Batman Archives - Kennelco Film Diary

February 14, 2017

The Lego Batman Movie (2017)

director Chris McKay
viewed: 02/11/2017 at CineArts @ Empire Theater, SF, CA

I really didn’t think I’d find myself watching The Lego Batman Movie. My kids are now 15 and almost 13, and while they still like animated movies, somehow I figured this was not going to be one that they were all that interested in. But as they are getting older and knowing that these times of going to see “kids” movies with them is a thing probably not long for my world, I’m happy to indulge them.

My daughter really enjoyed it, watching throughout with a smile on her face. The comedy is pretty quick and incessant.

I liked it. Not overly though.

Still, it might have been the best DC superhero movie to date.

March 29, 2016March 29, 2016

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

director Zack Snyder
viewed: 03/26/2016 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA

It looked bad. It got lambasted by critics, which in turn made Ben Affleck sad. So, why go and see it?

My son conscientiously objects to superhero movies these days, but my daughter was keen to see it. She’s really into superhero movies. I guess I wanted to see it also though I don’t know entirely why. To my mind, Zack Snyder’s previous Man of Steel (2013) was highly mediocre.

DC and Warner Brothers use the film as a quick-fix to world-building, or universe-building, short-cutting the work that Marvel constructed over four years and five films before launching their Avengers (2012) franchise. That Batman v Superman is subtitled Dawn of Justice is an unsubtle step in showing you where this is going: a Justice League movie, a towering superhero-packed counterpart to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

That is why, though not in the film’s title, Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) appears, and we catch glimpses of Aquaman, the Flash, and Cyborg. And we’ve got both Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) and Doomsday (a bunch of pixels), a pretty loaded set of characters by any count.

I’ve held that the best superhero movies typically need a really good villain, and ideally aren’t overloaded with additional characters. Batman v Superman is constructed in opposition to my observation.

But that’s not why it’s not a good movie. It’s terribly written. Some of the dialog is just astoundingly crap. At 2 1/2 hours, it’s bloated and bombastic, world-building as well as trying to tell a story. In fact, it’s trying to tell Batman’s (Ben Affleck) story, starting with the origin story and tying it to one of the film’s key moments. Really? The origin again?

I don’t mind Henry Cavil as Superman. He lacks Christopher Reeves’ inherent charm, but he’s affable and good-looking. Gadot shows promise as Wonder Woman. If they’d thought this out more in advance, she wouldn’t have been such a bit player.

Affleck seems constipated. And Eisenberg tries his manic best, but since the dialog is so dull, he doesn’t even once sound like a genius or supergenius, just a spoilt brat.

Still, I’d say it’s not as godawful as a lot of critics have reported. My daughter and I enjoyed it to an extent.

But I will tell you the most glaring example of the badness of the writing. When Batman is about to kill Superman (who he seems to loathe for no good reason), he is stopped when he comes to realize that both of their moms shared the same first name. “What? Your mom is named Martha? My mom is named Martha! We’re alike, not different!” This inexplicably idiotic moment is the dramatic shift in the storytelling, which has all been junk and horseshit up to that point.

So, there. Take it for what you will. It is what it is.

April 6, 2015

The Dark Knight Rises

director Christopher Nolan
viewed: 04/03/2015

And thus we complete the Christopher Nolan Batman cycle (the 2nd time through for me). This was for Felix, who was keen on the series and is keen on Nolan himself. I actually gave Clara the pass on this nearly three hour long piece of work, which I think she would appreciate.

When I watched Interstellar (2014), I pondered if Nolan had made his first M. Night Shyamalan film, suggesting that it was an ambitious, intentionally head-trippy, convoluted flop of a film. Initially, I undercut myself on that, but lately I’ve been leaning to believe I might have been onto something. And oddly enough, re-watching The Dark Knight Rises has only pushed me a little further in wondering if Nolan has jumped his own shark at some point.

