The Dark Knight Rises, Falls, and Rises Again...

I was one of those nerds who thought that "The Dark Knight" should have been at the very least considered for Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 2009. While I can understand the argument for why "Milk" or "Slumdog Millionaire" would be better, I can't imagine anyone arguing that it's a lesser film than "Frost/Nixon", "Benjamin Button", or "The Reader". I mean, honestly, does anyone actually remember "The Reader"?

But that's the Academy for you. It took them three tries before recognizing "Lord of the Rings", and "Return of the King" wasn't even the best of the trilogy, in my opinion. They picked "Annie Hall" over "Star Wars".

Then again, a lot of people think the Academy changed its rules for Best Picture nominees specifically because of the "Dark Knight" snub, and for that reason, I think a lot of people were hoping that "The Dark Knight Rises" would be the first comic book movie considered for Best Picture. Even if it wasn't quite as good as "The Dark Knight", the Academy might nominate it just as penance for the 2009 snub.

Here's the problem. "The Dark Knight Rises" isn't even CLOSE to as good as "The Dark Knight". It's not even as good as "Batman Begins", which really shocked me.

And to be perfectly honest, even if this movie DID get the "honor" of being the first comic book movie nominated for Best Picture, I don't think we should be proud of that. This movie, while certainly not BAD (and actually pretty good) is not a good representation of comic book mythology in general, let alone Batman mythology. A nomination would basically be the Academy saying, "We don't care how good the actual movie is, so long as it is needlessly topical and doesn't have bright colors." That wouldn't bring any new mainstream credibility to the genre.

Some of you might be thinking, "Why should we care what the Academy thinks?" Well, to a degree, we really shouldn't. The Academy Awards don't dictate what makes a good movie. However, they DO dictate what a studio is shooting for in terms of a movie's quality. For example, after "Beauty and the Beast" got nominated for Best Picture, suddenly animated films from Disney tried (and often failed) to shoot for that same kind of clout. It raised the bar for them. They knew they could accomplish more than just box office success, and that kind of awareness grants the creators a certain amount of freedom to focus more on quality than profitability.

In other words, the Academy recognizing a comic book movie as a quality piece of cinema would tell Warner Bros., Fox, Sony, and Marvel Studios that they don't have to simply try and make a ton of money. They can explore deeper concepts and critics no longer have to add the caveat "for a comic book movie" to any compliment they give.

However, if they recognize this comic book movie, it will say that a comic book movie has to be as gritty, dark, and realistic as possible in order to be considered a "true" film.

"The Dark Knight Rises" is not a comic book movie that takes its source material seriously. Catwoman is never once called "Catwoman". Batman is still wearing bulky, heavy armor that looks awful. Bane has only the most superficial similarities to his comic book counterpart.

It's like when you're in Junior High and your English teacher asks you to write an essay about something that has to contain words from your weekly vocabulary list. You go out of your way to include them just because you're supposed to, but if it weren't expected, you probably wouldn't have bothered.

That's what's going on here. Nolan clearly doesn't WANT to be making a Batman movie. Frankly, this movie probably would have been better off if it didn't include Batman. If it was just a movie about a city being cut off from the rest of the world and plunged into anarchy, that would be interesting. I mean, that's a really cool premise that you can do a lot with. But because Nolan is trying (but failing) SO HARD to give Batman a complete story arc in the midst of all this, we really have no time to really explore it.

This movie probably looked good on paper. If I just look at the overall plot or outline of this movie, it sounds amazing. The problem is with the execution of the screenplay. This is easily the messiest Nolan Bros. screenplay ever, and that includes "Inception".

The individual parts are well-put-together and the presentation is excellent, but it never really comes together in the way the previous two movies did.

OK, beyond here, we're getting into SPOILERS.

Why I'm Actually Kind of Excited to See "The Dark Knight Rises"

Like many comic book fans, the more I learned about "The Dark Knight Rises", the more skeptical I became. Bane looked wrong, Catwoman looked wrong, Joseph Gordon-Levitt was showing up as a character that never existed in any Batman story ever, and it just kept feeling... wrong.

But now I've sort of come to terms with it to the point where I'm actually kind of excited to see the movie again. How did I manage this? I'm basically going to go into the movie accepting that it's not going to be a Batman movie.

Obviously, it IS a Batman movie, but at a certain point I realized that Nolan was less interested in making another Batman movie and more interested in making a film that happens to have a few characters that share names with characters from the Batman mythos.

After "The Dark Knight", everyone was clamoring for Nolan to make another, but Nolan initially resisted. He told us that he would only come back if he felt like he had something that would live up to its legacy, and even then he would only come back after he had a chance to do something else.

So he goes off and does "Inception", which cements him in the public consciousness, and then he jumps into "The Dark Knight Rises", immediately starting a speculation thunderstorm about what got Nolan to come back.

More than likely, money and public expectations probably acted as a primary motivator, but what I think really got Nolan excited was the idea of ending the series.

After the jump contains possible SPOILERS.