Batman Begins (2005) 
The Dark Knight (2008)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Batman Begins changed the superhero genre. There had been serious (and self-serious) genre films before, but they’d been rare and generally failures. More often than not, comic book-based films made fun of the source material. And Batman had fallen into camp. Christopher Nolan’s vision of Batman won both critical and popular acclaim and made respecting comics the new normal. Not that Nolan was a purest. He took what he wanted and changed the rest.
Of course the path of the serious superhero film was almost immediately taken too far, with Nolan’s protégé, Zack Snyder, plowing superheroes into overly serious exercises in pretension. But Nolin had a better handle on it. He shot Batman the same as he would any noir-flavored action picture. He brought in themes beyond “friendship is magic.” He had money and knew where to spend it. His trilogy looks good and is skillfully, sometimes excruciatingly, crafted. For the first time since Superman (1978), superhero films had an epic.
While it is easy to argue that the trilogy is art, that doesn’t mean it is all brilliant. Each film has its failings (Rises is overflowing with them), but there are two weakness that stream through them all.
First, filmmaking has a language. How you use that language communicates things. The lighting and angles of film noir indicate that the world is dangerous and sick. The deep colors and rich designs of a Tim Burton film shows that we are in a gothic dream, where human limitations don’t matter. And the natural lighting and subdued color pallet of an indie drama means the world of the film is much like the real world, so all the normal rules apply. Since anything could happen in a film, a film needs to stick to the rules so we know what is dangerous, what is suspenseful, and what the heroes need to do to win. It needs to play fair. But the Nolan films don’t. The shooting style indicates that the rules of the real world, for the most part, apply. Which means people are restrained to the possible and a massive blow to the chest kills. Nolan presents us with real world films, and then every once in a while, he shatters the rules, making it impossible to know if anything is actually dangerous. In Batman Begins there’s a nonsensical bomb that ignores physics. In The Dark Knight, The Joker has infinite resources and magical powers, allowing him to personally carry tons of explosive in his own hands. In all of the films, fatal impacts sometimes have no effect (something common in superhero films, but not in ones trying to reflect reality). These are cheats that weaken the films. If he wanted opera, make opera. If he wanted realism, than go for realism. He just mixed and matched which tears the tension away.
And secondly, there is Batman himself. He’s not a failure, not when compared to Bat-Clooney or Bat-Kilmer, but he is less than the films called for. Partly it is his simplicity. This Batman has anger issues and wants revenge. Angry men get in bar fights. They do not dress up like a flying mammal. If the world isn’t insane (as in the old TV show), then anyone who does what Batman does needs to be a bit unhinged. Michael Keaton managed that well, creating a man unstable enough to think that putting on a cowl was reasonable. Christian Bale does not. His Batman is far too in control. No one could question Bale’s commitment. And his physicality is impressive. Plus, when it comes to expressing those anger issues, he’s a genius. But Bale himself acknowledges that he never quite succeeded.
Then there is the matter of his voice. He doesn’t just use a rougher tone as Keaton did; he goes for full on cancer-voice. It’s a cross between unintelligible and laughable, and it only got worse in the second film when Nolan decided to tweak it beyond human capability in post production. Kevin Conroy, the voice of the animated Batman, stated that the voice was ridiculous and Bale needed to stop doing it—if anyone should know, it is Conroy. It was a running joke in The Lego Movie and is the one item that seems to be tugging down the trilogies reputation in general in the last few years.
Well, lets get me in real trouble and look at each individually.
Batman Begins
Unable to deal with the death of his parents and the evil of men, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) joins the League of Shadows. With his training complete, he rejects their call to mercilessly kill all criminals, instead returning to Gotham to become Batman. There with the help of Alfred (Michael Caine), technical genius Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman), district attorney Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes), and not-yet-Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), he fights to stop crime lord Carmine Falcone (Tom Wilkinson), the Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy), and the leader of the League, Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson).