The film suffers from its massive length but also its amazing weight of pomposity and self-importance. But more than anything, I was struck by the film’s lack of variety in its pacing and rhythms. Set to the score by Hans Zimmer, the film is a constant boom of import and boding. And while the cinematography is slick and pretty, the sensation I developed was one of incessant building and looming impact, while no one sequence seemed to deliver on the release or climax. It struck me as the tone of a three minute trailer, booming the drum of drama and promise of important stuff, just extended to three hours.

Really, what is Nolan saying? The villains beat the drum of social change, while the hero is the rich philanthropist, who stems the tide of change by restoring the social order. There are a variety or readings from multiple sides claiming the film as representative of their ideologies, while Nolan has taken a non-committal approach in claiming his work as representing an ideology, all while stoking the flames of the catch-phrases and flashpoints of ideas. So what is it ultimately about? Doesn’t that matter?

In the end, I don’t know. And I don’t know that I feel the urge to delve into an analysis of the material. It’s really long. The whole Nolan Batman trilogy is really, really long. And while I’m glad Felix liked it — and I liked aspects of it — I’m kind of glad to put it to rest and move on from it.

January 26, 2015

The Dark Knight (2008)

director Christopher Nolan
viewed: 01/24/2015

So, the kids and I are working our way through the Christopher Nolan Batman films, largely at Felix’s behest. I hadn’t personally revisited any of them since first seeing them in the theater in their day, in the case of The Dark Knight, a day in 2008.

This is the best of Nolan’s trilogy, which I would credit to what I still think is true of a good superhero movie, which is simply having a good villain. The better the villain, typically, the better the movie. And to be a good villain, you need some relationship with the hero.

Heath Ledger’s Joker (which won a posthumous Oscar for the actor) still stands tall. Seven years out, it’s a striking creation, visually and in character. The kids liked him, too.

I still think this is the best of the three films, but it’s long and it’s convoluted and packed with tons of plot. The kids kept getting a bit lost and I had to stop the film to explain stuff to them throughout. And then the ending, in which Harvey Dent’s Two-Face (Aaron Eckhart)’s crimes are blamed on Batman to keep the tarnish off of Dent and his legacy — the kids totally didn’t get that. “Why blame it on Batman? Why not blame it on The Joker?” And while this might seem a trivial point to bring up, I think it’s testament to the fact that this massive enterprise has such grandiose import and complexity that it nearly stumbles on itself.

Nolan, his brother Jonathan Nolan, and story writer David S. Goyer packed in the social commentary. From surveillance to terrorism to human rights, there is a lot going on in the film and interestingly themes that permeate all three films. The villains all seek chaos as change to the social order. It almost makes you wonder if there is a part of Nolan that shares this perspective as he imbues his criminal geniuses with anarchy, chaos, and a just anger at the status quo.

Felix really liked it. He said it was “the best superhero movie” he’d seen.

It’s interesting, as I noted before in writing about Batman Begins (2005) how Nolan’s commitment to practical effects and a realistic or “real world” action film for his superhero Batman is in such stark contrast to the CGi-heavy Marvel Universe which is presently dominating the Hollywood pipeline. I have to say that I think Nolan’s films will hold up in contrast, perhaps in part to his commitment to this vision, this naturalism, but I also think that it will be all the more anomalous as more and more movies come pumping out of Hollywood featuring superheroes. I don’t think anyone else is adhering to that sensibility – at least not at present. It will make Nolan’s films that more unusual in the landscape of the genre.

January 13, 2015

Batman Begins (2005)

director Christopher Nolan
viewed: 01/11/2014

Having recently worked our way through the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher Batman cycle, my 13 year old son was now hankering for the Christopher Nolan films. And fair enough, they are probably superior and more relevant in many ways to a child of his day. For me, though, I hadn’t really felt like revisiting them as yet, maybe with the one exception being The Dark Knight (2008), which I had considered the best of the trilogy.

I’ve sensed, rightly or wrongly, that Christopher Nolan is the filmmaker that most young filmmakers want to be right now and his Batman films are likely their gateways to his oeuvre. So, I would expect that a lot of people have watched and re-watched these movies over and again many times, while this is actually the first revisit that I’ve paid any of them.

