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Christopher Nolan’s newest movie, Oppenheimer, may finally be out in theatres but the writer-director also celebrated two pretty big birthdays last week.
The Dark Knight, for one, turned fifteen (!!) this past Tuesday.
The Dark Knight Rises, eleven, two days later.
Nolan is an accomplished filmmaker, one of the very best working today, who has dabbled in various genres, from science fiction to drama and now, with Oppenheimer, biography but with a decade-plus of hindsight on all three of his Batman films - Batman Begins turned eighteen in June - I thought it would be a good time to look back on the trilogy that is still considered the high-water mark of superhero movies.
So that’s the plan for today’s newsletter - Superhero Sunday! Everybody say “oh yeah!”
I hope to see Oppenheimer soon and will be sure to share my thoughts with all of you in our growing community of Off-Balance-ites when I do (Off-Balancers? The Off-Balance Group? The Falling Over like Ryan Collective? I’m still working on it) but until then, buckle in: we’re going to Gotham!
Batman Begins (2005)
Going back and rewatching Batman Begins, it is almost hard to believe that it was the jumping off point for what became one of the most renowned trilogies in modern moviemaking.
That isn’t to say that it is poorly made or creatively lacking, far from it. But in jettisoning the campy excess that had come to define the franchise, there is a tremendous sense of weight and (relative) realism to the whole operation, the world-building, slow, purposeful, deliberate.
You don’t even see Batman (Christian Bale) proper until almost an hour in.
Instead, most of our time is spent with Bruce Wayne, who is no longer just a vessel to move us along from one action set piece to the next but rather, someone believably haunted by his personal demons.
We're with him as he travels the world, developing the fortitude, the tools and techniques he would later use to protect his beloved Gotham City, overrun not with zany supervillains but with mobsters and corrupt cops.
So when the Batsuit and the Batmobile (“The Tumbler“) finally do appear, it isn’t surprising that they aren’t the out-of-this-world inventions of a single man but rather, repurposed military prototypes, brought up to crime-fighting snuff with the help of Morgan Freeman’s R&D man, Lucius Fox.
Outside of Freeman though, the supporting cast is all given ample time to shine.
Michael Caine’s somewhat reluctant partner in crimefighting/father figure Alfred is a standout but Gary Oldman brings a quiet integrity to honest cop Jim Gordon, who quickly finds himself working with the Caped Crusader.
Liam Neeson’s one-time mentor to Bruce and later antagonist, Ra’s Al Ghul, is played to perfection, so good, you can, if not sympathize with, at least respect where he’s coming from in regards to his bad guy shenanigans.
And Katie Holmes, as Assistant D.A Rachel Dawes, an old friend to Bruce, comes across as wholly sincere in her desire to rid the city of corruption (and in my opinion, to a much greater degree then Maggie Gyllenhaal, who would portray the character in the sequel).
But for all his apparent practicality, for all his “realism”, Nolan never forgot he was making a comic book movie.
Inspired by the comic storylines of The Long Halloween and Batman: Year One, the “how Bruce became Batman” origin story was double baked in some fantastically entertaining, source material pulp even if it did stray into “over convoluted” territory, to the story’s overall deterrent.
Bruce was trained in the “arts of deception and theatrically” by a mysterious cabal of ninjas, The League of Shadows, whom he would come to turn his back on, disagreeing with their methods. Having pledged themselves to dismantling corruption of all kinds, for Gotham, that meant destroying it entirely, as they worked with Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow, planning to use his “fear toxin” to drive the city into madness.
Some real moustache-twirling villainy there.
But Gotham itself? It was a metropolis which stood on its own but gleefully recalled the Art Deco stylings of the Tim Burton films or Batman: The Animated Series.
“The Narrows” district of the city in particular, was a terrific piece of visual storytelling: cramped alleyways, choked with smoke, constant rain and riddled with crime, a place nobody would dare to go - expect “The Bat Man”.
Who, by the way, while utterly committed to his mission, would occasionally crack the odd joke or two, even as he called in massive swarms of bats to escape approaching SWAT teams or strung up mob bosses on spotlights.
Perched over the city, cape billowing behind him, able to disappear at a moment’s notice. Like his immediate movie predecessors, Bale still couldn’t turn his head while wearing the suit (something they would finally address in The Dark Knight) forcing him to twist his whole upper body like Chubby Checker every time he needed to talk to someone, which was absolutely hilarious but… c’mon! It’s Batman!
You don’t need to stoop to Adam West or George Clooney levels of camp but you still gotta have some fun with it, right?
Right?
