Musings on a Second Viewing of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice

This is actually being written several days after the fact. On Friday I went to another matinee showing of Dawn of Justice, this time with a friend. I enjoyed it again, maybe even more. What's more, my friend – who did not, by the way, see Man of Steel at all – also enjoyed it, although he is not a comics fan. About ten years older than myself, he has what I figure is pretty much a normal familiarity with the characters, based on reading comic books when he was young. And he enjoyed it. Which, along with the generally-positive audience assessments reported even by Rotten Tomatoes, further confirms for me that the critics' panning of the movie is largely rubbish. 

I definitely picked up on a couple more things, as well – Lex did turn over the painting so that the demons were coming out of heaven; the music when Wonder Woman was introduced was foreshadowed when Bruce opened the file containing her World War I picture. Given that Hans Zimmer was joined in the music credits by another name (I don't remember it, but it's the same as has been announced for the upcoming Wonder Woman solo movie), I think we got a preview of the general style of music we have to look forward to there. I can't say it's really to my liking. Oh well.

I still think overall the movie had some uneven editing, particularly in the beginning. But I do not agree with those critics who call the movie unrelentingly “joyless” or that Superman never cracks a smile – or worse, that he was utterly alien and unrelatable. I think he was all too human in his emotional turmoil given the seriousness of the situation. It was a serious movie, overall – like most “serious” comic book movies marred by the requisite world-threatening menace at the end – but a serious movie with serious underlying themes of conflicted humanity vs. The Other, matters of appearance and perspective, and – as pointed out in one brilliant review I read but have typically lost – how the media drive that. It was not a Marvel movie. And those people wanting to see a Marvel movie were doubtless the most disappointed in this movie. There, I said it. This – was – not – a – Marvel – movie. And in those places where it tried the most to be one – Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor – it was at its weakest. But overall, I was pleased with it, more so than I feared I would be given how far I knew it was departing from what I believed the sequel to Man of Steel should be. Frankly, that was not going to happen, given the virtual imperative in these kinds of movies to always outdo the last one in sheer spectacle, which usually comes at the expense of story.

One other impression I did have, in conclusion. I did not time things, but I was surprised at how, this go’round, it seemed that the fight-scenes at the end were relatively brief and swiftly told. I think they loom largest in our memories because they are virtually the last things that are seen, but I wonder just what percentage of the running time of this movie they really are, as opposed to story/plot/narrative…?

That's pretty much all I have to say about that. Thanks for reading.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016)

Directed by Zack Snyder

This review of Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice will not be the mammoth dissection that was my review of Man of Steel three years ago [LINK]. This is just going to be a short statement of my own impressions, with no intent to argue or justify my points. What would be the purpose? The critics have spoken, and as happened with John Carter and Green Lantern both, what may have begun as legitimate criticisms seems to have started feeding on themselves as critics seem more interested now in outdoing their peers in showing how clever can be their criticisms than in providing reasoned analysis and evaluation. The audience seems to have received the movie more kindly. For what it’s worth, the Rotten Tomatoes scores are quite divergent (approximately 28/72), far more so than for Man of Steel (approximately 56/76). (I found it really interesting last week how the initial critics’ assessments were quite a bit more in line with Man of Steel than the ones that started coming out later – when the later critics had had time to figure out which way the wind was blowing and the piling-on had time to begin.) Don’t get me wrong. This is obviously not a movie for everyone, and it is a movie that does have its shortcomings, particularly an uneven pacing as well as a couple of things highlighted below. It is ultimately, I believe, less a movie for general audiences than it was a movie for me and someone like me – a life-long comic-book fan with a deep love for these characters (one I do not have for the Marvel Universe, which means I admittedly approach those movies with a degree of objectivity that is not possible for me in this case). I can easily see how someone who does not have that love – and the innate knowledge of myriad story-lines and images accumulated over fifty years of reading DC Comics – would be left cold by it. All I can ultimately say is that I enjoyed BVS:DOJ  very much and look forward to seeing future installments in the DC Movie Universe that is emerging from what I consider to have been a similarly – albeit not to the same degree -- maligned Man of Steel.

