Everything That Rises Must Converge

The Dark Knight Rises: written by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David S. Goyer; directed by Christopher Nolan; starring Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Tom Hardy (Bane), Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon), Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle/The Cat), Marion Cotillard (Miranda), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) (2012): Given the dire history of the third installments of superhero movies (Superman III, Blade III: Trinity, Spider-man 3, X-Men 3: The Last Stand, to name four stinkers), Christopher Nolan has done a remarkable thing in making a third Batman film that's actually a worthy finale to his vision of the Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight Rises is a bit draggy at the start, and its main villain, Tom Hardy's Bane, occasionally lapses into incoherence when speaking words of more than two syllables. But we also get a third movie that actually builds upon what the first two films created both in terms of story and in terms of characterization. And while it lacks the extreme highs of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises nonetheless satisfies while giving its audience something more to think about than simply, 'Wow, the Hulk is actually funny!'

Some credit must go to what the Brothers Nolan and David S. Goyer pull from the comic books. This is easily the most intertextual of all Batman movies. Lines of dialogue from great comics that include Kingdom Come (created by Mark Waid and Alex Ross) pop up in the right places. Epochal Batman storylines that include The Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall, Batman: Year One, Batman RIP, and No Man's Land are used in ways both justifiable and, sometimes, offer an improvement on the original (Gotham's sudden geographic isolation makes much more sense here than in the near-endless, deeply stupid No Man's Land storyline, for instance).

The story itself also holds up. It chugs along like a well-oiled action machine, as much James Bond as it is Batman (though Bondaphiles Nolan et al. also take inspiration from the most James Bond-y incarnation of Batman, the globe-trotting Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams version). Some cuts would have been fortuitous, especially if accompanied by expansions in other areas -- the subplot involving fallen cop/administrator Matthew Modine goes nowhere and elicits nothing, while somewhat short shrift is given to both Michael Caine's Alfred and Morgan Freeman's Lucius Fox.

Nonetheless, this is a surprisingly generous and character-minded superhero film, with fine performances throughout from both the established principals -- Christian Bale is terrific, though his Bat-voice still grates -- and the newcomers -- Joseph Gordon-Levitt does nice work as a Gotham beat-cop, and Ann Hathaway shines as the movie's lightest character, the skin-tight-suited Cat (woman).

Several action sequences astound, though I wish they hadn't teased the football scene in the trailers. While there's nothing quite as thrilling as the lengthy chase in The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises does do a better job with understandable action choreography. I didn't get lost in some sequences the way I did in the previous film. The movie may be nearly three hours long, but it earns its length as a satisfying end to a trilogy. Highly recommended.

Red Helmet

Batman: Under the Red Hood, written by Judd Winick, directed by Brandon Vietti, starring the voices of Bruce Greenwood (Batman/Bruce Wayne), Jensen Ackles (Red Hood), Neil Patrick Harris (Nightwing), and John DiMaggio (the Joker) (2010): There have been four 'in-continuity' Robins in Batman history, with Jason Todd being the second, following Dick Grayson after Grayson graduated to college and became the costumed hero Nightwing.

Todd's history was bizarrely twisted. DC's post-Crisis revamp of continuity in the mid-1980's turned Todd from a circus kid like Grayson before him to a surly street punk. Looking back, it seems obvious that Todd's ultimate fate was years in the making post-Crisis, thanks in part to a bit in Frank Miller's ostensibly out-of-continuity The Dark Knight Returns in which Todd's death is one of the defining moments of an aging Batman's retirement from crime-fighting.

And so, in the late 1980's, DC held a phone poll to decide whether or not Jason Todd would be killed by the Joker. By a vaguely suspicious margin of 72 votes, death won, and Todd got bludgeoned and exploded to death in A Death in the Family, a horrifyingly bad story arc in which Iran names the Joker as their ambassador to the U.N. because...well, because it's a really stupid storyline.

Either that or we were about to find out that the Joker had been a Muslim terrorist all those years.

So the Joker, in his new role as U.N. ambassador, brings a nuclear missile to the United Nations and threatens to blow it up. Yes, the Ayatollah Khomeni was even loopier in the DC universe than in ours. A couple of years later a new, more loveable Robin -- Tim Drake -- debuted, and Jason Todd seemed to be consigned to the dustbin of Bat-history.

Cue the mid-oughts. Todd returns. And from that return comes this animated movie, well-made but depressingly similar to the depressing, doom-haunted Batman comics of the late 1980's and early 1990's. The animation, voice-work and writing are all solid, and writer Judd Winick wisely drops the whole Iranian connection for a slightly more workable plot involving super-terrorist Ra's Al Ghul's bone-headed decision to hire the Joker to distract Batman. The overall effect of this dark, violent movie, though, is pure Debbie Downer.

The Red Hood also offers one of the more curious naming choices in comic-book history -- in this new incarnation, as in his original 1950's first appearance, he doesn't actually wear a hood. It's a red helmet. I guess Red Helmet sounded too goofy even in the 1950's, though no goofier, ultimately, than Green Lantern. Or Animal-Vegetable-Mineral Man. And would someone just kill the Joker already? Lightly recommended, and not for kids.