Batman Begins copies wholesale from the 1994 film, The Shadow, to the point that it is nearly a remake. Scriptwriter David Goyer acknowledged his pilfering. It’s fair, since in 1937, Batman was created as a Shadow rip-off. Well, you can’t say that the thieving was done haphazardly or cheaply. This is a meticulously made film and everything that was stolen was done so lovingly.
There’s plenty of action. While others have found the fight scenes to be the weakest element of the film, I thought the choreography was more than adequate. But Batman Begins is more drama than fight-fest anyway. Luckily, the story is coherent. Character interaction is a high point of the flick, with one exception. Rachel follows in the tradition of bland love-interests. She speaks in platitudes. But even if she was well written, Katie Holmes lacks the maturity for the role. It’s a kid playing dress-up.
In attempting to remove the cartoon elements, the villains end up underwhelming. Falcone is a stereotypical crime boss. Earle (Rutger Hauer) is a stereotypical evil businessman. The Scarecrow looks like a teenanger. And Ra’s Al Ghul is just some British bloke. Do you think that perhaps someone named Ra’s Al Ghul should be Arabic? I suppose the Lazarus Pit and ancient mystic powers don’t belong in this world, but something should have been found to spice up the bad guys.
Like all of Nolan’s Batman films, the movie is message-heavy; it’s all about what makes a criminal and the nature of fear. The fear theme is overdone and too often repeated. At times this feels more like Green Lantern. Yes…a man without fear. Yes, will can counter fear. Yes, fear can be a weapon. Yes, I get it. Move along.
For a film that is the antidote for camp, Batman Begins can be pretty silly. The bat-summoner and microwave bomb are devices best suited for Adam West. The finale is goofy, which is a fatal flaw in a film begging to be taken seriously. No one bothers to search out where that military vehicle came from? How many people at Wayne Enterprises had to know about it? Fox makes a drug antidote like he’s a super scientist? And let’s not talk about how all the water would be vaporized if the microwave bomb made it to Wayne Towers. This is all silly stuff.
For a film that’s been given the label “gritty realism,” it ends up being a fanciful superhero flick, with 50% less fun.
The Dark Knight (2008)
District attorney—and current boyfriend of Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal taking over for Katie Holmes)—Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart), is the new star of Gotham City. He joins with Lieutenant Gordon and Batman to take down the mob by targeting their banking. The mob strikes back by unleashing the Joker (Heath Ledger), whose desire for anarchy is not what they intended and throws the city into chaos.
The Dark Knight is an amazing and influential film. It is also one of the most overrated movies in the history of cinema. It’s good. It just isn’t that good. It’s clever, but flawed, and like its predecessor, lets its theme overwhelm its plot. Poor Batman is overwhelmed as well. In Nolan’s first entry, Batman finally got to be the lead in his own picture, standing above the villains, but now that’s over. He’s pale compared to Two-Face; compared to the Joker he’s invisible. I guess being invisible is better than dragging down the film as Rachel does. Even portrayed by a better actress, the character is self-righteous, false, and annoying. Perhaps Nolan doesn’t know how to create a female character. Certainly his films are sausage-fests.
A two hour treatises on the meaning of heroism, The Dark Knight is essentially Harvey Dent’s story, yet Harvey gets less screen time than the Joker and little more than Gordon. For plot and theme, the Joker could be replaced in the story. Even Batman could be written out. Harvey is what matters. In which case, I’d expect to spend a whole lot more time with him. But then this is a movie that adds globe-trotting for the caped crusader simply because it looks cool. I suspect the same reasoning explains the Joker’s dominance over Dent—the Joker is just cooler.
Even with the strange structure, Nolan stepped up his game. The Dark Knight is a complicated, layered movie. And except for an incomprehensible decision at the end (which works for the theme, but is beyond stupid for the story) the myriad plot threats knit together in a satisfying manner.