Son of Batman (DC Universe Original Movie, 2014)

Directed by Ethan Spaulding

Although the outer sleeve of the Blu-Ray packaging sports a sticker touting this as “Based on the Graphic Novel Batman and Son,” that is only very loosely the case and in its broadest strokes. And if Grant Morrison, who wrote that story arc at the beginning of his seven-year epic run metatextually de-/re-/a-constructing the very definition of the Dark Knight Detective (for more on which, see the just-published Anatomy of Zur-en-Arrh by Cody Walker, see below), is actually acknowledged in the credits, I missed it. There's not much Morrison here anyway.  For all intents and purposes this movie takes the basic idea of Batman unexpectedly being presented with the fact that he has a son by Talia al Ghul in the context of a struggle for power within and over the League of Assassins and leaches it of any of Morrison's quirky psychological brilliance. I would have hoped for more, given it is now credited as “a story” by James Robinson, who can himself be awesome – but who can also be pretty uninspired. We get the latter Robinson here, depending on how much of his story passes into the final script by Joe R. Lansdale.

Batman Eternal #1-4 (DC Comics, June 2014)

By Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Jason Fabok, and others

DC Comics are trying to recapture the magic they inadvertently stumbled on back in 2006 (eight years ago?!) in the year-long weekly 52. As usual these days, it seems they are blundering right in with little thought – in the next few months no less than three (is that all? – this one plus Future's End and Earth 2: World's End) new weeklies will be going. Hey! – If one is a good idea, three must be a better idea, right? – Throw 'em at the wall and see what sticks! – Whether they will “stick” and be going “strong” is another matter, but I am happy to say that this first one out the gate is a winner in my book. I'm not going to say a whole lot about it, except that this is the kind of Batman story I like – characterization and action, fast-paced, an intriguing mystery, involving both the full range of primary Bat-family characters (including the New 52 debut of Stephanie Brown!) and secondary (sometimes new, sometimes just New 52 reintroduced) characters including the Gotham City Police – all graced by dark, moody, but cleanly realistic art. Makes me wish I had a local comic shop so I could be there every Wednesday for the newest chapter rather than waiting until the end of the month for my mail-order subscription service to dump them all on me at once. Which is part of the strategy of the weekly model in the first place – to encourage that weekly compulsion to get thee to a comic shop! I'll make do, but at the moment, just four weeks into the story, Batman Eternal has catapulted to the top of my short list of titles I'm really looking forward to each month. It sets a very high bar for those to come.

Cheers, and Thanks for reading!

Reviews [LINK]

The Beginning of the Modern Titanomachy

Exactly one year ago I commemorated “The Birth of the Modern Mythology” on or about 18 April 1938 [LINK]. I based that date for the release of Action Comics #1 (June 1938) upon a flurry of other websites' and bloggers' celebrations that appeared then although, as I noted, my customary “go to” source for such historical data for DC Comics – Mike's Amazing World of DC Comics – cites 3 May as the “Approx. On Sale Date” for that epochal event [LINK]. Since “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” (Ralph Waldon Emerson via my 9th-grade Algebra teacher Mr. Kemper), this year I am going with Mike's Amazing World for the 75^th anniversary of the second most important event in comics history, the appearance on newsstands of Detective Comics #27 (May 1939) [LINK] even though the “flurry of other websites' and bloggers' celebrations” appeared a couple of weeks ago, 'round about 30 March, e.g., at Bleeding Cool [LINK]. That latter posting does give the rationale for the earlier date, basing it upon an official catalogue of copyright entries, and I suspect the mid-April 1938 date for Action Comics #1 comes from a similar source. Bearing in mind what I said last year regarding the haphazard nature of newsstand distribution during the early years of comics publication, however – and based on my virtually nonexistent knowledge of how these things actually work – I imagine the earlier date is when a just-printed, hot-off-the-presses magazine would have been submitted to the copyright authorities and was just entering the distribution chain, which back then would take weeks to ripple copies out across the country. More than likely, however, by two to three weeks later – 18 April 1939 – most outlets would probably have gotten their copies, and grubby little fingers everywhere could be scrounging up dimes to find out about “The Amazing and Unique Adventures of The Batman!” The short story that they would find therein, Bill Finger's and Bob Kane's “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” was a barely-disguised rip-off from an adventure of the pulp juggernaut The Shadow of a couple of years before, November 1936's Partners in Peril [LINK], and frankly gave little hint of the greatness that would eventually come – but it's been reprinted many, many times and can be most easily read (for free) via Comixology [LINK]. There was little indication that as the Olympians overthrew the Titans of old, Batman would one day outstrip the previous year's Superman in popularity, although not (I would argue) in historical significance.