At 2 1/2 hours, it’s a long haul, but Nolan was going for epic here and what with his two sequels, I hope that he feels that he got it. Nolan returns to an origin story for Batman, here played by the amazingly fit Christian Bale. Not only the death of his parents, his discovery of the bat cave under his stately home, but also his trip to the Himalayas where he trains in fighting, discipline and ideology under the tutelage of the League of Shadows and Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson). We’ve also got the up and coming detective Gordon (played by Gary Oldman), an origin story of his own.

It’s a dark world (literally and figuratively), Nolan’s Gotham. And the villains, which also include the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) are ideological in their bents, seeking to purge the ills of society through mass chaos and death. For Nolan’s interest in realism and humanism, the film finds grounding (especially when contrasted to Schumacher’s two Batman movies. And once it gets going, it’s a pretty good ride.

Both Felix and Clara enjoyed it. Felix was asking why he didn’t see it when it first came out and I had to remind him that he was only four. This film is 10 years old now. That’s freaky in itself, isn’t it?

With the new Fox TV show, Gotham, we’re entering an era of further evolution in which even the Nolan Batman films will be old reference points. Gotham is interesting as it goes back to the origins of the characters of Batman to the days right after the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents and focuses on a young James Gordon and a kid Bruce Wayne with his young Alfred Pennyworth. Felix was wondering about the next Batman movie, the first that he might see in the theater and I mention, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice as it is currently known, sequel to Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel (2013) and I don’t think that Felix has yet developed the inner groan that those of us have about this being a Ben Affleck Batman.

Nolan’s Batman films were game-resetters, if not game-changers, when they came out. But given where we are in superhero moviedom, I reckon that Marvel is currently ruling the roost in current styles and expectations, either based on the coming Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) or even last year’s Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). It’s a constantly changing game at this point.

But we will doubtlessly be revisiting the other Nolan films. So, more to come.

January 4, 2015January 13, 2015

Batman & Robin (1997)

director Joel Schumacher
viewed: 01/02/2015

There was some inevitability I suppose in our need to watch Batman & Robin. I’d started Felix down two paths that eventually converged here, the 1980’s/1990’s “original” Batman films (Batman (1989), Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995)) but also an appreciation for the worst movies ever made. So, yes, the convergence occurs here at Joel Schumacher’s atrocious Batman & Robin.

Whether it really is one of the worst movies or not, it is tremendously annoying. And it is impressive to have made a movie that basically crashed and burned a pretty red hot film franchise in one gloriously abysmal cinematic cataclysm. I mean, coming off of the (I think) very awful but commercially successful Batman Forever, to steer this series into disaster and set back the superhero film by several years, is a work of unique character.

The thing about Batman & Robin is that it’s not really bad in the way a lot of bad movies are bad. It’s not a thing of amateur mistakes but rather of vastly terrible conception. Because you have to realize that this is the film that Schumacher was trying to make. In some ways, it’s a success of vision. Only it’s a vision no one else wanted to see and quickly wanted to erase from their minds.

It does start with the nipples on the batsuit. The fetishization of the costumes. I mean, the film virtually opens with that (though this was started in the prior film, so it’s not really new here). It extends considerably with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Mr. Freeze, but in large part to conception of his character, a bad pun quip-tossing cartoon figure with no hint of real menace in his being. Adding Alicia Silverstone to the mix (as if Chris O’Donnell wasn’t punishment enough). And Bane. The bane of Bane.

I’ll be honest. In 1997, I didn’t know who Bane was. I never really read DC Comics so I didn’t realize that this stooge assistant to Uma Thurman’s (one of the only decent things about the film) Poison Ivy was one of the more notable villains available to Batman. It’s only been in the post-Christopher Nolan The Dark Knight Rises (2012) that I’ve come to learn what was both squandered and reduced to here in the extremely cartoon conception of this character of Bane. Actually, it’s almost if not entirely funny.

And George Clooney. His glib cheeriness is apropos for this Batman. He is the Batman that Schumacher was seeking out. His performance is just what Schumacher and the studio ordered. In fact, the studio was so happy with the whole thing, they had streamlined a sequel with Schumacher at the helm and Clooney, O’Donnell, and Silverstone all lined up to go again.

