The Dark Knight Rises: A Bit of Craic, Despite Itself

Roger Ebert, the Yoda of US film critics, was a guest on the Jay Leno show when Batman Begins was released in 2005. Ebert loved it, and was scathing in his criticism of those who were disappointed Batman didn’t have a PG rating. “I want a Batman for adults,” said Ebert, to general whooping and cheering among the audience.

Nobody stopped to ask what the children were expected to watch if Batman was adults-only. Hard to see them sitting through McCabe and Mrs Miller.

Comic book movies should sing to the child within. Leave the heavy lifting to Ingmar Bergman. The Dark Knight was overly bleak, with Heath Ledger’s Joker being just a little too real, and the dirty politics of the ending too close to home, to provide proper escapism. The Dark Knight Rises returns a bit closer to admitting that these are kids’ films, and there are two actors to thank for this.

The first is Tom Hardy, who plays Bane, the villain. Bane is a hard chaw given to philosophical expression while throwing his (considerable) weight around. If he were to exist in real life, he would be a composite of the actor James Robertson Justice, the actor, and Brian Moore, former hooker for Northampton, England and the British Lions. Pomposity mixed with a tremendous capacity for violent action. Hardy is wonderful in a role that was never going to be The Dane.

But the real star of The Dark Knight Rises is Anne Hathaway, who plays Catwoman. The New Yorker's Anthony Lane is typically witty about her role; your correspondent can only settle for a paraphrasing Mr Sinatra and remarking that if you don’t like Ms Hathaway in The Dark Knight Rises, you don’t like ice cream.

This is almost certainly accident rather than design from Christopher Nolan. He is producing the new Superman, and the trailer suggests it’s being made as an homage to the cinema of Ken Loach. It’s so disappointing.

These things are meant to be fun. That’s the reason that the “new” Star Wars movies were all rotten. They were taken too seriously. They were made for fanboys, rather than people who don’t care which one is green and which one has antlers – they just want to have a good time.

Yoda is emblematic of the problem. In the Star Wars movies, Yoda has a thing that distinguishes him from the rest of the characters. Backwards he speaks. Wise to show he is. A pain in the neck it gets, after a very short while. They keep it up in all three movies. Religiously so.

But here’s the thing. When Yoda first appeared, in The Empire Strikes Back, he didn't always talk like that. “That is why you failed,” he tells Luke when Luke refuses to finish his training. Recognisable Queen’s English there for a vital plot point, because the plot point was more important than loyalty to a fanboy article of faith.

The best comic book movie of recent years was the remark of Star Trek, and there’s a scene at the end that illustrates just how well its writers understand the genre and realise that if the thing is going to work, it has to have broader appeal than people to make dead threats to movie critics online.

In the final minutes of Star Trek, Nero is about to meet his Waterloo when Kirk surprisingly offers to save him. This is the dialog that ensues between Kirk and Spock:

Kirk: This is Captain James T Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Your ship is compromised. You're too close to the singularity to survive without assistance which we are willing to provide.
Spock: Captain, what are you doing?
Kirk: You show them compassion, it may be the only way to earn peace with Romulus. It's logic Spock – I thought you'd like that?
Spock: No, not really. Not this time.

Spock cracks a funny. The fanboys should have been up in arms, because as a Vulcan Spock a, shouldn’t be able to see the funny side and b, should agree with Kirk’s reasonable point that peace with Romulus is more important than revenge on Nero. But guess what? There is no Vulcan, or Romulus! This is just a game – launch photon torpedoes! Blow them out of the sky!

The Real Reason Hollywood Stars Make the Big Bucks

Your faithful correspondent has a pet theory about Hollywood actors and their extra-ordinary levels of remuneration. An Spailpín doesn’t think that they pull down the big dollars because of the acting they do for the films’ two hour duration.

They pull down the big money for the acting they do afterwards, in keeping a straight face when promoting a film that they know, as surely as anyone can have knowledge of anything in this crazy, mixed-up world, that the film they’ve just made is a complete and utter pig.

There are two films in An Spailpín’s mind particularly at the moment; One Day, a romantic comedy starring Anne Hathaway and someone else, and Cowboys and Aliens, a science fiction actioner starring Harrison Ford, Daniel Craig and Olivia Wilde.

There are some people who will like these movies, to whom the pictures will speak as works of art. An Spailpín’s brother Mayoman, Willie Joe, got rather a blast out of Cowboys and Aliens. But generally speaking, the movie industry will remember these two films as turkeys.

Everybody knows it. In modern cinema, there are no word of mouth hits anymore. A movie sinks or swims immediately it comes out. It may become a beloved DVD hit a year later, but as far as Hollywood is concerned, if a picture doesn’t open everyone concerned with it has a smell rising from them because of that, a smell that can only be cleared by a bone-fide box office smash.

Anne Hathaway knows that the picture is a bomb by the time the movie is released. Chances are she's known for months. But she’s still got to do her media, as she is the only star connected with One Day. She is the only person with whom interviewers wish to speak. What would Ryan Tubridy do for twenty minutes’ of Hollywood glamour on the Late Late Show this Friday night, instead of the scrapings of the RTÉ canteen, followed by a panel discussion featuring Terry Prone, Eddie Hobbs and Jason Byrne?

So Anne Hathaway does her interviews and smiles her million dollar smile and talks about Yorkshire and how much the book moved her and how hard it is to find good females roles in Hollywood and yes, she loves Kate Middleton and the wedding did remind her of the Princess Diaries and all the while she’s thinking: my God, will I ever have a hit movie to myself? Or will I be on the Hallmark channel for the rest of my days, playing alcoholic mothers who sell their daughters for crates of gin?

Harrison Ford hasn’t had a hit since Air Force One. The last Indiana Jones movie doesn’t count, because nobody can think of it without becoming incredibly sad. Jon Farveau, the director of Cowboys and Aliens, has the consolation of the guaranteed money of the Iron Man franchise (provided nobody has a hundredth-monkey-moment about these interminable Marvel comic movies), while Daniel Craig has the matchless consolation of knowing that, whatever happens to him in his future career he cannot possibly make as bad a call as Clive Owen already has.

While Olivia Wilde thinks: Tron bombed and this bombed. I have three, maybe four more movies left until I’m on the Hallmark channel for the rest of my days, playing drug-addicted mothers who sell their sons for crates of Acapulco Gold, the notorious bad-ass weed. Oh God, oh God, oh God.

But they can never voice that. Instead it’s all about how great it was to work with Harrison Ford, how much she learned from Hugh Laurie on House, and how she really got to explore what her character went through and developed as a person when Zolbat the alien wrapped his scaly tentacle around her milky-white neck, before Daniel Craig chopped it off (the tentacle now, not the neck).

And people say Hollywood actors and actresses are over-paid? Reader, they don’t get paid half enough for keeping a straight face through all this.