Wayne of Gotham (2012)

By Tracy Hickman

This is a very difficult prose novel to write about. I don't know if ultimately I will decide I liked it or loathed it. I have very mixed feelings about it. I had been looking forward to it ever since I'd seen it announced, and rather than avail myself of the cheaper SFBC edition as I usually do these kinds of things, or even wait until a cheaper paperback edition appeared, I ended up paying virtually full cover price – a whopping $26.99 (I find hardcover prose book prices even harder to swallow, oddly enough, than graphic novel prices in which you objectively get far less story. But I also recognize that there are significantly different economic realities underlying the two genres) less a membership discount at Books-a-Million. But then I found it a very hard book to get through. In fact, I put it aside a couple of times for rather lengthy periods and ended up being almost six weeks from start to finish. And then have let it sit for some time before deciding I have to write something and get it off my back. So here it is – most likely even more than typically rambling.

The overall plot is a parallel story of Bruce Wayne in the present discovering horrible things about his own, his parents', and Gotham City's past with Thomas Wayne in the past participating in a rather dubious secret program of medical experimentation, “Project Elysium,” with the aim of reforming criminals into model citizens via behavioral engineering by means of viral-borne DNA modification that goes grotesquely wrong and ultimately results in his own and his wife's deaths and the creation of the Batman. Of course, those long-buried events are now having repercussions in the present leading Batman to confront the reality of a father who was far less than the paragon he always believed him to be. And along the way Martha Wayne doesn't come off much better. I'm conflicted in how to feel about this. To a real degree it cheapens the ideal for which Batman has always fought, but the reality is that he only saw his parents through the eyes of a child who witnessed the center of his life ripped away from him in a moment of violence and to believe that his memories of perfection were but an idealization is reasonable. But for almost three hundred pages this book rubs the reader's nose in it, from a very off-putting opening with a repulsive depiction of the abuse that young Thomas suffered at the hands of his own father to the revelation that in a real sense Thomas Wayne contracted his own murder!

And it's carried off very inconsistently. On the “cool” side, Hickman very effectively depicts Batman's technology, his ever-evolving equipment and constant upgrades, and at first glance seems to use a lot of canon in this tale of an aging Batman who is now feeling the effects of a lifetime of crime-fighting. At first glance it seems very much a post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint continuity, perhaps set in the future. The “present” is not specified, although 9/11 is more than a decade in the past (p. 31). Seemingly hard dates are established for the past sequences, but there is considerable inconsistency – Thomas Wayne is said to have been born on 26 November 1935 (p. 293), but in the second paragraph of the prologue, set on 21 September 1953, reference is made to “his fifteen years of life” (p. 1); the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne are dated at 15 August 1971 (pp. 292-293) and 26 June 1974 (pp. 43-44). (Along the same lines of sloppy editing, I noticed several instances of bad word usage, although I only jotted a reference to one – p. 214, “site” for “sight.”) Regardless, Bruce's own birth is placed in 1963, which would necessarily put him in the range of fiftyish years of age at the unspecified “present” date.

There is considerable use of the rich Batman mythology with regard to the Rogues Gallery – a wide range of villains appear or are referred to in the course of this story – but there is nary a mention of any of Batman's many allies and proteges, under either their “civilian” or heroic identities. The closest is Bruce's spur-of-the-moment use of the name “Gerald Grayson” when he needs a quick alias. He is truly alone here. The geography of Gotham City is, as far as I can tell, pretty consistent with the map established around the time of No Man's Land – although I don't think that cataclysmic story was ever referenced – with frequent mention of the various streets, avenues, parks, and so forth named after the many creators of the Batman mythos over the past seventy years such as has been common, I think, in the past decade's comic stories (e.g., Moldoff Avenue, Robinson Park, Wayne Manor is in Burnley just across the river to the north of the island on which is built Gotham City, and so forth). So what you have here is a mixture of what seems very familiar but distorted so that it's almost unrecognizable as if seen through in a funhouse mirror, especially the relationship between Bruce and Alfred as a result of the latter's vigorous efforts to maintain a cover-up that was begun by his father to keep knowledge of Thomas Wayne's actions secret from the world and most importantly from his son. And we are asked to believe that it was so effective that Batman knew nothing of a period of intense chaos in Gotham City that resulted from those same actions – a reign of terror on the underworld carried out by a group of mutant super-humans called “The Apocalypse” – the misbegotten progeny of Project Elysium.

