Trailer round-up: The Dark Knight Rises

I was tempted not to write a post on The Dark Knight Rises. What else is there to say that hasn’t been said already? It’s partly the reactions to the trailer and the IMAX prologue, practically unavoidable in this age of instant information that made me less interested in writing or talking about it, in case I exhaust my levels of enthusiasm. Fans will lament that the trailer didn’t reveal enough, others will jump in and moan about something (in this case Bane’s voice, CG explosio).

I am intrigued though by a story which seems to echo the recent/current recession in some way. Batman Begins was about many things, the use of fear being one but it was also about the divide between the rich and poor, maintained through corruption and criminality. Despite Batman’s presence he hasn’t actually changed Gotham much; he’s just made the presence of crime a little less pervasive.

So while the Joker aimed his guns, explosives and gasoline drums at every single social strata of Gotham in The Dark Knight, Bane here seems to be lighting a fuse and ransacking Gotham. After seeing the prologue you can tell that Nolan and Hardy are going for a mixture of intelligence and brute force, someone who appears to be an inspiring leader and coming up against another inspiring figure in the form of Batman, it’ll be interesting to see how that works. I doubt we’ll see the Batman “broken” as I doubt a film could cover that storyline efficiently but Bruce Wayne and Gotham look like they’re in the fight of their lives. We’ll have to wait until July 20th to see if Bruce Wayne survives.

Obligatory post about the The Dark Knight Rises teaser trailer

Bah…sue me.

Anyway a  teaser for The Dark Knight Rises debuted online on Monday (Friday if you saw it in front of Harry Potter), something I’m sure very few people would be interested in. It did offer a few interesting tidbits and despite many people’s complaints that the trailer had very little in terms of footage from the ongoing production (madness!), it was a good trailer that did exactly what it meant to. Spark some interest and have people post the trailer on their blogs/sites as I am about to do now.

With Ra’s Al Ghul’s (SPOILER if you haven’t seen the first film, it’s Liam Neeson) voice over the beginning recounting the ‘legend’ speech he gave to Bruce at the start of Begins, it does suggest a tie-in the beginning, a full circle as it were.

The first real shot is of Gary Oldman’s James Gordon lying in bed and if you ask me he looks a bit more yellow than usual. That may be my eyes though but I think we can assume he’s suffering from some kind of ailment (duh), I’m going to guess some sort of liver disease as it matches in with Gordon’s alcoholic tendencies in the 90s comics.

We see someone probably Christian Bale’s Bruce Wayne climbing or, ahem, rising out of the well that young Bruce fell into in the first film. I’m sure there’s something symbolic about that shot /strokes chin.

Bruce is then working out, in what looks like a jail (could be completely wrong on that). I think the voiceover suggests that whatever happened after The Dark Knight, Batman has been gone for a while and the city has, em, crumbled without him?

Then we get out first look (initially out-of-focus) of Tom Hardy’s Bane. Looks like an animal, probably is.

Ooooh, the buildings are forming the Bat-sign

Batman Vs Bane, looks like ol’ Bats is up for a fight but we wonder, who’s that in the background? Christopher Nolan, you huge tease.

Poster Round-up – The Dark Knight Rises, Captain America, Conan, Dream House and more

Lots and lots of posters, let’s get to it…