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Special Review: “The Dark Knight” – An Essay on Ethics and Excellence
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Produced by: Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas, Charles Roven
Written by: Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan (screenplay), Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer (story)
Cinematography by: Wally Pfister
Music by: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard
Starring: Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Aaron Eckhart, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Morgan Freeman, Eric Roberts, Ng Chin Han, Nestor Carbonell
Year: 2008
Can a film based on a comic book superhero really be considered a “masterpiece”? Even up until and including the amazing Batman Begins, this was a hard question to answer. While certainly a great feat of audience-pleasing entertainment and thoughtful craftwork merging together, Batman Begins was certainly more like a skilled adaptation of a popular character’s story than it was a profound examination of humanity. While this doesn’t inherently disqualify it, the film’s appeal and impact is limited somewhat as a result. The film was largely a study on how one man is driven to the point of becoming a masked vigilante, striving to become a symbol of hope and justice in a city infested with criminals and the morally bankrupt. Yes, Begins had scatterings of a universal message regarding the redemptive ability of humanity, but overall, it really was mostly Bruce Wayne’s story — and that’s really all it had to be. Read more…
Review: “Batman Begins”
Directed by: Christopher Nolan
Produced by: Emma Thomas, Larry J. Franco, Charles Roven
Written by: Christopher Nolan, David S. Goyer (screenplay), David S. Goyer (story)
Cinematography by: Wally Pfister
Music by: Hans Zimmer, James Newton Howard
Starring: Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Liam Neeson, Katie Holmes, Gary Oldman, Cillian Murphy, Morgan Freeman, Tom Wilkinson, Rutger Hauer, Mark Boone Junior, Ken Watanabe, Colin McFarlane, Linus Roache, Sara Stewart
Year: 2005
I was planning on going through the whole story about how much the Batman franchise was in dire need of a reboot, but I quickly found that I was going on about so many things that didn’t need repeating. The basic and short version of the story is that, after two rather strong films (Batman and Batman Returns), Warner Bros. and DC Comics shot themselves in the foot by allowing, nay demanding, for the rather awful Batman Forever and Batman & Robin to be unleashed upon the tortured fans in the name of making more money off of merchandising, only for critical reaction to slam the films and tickets sales to drop. Instead of going forward with what was in hindsight the rather ironically named fifth film, Batman Triumphant, both companies decided to take a break from the superhero films business and think about where they’d gone wrong.
Of course, in that time, their rivals over at Marvel were apparently seeing this as a window of opportunity, and they began production on and even released several rather strong films over the following years, namely the two first films in each of the Blade, X-Men, and Spider-Man trilogies, each with increasingly better reception from audiences and critics. At that point, it was clear that after years of being in the shadows, it was time for Batman to emerge once again. Read more…
The Dark Knight Rises – Trailer #3
I kinda missed updating last week. I promise to you and myself that I will have a new review up this week, but I kinda needed a mental break and had a lot going on. To ease back into things, how about a new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, eh?
So, what do you think? Like the new Batwing (or whatever its equivalent is in this film)? Like the eerie No Man’s Land vibe of the trailer? This its definitely more of a larger scale movie than the first two films, that’s for sure!
The new glimpses of Catwoman are pretty interesting. I’d previously thought that they had possibly made her it to be a reluctant(?) henchwoman for Bane, but it looks like they’re going with the antihero after all, though she definitely still has tires to Bane in some way, since you hear Bruce asking her questions about him.
Bane looks pretty fierce himself and is also notably more intelligible than previous audio from him showed. Dare I say it, but it does sound a bit… off, but we all hour through The Dark Knight despite Christian Bale’s apparently chronic throat condition and it was still a brilliant film.
Notably, we also get way more footage of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s cop character, albeit in silent clips of his reactions to the happenings in Gotham. He’s still fairly shrouded in mystery, and, to be honest, I’m kinda glad since I’ve pretty much a given that so many other spoilers are likely to reveal themselves as truth. It’s nice having one original character who can be dealt with in so many ways and who brings up so many questions, isn’t it? Like, why do we see him kneeling as if in the presence of… something? I don’t know if it’s malevolent or not, and that is probably going to help bring a great deal of tension to the role.
I’m obviously a Batman fan, as the past few weeks have proven (I promise my next review will be of a very different type of film), so to say that I’m extremely excited for this film is an understatement…
Trailer & Speculation: “The Dark Knight Rises”
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. Read more…