Of course the Joker rules this film, which is a double edged sword. He easily sweeps in the viewer—well, me anyway. His gags are funny (and wow, does this film need something funny), and his weird, lip-licking, twitching, hunched mannerisms are hypnotic. He’s not a character, but an archetype. He’s the personification of chaos: a big budget Michael Myers. That works great for Batman, except this time we’re supposed to take this all realistically. These are supposed to be real people in a real world. And Ledger doesn’t attempt to grant the Joker any connection to reality. Harvey Dent could be a real man, flawed to start as most men are, and twisted as he is broken. The Joker is just weird. I like weird, but does it fit?
The Dark Knight is a preachy drama masquerading as an action film. In an action film, I should care more about who is hitting whom. And for a drama, I should see fewer men in rubber.
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Eight year’s after Batman took the blame for Harvey Dent’s crimes, Gotham City appears better on the surface, but, if anything, is worse for the 99%. In it, idealistic police officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) tries to make a difference while jewel thief Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) just tries to get by in a world that doesn’t care. Bane (Tom Hardy), trained by the League of Shadows, arrives with mysterious plans for a revolution that involves Wayne Enterprises.
The third Nolan Batman film is by far the most interesting. It is also the dumbest. It is chocked full of messages on economic inequality and terrorism and plastered with allusions to the French revolution. It also contradicts the entire point of The Dark Knight. It turns out all that stuff about the hero Gotham needs—that was all wrong. The symbol of Harvey Dent, the White Knight, was of no value at all. In fact everything that film had to say about heroism was off the mark. The entire previous film was meaningless. Well, I guess that was one way for Nolan to go. I can’t say I mind that as blaming Batman (when the Joker was an easy fall guy) was nonsensical. What I can’t figure is if this is Nolan contradicting himself with no thought, or if he came to believe that his earlier position was too naive. As he is so focused here on the plight of the 99% and the sins of the 1%, there’s a bit more ammunition for the latter.
As for the stupid parts, there’s an ancient secret prison that lack plumbing but gets Gotham City cable news. There’s the muffled Bane voice (and does Nolan have an obsession with White Brits? This is the second character he’s White-washed). There’s orphan-sight (yes, all orphans know each other). There’s the entire police force running underground together. There’s the end of the film, with its miss-timed and underpowered nuclear bomb and impossible survival. And there’s so much more.
None of the Nolan films play fair, but in this one it is harder to find a spot where it follows its own rules. Stock exchange trades that occur during an armed attack are certified. Huh. Cartilage destruction that would leave Batman in a wheelchair is simply ignored. OK. A broken back is fixed by tugging on ropes. Ummm… And in a supposedly realistic world, Bane is an old fashioned comic book super villain.
So, the movie is dim. It drags at times. Interactions with Alfred are neither fun nor interesting. Its message is delivered with the subtlety of a machinegun and still manages to be confused. It is over-stuffed with villains and heroes. Yet it might be the most enjoyable of the three. Partly that is due to Batman actually being a likable character for the first time. Partly that is due to him having a heroic arc that, while impossible, is engaging. Partly it is due to having a character that is witty and whose feelings I could care about, that being Selina Kyle. And partly it is due to it not ending as a depressing drama as its immediate predecessor, nor as a ridiculous, empty, but grim fight as the first film, but as a wild, post-apocalyptic war. Reality is tossed away. Considering how Nolan had treated reality, it was time for it to go. The big stupid fight at the end may indeed be stupid, but it is a good time.
As for the confused message, all three of the films make a mess of their messages. All three hammer on vague ideas but never say anything coherent. The first two films might have themes that are more eternal, but as they lack clarity, end up saying little. Now, five years after its release, the unfocused theme of The Dark Knight Rises seems prescient. The corruption and greed of the elites will lead to their destruction at the hands of the oppressed masses, but the revolution won’t bring anything to those masses. It is Brexit and Trump, and the only happy ending is to go off to Paris with the hot chick.
Batman had previously been seen on the big screen in the 1966 Batman: The Movie. He was rebooted for Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, and Batman & Robin before Nolan rebooted him. Zack Synder has started yet again with Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.