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. 

Dark Shadows

Blood is thicker than water.

We all have our curses and secrets, but it would seem that the Collins family hold the worst curse and therefore biggest secret of them all. Tim Burton brings us another delightfully strange film that is an adaptation of the cult TV series, Dark Shadows that ran in the late 1960’s.

Teaming up with Johnny Depp, Burton’s Dark Shadows follows the story of Barnabas Collins (Johnny Depp), an extremely wealthy man whose family built Collinsport town after they introduced a fishery to the area. Barnabas was a handsome fellow and during his youth managed to break the heart of a, no ordinary, girl. The girl whose heart he broke turned out to be a witch, Angelique Bouchard (Eva Green) that enjoyed holding a grudge. So much so, that she cursed Barnabas by turning him into a vampire and sending any woman he loved over widows cliff.

Two Centuries later, Barnabas is released from the box in which he was imprisoned by Angelique and returns to the Collins home in the year 1972. Barnabas returns to find that the Collins family and home is not how he left it, but instead the family has fallen into shame, due to what happened to Barnabas, and the family business has all but ceased to exist. Barnabas sets out to restore the family business and reputation, but in doing so angers a desperately in love witch that will stop at nothing to destroy Barnabas if she cannot have him.

The film emphasises that family is the most important thing in life, as Barnabas sets out to avenge and protect his. In true Burton style the main characters all have disturbing backgrounds but it is the Collin’s family home that offers them a safe sanctuary.  This film perhaps represents how strange our world has become, as we live in a place where consumerism has taken over, which is beautifully presented to us by Barnabas encountering a Macdonald’s sign, which he admires in awe. Technology has advanced and families have been broken, but the film pushes the audience to return to simpler more traditional values, the idea that blood is thicker than water sums up the films stance, as it suggests that in desperate times, such as those that we are encountering in society, we must turn to family for protection and strength and embrace those dark shadows that cloud over them.

It would seem, however, that the trailer for Dark Shadows leads the audience slightly astray. The trailer suggests that the film is fairly light-hearted and humorous, when in actual fact the film is much darker and the one liners that are present in the trailer are not quite as funny in the context of the film as a whole. However, do not despair as there are plenty of other instances in the film that gets the audience laughing out loud.

With fantastic performances given by Johnny Depp, Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard, Eva Green and Chloë Grace Moretz as Carolyn Stoddard, this film is definitely worth sinking your teeth into. This fantastically wired story filled with vampires, witches and magic is sure to leave audiences entertained and bewitched.  

3/5 stars