The dark knight trilogy
Christopher Nolan’s trio of Batman movies are by far the best comic book movies made to date. There’s a weight to them because he’s serious about the Batman theme. . . very serious. Well written with scripts that carry emotional weight and characters whose actions have consequences, this is no easy feat here, and our hero Bruce Wayne has a lot of baggage on his shoulders. Nolan was the perfect person for this reboot. He is a filmmaker of tremendous vision, scale and presentation; the grandeur of The Dark Knight trilogy is a thrilling experience with a perfect score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard.
Batman Begins
The origin movies are sometimes a test to get through at first, as they tend to take quite a bit of time with setup before the meat of these movies kicks in, but (Batman Begins) is no ordinary superhero movie. Christian Bale is perfectly cast as Bruce Wayne/Batman, conveying the many layers of a character struggling with so much inner turmoil after seeing, as a child, the senseless murder of his parents at the hands of a thief. Bale is a damn good actor. You understand his thirst for revenge, which is eating him up inside and his need to disappear for years from Gotham; live a life of crime and watch the way criminals think and live. He wants to understand them, before destroying them. Guess after ending up in a prison somewhere in Asia, he tests his growing fighting skills on his fellow inmates, then gets recruited by Henri Ducard (Liam Nesson) to join the League of Shadows and learn from him. . These early training sessions are not only tremendously exciting, they are crucial to the development of Bruce Wayne’s character and the plot of the film. Throwaway scenes aren’t, so pay attention. Nolan doesn’t have a piece of fat in his movies; everything has a purpose. Some major disagreements ensue over the state of Gotham and what should happen to it, so Bruce and the league split up. Chaos ensues.
Back in Gotham, now a trained fighting machine, with the wealth of Wayne Enterprises at his disposal; Not to mention his trusted butler Alfred, the solid (Michael Caine) and the resourceful genius of Wayne’s applied sciences division, Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) Batman is born. It’s also a good time, because Gotham City is riddled with crime, corrupt cops, and politicians, all controlled by mob boss Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson). With the help of good cop Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Bruce’s childhood friend and love interest, Assistant District Attorney Rachael Dawes (Katie Holmes), Batman at first awkwardly begins his crusade against crime. As a twisted psychiatrist with a big secret: Jonathan Crane (Cillian Murphy) is very effective and creepy. . . his alter ego even more so. The theme of whether Gotham City is worth saving, or should be erased, is a common thread running through all three movies. This is a fantastic start to the Batman series. Hold on tight; It only gets better.
The dark knight
Why this film was not nominated for an Oscar for best picture further reinforces my broken faith and admiration for the Academy Awards. At least they chose to honor the late (Heath Ledger) brilliant performance as The Joker. What he does here cannot be underestimated; it’s mesmerizing every time it’s on screen. He is a chaos machine who sees Gotham as his playground to punish what he sees as hypocrisy in the citizens, the government and the police. Every weird tick and inflection in his voice, as he spits out his twisted logic (mixed with some interesting observations to be honest) is mesmerizing. He makes one of the great entrances in movie history when he crashes a mob meeting.
The Dark Knight starts with a bang and never stops. A mob-controlled bank robbery by the Joker and some disposable thugs is just the beginning of what this renegade has in store for the city. Soon it will be Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), District Attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), known as Gotham’s white knight, and his girlfriend, Assistant District Attorney Rachael Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal), replacing (Katie Holmes). ) and of course: Batman, it’s about taking down the crime syndicate and restoring Gotham for its people. There is a rhythm to this movie that never stops. Nolan is a master at setting his scenes, and the action sequences are massive and make sense, unlike most Hollywood nonsense. An action scene high above Hong Kong is impressive in scope. There are parables about good fighting evil; a common thread in the trilogy, and how far you can go before it consumes you when the other has no limits, and how people cling to their heroes, hold them up only to drop them at the first sign of trouble, as it says the guason. . There are tough decisions that the Joker imposes on the characters in this movie that will haunt them in this movie and the next. These are some heavy moral things going on. The stakes are high and the entire cast is up to the task of Nolan’s vision. This is the gem of the trilogy as far as I’m concerned. It is an impressive, noisy and spectacularly brilliant piece of cinematography.
