Tags
bane, batman, catwoman, christian bale, christopher nolan, dark knight, gotham, heath ledger, joker
I finally saw this film last night and spent today talking about it, so I just have to tell you this – it’s a great movie, putting on screen another great villain. There’s not much else I should say, just go and see it for yourself. But I will indulge in a few words… spoiler free, of course.
First off, the movie is bigger than the previous two (as a side note it seems every movie had 12 minutes more than the previous one) – the scale is greater, a lot of stuff is happening all over the world. You’ll know this from the first minutes when a kidnapping involving two planes happens high in the sky. That scene is outlandish and it got me dizzy from everything that happened on screen. And everything that happens after this follows the same path – great action all over the screen. The Bat is no longer small scale threats, but something that puts in danger the whole Gotham, and the scenes that you see on screen give you that feeling. The sound also help putting that sinking feeling in you, and the chanting from the pit (you can also hear it in the trailer) will follow you for a while.
But what really steals the show is the new villain, Bane. Let’s admit it, no one expected anyone to come even close to Heath Ledger’s performance as a Batman villain; and that was a though role, as Joker is one of the iconic character from the comics. Bane, on the other hand, is someone you never heard about unless you’re a fan of the whole Batman universe. I remember being disappointed when I first saw a trailer and realized who the villain will be this time. And boy was I wrong; to give you an idea on how great a performance it is, let me just tell you that I got spooked real bad the first few times Bane appears on screen. Tom Hardy (the actor that plays Bane) described Bane as an absolute terrorist: “He’s brutal, but also incredibly clinical in the fact that he has a result-based and oriented fighting style. The style is heavy-handed, heavy-footed… it’s nasty. It’s not about fighting, it’s about carnage!” There are two things that contribute to the brutal feeling: his looks his voice. Bane is a bald, bulky, mountain of a man that has his face covered by a mask. Because of the mask, everything sounds distorted, but he also has an accent that I can’t quite pinpoint (According to Tom Hardy, he based his voice for Bane on Bartley Gorman (1944 – 2002), an Irish Traveller who was the undefeated Bare-knuckle boxing champion of the United Kingdom: “The choice of the accent is actually a man called Bartley Gorman, who was a bare knuckle fighter, a Romani gypsy. So I wanted to underpin the Latin, but a Romani Latin opposed to Latino.”). Also, because of the mask, you can’t see his mouth, so when he talks you just see his unblinking eyes and hear the psychotic words that come out of his mouth. Really, he’s one of the scariest persons I ever saw on screen.
Also, it seems Christopher Nolan gave some fan shoutouts in this movie, although he had previously proclaimed his distaste for comics. (One of these is quite obvious, the others you can find here, but be careful as there are a lot of spoilers.)
The Dark Knight Trilogy is the perfect way to do a Batman movie: it’s dark, serious and filled with deep, interesting characters. It will be interesting to see in what new direction the world’s greatest detective will be resurrected, but for now go and re-watch the first two movies (I just got them on Blu-ray) and then go see this last installment. You won’t regret it.