Initial verdict on The Dark Knight Rises:

Very Return of the Jedi. It's not nearly as dark or accomplished as its predecessor, and it descends into maddening silliness at times, e.g. every time Bane "opens" his "mouth." More on the politics, as well as some general comments of the spoiling variety, from someone the Washington Post contacted as a "Batman expert," can be found below the fold.

Let me preface this post by noting that I'm extremely fond of both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, and have written extensively about the thematic and technical accomplishments of both:

• Batman Begins I (horror)
• Batman Begins II  (scene structure)
• The Dark Knight I (interrogation scene)
• The Dark Knight II (benefit scene)

So I don't want to read any comments about how someone with a doctorate in English Literature would be predisposed to disliking The Dark Knight Rises because, if anything, the opposite is true: I've studied Christopher Nolan's films and am intimately familiar with the hallmarks of his style. Now that that's out of the way, I'll be blunt:

This is easily the least accomplished film in the trilogy. Batman Begins is the most structurally sound (in narrative terms) and thematically coherent of the three: Nolan orchestrates his narratives such that they advance forward in time, indepedently, as they build Bruce Wayne into a believable character. The Dark Knight is structurally and thematically chaotic by design: Nolan can't seem to decide which scene belongs where (but cuts to it anyway) and is so indecisive about the film's argument that I can plausibly claim that it's all about dogs. But that structural and thematic anarchy is acceptable in a film that belongs to the Joker: form follows content and the both are better for it. The Dark Knight Rises shares its immediate predecessor's commitment to structural tumult and thematic incoherence but lacks a compelling motivation for doing so. The charitable version of this argument would go like this:

Nolan's narrative is disorganized because Bane claims to be committed to an ideology very similar to the Joker's. The only problem with that argument is that it's not true: his heart belongs to a fascistic order that values discipline and loyalty above all else (the League of Shadows) and the plan he carries out requires military precision. He protects the nuclear device by moving it and two decoy convoys around Gotham in a coordinated fashion. The device is ultimately lost because he adheres to the plan so rigidly that Gordon and his cohorts are able to create a map that tells them when and where each convoy will be at a given point in time. The Joker's plan? It doesn't even make sense. But The Dark Knight can be forgiven its formal incongruities because the resulting confusion enhances the experience the film. If a sequence seems make no sense it's because the Joker's lost the plot. If nobody appears to know what's going it's because nobody knows what's going on. Lest this seem unnecessarily abstract, let's consider an example of the interpretative consequences of the film's formal difficulties:

In Gotham's sewers, Bane recruits those like himself—the insecure thumbsuckers raging with a sense of entitlement, desperate to justify their own laziness and failure and to flaunt a false sense of superiority through oppression, violence, terror, and ultimately, total and complete destruction.

The odds of discovering something deliberately insightful in a John Nolte review are always vanishingly slim. I know that. But half the blame for Nolte's inability to grasp the most basic of plot points belongs to Nolan. Members of the League of Shadows aren't "insecure thumbsuckers raging with a sense of entitlement," they're an army who can coordinate convoys with military precision. Nor are "laziness and failure" terms that apply to an organization whose members successfully perform a controlled demolition of Gotham's infrastructure. Also, these people made a Batman. In short, Nolte pulled off the impressive feat of getting the League of Shadows exactly wrong. His politics may have predisposed him to mistake a paramilitary organization like the League of Shadows for the Occupy movement, but Nolan's direction encourages Nolte's misunderstanding.

Which is only to say: in this instance Nolte's stupidity can be excused. Tomorrow I'll address instances in which it can't.

Comments

[KWK]

For all the hyper-realism that comic book movies go in for nowadays, I sometimes appreciate a bit of pulp-y melodrama too. Bane provided that in spades, so I actually enjoyed the overwrought verbiage that poured out from behind his mask (when I could understand him, that is).

Of course, you're trained to respond to different things than I am; ask me about nuclear physics in the Nolan-verse and I will be much more tempted to toss around terms such as "maddening silliness".

[Devlin du Genie]

"Nuclear physics" Oy.

I'm still waiting for that shockwave. The scene was only a whisker more believable than Indiana Jones in the fridge. It dropped me right out of the movie.

[Adam Roberts]

I quite liked the chutzpah of structuring a ticking-bomb tension narrative around ... an actual ticking bomb: so cheesy it passed beyond cheese and back into tension. And I liked Bane! I liked the combination of his old-school politesse of manner and his rabid gorilla physical bulk and violence (Hardy modelled his performance on Bartley Gorman apparently, which is nice). I didn't think I liked the Tale of Two Cities stuff: it struck me as a misreading of New York to imagine it being like Paris-in-1788. Afterwards I decided I disliked all that stuff because it was the point where the fascistic sub-plot became Conservative-fascistic Actual plot. Two things I really didn't like: the fact that the film was 107 hours long, and all the hole-in-the-ground prison in NonSpecificMuslimland stuff. Silly.

