The Dark Knight Rises: A reality too far?

*** Spoilers Ahead ***

First things first, I loved The Dark Knight Rises. I thought it was a marvellous conclusion to what has been probably my second favourite trilogy so far (Toy Story still being my number one). This post is in absolutely no way an attack on this film, as I do not wish to bad mouth Christopher Nolan’s wonderful take on the Batman universe (gosh, I must sound like a right Nolanite).

However, despite this being a great film, The Dark Knight Rises was by far my least favourite in The Dark Knight trilogy. The reason as to why I did not find this instalment as superior as its predecessors was for one specific reason: its level of realism.

Ok, so let me explain what I mean by this. Firstly, The Dark Knight trilogy is not meant to be a ‘realistic’ trilogy in the traditional sense. For starters, the initial source material of Batman is completely detached from our own reality in many ways. I mean it’s about a stupendously rich bloke who dresses up as a bat, owns an arsenal of [semi] non-existent technology and spends his nights fighting the maddened criminals of a fictional American city. No matter how hard Hollywood tries, Batman could never be realistic in the sense that his story can be placed into our own reality.

What made Batman Begins so interesting in 2005, however, was that the film did something incredibly interesting in terms of realism. It was almost as if Nolan and his team sat down and said “how can we try and make Batman as lifelike as can be?” And that was where the beauty was born; the fact that the film’s script worked as hard as it could to try and get this far fetched universe to resemble our own as closely as it possible could.

Batman Begins was not set in our universe, but instead it felt like it was set in a parallel present day (a semi-reality if you like).  The film felt about one or two steps out of sync with our own reality and that’s what made it so exciting for me.

This type of film ignited my imagination like nothing else before it; to see Nolan spend a large portion of the film mapping out a detailed retelling of a far-fetched franchise, so that it felt almost as if it could actually happen.

Of course, nothing that took place in this universe really could exist in our present time period (if it could then it would have probably happened already), yet it felt almost as if it could in some mad alternative timeline. It was set in a semi-futuristic present day (an oxymoron I know) which felt almost lifelike. It was like an oil painting which was aspiring to give off the appearance of a photograph.

I had the same feeling in The Dark Knight; particularly when it came to the character of Harvey Dent/Two-face. Dent has always come across as quite a camp and unbelievable villain to me (maybe that had more to do with Joel Schumacher’s Batman Forever, as oppossed to the comic books) however The Dark Knight worked its balls off to make the character almost believable. Here was a man who was destined for greatness, but due to the dark mind of the psychotic joker became a madman who lost himself to the twisted vines of evil and revenge.

During my first viewing of The Dark Knight Rises, however, I started to become somewhat aware of the new feel which this film possessed. The over-the-top destruction of Gotham’s underground & stadium (although you could say the same about the hospital sequence in The Dark Knight), Banes abnormal strength, the threat of a nuclear meltdown in Gotham, the high speed flying batpod and Bruce Wayne’s ability to heel his snapped back made the whole film seem a few more steps detached from the reality which its predecessors were set in.

The whole film just felt a lot more over the top than the previous two. Seeing Batman and Catwoman walking the streets of Gotham, kicking bad guy’s arses; the batpod flying away from Gotham’s skyline whilst carrying a nuclear device and Banes highly skilled army patrolling the city with an arsenal of deadly tanks which once belong to Wayne industries all felt a tad too farfetched.

Whilst Batman Begins and The Dark Knight felt about two steps out of sync with our reality, The Dark Knight Rises felt several steps further. This was what made the film less engaging for me. No longer did I think that this was an attempt to make a fantastic character more lifelike, but instead felt more like an epic conclusion set in an explosively heightened reality. Like all the other superhero movies that have existed in recent history, it felt like a comic-book movie.

But of course my words contradict themselves, because that’s exactly what Batman is; a comic book movie set in a comic book universe. This is not an attack on the film. Like I said above, I absolutely loved this movie. I thought Tom Hardy was perfectly cast as the terrifying Bane, Anne Hathaway did a great job as Selina Kyle, Christian Bale was on top form, the script worked a treat (sure, it had flaws, but every film in existence has), Nolan’s directing was first-rate, Wally Pfister’s cinematography was breathtaking, Han Zimmer produced his best score to date (my opinion), Cillian Murphay’s cameo was too enjoyable for words to even express and I absolutely adored the subtle narrative which centred around the character of Blake/Robin (I know a lot of people disliked this, but I thought it was a work of sheer excellence).

So there we have it. I loved The Dark Knight Rises, but it was slightly more out of sync with the reality of Begins and The Dark Knight. None of them are pragmatic in the conventional sense, however this one was less so than the previous two.

Anyway, I’m talking utter nonsense, so it’s probably best to ignore my daft opinions (and dear lord, how many times can I say the word ‘realistic’ and ‘reality’ in a single post? I seriously need to improve my vocabulary).