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!

Star Trek

The new Star Trek movie is a triumph. Not just because of what it is, but also because of what it isn’t.

The makers of the new Star Trek get it. They know the single greatest element of a movie like Star Trek is that it’s got to be fun, and Star Trek delivers fun by the bucketload. For the first time in quite some time your correspondent wished that he were ten or twelve years old again, because if you see this picture when you are that certain age, it stands a strong chance of being your favorite movie until you die.

The movie is over-plotted slightly, but it is a small complaint. It’s no easy task to reinvent something that’s as established in the culture as Star Trek but the makers of the new Star Trek have been as successful in this as the makers of the Daniel Craig Bonds, and for that you can only take off your hat to them.

They are blessed in their casting also. Zachary Quinto is a marvellous Spock, taking advantage of the fact that this is a re-imagining to look at the character in a different way. When Leonard Nimoy invented the character his super-rationality was the novelty. But now, because the Spock character is so large in the culture, forty years after the TV show first aired, Quinto is able to focus on Spock’s repressed emotions rather the no-longer-novel idea of Vulcan logic, and Spock is very much the centre of the show in consequence.

The writers have to take credit also for a very witty and well-judged script. There is one scene early in the movie, when the child Spock is being bullied by the other Vulcan kids for being half-human. “Spock,” they say, as they gather behind them. Spock knows their game. “I presume you have prepared fresh insults yet again for today?” he asks, wearily. “Affirmative,” says one of the bullies.

That slew me.

The movie is gloriously and unapologetically shallow. Chris Pine’s James T Kirk is an uncomplicated alpha male who wants to get his way and isn’t too bothered about anything outside of that. Anybody looking for messages will have to pop down to Spar or Centra instead.

In one way this is slightly off-brand, because Star Trek was always seen as the thinking man’s sci-fi. But the producers have two reasons for going with the uncomplicated approach.

The first is that The Dark Knight was weighed down with strum und drang more than its ability to carry all that philosophising. It’s a comic book, not Schopenhauer. As for Watchmen, that was just rubbish. Far better that Star Trek takes the delivery of an uncomplicated good time at the movies as its remit, and piles on the thrills.

The second reason – and this is just a guess – is that the first Star Trek movie in 1979 had one of the most thought-provoking plots of all the Star Trek movies, but nobody noticed and the movie is generally considered a disappointment. Unfairly so. They boiled it down to brass tacks for Star Trek II, which is about some crazy bastard out in space and the Enterprise is sent out to blow him out of the sky. Exactly the same as the plot of this year’s movie. No daws in Paramount pictures, you know.

There will be sequels – the box office and the almost universally ecstatic reviews dictate it will be so. It will be interesting to see if they can keep the magic, or if, like the Spider-Man and X-Men franchises, they disappear under the weight of expectation. Here’s hoping the new Star Trek lives long, and prospers.







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