[Josh K-sky]

Members of the League of Shadows aren't "insecure thumbsuckers [...]"

No, but more than just the League of Shadows are underground -- witness the dead orphan whose brother explains to John Blake that there's work underground. It's tendentious to call them "thumbsuckers," and this may bolster your point that Nolan made it confusing, but the underground population seems to be a combination of the LoS and Gotham's sans-culottes.

If a sequence seems make no sense it's because the Joker's lost the plot.

Have you discussed Jim Emerson's close visual reading of TDK? He was really put off by its visual incoherence. (A quick site google says no. But still I ask.)

[SEK]

Have you discussed Jim Emerson's close visual reading of TDK?

I've recommended it, but not discussed it. Basically, I agree with his account of the direction, I just think what he considers incompetence was actually purposive. (Or did, until the latest film. Now I think I might be wrong.)

[Jake]

Okay, Batman Begins may be the most structurally sound and thematically coherent of the three movies, but can you honestly say the plot was all that good? Ra's Al Ghul's plot at least. It was so silly.

[Gary Farber]

Two things I really didn't like: [...] and all the hole-in-the-ground prison in NonSpecificMuslimland stuff. Silly.

Wait, what? Those scenes were filmed in Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. This is Mughal dynasty stuff, but I don't understand why the movie would be better if it were somehow more SpecificallyMuslim. I'm not even sure what that means. But you'd like the film more if it were more specific about the Muslimland? Really?

What's the relevance? I'm sincerely puzzled, and willing to believe I'm being slow.

[Adam Roberts]

Gary: you're not slow. The nonspecific modified Muslimland not because I wish the film had been specific, but because I fear 'Muslimland' is the early 21st-century version of what 'The Orient' was to the early 20th. To quote the propriety of this-here very blog 'The geographic and narrative cues align with the visual to demand that the League of Shadows be seen as an old school Oriental menace whose politics amount to whatever-frightens-white-people.' Or to put it another way: I can't see that TDNR is a film with much to say about the specifics of Mughal dynastic history. It is a film that says: 'New York faces a devestating threat from ... these people, people who lock their prisoners in a cruel-and-unusual prison like this ...' The identity of 'these people' being left blank for audiences to overlay their current prejudices upon. Except that they're from a hot and dusty and violent place somewhere to The East, where human life is cheap and etc etc.

[Gary Farber]

Thanks for unpacking your point for me, Adam.

[Robert M.]

Is it too late to de-lurk and participate in the conversation here? Because now I've finally seen the movie, and (as usual) the comments here have smart things to say.

I should also say... spoiler alert.

I think the situation is actually worse than SEK makes it out, actually. The plan required not only immediate strategic sophistication, but also some subtle and entirely successful manipulation of Wayne Enterprises and Bruce Wayne himself stretching back years and possibly decades. Consider that Tate built up her own fortune and reputation to the point where she could serve on the board at Wayne Enterprises, and then at some point during the eight-year lapse between TDK and Rises, convinces the corporation to commit to building the fusion reactor. Meanwhile, Bane is building his reputation as a central Asian mercenary, to the point where he can credibly be hired by Daggett.

And all of this is, apparently, aimed towards taking over and then destroying Gotham. So it's not just a calculated, precision plan, but one requiring a decade of patience and Byzantine manipulation.

But what really broke the movie for me was that while none of Bane's plot would have worked without both Bruce Wayne and Batman, Batman was in turn entirely unnecessary in undoing it. Wayne's paranoia about the reactor (and the inexplicable assent of the hundreds of other people who must know about its construction) leads to it being a hidden secret, rather than a public and publicly-guarded facility. Similarly, the secrecy surrounding the reactor results in the financial peril of Wayne Enterprises that Bane later exploits. Wayne's bizarre hermitage results in Fox hoarding defense prototypes against Batman's possible future need. Wayne's idiotic refusal to report the theft of his fingerprints to the police leads to the success of the stock market robbery, without which Tate would not have had access to the reactor, and Batman's unplanned distraction is critical to Bane's successful getaway after the robbery.

But it's Gordon, Blake, and Foley who do the essential work of ending the threat to the city. Batman's toys are partially necessary, but surely there's at one person in Gotham aside from Fox and Wayne who could have devised a device to block the detonator signal--and once the right truck was found, it could have been hijacked in half a dozen ways by Gordon's small group of resisters. There was nothing about undoing Bane that required Batman at all, and as a result, he feels shoehorned into the most of the last act.

[SEK]

There was nothing about undoing Bane that required Batman at all, and as a result, he feels shoehorned into the most of the last act.

Yes. I have more to say about this, but it'll require another post. The short version is, yes, Batman wasn't necessary anymore, except as the owner of a bit of flying technology that anybody could've flown, especially since it did actually have autopilot.