The Dark Knight Rises

The Dark Knight Rises

Legendary Pictures/Syncopy/Warner Brothers, 2012

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman

Four stars

How do you reconcile impossible expectations with reality? How do you close out a franchise that has, over the past seven years, become one of the most beloved and acclaimed of our time? How do you give a definitive conclusion to the story of a character who has been seen in many different forms, in many different times, a character that will doubtlessly be re-imagined by another in time? How do you give fans the big payoff they deserve without falling into the traps that so many promising trilogies have stumbled into with their third film? The truth is, I wouldn't have the first idea of how to answer those questions.

Thankfully for us though, Christopher Nolan did.

The Dark Knight Rises, all hype aside, all of the polarizing reviews and all of the fans who will doubtlessly cry out that it doesn't live up to its predecessor (untrue, but we'll get to that in good time), manages all of the above and more. This movie is massive, boasting an epic, almost three-hour runtime, and bringing the series to a resounding full-circle conclusion. It's also a definitive ensemble piece, allowing every character we've come to care about throughout the series (and numerous new additions, all of them positive) their moment to shine, bringing all of their stories to a satisfying and deserved finale. Even Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes, a pair of characters whose presence (and ultimate demise) was of pivotal importance to the last installment, linger in the hearts and minds of the people of Gotham City. Only Ledger's Joker is left unmentioned, a loose end that Nolan had never intended to leave, though, after seeing what he orchestrated here, I can't help but wonder how the character could have fit into the story anyway.

But Nolan does more than just hit all of the requisite checkpoints here: with an ambitious script and a structure only befitting an epic and unforgettable conclusion, he sets out to make his masterpiece. Since he started his journey with Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Nolan has become a world-class auteur, breaking up his Batman flicks with a pair of innovative and dense pieces of sci-fi cinema (The Prestige in 2006 and Inception in 2010). But while those movies felt like separate entities upon their release, like a director flexing his creative muscle before returning to the more limited boundaries of a comic book adaptation, they seem to fit into something greater and wider-ranging now. Nolan incorporates more than just cast members from those films here, using the tools and techniques he learned from them (along with a few thematic nods) to construct a film that stands as the pinnacle of his directorial endeavors. It's a film that not only fits into a series and an overall story arc, but also into the interconnected body of work of its director, and when viewed in that context, the enormity of it all is baffling. In recent years, many fanboys have proclaimed Christopher Nolan as the greatest director of his time, and with this film and the completion of what appears to be a meticulously planned cinematic progression, he makes a startlingly strong case for just that.

Of course, it would be all for naught if the storylines didn't come together, but they do, and in ways that I would never have imagined. The film picks up eight years after The Dark Knight ended, with Batman a mere memory from the night that he took the blame for Dent's murder and disappeared. The mob, always a secondary villain in the first two films, has been vanquished, and Bruce Wayne has retreated into the life of a recluse. But Selina Kyle, a slippery cat burglar (Anne Hathaway, brilliant), shakes Bruce out of his reverie. "There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne," she says in a scene early on, and when the storm hits, it's something to behold. Enter Bane (Tom Hardy, horrifying and unrecognizable from his work in Inception and Warrior), a tank of a man with a face mask, a voice that sounds like it belongs to the devil himself, and a tie to Bruce's past. And while Ledger's Joker will likely remain the series' "definitive" villain, Hardy's Bane is at least as disturbing. In past film incarnations (Batman & Robin being the one most moviegoers will likely recall), the character has been portrayed as a stupid, stumbling thug. That's not how it was in the comics though (specifically in the Knightfall storyline that the film borrows from), and Nolan is committed to making Bane the fearsome figure he should be. Where the Joker specialized mostly in mind games, Bane is Wayne's physical match, and their battles are everything that the final confrontation between the Batman and the Joker could never be. One riveting fight scene halfway through the film will take your breath away. There's no music, no stylish camera shaking or editing, just the sickening reality of our hero fighting for his life. It's a splendidly well choreographed scene, miles away from the hard-to-follow action sequences in Begins, or the blink-and-you'll-miss-them ones in Dark Knight. Nolan wants you to pay attention, he wants you to see this, and it's equal parts devastating and stunning; the stakes have been raised.