Sitting down and trying to write something about this book has not helped me to come to my own consensus, either, and I'm ready to give up on it. The reviewers on Amazon.com seem to be as a whole conflicted as well. Probably the best review I've found of it is by one Eric Garneau at The Mind Hut and I might as well refer you there and be done with it. It's not a book I can recommend.

Thanks for reading.

Quick Hits

Very quick notes on some stuff I've read or watched of late that I've not blogged about for whatever reason....

Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul, by Tony Hendra (2004)

I read this about a month ago at the suggestion of one of the members of our Monday night Bible Study group. I should have written something up before now, and I really didn't take good notes, so here you've got mainly just some long term memories and impressions. The author is a former writer and editor of National Lampoon – and probably more recognizable as the band manager in Spinal Tap – an unlikely spiritual writer if there ever was one! – telling the story of how he initially found faith through the inspiration of a particularly holy if somewhat unorthodox Benedictine monk of Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, was for several years heady with the conviction that his own vocation was to be a monk of Quarr, suddenly found his faith as mysteriously vanished as it had appeared, devoted himself to another god, that of Comedic Satire, for a couple of decades during which he continually felt a draw back to Quarr and always needed the approval of Father Joe with whom he maintained contact and who never, ever, judged him, and eventually found his way back to a more mature faith. It is a fascinating story, although frankly I do not believe I would like Hendra at all – and find aspects of Father Joe's theology a bit dodgy. (Bear in mind, however, that here we do not get a direct picture of Father Joe, but rather Father Joe filtered through the lens of Tony Hendra.) And yet the book as a whole is quite touching, especially the ending, when after Father Joe's passing Hendra discovers that there was far more to this simple monk than he ever dreamed.

There is one line I noted from the book and want to pass on.  "You only parody what you once loved, and now loathe" (unknown page number as I long since returned the book to my friend).  I think there is a tremendous amount of truth to that statement, and I think it helps me understand why I have quite seldom ever cared for parody or satire.  

Green Hornet: Year 1, Volume 2 – The Biggest of All Game by Matt Wagner and Aaron Campbell (Dynamite 2011)

I read the first volume about a year and a half ago, not long before I started this blog. I should have gone back and reread that one before picking this one up, but managed to pick up the story pretty well starting at the mid-point of the twelve-issue series as I did. I could quibble over a few details where I know the status quo here doesn't match that of the radio show – not that I've heard that many episodes, but one that I have listened to is one where Britt tells his father what he's been up to, only to have his father tell him of another such masked man in their ancestry. With the William Tell Overture fading in and out as he did so, although some kind of legal reasons kept the radio show from invoking the name of that masked man, you know who it is. Unfortunately, the website where that episode was available in mp3 is gone now – probably, again, for legal reasons. Anyway, in this comic series, the death of the elder Reid is part of the story and occurs before Britt assumes the identity of the Green Hornet. Overall, however, writer Matt Wagner evokes very well the pulp-noir world of the 1930s, complemented very effectively by the art of Aaron Campbell.

Batman: Earth One by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank (DC 2012)

I surprised myself by enjoying Superman: Earth One immensely when, after a considerable amount of time post-publication I succumbed to a Science Fiction Book Club offer and picked it up cheap. “Surprised” because – as highly as I regard Babylon 5 – I've not been much of a fan of J. M. Straczynski's comic book writing. You can see more of my thoughts on that here. Anyway, I went ahead and preordered Batman: Earth One and received it along with my July month-end comics. I figured, as it was by Johns and Frank, it would have to be good. Boy was I mistaken. If you've not bought it, don't bother. The characterization of Batman here is unrecognizable. And the story continues certain trends in Geoff Johns' writing – and the new DC Comics in general – that are becoming more and more annoying to me. One being that he seems to no longer be able to write adolescents that are not annoying snots that you want to punch in the mouth. That's Johns. You can't even explain it as young Bruce's understandably angry reaction to the murder of his parents, because it's the kid's own rude arrogance that helps to bring about their deaths. I also noticed the continuation of the trend that established characters with significant “flaws” or departures from our cultural ideal of attractiveness are being reinvented as more cardboard punchout images of “perfection.” Here it's the famously slovenly Harvey Bullock recast as one suave dude who I figured, at initial glance, must be the equally famously handsome Harvey “Apollo” Dent before getting half a face-full of acid. Alfred also, to a degree. I have some more to say about this in my “New 52 One Year Later” retrospective that is in the works, so I'm going to leave it at that for now. Think about it, though, and you'll come up with plenty of examples before I even mention them. Anyway, the story's pretty sucky too, with a stereotypical sadistic monster who preys on children for the story's shock value. Don't waste your time or money.

