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Volume 381
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Wednesday, August 29, 2012
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Page 1 of 16
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This is from www.hitfix.com
If any blockbuster film this summer deserves a second look, for me it would be Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises," which I knew was going to hotly divide
audiences. Sure enough, the reactions have been all over the place, with some strongly negative pieces. Dozens of websites have published their own versions of a
"second look," and it's been interesting seeing how the exact thing one person loves is the thing another person hates. When I saw the film a second time, I took
careful notes about the things I wanted to discuss in a follow-up, and I decided to break things down using my favorite character templates, established so memorably
by Sergio Leone. I love the way he divides his characters into three camps, the "good," the "bad," and the "ugly," and I think the same can apply here. I think all
of my points can be made simply by discussing character, because many of the most vehement reactions I've seen come from people who are upset about what they see as
a misinterpretation of the characters, something I can certainly understand as a sticking point. I don't agree, but I can see why it would bother them.
THE GOOD
BRUCE WAYNE / BATMAN
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The criticism I've seen most often so far boils down to "Batman doesn't quit."
It's funny how the people who seem most adamant about that seem to be, in many cases, the people who loved "The Amazing Spider-Man," which I thought threw out many of
the core ideas about that character. I guess the difference is that if you like something, you'll accept whatever changes are made in adapting it, and if you don't like
something, you won't. If you enjoy the end result, you'll expand your idea of what that character is, and if you don't, you end up becoming a hard-line purist over this
or that point. Personally, I think it is a disastrously stupid idea to make Spider-Man into a "chosen one" archetype, destined for his role as a hero from childhood,
with every single character somehow involved in his secret identity. On the other hand, I can completely accept that in Christopher Nolan's version of this Batman story,
Bruce Wayne would choose to disappear for eight years after the ending of "The Dark Knight" because, as we've seen in all three of the films, this particular Bruce Wayne
has always been looking for an exit strategy, almost from the moment he came up with the idea of using his resources to fight crime on a street level.
At the end of "Batman Begins," the fuse was lit. In the scene where Bruce and Rachel talk about his identity as Batman, she holds out the hope
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