But for most of the film's first half, Nolan takes his time, shedding the frantic pace and wild tension from his previous installment in favor of the calculated escalation that made Begins such a winner. Some critics have called it "slow," but I would argue that they're missing the point: Nolan lays all the groundwork in these scenes, establishing Bane, Catwoman, and the other two new faces (Inception vets Joseph Gordon Levitt and Marion Cotillard, as John Blake and Miranda Tate, respectively), and carefully writing in some seemingly disposable lines and hints that will be of pivotal importance to the plot down the line. We also re-establish the relationships between Bruce, Alfred (Michael Caine knocks it out of the park here, in a beautifully conflicted and poignant, fatherly performance), Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman just gets better and better), and Lucius Fox (Freeman feels underused again, but it's a small gripe), all of which play important roles in the development of the story. And it's a joy to see such strong female characters this time around. One of my main problems with this series so far has been the dearth of relevant women throughout the proceedings. It certainly didn't help that Rachel Dawes, the only female role of any size, was traded from Katie Holmes to Maggie Gyllenhaal between film one and two, a jarring shift that hardly felt like the same character. But Hathaway and Cotillard, two of today's finest actresses, provide strong presences for their characters...both of whom are more than meets the eye.

Once the film really takes off, there's no looking back. Nolan aims for the fans here, throwing out a slew of clever references to the comic, making more than a few callbacks to the first two films, (especially Begins), and playing true to the characters, themes, and ideas that he established for himself back in '05. He also builds the story up on many levels, a la Inception, directing the project like a complex game of chess before bringing all the pieces together for the flawless third act. The last hour or so puts other comic book movies to shame, bringing everything that has been building for three films crashing down in a masterfully choreographed fireworks show. If you think you have a handle on what this movie is, think again: it morphs into something else entirely as it races toward its climax, hitting fans with a big twist and a tremendously satisfying reveal, and then dropping them back into the fray. In Batman Begins, Liam Neeson's Henri Ducard told Bruce Wayne that "theatricality and deception are powerful agents," and Nolan epitomizes that here. Everything about this film, from the promotional campaign to the ever-important groundwork Nolan lays early on, is a house of mirrors, and it's all set to shatter around this single twist: be sure to make it to the theater before someone spoils it for you.

That twist sends us hurtling toward a shattering climax, and suffice to say that the film's final minutes exceeded every one of my lofty expectations. There are crowd pleasing tie-ups, Inception-esque cliffhangers, "a ha!" moments galore, last-minute twists, and then, to top it all off, the traditional swell of Hans Zimmer's theme music, right before the film cuts to black. It's an emotionally weighty and viscerally satisfying conclusion, one that leaves questions to be debated, references to puzzle over, and plenty to re-examine on repeat viewings. And repeat viewings will come, that's for sure, but the film does on its first glance what it's supposed to: it takes a great trilogy out on its highest note. As soon as the credits rolled, I clapped, I cheered, and I wanted to see it again right away. And as I drove home, pondering everything that had just played out on the screen in front of me, I was ready to call it a masterpiece. I could hardly recall a better moviegoing experience. I had my reservations about The Dark Knight, about the claims that it merited Oscar attention, and about the "classic" status it was almost instantly annointed with, but this time around, I'm thoroughly on board. This film, in scope, in ensemble performance, in overall depth, is the best picture of the year so far. It's a beautifully executed summer blockbuster, loaded with stunning camerawork and special effects, but it's also more than that. It's the conclusion of one of the most riveting stories any filmmaker has told in my generation. It completely transcends its genre, making other comic book films look almost silly in comparison. And as a trilogy, it stands among the greats, with The Lord of the Rings and Toy Story from the last decade, or alongside Star Wars and The Godfather from the catalog of classics. At it's heart, Nolan's Batman is about a man who struggles with his anger, his past, and his own shortcomings to become more than a man. To become a legend. But with all the talent on display here, with all the characters and storylines and complexities that Nolan outfits this final film with, it becomes something even deeper, something more profound. Something that needs to be seen to be understood. Something that audiences will be watching and discussing for decades to come. It would be shameful for the Academy to ignore that.

