The Viewer's Commentary

Merry Christmas, everyone! Santa’s come early, and he’s brought a pretty exciting gift: the first theatrical trailer for The Dark Knight Rises!

You may have already seen the teaser trailer: , but this new trailer, somehow bleaker than all the previous films’ trailers, gives us an actual glimpse at all the new characters and actors (Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, for instance) who have joined the third and, yes, final entry in the Christopher Nolan Batman film series! The most prominent, of course, are Anne Hathaway and a masked Tom Hardy. 

Anne Hathaway, if you don’t know already, is playing Selina Kyle, alias Catwoman. While I always thought they would go the Catwoman route, having killed off Rachel in the last film and thus making a female villain like her so obviously right for the third film, it does feel as though she is not quite the same cat burglar she always has been portrayed. Specifically, her speech to Bruce about the rich leaving nothing for the rest (in a scene that mirrors Michael Keaton and Michelle Pfeifer’s masquerade dance from Batman Returns) echoes those of Ra’s al Ghul from Batman Begins. Could Selina now be in league with… The League of Shadows?!

There have been reports of a flashback sequence to Ra’s as a young man, with unconfirmed reports (and, frankly, while I don’t mind the speculation, I don’t really want the confirmation) that Liam Neeson has been secretly cast to be in the final film. The Ra’s of the comics was an immortal of sorts, submerging himself into a pit he calls the Lazarus Pit, keeping his youth. Could it be that Christopher Nolan has done the unthinkable and added some more comic-y touches to his ultra realistic world by reviving Ra’s as their leader?

Or could Bane be the new leader? Bane’s previous film outing was pathetically gimped… literally. Schumacher had the poor guy grunting words and being Poison Ivy’s muscle, but here  the character looks to have been brought back to his roots as a criminal mastermind, blowing up an entire football field — though his costume looks incredibly different, I must say. No spandex or luchador mask here, though the mask looks to have been altered to be the apparatus for delivering Bane’s strength-inducing serum, Venom. Bane here seems to espouse  the same philosophies as Ra’s, as well, notably saying, “When Gotham is ashes, you’ll have my permission to die.”

What does that mean, exactly, in context of this film? Bane of the comics broke Batman’s back and paralyzed him, and we do get a glimpse of Bruce carrying a cane (look in the globe, it’s totally him), and, in the beginning of the trailer, Alfred is practically scolding himself for breaking his promise to Bruce’s parents to keep him safe. Many have speculated that Bane will break Bruce’s back in the end, as well, and that Nolan might even be gutsy enough to kill him off all together.

My theory? Bane breaks him somewhere towards the beginning or middle, allowing him to practically take over Gotham and, as we see, free the criminals from their prisons (presumably not the Joker, but likely including Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, who, let’s face it, needs to make one last appearance). Bruce, at the very least somewhat crippled, then likely fights back via the brand new Batwing — which, again, is given the Nolan twist of being similar and yet different from its comics roots in most other ways by being a sort of hovering vehicle rather than a jet. Somehow more believable, I guess, but it does look quite awesome and, with Bane in control of a couple Tumblers, it’s possibly a necessity, too!

So what does this all mean for this supposed end to this Batman series? Way back in Batman Begins, Gordon told Batman that things were only going to escalate, revealing the Joker’s playing card. Of course, in The Dark Knight, we got our first themed hero in said villain (the Scarecrow persona was almost accidentally given to Crane in the first film, though by the second, he seems to have embraced it, joining the Joker, I guess). Joker’s choice in a clown persona juxtaposed his vicious nature and escalating the very human terrorist threat of the first film. He even seems to make a point of taking over from the similarly human threat of the gangsters, killing their leaders, and turning them into his own henchman. We also got Harvey Dent, the eventual Two-Face, who is also glimpsed briefly in picture form in this trailer, whose scarring led to his dual persona and double standards illustrating how even the best of men can fall hard.

It seems as though The Dark Knight Rises continues this trend of escalation. The League (or a terrorist group very similar to them) has come to Gotham with a possible leader who feeds himself artificial strength and has freed the criminals upon the city, many of whom will turn into some of the worst villains Batman will likely face. Catwoman seems to be in league with him, or at least sympathetic to the cause, which continues the trend of Nolan’s villains basically exacerbating the problem and infecting one another with their criminality. And there are strong hints that Marion Cotillard’s character (also briefly glimpsed) is secretly the character Talia al Ghul, who, you might have guessed if you don’t know already, is the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and is also, like Catwoman, a conflicting love interest of Bruce/Batman.

With all of these comic book elements and broader universe building seemingly being thrown into this film, I wouldn’t be surprised if Nolan is showing us the rise of the supervillain as the primary threat to Gotham City and, possibly, the rest of the world. And if he does, indeed, throw in the supernatural or super-powered into the world he has created, this opens up this franchise to be not an ultra-realistic take on a comic book hero but rather the origins of how such a hero is created, exacerbates the problem, and then rises to become a necessity in this newly founded world of superheroes and their supervillains.

Of course, this is all mere speculation. The film is coming out next summer, as the trailer says, and is actually still a work in progress. We still have very little details on this plot, and while I wouldn’t dare, say, go to the six minute prologue that you can go preview right now in select showings of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (which, I might add, is getting fantastic reviews – yay, Brad Bird!), I do think it is quite fun to speculate about the possibilities of what is to come. Of course, once it does, then all we’ll have to speculate upon is how they’re going to top what is likely to be the greatest superhero film series for quite some time. I only hope Nolan continues his winning streak with this one.

Also, I thought it’d be fun to watch the first trailers for each film in succession… ’cause I’m a nerd like that!