Alphas (2011 ff.)

Who says advertising doesn't work? I'd heard of this show but not much more, until last month's stack of DC comics with its full-page advert brought it to mind again. I did a little research, found out that the first season of eleven episodes (twelve TV-hours) is available for streaming on Netflix, and checked it out. Why have I not heard more about this show? It's great! Nothing quite matches the first season of Heroes, which the basic premise is most like, but this is easily light-years better than the second and subsequent seasons of that show. And Rachel … whoa. We were only a couple of episodes into the second season currently appearing on the used-to-be-Sci-Fi-Channel (I refuse to use that new name), so with a minimal cost to purchase those episodes from iTunes, I'm pretty much up to speed.

One interesting little fact that I've learned – Alphas occurs in the same universe as the same channel's recently wrapped up Eureka! (which a friend has been encouraging me to watch) and Warehouse 13. I caught the first couple of episodes of the latter on Netflix streaming and surprisingly liked it – I say surprising because the commercials had never piqued my interest. But when I found out there have been character cross-overs I thought, what the heck, it doesn't cost anything to check it out. And I will get around to Eureka! – eventually.

Mad Men (2007 ff.)

Actually, I watched the first season of this before I fell into Alphas. I can't blame anything except my own ennui for not picking it up before. There's a lot of well-deserved buzz about it. Several of my fellow professors are devoted viewers. Netflix, you're wonderful. I'm just old enough that the world portrayed is very much the world of my childhood … well, not the big city rat race, of course, but the early 1960s. When I run out of Alphas I'll be jumping back into it – with classes going again, I don't have nearly as much time to work my way through TV series, so it may be Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. Unless something else strikes my fancy (cough – Warehouse 13 – cough).

The Tudors (2007-2010)

Can you tell it was summer break? I had actually started this over Christmas break, I think, watching BBC America reruns that I'd DVR'd. I think I actually finished it out via Netflix as well, before I took up Mad Men. Really good, in most respects. I know just enough of that period in English history (I'm more a medievalist than a Ren-Ref/Tudor guy) that I could catch them in historical faux pas, but not quite enough that they messed it up for me. I could doubtless have written more, but it's been a couple of months since I actually finished it up, so let's just leave it as something I would recommend. I particularly liked a very believable depiction of a sweet young girl warped by the repeated emotional traumas she was subjected to through the years into what history would know as Queen "Bloody" Mary Tudor.  And Sir Thomas Boleyn is probably the single slimiest, most evil character I've ever seen – anywhere.

The Books of Magic, by Neil Gaiman and Company (DC-Vertigo 1990)

No, that's not Harry Potter.

I've had this volume for several years but never got around to reading it. Since Tim Hunter and the Books of Magic are showing up in Justice League Dark these days, I figured it might be a good time to try to get up to speed. Gaiman, of course, is most famous in comic circles as the author of the long-running title, Sandman – which I've actually only read in the first two trade volumes. Something else I keep meaning to get around to. Actually, I'm investing in the current deluxe hardcover volumes of The Annotated Sandman and may well tackle it that way. There are a lot of arcane references that annotated versions can help the reader appreciate. In fact, I found it helpful to dig up a set of annotations to get the most out of this volume here.

Briefly, The Books of Magic was originally published as four “Prestige Format” issues wherein one after another four representatives of DC Comics' supernatural genre took a young English boy – whose mother is dead, who wears glasses, and has a pet owl (although it predates Harry Potter, Gaiman himself professes no belief that J. K. Rowling was even aware of his character when she came up with her own) – on a tour of the supernatural side of the DC Universe. They are, in order, the Phantom Stranger, John Constantine, Doctor Occult, and Mister E, and Timothy is faced with a choice, to live a normal life or to live a life in constant danger – but as the most powerful magician in the universe. Although Gaiman did not continue with the character, the foundation he had lain was firm enough that it resulted in a fairly long-running and highly regarded series following Timothy's further adventures – because you know what he chose. I'm anxious now to acquire the bound volumes of the Books of Magic ongoing series.