In many ways, the film is an emblem of Hollywood action film-making circa the 1990’s with its franchise-planning and toy empire mentality, but also its cultural naiveté. Two things that stand out in contrast in present day movie franchise-making is a post-9/11 darkness in tone and conception and a much more sophisticated corporate approach. The studios and empires should have learned one thing more, something I’m not entirely sure that they have, which is it’s also important to find the right director/author/auteur for a franchise. Christopher Nolan has pretty much set the standard image of what this should probably look like.

I say all this because we are on the precipice of a whole new era of superhero films and we are between Batman franchises, too. Frankly, the upcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice circa-2016 could prove to be the next iteration of cosmic fail for studios.

And finally, I can say of watching Schumacher’s decadent “Gotham City on ecstasy” Batman & Robin, I really, really hope I never have to watch this film again.

December 8, 2014January 13, 2015

Batman Forever (1995)

director Joel Schumacher
viewed: 12/06/2014

Joel Schumacher’s 1997 film Batman & Robin is considered one of the worst movies of the last 20 years, and it certainly was a franchise slayer, the final nail in the coffin of the original Batman film series. But you know, it’s predecessor, Schumacher’s 1995 movie Batman Forever with Val Kilmer, Nicole Kidman, Jim Carrey, Tommy Lee Jones and Chris O’Donnell…it’s pretty freaking bad on its own.

Now Joel Schumacher has made a lot of movies, D.C. Cab (1983), St. Elmo’s Fire (1985), The Lost Boys (1987), Flatliners (1990), Falling Down (1993), 8mm (1999), Phone Booth (2003) and Trespass (2011) to cherry pick a few. So whether he is remembered for those or other films or largely for his two completely awful Batman movies, history will have its say.

Apparently Warner Brothers wasn’t satisfied with the commercial performance of Tim Burton’s Batman Returns (1992) and had Burton merely produce the third installment. Michael Keaton, without Burton at the helm, decided to hand over the cowl and mantle of Batman to Val Kilmer, who stepped into the batsuit for this one film. And Warner Brothers had what the wanted, a more commercially successful film. But also a braying and annoying camp confection.

Schumacher dispatched the darkness of the first two Batman movies, focusing on the comic book colors and the Batman television show of the 1960’s for a colorful, theoretically more kid-oriented adventure film. Also a more fetishized Batman with shots of batsuit nipples, Kilmer’s rubberized butt, and codpieces. Apparently no one seemed to get along on the movie set either. Kilmer always has had a notoriety of being “difficult” but Jones was also apparently not the most magnanimous of personas either.

Largely it suffers from Schumacher’s camp approach and the resultant performances that he eked out of Carrey and Jones. Carrey in 1995 was just cresting in his career and this film did him no damage, only good. But he’s Jim Carrey circa 1995, whose overt and showy comic sensibilities made him a sort of Jerry Lewis of his day, loved by the masses, hated by any with taste (I personally was conflicted about him around the time. I’d discovered him early in the 1980’s and thought he was very funny, but by the 1990’s when he was finally getting his recognition, I could hardly stand him. I’m not sure where I sit with this anymore).

While Carrey’s performance as Edward Nigma/The Riddler was typical Carrey. Tommy Lee Jones’ Two-Face is totally God-Awful. Jones plays against type and the result is strained over-the-top screaming and (again) camp that is almost painful to watch. Especially in the scenes he shares with Carrey, it’s almost like you can see that Jones realizes that he’s not good at this super-villain stuff and Carrey is much more natural.

Actually between the two of them it’s amazing that there is anything left onscreen because they chew scenery like no one has chewed scenery before.

As for Kilmer, it seems like he hoped to be in a Tim Burton movie, not a Schumacher one. Schumacher made numerous snide comments about Kilmer, mostly based on personal dislike. While a lot of the actors here were at the tops of their games in 1995 and went on to more and more commercial and critical success, this was around Kilmer’s turning point toward career crash. He’s not bad in the movie, though.