As the sun sets on Nolan's Batman series, as the credits on The Dark Knight Rises begin to role for everyone around the world this weekend, I can't help but think of the trilogy in the words that Michael Caine used to lay out the rules for a great magic trick in The Prestige. And somehow, knowing Nolan and how he used pieces of each of his films here, I think that might be more than coincidence...

"Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called 'The Pledge.' The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called 'The Turn.' The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call 'The Prestige.'"

On Christopher Nolan and his Batman Trilogy

Will The Dark Knight Rises live up to the impossible amount of hype surrounding it? And how does the rest of the series hold up?

Well here we are: seven years down the line from the first film, and four since the sequel that lit the world on fire, down to a mere 25 and a half hours to the conclusion. I've got my tickets all set for tomorrow night and for the big midnight blowout of Christopher Nolan's highly anticipated Batman finale, called The Dark Knight Rises, and I've spent a few nights this week re-acquainting myself with the rest of the series. Needless to say, I can hardly even describe how psyched I am for this movie.

I'll admit that there have been a few times over the past few years where the ridiculously hyperbolic praise for Nolan, and especially for The Dark Knight, has really started to irritate me. And I'm a big fan of his: I think The Prestige and Inception are science fiction masterpieces, and I think he certainly stepped things up for comic book movies with Batman Begins. When that movie unraveled in the summer of 2005, Nolan was picking up the pieces of a franchise that had been, essentially, left for dead eight years earlier. Joel Schumacher's disastrous Batman & Robin is the kind of deal-killer that  every major studio has spent the past 15 years trying to avoid. It took a bankable property and proceeded to do almost everything wrong with it, from having George Clooney play himself in a Batman suit, to Arnold Schwarzenegger's plethora of cringe-worthy lines, to bat nipples. Schumacher's obsession with cheesy camp (and the resulting lack of dark, realistic textures or storylines) and a barrage of horrific reviews (the film scores a 13% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 28 on Metacritic) led to a disappointing box office gross. Or perhaps the studio realized that the script was, in fact, the worst ever written. In any case, the movie was acknowledged as the piece of crap it is by everyone. from studio heads to Schumacher himself, and the planned follow up, supposedly called Batman Triumphant, was canned. Years later, Clooney would hit the nail on head by saying "I think we might have killed the franchise."

Luckily, Christopher Nolan was there to pick up the pieces and build them back up into something that was not only worthwhile, but transcendent as far as comic book movies go. After watching both films back to back, I actually think that Batman Begins is the superior work. Nolan chooses to construct the film completely around Bale's Bruce Wayne, and the result is in turns haunting, hilarious, and viscerally thrilling. Somebody once told me that Batman Begins is a movie about Bruce Wayne, whereas The Dark Knight is a movie about Batman, and that's true. It's a blurry line, no doubt, but one that I think marks a valid difference. Wayne often gets lost in the shuffle during the feverish action and constant tension of the sequel, and we occasionally lose him entirely in the sea of other characters. Nolan tries to juggle Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox, Michael Caine's Alfred, the mob, a slew of corrupt cops, and a relationship between Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) that never quite works despite its paramount importance to the plot. His worst offense, however, is the amount of time he spends with the citizens of Gotham, which would be fine if he spent it in interesting fashion, but he doesn't. The extended "boat sequence" almost derails the entire film, focusing too much on characters we don't care about, and doing so with awful dialogue and a predictable arc. And then there's the Joker himself. No one can deny the sheer level of brilliance that Heath Ledger channels into his performance here, nor that he was deserving of the Supporting Actor Oscar in 2008 (though I personally thank that Javier Bardem and Christoph Waltz both won for greater, more nuanced villain work in the surrounding years). But Ledger's presence is so gargantuan that Bale's is greatly diminished, and while the film certainly comes together in time for its conclusion (a spine-tingling cutoff, especially now that the sequel is mere hours away), re-watching it in quick succession with the first film left me sure of one thing: I don't want another Dark Knight.

