I usually don't feel like I could relate to the story or the characters at all - my fantasies about playboy billionaires notwithstanding (judge all you want). It was total escapism, magical realism, cinematic feat. Nolan created a world that we could all enter into, so it was borderline familiar to us, but still the wall is up. There will be many moments of realness, like the football match, police-protesters clash, talk of revolutions, the line "we don't negotiate with terrorists" and fear of death that gets mentioned quite a bit in the movie (getting quite philosophical there, Nolan).
Nolan humanized Batman, but still to the extent that we could enjoy him as a movie character. It was dramatized and tragedized real life, which I suppose is what made the wall for me. (Definitely not a complaint.) Despite all the other directors who remake comic books and their efforts to humanize the heroes (see: Amazing Spiderman and Captain America) it is Nolan who succeeds at doing this the best. We barely see Batman in DKR, and more of Bruce Wayne and the other characters that revolve around Batman. Yet when the bridge lights up with the Bat signal, we all lit up with hope.
The movie is also extremely long. I have to admit, at the start I thought Nolan might have overstretched himself here, but it was because of the length of the movie and the time it took for stories to develop, considering how The Dark Knight left off (The Dark Knight could develop a lot faster because of how Batman Begins ended - you see the pattern). The ending did it for me. It was so Nolan-esque and kickass. It tightened up the plot, and if before the movie was just strands of spring floating fluidly in water, the ending gathered them all up into a coherent and cohesive bunch. It was so fast-paced, jampacked with a multitude of emotions, and the world made sense again at the end of it. We find out Blake, whom the whole time we thought was this ordinary cop/character in the story, is a really pivotal character to Batman himself -- Robin. We see Alfred who has been through a lot in the movie finally get his wish in Florence, exactly as it's planned (again, something else that can only be done in cinema, but we lap it all up). We see the people who needed to know that Batman/Bruce Wayne was still alive, knew in the end. And alive and kicking he was! Hot damn I want to fuck Bruce Wayne. And now you find out at the end of this blog post that all this was probably driven by that primitive desire of mine.
A friend commented the weakness of the movie was writing, and I agree. The lines didn't deliver the punch that The Dark Knight or even Batman Begins did, for some reason (Jonathan?!?!), but I attribute this to the loose ends issue. After all, we all know and love these characters already, what else is there to explore? I thought Blake and Catwoman's lines were pretty good for new characters brought into the movie. I liked the part where Blake told Bruce of his orphan childhood, and how he saw Bruce with the same smile he taught himself to put up. Heartwarming without being too cliche. As usual with Nolan, it was the characters and the execution. I like Catwoman's sharp and witty one-liners, and (this was stated by an IMDB reviewer so I owe that to him/her) how believable her fight scenes were.
Nolan also does this thing where you have this realization at the end of the movie why the movie was titled this way. I'll leave this one to you to figure out why the movie was titled Dark Knight Rises, and it's not just for the obvious reason. Hint: something to do with Batman's speech about heroes in everyone. See, in real life I would have totally scoffed at that idea. I am just not an idealist that way. I tend to see more bad in people than good. Maybe that's why I need this movie. The yin to my yang.
I liked the movie. I really did. I left the cinema wanting to see it again. Needless to say, very few movies have that effect on me. Even great movies can be one-time deals so it's not about the quality. Sometimes it's about whether I want to put myself through the experience again. With Nolan, the answer is always yes.
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