A couple of weeks ago, James and I released our podcast on The Dark Knight Rises. I was worried it would sound like I hated the movie, and according to some listeners it kind of does, which is not entirely the case. While I still believe everything I said on the podcast, I also believe I really like The Dark Knight Rises, and I definitely love large sections of it. It\u2019s probably not up to par with the rest of the trilogy, but that doesn\u2019t mean it isn\u2019t a good movie. And since I\u2019m a Christopher Nolan fanboy (always) and apologist (sometimes), I\u2019m not entirely ready to stop thinking about it, and I\u2019m damn sure going to apologize for its flaws.<\/p>\n I suppose it\u2019s important to note here that I have literally no idea why I feel compelled to say anything more about The Dark Knight Rises than I already have. Over an hour of my thoughts exist on our website (and on iTunes!), and I still believe everything I said, if only because I said it approximately ten days ago. This fanboyism is an odd feeling; I tend to cherish objectivity as much as possible when watching a film, but in this case I feel like there might be even less than usual. However, one of the biggest flaws of The Dark Knight Rises is that it tries to say too much, so perhaps it makes sense for me to do the blogging version of the same.<\/p>\n This film, as opposed to its predecessors Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, deals with a much larger world of characters that we are all supposed to care about. Instead of succeeding in getting us to care about Bruce Wayne, it attempts (and fails) to get us to care about everybody, a problem that often exists in modern blockbuster cinema. In the modern action film, Earth as a whole is perpetually in danger, be it from the Tesseract in The Avengers, or the exact same thing but with a different name in Transformers, or the exact same thing with the exact same name in Captain America: The First Avenger. This is a problem seemingly brought on by the advent of special effects technology: once it is possible to create anything, everything is an option. As the scale of your film needs to grow, there\u2019s no reason to stop at anything less than the destruction of the entire world. While only Gotham City (and, one would assume, its surrounding area) are in imminent danger during the climax of The Dark Knight Rises, that\u2019s more or less the totality of the Batman world Nolan has familiarized us with. The whole world isn\u2019t really at risk, but the whole world we know is, and we\u2019re supposed to care about everybody within it.<\/p>\n Pictured: You don’t care, stop pretending.<\/p><\/div>\n It\u2019s almost impossible to care as much about such a large number of people in a movie, if only because no reasonable film has time to set up that many characters. In The Dark Knight Rises, the best-case scenario for the viewer is that they are emotionally invested in Bruce Wayne, Selina Kyle, John Blake, Commissioner Gordon, and Alfred Pennyworth (although there\u2019s a solid chance he\u2019s not even in Gotham once shit gets real). The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 best moments are ones that show one or two of these characters dealing on a small-scale personal level, like when Wayne climbs out of the prison he has been banished to, or when Batman reveals his secret identity to Commissioner Gordon (who doesn\u2019t have the Magic Orphan Eye superpower that John Blake appears to possess). These echo the best moments in the previous films, when we see Batman triumphantly swoop away to close Begins, or when he takes the blame for Harvey Dent\u2019s murders to become The Dark Knight. These moments are why we got attached to these films in the first place, and since there are fewer of them in the new film, as the film focuses on the grander moments, we simply care less about what happens to anybody. And for people that were kind of already on the fence about the form in general, that won\u2019t help the way they see the movie.<\/p>\n I often find myself defending Christopher Nolan\u2019s action movies to those that don\u2019t like them. This seems like something I shouldn\u2019t feel compelled to do, but that\u2019s only because I\u2019m never really defending them; more than anything, I\u2019m trying explain a phenomenon of sorts.<\/p>\n The reason Nolan has become a sort of god auteur in the arena of blockbuster film is that he takes a genre seriously that nobody else does. The blockbuster is the dominant form of North American pop culture, yet almost nobody makes serious versions of these movies. The Avengers was too quippy (and thematically pretty empty) to really find interesting, and Total Recall was too terrible to take its John Cho monologue about objectivity and subjectivity at all seriously. Critics have to watch so many of these movies that, when Nolan takes this style of filmmaking seriously, the critics not only see an enjoyable movie, but a relief from the seemingly unending dread of blockbuster season. And despite my general disdain for film reviews, they have more effect on the way the public views a film than most realize. Seeing a Christopher Nolan movie isn\u2019t just seeing a summer action movie; it\u2019s seeing an important piece of culture, but the only people that think this type of culture is truly important are the people that already like it.<\/p>\n “I’ll get him to punch him, before he punches him, leading to a flurry of punching. Then they’ll chase a nuke, because obvs.”<\/p><\/div>\n The majority of the people I explain this to are people who simply aren\u2019t typically interested in big action movies. They\u2019re the people that will see Prometheus because Alien is a great movie, but they\u2019ll ignore The Amazing Spider-Man because they think it\u2019s inessential. They tend to have similar tastes as movie critics, and when their reviews for The Social Network match up, they wonder why they don\u2019t feel the same way about Batman. They simply aren\u2019t into the disbelief necessary for the Batboners to develop. These movies must come around by the end and eventually turn into a hokey, clich\u00e9d action film, in order to justify the money the studio puts into them. For some viewers, that doesn\u2019t make sense and adds to the overwhelming dissatisfaction they feel about the movie, but for those willing to forgive, those first two acts of more interesting ideas and story beats are enough to get us invested when it all turns into a boxing match followed by some nuke chasing.<\/p>\n The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 final message is one of valuing the work of a collective; it essentially thanks its legions of fans by having a mass of Gothamites assist in Bane\u2019s defeat. Batman wasn\u2019t important as much as the Bat symbol was; without the assistance of the citizens of Gotham, Bruce Wayne has no chance. The film depicts its world as an economically depressed place for most, but it also says that the human spirit will persevere and things will get better. We shouldn\u2019t go so far as to become domestic terrorism hobbyists like Bane, but gathering as a collective and pursuing a common goal as opposed to going it alone is highly valued in this film.<\/p>\n Similarly, I am not alone in loving Batman. There are legions of fanboys, and we\u2019re all desperately in love with these movies. The Dark Knight Rises is likely the last time a lot of us will get extremely excited over a film; as we get older and smart enough to realize how illogical it is to be excited about stuff like this, it will get harder to be irrational. We\u2019re called fanboys for a reason: only a boy would be stupid enough to casually claim he is emotionally attached to a Christian Bale character and mean it. But with The Dark Knight Rises, we\u2019re still in 2005.\u00a0 It\u2019s a superhero brand of Revertigo, and it makes us all eighteen again. In the months leading up to these films, we have nightmares of the Joker making coffee in our kitchen, or of rescuing Kelly Clarkson from a version of Bane who has decided to terrorize a water park. We were too young for Star Wars, and the Lord of the Rings movies had too many fucking goblins for us to care about. Batman was our trilogy. But now it\u2019s gone, hiding out in an Italian caf\u00e9 with Anne Hathaway, and it took the fanboy inside of us with it.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/themacguffinmen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/TDKR1_.jpeg\" "\\"TDKR1_\\"")
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