The Dark Knight (2008)
Ah, The Dark Knight.
What can I say about it you probably don’t know already?
Not only did it radically change the perception of what a superhero movie could be, it also broke through into the wider zeitgeist: instantly-quotable, widely studied, an immediate cultural phenomenon that is now, for many, regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made.
What ultimately made it so successful though, for my money, is that it was an action-crime film, which just so happened to be based on a pulpy superhero from the 1930s.
And putting forth his best Spinal Tap impression, Nolan dutifully cranked that realism dial up to eleven.
Gotham was no longer Gotham, with its monorails and other-worldly sense of scope but was very clearly Chicago, where the film was primarily shot, hoping nobody would look close enough to notice.
Even the presentation of villainy shifted drastically from movie-to-movie.
The League of Shadows succeeded as antagonists in part because you, the viewer, were allowed some suspension of disbelief from their core premise (all-powerful ninjas, who ruled from afar) and Scarecrow, on a similar level, was incredibly terrifying but also somewhat whimsical, charming even.
A dude you’d be down to have a beer with if only he wasn’t something of a total maniac.
But in The Dark Knight, outside of his morbid wisecracks, there was no whimsy to be found in Heath Ledger’s Joker, a cold and calculating terrorist, who the movie itself would famously describe as someone “who just wanted to watch the world burn.”
Sure, Aaron Eckhart’s Harvey Dent did have an arc, albeit full of tragedy: from righteous public defender to a broken man hellbent on misguided revenge but Nolan’s insistence on telling that entire story, as it related to the film’s broader thematic narrative (paranoia in a post-9/11 world) means that the back third of the movie lags, with multiple balls already in the air, rushing to conclude Dent’s story as well isn’t entertaining - it feels like homework.
Even the comic relief found in Begins is long gone, save for the few moments we spend with Alfred or Lucius and even then, that’s pushing it, the supporting cast, not given nearly as much to do this time around.
Rachel’s story concludes but only in service to another, which is incredibly frustrating, while Bale, his Bruce more defined in comparison to Begins, feels like a less active part of the story - although, as always, he gives it his all.
Some of you out there may not like reading this but I find The Dark Knight to be completely… exhausting, devoid of any sense of fun or base enjoyment.
And yes, “fun”, especially as it relates to superhero movies, is very much subjective (just look at last year’s Thor: Love and Thunder, which went too far in the other direction) but the reality is, it isn’t a superhero movie: it is an action film that, at times, seems almost embarrassed to have Batman at its centre.
My personal barometer is pretty simple: if I come across a movie on TV or Netflix or Max or whatever else that wants my money in this particular moment, will I rewatch it?
And for The Dark Knight that answer is a pretty resounding no.
It is forty-five minutes too long, so insistent, much more than Begins ever was, on presenting a “realistic” Batman, that I can’t even giggle as the billionaire dressed like a giant rodent fights a clown for the “soul of Gotham”, if only because it is presented with the upmost seriousness - which is simply grating after almost three hours of movie.
Yet, in saying all that, I do believe it is exactly the movie Nolan needed to make. Had to make.
For better or worse, it was the logical next step, taking something that worked in the first film and effectively elevating it.
And putting all my personal gripes aside, is it unquestionably a masterclass in action filmmaking: from the iconic Hans Zimmer/James Newton Howard helmed score, to the (almost) consistent pace and the fight scenes, which, in a notable improvement over Begins, are fluid, crisp and easier to follow, with tighter choreography and much longer cuts amping up the tension.
Iron Man released that same summer, the first movie in what would become the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in general, a much different style of superhero storytelling.
Yet The Dark Knight stands alone, still imitated, duplicated, discussed and praised.
From its narrative beats and visual language, to Ledger’s performance that has become revered as the gold-standard for villainy in modern movies (and I would know, I went as Dark Knight Joker for Halloween one year - as you might remember, this movie was everywhere) or those, who still try, in vain, to attempt Bale’s often-ridiculed Batman voice at the risk of destroying their vocal chords (altered in post-production, it came out just an octave too low: the World’s Greatest Detective! He eats nails for breakfast - without any milk).
The thing is though, I don’t think Nolan could’ve made that movie again. He all but admitted it publicly, over the next few years, where he spoke openly about the difficulties he faced in making a then-potential third film: would the story be worthwhile? Necessary?
Would he, as the driving creative force, be properly invested?
In many ways, it was the lightening in a bottle all creatives hope for but rarely, if ever, achieve.
How could he possibly follow it up?
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
It was always destined to fight an uphill battle, wasn’t it?