Chris O’Donnell. Jeez. Maybe I’ll save criticism of him when we watch Batman & Robin. I, like a lot of people, just never liked the guy. Not necessarily for any good reason.

The whole film is a horror. The writing is trite and embarrassing. The performances over the top and blaring like a fire alarm. And the outright commercialism, adding characters (action figures) to an over-ripe stew of “too much is never enough” filmmaking…man. It’s terrible. Worse than I remember, honestly. In some ways it’s amazing that this film didn’t kill the franchise. My guess is that Carrey’s heyday popularity helped make this the financial windfall it was an set the stage for the final act.

Man oh man oh man.

December 6, 2014January 13, 2015

Batman Returns (1992)

director Tim Burton
viewed: 12/03/2014

Batman indeed returned in 1992, back in the hands of director Tim Burton and in the flesh of Michael Keaton. Batman (1989) had been a phenomenon, a phenomenon from whose influence American filmmaking may never shrug off. It was the first modern superhero movie, and though others since have shifted its direct influence, it is still the site of which the torrent was originally unleashed. And Batman Returns, by nature of being the first sequel of the original, has symbolic influence as well.

Batman had only one villain, Jack Nicholson’s The Joker, and though other key characters like Harvey Dent were introduced, it was a case of one hero/one villain. Batman Returns offered both Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer) and The Penguin (Danny DeVito) but also less directly Max Shreck (Christopher Walken). It’s the issue with which all superhero sequels hence have had to contend: upping the ante on the villains probably at the behest of the merchandising rather than actual need.

But Tim Burton did what was unusual at the time. He made the sequel almost better than the original. I say almost because for years I felt that it was actually better. I liked it better. But now, I’m not as sure. I think it’s more aesthetically complete, the designs are nicer, the villains Catwoman and Penguin are interestingly designed and realized, but in many ways it lacks the full perverse humor of the first film and while maybe more aesthetically pleasing, isn’t actually really a better movie.

It’s an interesting question to raise for a Burton film. He’s often known for lush and vibrant visual design but otherwise rather incomplete movie-making.

It was more than six months ago we watched Batman, but a new condition has arisen: opening streaming avenues for movies has suddenly changed our movie-watching landscape and here, Batman, Batman Returns, and even Batman Forever (1995) are suddenly available on Netflix for the clicking. With the new television program Gotham teasing on the tube, Felix’s interest in Batman in general has risen.

Batman Returns was not the commercial success of its predecessor, though success it was. The results wound up with Burton leaving the series as director and Keaton leaving as actor. Actually, only some of the more general background characters carry on through into the two Joel Schumacher films.

I would go on but I think I’ve hit the nail on the head for this movie for me. I really do think it’s a more beautifully-rendered Batman movie. Gotham is more massive and fascist in its design, but the Christmastime setting and muted blues and blacks and whites creates a palette more pleasing to the eye, though it does follow in the footsteps of its predecessor aesthetically. This whole design aesthetic would reign supreme through the genre for ages to come. The clowns and the penguins, the cartoonish elements Burton places on the scenes like oversized brightly-wrapped Xmas presents are just all very, very slick and cool art.

But the movie itself lacks in the comedy that actually made Batman pretty good. Pfeiffer, DeVito, and Walken all add to the pleasures…and it’s still pleasurable. I mean, I still liked it. But I don’t know if it’s better or not than Batman.

Felix liked it and is keen to see Batman & Robin (1997), apparently having inherited some component of my appreciation for the bad and ugly in cinema to set off the good.

March 17, 2014January 13, 2015

Batman (1989)

director Tim Burton
viewed: 03/15/2014

It had been a long time since I had seen Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman starring Michael Keaton, Jack Nicholson, and Kim Bassinger. It was the touchstone of the modern superhero movie, reinventing the characters and ultimately the genre, setting forth a style that would be adopted and readopted until it was finally eclipsed. It is still pretty safe to say that this is the movie that started a pop cultural shift that has almost utterly subsumed the summer movie period 25 years in its aftermath.