Caprica (2009-2011)

I almost forgot about this prequel/spinoff from the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica that I watched early in the summer. I actually intended from when I finished it to give it an in-depth post, but it looks like that will never happen so this will have to do. It is a show that makes you think. I think it says some interesting things about our own society, and even more so the culture of the Hollywood creators behind it. It's too simple, I think, to say that the overall spirit of the show is “anti-religion” or results from the typical liberal/atheistic predisposition to disdain religion. It's more a result of the clueless modern liberal/atheists' total misconception of religion. I think the most telling line in the series comes about half-way through, in episode 11, delivered by their archetypical evil religious person, Sister Clarice: “I offer you a religion that removes the need for faith.” Isn't this our modern world's idea of a true, pure religion … that would ultimately mean nothing?

As a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, unfortunately I think this series fails. I just don't see how you can get from here to there. There are too many discrepancies. And falling back on the shock value of killing off the kid, Willie Adama, whom we'd sort of been getting to know over the course of the series and assuming would grow up to be Admiral Adama (although I'd already suspected there was something wrong with their time-line), in the last episode and giving lip service to a younger brother being subsequently born and named in his memory is just lazy and manipulative. Didn't they do the same thing with Jimmy Olsen on Smallville?

And I think that actually catches me up, more or less, at least with regard to those things I consider “blog-worthy”....

Cheers, and Thanks for reading!

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Five minutes after getting back home from viewing the midnight premier of the last installment in Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy of Batman movies, I posted the following on Facebook:

“Just in from seeing The Movie ... Will have to process it, but first impressions are: 1) I liked it; even tho 2) It lacked the constant sense of anticipation as to what outrageousness will the Joker get up to next? But holding it to the Heath Ledger Joker standard is unfair anyway....”

Those words seemed a little on the sick side only a few minutes later when my son's girlfriend – who had also attended – called and told us to turn on the news. The emerging reports today that the perpetrator identified himself with the Joker only sharpen the sense of grotesquerie. The events in Colorado will, I believe, forever loom over this movie. They have already provoked both ends of the political spectrum to commence throwing around accusations and recriminations in a shocking, but entirely expected, politicization of a tragedy. Before I give a few thoughts on the movie itself, I feel the need to express my reaction to the murderous frenzy and its aftermath.

What happened early this morning was caused not by the Second Amendment or the Tea Party, nor by comic book or movie violence, nor by Right-Wing conservatism or Left-Wing liberalism. It was caused, apparently, by a single deranged individual with a sick need to win fame through infamy. To think or allege anything else, or to attempt to capitalize on his actions, I believe to be an insult to the memory of those – most likely of a range of political affiliations themselves – who were in attendance because they were fans of Nolan's vision of a hero who has been interpreted in many ways for seventy years. One of the messages that runs through Nolan's Batman movies, made explicit even at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, is that anyone can be a hero, although that heroism may well not be recognized or remembered. James Hughes' “alleged” actions in seeking attention through his horrific rampage are entirely antithetical to that.

Having said that, and expressing my heartfelt condolences to the victims and their families, who are in my prayers, what are my feelings about the movie itself? 

 Going back to my first impressions expressed above, I repeat again that I liked it. I enjoyed it thoroughly and came away satisfied. It did not rise to the level of The Dark Knight, although as yet I've not identified nearly as many plotholes and sheer implausibilities as several years' and viewings' reflection on the second movie has ultimately revealed, but it did make an overall better movie than did Batman Begins, which for me at least faltered in the last third or so. I could belabor a list of the things I really liked (Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle) or didn't like (the significantly changed visual appearance of Bane), but see no real point in that. The most important thing is that this movie accomplished its task better than most film trilogy conclusions in that it did bring together all the various elements and themes of the first two movies and tie them up into a satisfying conclusion that brought in more of the myriad story-lines and plot arcs from the long history of the character, shook them up, and recombined them in sometimes unexpected ways. Nolan even allowed a fanboy shoutout – which his movies have noticeably lacked, instead carving out their own little universe – at the end, which I admit caught me unawares despite the rumors 'way back when as to what Joseph Gordon-Levitt's role in the movie might be. I grinned even as I thought how forced the moment seemed to me. And almost immediately afterward, Nolan allowed a satisfying concluding moment that up until virtually the last instant I expected to be a much more ambiguous ending.

Thanks for reading.