No matter how good the movie turned out to be, it seemed unlikely to reach the same critical heights as its predecessor and there is no denying that Ledger’s death (just months after completing his work on The Dark Knight, he died of a drug overdose) altered the trajectory of where it ultimately ended up.
Like, of course, they would’ve brought him back if they could have.
Perhaps then, the story of Rises would have dealt with the immediate aftermath of The Dark Knight, with Batman being hunted and on the run, having taken the fall for Harvey Dent’s crimes as The Joker continued to sow his particular brand of chaos throughout Gotham.
But in that case, maybe we don’t get Rises as is, a rarity in the franchise model which currently dominates moviemaking: a true conclusion to what came before, an ending, in every convincible sense, that feels earned and justified.
It picks up eight years later, with Batman drawn out of hiding by Bane (Tom Hardy) a dangerous revolutionary intent on “purging” Gotham of its corruption.
Sounds familiar, huh? Rises brought things full circle, with Bane, like Bruce Wayne before him, a former member of the League of Shadows, driven to do what Ra’s Al Ghul never could.
And much like Begins, Rises more willingly leaned into the inherent zaniness that comes with comic book storytelling, something The Dark Knight made every effort to avoid.
I’ve always gotten the impression that this was a conscious decision on the part of Nolan and his creative team: the hyper serious approach may have worked for their version of The Joker but for Bane or Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, it would’ve came off as forced and at worst, disingenuous.
Instead, we have a Batman that isn’t afraid to talk out loud to himself or banter with Catwoman (“This isn’t a car!”) as mercenaries have them pinned under fire. Listen, Batman has long been throughly entrenched as a serious character doing serious work and that’s just fine - but a little levity can go a long way.
An older, battered and initially more bitter Bruce recalls the Batman of Mark Waid’s Kingdom Come and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns: no longer the man he used to be but wanting to believe Gotham deserved nothing less - even if he could no longer live up to that ideal.
And as the trilogy drew to a close, there was an effort made to ensure that the supporting characters that perhaps didn’t get their moment in The Dark Knight, got it in Rises, without taking all the spotlight away from the new additions.
Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, they were all terrific in seeing the journeys of their respective characters through to the end, not a moment that felt wasted or misplaced. Caine’s work in particular is a highlight, as Alfred tries desperately to make Bruce see the great personal cost that his heroism has taken.
Meanwhile, Hathaway’s Selina Kyle/Catwoman makes no secret of her anti-hero’s more self-centred nature, providing a fantastic foil to a Batman who still considers the greater good above all else, as he becomes a mentor to Joseph Gordan-Levitt’s John Blake, an idealistic cop who isn’t afraid to stand up to corruption.
And Bane! Holy cow (Batman), what to say about Bane?
Tom Hardy’s face may be mostly obscured by his character’s mask but he acts his goddamn ass off, bringing both a wild physicality and a very different type of (Liam Neeson approved) theatrically to the role.
In terms of embedding himself into the cultural consciousness the way Ledger did, well, that was a tall, very near-impossible task but I’d argue he pulled it off - from the self-assured delivery, the almost humorous disposition, undercut with terrifying violence, the way he commands a scene simply through standing there, his posture alone, coupled with some fantastic dialogue, creating a character that feels throughly lived-in and incredibly dangerous.
It isn’t perfect, though.
This time, the film was primarily shot in Pittsburgh and New York City but the setting is still, very clearly, major American cities, with very little done to mask notable landmarks, save for story appropriate snow . The uniqueness of the Gotham shown in Begins, a one-off that was never returned to.
Bane’s big city-destroying scheme involves so many moving pieces, namely fusion bombs and backup plans to backup plans, even as someone who prefers a looser, comic-book inspired narrative style, it can come across as just a little too… much.
And while I personally love the movie’s third act, one that works to provide a satisfying end to various stories, the online chatter still persists over a decade later, some viewers, perhaps thinking Nolan mixed up his Batman and Inception scripts, as they debate over dream sequences and plot points that are said to be straight up confusing - and for a good portion of it, I can’t really argue with their frustrations.
But it ultimately lands, not just a fine finale but as a conclusion to one the very best superhero stories told in movies.
Early on in Batman Begins, as he prepares to begin his crusade on Gotham’s underworld, Bruce relays to Alfred some of the lessons he learned from Ra’s Al Ghul and the League of Shadows.
“People need dramatic examples to shake them out of apathy and I can’t do that as Bruce Wayne. As a man, I’m flesh and blood, I can be ignored, I can be destroyed but as a symbol, as a symbol, I can be incorruptible. I can be everlasting.”
Everlasting, indeed.