25 years. It’s true. I still remember standing in line for Batman the day it opened in June 1989. I was quite a Tim Burton fan at that point and this seemed to promise something new and interesting. And in a fair amount of ways, it succeeded. I was also a Batman the TV show fan from childhood and was thrilled to get to see those old programs again. I wasn’t a Batman comic book fan, per se, but I had read The Killing Joke and The Dark Knight Returns, two books that suggested the darker sensibilities that would come.

It’s funny now, with Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy, Burton’s Batman seems lighter by contrast. The big difference is that Burton and company had more of a sense of humor throughout, and interestingly, also had a little more of a nod to the Adam West camp television show from the 1960’s. By Nolan’s time, no iota of that remains. Of course, that has a lot more to do with what director Joel Schumacher did with this series of Batman movies than what Burton did.

The kids and I have wound up watching quite a few Tim Burton movies: Beetlejuice (1988), Ed Wood (1994), Mars Attacks! (1996) and more, most of which they’ve enjoyed. We’ve also watched a few of the superhero movies of the present, like Iron Man 3 (2013), The Avengers (2012), X-Men: First Class (2011), and others. The superhero movie is more than alive and well. It’s probably never been better from a shareholder perspective.

But we never watched a few things, like Nolan’s Batman movies or Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films. These came too early for the kids ages. And I’m a little conflicted about how interesting I think they are to share with them. That said, I thought that it is interesting to see some of the superhero movies that they’ve missed, for context, or in some cases because they warrant it enough.

Case in point: Burton’s Batman.

Interestingly, Clara was bored by it, but Felix liked it and was interested to see Burton’s Batman Returns (1992), which I sort of thought we might see initially. Now, I’m not as sure. It’s still a possibility. (We still haven’t gone back for the Star Wars episodes I-III.)

This 1989 Batman was quite the thing in its day. And I would suggest that it mostly holds up today. Keaton was always an unlikely Batman, but he proved himself quite compelling in his two goes of it. And Nicholson might not be the most ideal Joker, but he’s probably the best thing in the movie. He gets all the best lines and is the darkest, funniest thing throughout. And the set and costume designs, these came to utterly define the new dark superhero movie, these weird mash-ups of Art Deco, Gothic, what have you, ridiculously over the top, rather insanely unrealistic but quite marvelous as well.

Some of the effects are better than others. This was 1989 and everything hadn’t gone digital yet. The digital effects of armoring the Batmobile look kind of cheap. The leaping/soaring Batman is kind of slow and obviously wired on a track. And really, as great as Keaton is, this was back at a time when everyone on TV and movies didn’t spend their lives at the gym and never took off their shirt to reveal a sculpted torso. In Keaton’s case, there is little question that it’s the suit that has six-pack abs.

The film is actually quite funny. And not all of this is purely in Nicholson’s camp, though as I mentioned, he gets all the best lines and gags. There is the humor about the television news people when it turns out that make-up and hair products may be poisoned, so they appear looking ruffled and spotty. The Joker makes any number of not just visual gags but physical, cartoonish ones. The humor and style are a significant difference between today’s superhero movies, which are nowhere as outwardly humorous.

In the 25 years since its release, there have been other significant turning points in the genre. The first X-Men movie X-Men (2000), Raimi’s Spider-Man series (pure digital action), Nolan’s Batman films (probably the “artistic” high mark of the genre), and most recently Joss Whedon’s Avengers movie (really, Marvel’s multi-film build up of the Avengers franchise is something more massive than any one film). Game changers come along every so often and it’s not even such an obvious pivot that moves things forward in a different direction.

But Tim Burton’s Batman did have that massive effect, reinventing a genre that was barely a genre but which would come to massively take over Hollywood pop culture in time. The film itself is good, not really great (I always thought I preferred the sequel, not sure anymore). I state my opinion of it just to help separate what I think of the film from what I’m tyring to say about the impact that it had at the time and cumulatively.

The present day situation has a lot more to do with the state of Hollywood, the way films are marketed, special effects technology, and box office receipts. Hollywood’s always been more about what have you done for me lately than really showing a track going back a quarter of a century. And it’s probably a bit reductive to give Batman (1989) too much credit. The action-movie, the “summer blockbuster”, the “popcorn films” reaped input from many other genres and successful films. But this film was the turning point for superhero movies.

