I realise that with this post, I will be in the minority and you know what, I’m fine with that. I’ve just been to see the new Batman film and now that I have completed Christopher Nolan’s trilogy, I feel able to raise my issues with them.
I haven’t enjoyed these films for a myriad of reasons, so I’ll start from the top. These films were pompous, pretentious and so far removed from the original source material, they didn’t even seem like Batman films. They lacked any real emotion with half-baked attempts at love interests for Bruce Wayne in the form of Katie Holmes, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Marion Cotillard, falling rather flat.
Villains in the trilogy were hardly popular either. Cillian Murphy’s ‘Scarecrow’, Liam Neeson’s ‘Ra’s Al Ghul’ and Tom Hardy’s ‘Bane’ are hardly household names when you think of Batman villains, let’s face it. The much-lauded performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker was not a true reflection of The Joker, for that we must look to Jack Nicholson in Tim Burton’s 1989 effort. Nolan’s best villain has undoubtedly been Catwoman portrayed by Anne Hathaway. Hathaway brought some much needed humour to the final part of Nolan’s otherwise dull, overly chatty film. Catwoman is also easily the most interesting of Batman’s adversaries, displaying a selfish side while never being intrinsically bad.
I disliked all the gadgetry on show in the trilogy too. The only thing it achieved was to remove it even further from its roots and if Nolan wanted to do that, why make the films in the first place? They certainly didn’t bear any resemblance to any Batman film I’ve seen before!
I liked Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s detective character in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ and the hint that we may not have seen the last of ‘Robin’ despite the disaster that was Joel Schumacher’s ‘Batman and Robin’. I’d draw the line at resurrecting ‘Batgirl’ though!
These films were accomplished films but they forgot their roots and as a result became boring. I, for one, am glad they are over and that the next person to reboot the series will bring back the ‘fun’ to the series.
You can also see this post at my own website http://thescottkingshow.blog.com/