The dark knight rises
I can honestly say that when I saw this movie in IMAX for the first time, it was one of the most exciting experiences I’ve ever had in the theater. Right from the start, (no pun intended) the scene with the two planes and the introduction of the villainous Bane (Tom Hardy), Nolan lets you know that he means business when it comes to the final chapter of his Batman movie. A towering mountain of a man, wearing a mask that has tubes that look like raptor teeth to keep the pain at bay, Bane is a man with a very bad plan. If Bane was just a hulking beast with no brain, he wouldn’t be as terrifying a character as he is. But Bane is as smart as he is strong, and he’s on a mission that will finally bring Gotham City to its knees. Much was made of the sound of Bane’s voice; which was difficult to understand and didn’t seem to fit. He couldn’t disagree more; his own Sean Connery-like voice actually adds to the depth of his danger. Hardy does a lot with a hidden face. He will look closely and you will see the many things that he does with the movement of his body to compensate.
Bruce Wayne has been out of the loop and in exile for many years after the events of The Dark Knight, and crime is at an all-time low in Gotham. Harvey Dent is a fallen hero and Batman took the blame for his death. Everything’s fine; Or so it seems. Somewhere deep below the city, evil dwells. After a fundraiser at Wayne Manor where Bruce catches a rather audacious woman: Selena Kyle (Anne Hathaway), stealing her mother’s pearl necklace, but she runs away, he starts to investigate her story and she wasn’t there. to steal the necklace; she was stealing her fingerprints. Big problem. Meanwhile, a young cop, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), suspects something strange happened years ago with Batman’s disappearance, and questions Gordon about it.
Someone is putting out building permits all over town for some unknown reason, and some nefarious people are taking Bruce out of control of Wayne Enterprises. Something big is afoot in Gotham and Batman must come out of retirement to begin to figure out what’s going on. His body is a mess after many years of fighting crime in Gotham City, and Alfred (Michael Caine) again has some great scenes like Bruce’s moral compass, telling him that the city needs Bruce Wayne, not Batman. . Bane has an army of men working under the city and has infinite resources to carry out his plan. A large portion of the plot revolves around Bane and his men’s acquisition of a nuclear device created by Wayne Enterprises, from a fusion reactor to a clean energy device. Wayne’s fingerprints raised by Kyle provided access to the stock market to help him take over Bruce’s company. There are truly magnificent action moments in this movie, and each one gets bigger and better. As Bane and his men take over the city and hold it hostage, the stakes are higher and it seems Gotham City is doomed. Much of the middle of the film has Batman; his back broken by Bane, exiled to a prison in the far east that is a pit in the earth. A large vertical tunnel, letting in the sun, is the only shred of hope left for anyone who enters the prison pit. Many have tried over the years to climb the tunnel to the light, only to fall and die. Bane came out of this pit and now controls it. He takes Batman there, broken, to watch on a television monitor, Gotham burning. There is a great subplot about how a child was born in this well, and that the child was the only person to escape from it. This story, which is crucial to the plot, is revisited many times in the film. I thought this added a lot of depth to the movie and didn’t slow it down at all.
Big commendation for Joseph Gordon-Leviit and Anne Hathaway, who are a huge asset to the film. Levitt is solid and interesting as the (sort of) stand-in for Batman, since he’s in exile, trying to piece together the clues with the help of an injured Gordon the Shining (Gary Oldman). I’m a fan of Hathaway and she does a great job of giving Bruce/Batman big issues and attitude as someone who is struggling to start over and taking care of herself first. She was Nolan’s perfect choice for the role. Marion Cotillard as (Miranda Tate) a wealthy mystery woman, and a new Wayne Enterprises board member, who is helping Bruce regain control of his lost fortune, is also a huge bonus.
This is the longest of the Batman movies, as it should be. Nolan’s ideas about powerful people controlling the poor and weak, by manipulating the truth, with Wall Street and big money front and center, are obvious takes, and well deserved considering the recent climate. Bane uses this to his advantage to control the panicking masses; thinking that now they control the city, when in reality he wants chaos.
I can’t stress enough how much control Nolan has over his big ideas and how he executes them as a filmmaker – he was born to do this. He has to fit a lot of things here and make it into a cohesive conclusion to satisfy everything for the fantastic series that he’s rebooted; and he does it. Of course, a nuclear bomb blowing up a city isn’t all that original, but it’s how he gets there and what he does with the surprises he has in store for us that makes for a great cinematic experience. Lesser hands would have messed this up big time. Bravo to the Dark Knight!