July 25, 2012January 13, 2015

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

director Christopher Nolan
viewed: 07/21/2012 at CineArts @ the Empire Theater, SF, CA

Much has been made of Christopher Nolan’s Batman as a post-9/11 superhero. One who deals with modern, global terrorism, the state of militarized reaction, corporate insinuation in the whole. The Dark Knight Rises is the final film in his trilogy, attempting to channel not just these realities but also the zeitgeist of the Occupy movements, the banking disasters, and responsive justice, vigilante or otherwise.

Sadly, the meta narrative has expanded beyond anything that Nolan and his collaborators have created for the film. The attack that occurred in Aurora, CO during a midnight premiere of the film brought terrorism physically into the movie theater. The post-9/11 superhero film now has its own new precedence, a brutal act infamous on its own.

I watched The Dark Knight Rises at a Saturday matinee, a day and a half after the shootings in Colorado. Long before the chaos had subsided, long before anyone could begin to eke meaning from it. I felt its echo throughout much of the experience.

There had been so much preamble to this film already, largely by fans, largely on the internet, spawned by the passionate reception to The Dark Knight (2008) and its predecessor Batman Begins (2005). Next to Prometheus (2012), it’s hard to know if there was a more hotly anticipated film this summer. With Heath Ledger’s death prior to the release of The Dark Knight in 2008, tragedy has shadowed the films, but has not obscured their impact.

Nolan has definitely tried to tap into societal currents of strife and fear to define his version of Batman through his three films, quite specifically via chaotic terrorism wrought against the people of Gotham (City) a.k.a. New York. In Batman Begins and now again in The Dark Knight Rises, the villains are connected with the “League of Shadows,” a group that wants to destroy Gotham in madness and bloodshed, a politicized doctrine, essentially a judgment on Western civilization, couched in language not dissimilar to that of some radicalized Islam. Ra’s ah Ghul led a siege on Gotham in Batman Begins, invoking literal terror by means of toxins supplied by The Scarecrow that would cause the entire population to hallucinate nightmares and go mad and murderous.

This time the hulking mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy) plans to destroy the world order by destroying Manhattan. In both films, the motivation for the onslaughts arise as judgment on the decadence of Western Civilization, as embodied in “Gotham”. In aligning any of this rhetoric to intimations of a “class war” or touching on the Occupy movement’s tones of protest over disparities between the rich and poor, Nolan leaves room to project upon the film various ideological stances. Various pundits have been grasping at the straws to espouse their own agendas (even before the film came out). Much had been made of how hard it is to understand Bane when he speaks (through his mouthpiece), but the ideological statements that he espouse are doubly muddled. Is there meant to be meaning to his madness? Or does Nolan intentionally muddle Bane’s verbalized politics to suggest these platitudes are as garbled as his voice?

And then what about Catwoman (Anne Hathaway)? She’s another voice of the proletariat, though one in flashy outfits. Is she hypocritical, too? She speaks of the coming storm, the devastating chaos meant to purge the world of its decadence. She’s very well-heeled for one of the 99%.

I think that the Joker was a much more apt and uncanny terrorist. There is no rhyme or reason, just madness and chaos, to his method. Random senseless violence. Largely without explanation.

Frankly, I found the film a bit disappointing. Though it has a lot of power and style, the film is long, overlong perhaps. If you ask me, The Dark Knight hit a high point for the franchise. So it’s not unrealistic to have had heightened expectations going into a follow-up so full of self-importance and rabid anticipation. The Dark Knight Rises is portentous. It booms onscreen and on the soundtrack with great emphasis. But for my money, it was even more convoluted, illogical, sprawling. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy it. Just not as much as I’d hoped, not as much as The Dark Knight.

I’ve probably spent more time (though it may not show) editing this post than any one other of which I can recall. For many attendees of the film over the last weekend, a police presence accompanied screenings, further physical reminders of terror wrought and the vigilance engendered in response. The screening I attended had no police presence, but all the same, the shadow of those events were inescapable.