And it seems likely that I will get my wish. While I've sworn off reading any full reviews and kept myself deliberately in the dark concerning specific plot points and characters (just like last time around), the RT blurbs seem to agree on one thing: that The Dark Knight Rises, as great as it is, "doesn't quite live up to its predecessor." It's a weird qualifier to get excited about, but that's just what's happening for me, because the buzz says that we get back to Wayne and we see him come full circle from where he was in the first film: we get back to the heart of the matter. I trust Nolan to do that, because, for all of the fanboy hype and exaggerated claims, he has never made two movies that are even similar, let alone the same. The ballet-like story choreography of Inception is worlds away from the innovative filmmaking structure utilized on Memento, which bears no resemblance to the unraveling mystery of The Prestige. And his Batman films, while both members of the same trilogy, could hardly be further apart: one is a clear portrait of Wayne's psyche as he becomes more than a man, the next a cloudy glimpse of it, fraught with horrific threats, death, pain, and conflict; one is sheltered in the safety of Wayne Manor, the next consistantly shrouded in the shadows of a broken city; one is a man who loses his parents and vows to never let his loved ones be harmed again, while the next is the shattering realization that his transformation has only brought them closer to danger and doom. And the third film...well, I'm not sure what that will be yet. That's the point, right? But I'm hopeful that, by the time I walk out of the movie theater, sometime after 3 a.m. on Friday morning, I will have just experienced something visceral.

Something important.

Something completely satisfying in every way.

So bring on that midnight showing: it's time to see how this thing ends.

The Amazing Spider-Man

The Amazing Spider-Man

Columbia Pictures, 2012

Directed by Marc Webb

Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans

Three stars

Not quite "untold," but entertaining nonetheless.

Ten years ago, Sam Raimi's Spider-Man launched the comic book genre into the very upper echelon of Hollywood box office bets. Bryan Singer had revived the genre only two years before, assembling a killer cast for a surprisingly weighty live-action version of X-Men, and in the years that followed, we'd see adaptations of everything from Daredevil to Fantastic Four, but Spider-Man was the first to smash box office records. Needless to say, what was established by Raimi and Singer's films (each the first in respective trilogies which bottomed out on their third installment) has grown into a film genre of its own, one that has largely defined the last decade in cinema. Other directors would come along and take the form to higher levels (Christopher Nolan and Jon Favreau are the most obvious figures), but as far as doing the original legwork, a lot of credit must be given to Singer and Raimi. I can still remember seeing the first Spider-Man film on opening day, and I must confess that, back then, I loved it. Repeat viewings would reveal what I now find to be shoddy storytelling, awful acting (though it's not really the fault of the stars - the film was horribly miscast), and weak CGI, not to mention the single worst theme song of all time, and the rest of the series didn't do a whole lot to transcend those problems. Spider-Man 3, even five years after its release, is still a laughingstock, and while not quite the low water mark for comic book films (nothing, absolutely nothing, will ever be worse than Batman & Robin), it's still one of the most disastrous and unintentionally hilarious movies I have ever seen(or perhaps it was intentional, given Raimi's roots in campy horror films).

Enter the reboot, which comes in to sweep up the pieces of the franchise almost exactly ten years after Raimi's original. It's a similar arc to that of X-Men, which also saw a reboot with last year's X-Men: First Class, and much like that film, The Amazing Spider-Man's finest scenes are those that focus on its pair of young and extremely talented leads. But First Class aimed to play like a prequel, with numerous references to the original (including one brilliant cameo), and a completely separate story with only a few overlapping characters. Right out of the gate, The Amazing Spider-Man makes the mistake of choosing to retread the origin story that was already aptly covered in the first film, and indeed, some portions of the two movies are almost identical as a result (the biggest offender being the storyline that surrounds Martin Sheen's Uncle Ben character). For that reason, The Amazing Spider-Man has earned one of the worst critical tags a movie can gather: unnecessary. The writers who have called it that are certainly not far off, as at its worst, The Amazing Spider-Man is essentially an improved version of Raimi's original, but I believe there's more to this film than that: director Marc Webb (who helmed one of the best romance films of the last decade with 500 Days of Summer) wisely chooses to focus on the love story this time around, and the romance between Peter Parker (Andrew Garfield) and Gwen Stacy (Emma Stone) soars at heights that the Peter/Mary Jane storylines never reached for a single frame during the first trilogy. That's because Garfield, a should-have-been Oscar-nominee for The Social Network, and Stone, who delivered the break-out performance of the decade (so far) in Easy A, are significantly more talented than their predecessors. The two share an electric chemistry that leaps off the screen, and both bring more nuance and humor to their characters than Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst were ever able to find in theirs. In short, the screenplay, which is solid but unoriginal, manages to thrive thanks to the life these two stars inject into it: things wouldn't work out so well in lesser hands.

It also doesn't hurt that the screenplay (written by Steve Ditko, James Vanderbilt, and Marvel's own Stan Lee, who gets his most splendid cameo to date here) adheres to and honors the Spider-Man source material better than the first film did. Where Raimi's film cherry-picked some of the most memorable moments of the comic book, with little regard to continuity, the screenwriters this time around seem more focused on paying tribute to the source and building a set-up for a more compelling series arc (a la Nolan's Batman trilogy). It's also that quality of the film that forms the most convincing argument for retelling the origin story: it feels like we could, conceivably, get a much stronger and more fully-formed trilogy this time around, in which case skipping the genesis segment would result in things feeling incomplete down the road. And the first third of the movie is actually quite well executed, with Martin Sheen doing some brilliant work in his brief appearance, Garfield having a ton of fun with the "discovering the powers" bits, and Stone and Garfield sharing some deliciously awkward onscreen encounters. Indeed, the "origin story" parts of the film are so entertaining and so well done that it's hard to imagine the film without them. Undoubtedly, the film retreads things we've seen before, but it's a testament to the talents of director Marc Webb (do we think they chose him for his last name?) that, really, retreading familiar ground has rarely been this fun. Contrasting July's other superhero opus (the sure-to-be-bleak The Dark Knight Rises), Webb injects The Amazing Spider-Man with a romantic frivolity and comedic edge so irresistible that, damn the action scenes, I wanted more of it. Luckily, Webb acquits himself quite well as an action director also (thankfully avoiding the "shaky cam" method that many inexperienced directors employ), and he ultimately orchestrates the project in a much less heavy-handed manner than Raimi did (minus one forgivably cheesy indulgence near the film's climax).

All told, The Amazing Spider Man is a top-tier summer blockbuster and is just a notch below the best superhero films. The cast is the film's biggest advantage, surrounding the fantastic young stars with a list of some of Hollywood's most seasoned veterans, from Sheen to Sally Field to Denis Leary, all the way to Rhys Ifans' Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-eqsue villain. Garfield is the ideal Spider-Man, trading Tobey Maguire's consistently anguished facial expressions for a guy that accidentally becomes a hero and spends a good deal of the film's runtime cracking jokes. The action set-pieces are exciting but not exceptional, and Ifans' villain (the Lizard) is far more compelling in human form, but those things don't seem to matter much here. The heart of the film is in the human aspect, just like it was with Nolan's first Batman film and just like it was with the original Iron Man. The Avengers will likely remain this summer's top form of escapist fun, and the Batman finale will almost certainly take the lion's share of acclaim, but Webb has found in Garfield and Stone the perfect characters to build a franchise on, and he's accomplished something that only the best comic book movies have done: he makes it less about the mask and more about the man behind it.