It's been a long while since I last watched this marvelous trilogy, so I've got quite a bit to say...
Batman Begins (2005)
It's been 17-years since
'Batman Begins' was released and the world of pop culture has changed a lot. It's difficult to remember a time before a top-tier comic book movie would be greeted by online hysteria. Back in 2005 only 16% people globally were online and 51% in the "developed world". There wasn't an endless parade of pop culture YouTubers hyping such films because there wasn't really any YouTube (having only been launched 4-months prior to BB's release). It was also 3-years before anybody had heard of this
"MCU" thing. It was in this world that I was able to greet BB with total indifference, barely noticing it's existence. Having grown up in the 90s, I'd loved
Tim Burton's 'Batman' and then watched the film series steadily descend into utter dreck, so who cares about a new one right?
It was only after the irresistible worldwide hype from
'The Dark Knight', 3-years later, and after me absolutely loving that movie, that I went back and watched BB for the first time. TDK sets everything up so well, exploding out of the gate with Batman action and drama, so I didn't feel like I'd missed anything. So I've viewed BB in that context ever since. A superfluous movie that makes you wait 3/4 hour to get to the good stuff. But when Bruce has finally teamed up with Alfred, Gordon and Lucius and starts developing the Batman tech and his alter-ego's legend, it's pure magic from there on out. But I'll discuss the flaws first...
BB feels like a compromised
Christopher Nolan vision. Maybe because Nolan was a relatively small-time Director then, making his first move into big budget blockbuster territory, he didn't have full control over the project. I don't know. Nolan is all about the awesome power of seeing something unbelievable, for real on the big screen, on the biggest scale possible. The claustrophobic, set-bound, gothic, comic book looking Gotham seen here, is so different to the modern real world Chicago locations used in TDK. BB still has one foot in the aesthetic of Burton and
Joel Schumacher. The fight scenes aren't that well shot, showing Nolan's inexperience as an action Director, something he would again master in the sequel. Nolan casts far too many British actors, doing American accents of variable quality.
Katie Holmes is not a particularly great actress and has little chemistry with
Christian Bale, made worse by me seeing the superior
Maggie Gyllenhaal playing the role first with oodles of enthusiasm. I feel bad about speaking ill of the late great
Rutger Hauer but lets face it, he's phoning it in here, perhaps not realising like his fellow old thesps had (such as
Morgan Freeman and
Michael Caine), that he's been cast in something a good deal deeper and higher quality than comic book movies had been up until that stage. The reverse angle shot of Wayne Manor always makes me laugh because it's the most stereotypically English shot of countryside you're likely to see. Nolan doesn't make any such schoolboy mistakes in the sequels. The epic helicopter shot at night, circling around Batman, perched as if he's a gargoyle on a skyscraper is a glimpse of what the real Nolan was about.
There is still much I love about BB though. You can tell Nolan sweated over making Batman look like part of a real, believable world. This time I was digging seeing the close-ups of the Allen-key (aka hex-key) bolts that his utility belt is screwed together with. Plus all the nerdy thought that went in to showing how Bruce and his "Q", Lucious Fox, go about ordering and third-party manufacturing the elements of the suit and gear.
Hans Zimmer and
James Newton Howard's score is of course genius. The story, characters and script are well written, developed and structured. It's a very cool take on the Batman legend.
The Dark Knight (2008)
There was such a good buzz about this in 2008, that I felt I had to watch it, even though I'd skipped over
'Batman Begins', three years before. It starts at full throttle and picks up pace from there, no setup had been missed. That bank heist opening grabs you and the rest of the film never lets go.
Christopher Nolan brings his Batman completely into his unique vision, with Gotham now rendered in realistic, modernist, corporate, steel and glass, mixed with old world Chicago architecture, and filmed with those cool blues and greys he favours. The way those structures are shot looming over the characters and the portrayal of Gotham's pervasive corruption, and Harvey's opposition to it, recall
Brian De Palma's 'The Untouchables'. Nolan has often played around with the tropes of
James Bond and here he has
Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox going full-Q, replicating those fun scenes were Bond/Bruce is messing with the new gadgets and bantering with Lucius/Q. Despite all the action and visual grandeur, the best scene is probably the one where the accountant foolishly tries to blackmail Lucius. Both actors play it to perfection. The fight choreography is on another level from BB, it's clear, fluid and impactful.
'The Dark Knight' is only 14-years old but it feels like a film from another era, before throwing as much CGI at the frame as possible was standard, to the point where there is never enough time and budget to make any of it feel real. Nolan knows that no amount of FX are going to be as epic and thrilling as seeing a real truck flipped end to end on IMAX 70mm.
Hans Zimmer and
James Newton Howard's score is a beautiful, dark, assault on the senses, many composers have sadly tried to copy it with little success.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is so much better as Rachel. Heath Ledger's performance is of course iconic, faultless and a blackly comic delight.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
I can't get enough of Bane's voice, I think it's 50%
Tom Hardy's brilliant performance and 50% the deliberately aggressive way it's mixed, so it sounds like you're hearing it inside your brain. Lines like
"Do you feel in charge?" give me goosebumps every time. I'd forgotten how much fun
Anne Hathaway is as Catwoman. She's able to do the full-body transformation thing (when Bruce catches her stealing) that
Christopher Reeve did between Clark and Superman. I believe the general opinion is that
'The Dark Knight Rises' is a slight step down in quality from the last film but rewatching it today I'm thinking it's even better than
'The Dark Knight'. The plot is so well put together, with lots of characters all having there own important things to do, which build towards the finale. The withholding of Batman's appearances (for well established plot reasons) makes whenever he does don the suit feel so special. Like in
'Superman III' when he comes back from the dark side, the way Bruce comes back from the prison, it's so triumphant. The only thing that spoils the ending for me, is having actually drank
Fernet-Branca. I can buy the inverted bat-copter thing and the fusion reactor bomb stuff but Alfred saying he likes the drink, is just not credible. My taste buds have never recovered.
:
