Interlude: I AM THE BATMAN

Given the recent release of the Dark Knight Rises, I think it is a good time to look back on the trilogy that revived the franchise and gave it new life.

I'd heard about Christopher Nolan back when he made Memento, a wonderful little film that I still consider one of my favorite films of all time. He had a knack of devising inventive and unconventional plot structures, and making interesting characters. But other than that he didn't really make many notable films. There was, of course, a film called Insomnia with Robin Williams and Hilary Swank that gained critical acclaim, but not many people knew about it.

Meanwhile, the Batman franchise was as good as dead. The final nail in the coffin was the deplorable Batman and Robin, whose return to 60's camp and general corniness destroyed the franchise that had been built on decent Tim Burton movies. The jury is still out on whether Batman Forever was any better or worse.

So a new film was made in 2005, Batman Begins. It reboots the franchise and tells the story of how Batman got his chops. It's an interesting story with a lot of nods to the comic stories, and brilliant performances all around.

What got me was how dark the whole thing was. This wasn't the bombastic showy Batman of the first two films. This was Batman as how he should be. We were coming off films like X-Men or Spiderman, films that, despite the relative seriousness, were still fun adventures for the whole family.

Then came The Dark Knight, and that was one of the greatest movies ever. Using the Joker and Two Face as villains, this movie was a deconstruction of the hero genre, redefining what it truly means to be a hero. Along with it came a performance by Heath Ledger that is so intense, people remember it to this day. It wasn't just a good superhero film, it was a good film, period. It also adapted itself from stories considered to be Batman's finest, such as The Long Halloween and The Killing Joke. The ending is especially chilling, as it describes Batman as what he is: a silent protector, a symbol that can be anything Gotham's citizens want him to be.

Finally we come to the recent movie, The Dark Knight Rises. Based partially on the comic series on the same name, we see an older Bruce Wayne, now in hiding after the events of the previous movie. It takes a terrorist named Bane to get him to don the cape and cowl again, but doing so is not as easy as it may first seem.

In the interim, Nolan sharpened his skills by making Inception, another very accomplished film and one of the most fascinating films of the last decade. It was blockbuster, sure, it was also action. But it was very cerebral and didn't treat its audience like ADHD-riddled mooks.

The last film goes back to the themes in the first, examining Batman's reasons for being Batman. While not as accomplished as the second film, it does its job capably. Bane is like Batman's antithesis. Trained by the same man, his skills and intelligence are more than a match for the caped crusader, and in the comics he is the only villain to have "Broken the Bat."

Speaking of that, my first real introduction to Batman was during the Knightfall storyline, which involves Bane. So there's a bit of nostalgia for me in that regard, despite the movie Bane being quite different from the one in the comics.

In the end, these three movies earned a ton of money in the box office and critical praise that the previous quadrilogy never got. Now that the trilogy is over, here's to better adaptations of comics in the future. Superman, I'm looking at you...