The Dark Knight Rises

There’s a storm coming…

Christopher Nolan’s epic conclusion to the Batman trilogy has finally arrived and it has reached new unprecedented heights.

Nolan has brought us the origin of Batman and Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins as well as Batman's greatest adversary in The Dark Knight Rises. He has given us a dark and gritty portrayal of Gotham and in this defining last instalment he even gives us a critique of our own capitalist ways. This final act brings together the ambiguous loose ends from the previous two films to bring us a conclusion to remember.

Gotham’s reckoning has arrived in the form of the massively hench Bane (Tom Hardy), whose brutal strength and skill is matched and exceeded only by the calmness in his voice.

The Dark Knight Rises picks up where The Dark Knight ended. Batman (Christian Bale), after taking the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes and suffering the loss of a loved one banished himself, alongside Bruce Wayne, to the shadows and has spent eight years hiding in Wayne Manner. However, his curiosity returns when he meets estranged Selina Kyle (Ann Hathaway), who stumbles upon an opportunity to steal something extremely valuable to Wayne. Although he has aged and has old injuries to contend with that does not hold him back.

Batman enlists the help of his faithful ally Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) to face his toughest challenge yet. Batman must stop Bane from turning Gotham upon itself as he “gives the city back to the people” by destroying those with authority and social status. The idealist views leave a resounding truth ringing through the air, as it would seem that Bane offers a critic of our very own capitalist society.

The emphasis on identity still continues to be playfully negotiated throughout this film, especially with the introduction of a hyperfeminine Catwoman, known as The Cat. Hathaway delivers a critical performance, but seems to lack a certain audacity that Michelle Pfeiffer gave to the role in her unforgettable appropriation of Catwoman in Tim Burton's Batman Returns (1991). Bale and Hardy also deliver fantastic performances, emphasising that there is more truth in the mask than the face beneath it.

Christopher Nolan’s epic finale is nothing less than epic as it is hard to imagine it any other way. Nolan playfully raises the idea that we are not bound to our bodies, but, rather, it is our memories and actions that define who we are and who we can become. This is done through the hypermasculine Bane as he points out that "it does not matter who you are what matters is your plan." This idea that identity is fluid and can be 'put on' is foregrounded in all of Nolan's films and leaves a subtle, yet, playful sense of ambiguity surrounding the identities of the characters.

Despite the lack of The Joker and the plot twists and turns that the last instalment offered, Nolan ends the epic conclusion to the Batman trilogy with a film that rises to an unprecedented height as he raises the bar for superhero films.

You are definitely in for a show tonight.

The Dark Knight Rises

The press is picking up for the ever imminent release of the end of a legend, The Dark Knight Rises and there is a new trailer out that will make you very excited!

Christopher Nolan entered this franchise in 2005 with the release of Batman Begins. Nolan took Batman into ever darker territory as he explored the making of this legend. Tim Burton directed both Batman and Batman Returns in the early 1990’s and created a dark, troubled Gotham with a mysterious and dark vigilante. Burton created a Batman that expressed deep anxieties and fears, but Nolan takes it one step further. Nolan manages to do this alongside grounding Batman, ever more, into our reality.

In The Dark Knight Batman faces his oldest nemesis, The Joker, as in Batman directed by Burton. However, Nolan creates a Joker that is particularly unstable and psychotic, more so than Jack Nicholson’s performance. Heath Ledger creates a man who has been engulfed into psychosis and, therefore, has no reasoning to his actions. This leads you to wonder what Nolan has done with the character of Bane in the ultimate end to this legend.

The Batman films that Nolan has directed are based on identity, as Batman states in Batman Begins:

“It is not what is inside you, but what you do that defines who you are.”

Despite not containing the overtly campness that the 1960’s TV Shows and the two films directed by Joel Schumacher, Batman Forever and Batman and Robin, did, Batman still offers those queer possibilities, in the sense in which he goes against the essentialist and patriarchal norms, because he is a hyper-masculine symbol, he has no parents, he works on the outside of the law and has no jurisdiction. Batman proves that identity is not fixed, whether it is concerning gender or sexuality, but that, rather, identity is fluid, non-essential and a performance, much like putting on a mask…

I will not bore you with an in-depth reading into the Batman films, but just be aware that the dark symbol of the bat represents a lot more, as it foregrounds the darkest anxieties in our society, mainly revolving around masculinity. Batman illustrates how the subject is never complete or coherent, as a subject is continually becoming, continually negotiating within itself between reality and fantasy. The films play with this idea through the split identity and the constant ‘putting on’ of identities in the form of costumes. The superhero genre is a cultural phenomenon as genre is a cultural construct.

Batman is, by far, the most interesting of all superheroes and I am excited to see what Nolan has done with him next.

I am also intrigued to see what has become of Catwoman. Michelle Pfeiffer gave us an ironically feminist performance in Batman Returns and so I am intrigued as to whether Ann Hathaway has followed in her footsteps.

The Dark Knight is due out on 20^th July.