If you didn’t see my earlier entry, let me recap here:
I really love the Batman movies. The ones by Christopher Nolan. I’ve been watching them repeatedly since Batman Begins came out seven years ago. I’ve obsessed over them and in no gentle way.
Partly this has to do with the fact that I grew up with the best cartoon Batman ever and partly it has to do with the general awesomeness of what Nolan accomplished with all three movies.
With the newest movie, Nolan has tied it all up, neat and tight. From beginning to end it’s a thoroughly satisfying narrative. He has managed to tell a story with all three movies in a way few directors could (Peter Jackson cheated by doing all three at once and using a single unified source. George Lucas uses plot holes to shore up a cliched story-arc.) They’re not perfect. I will not defend them to the death. There are gaps in logic and weird puns and stumbling lines and some oddly terrible actors hiding amidst stellar performances.
Speaking of which, Anne Hathaway surprised me. I’ve never had much of an opinion about her or her acting, but she took a character I could care less about and made me care. She was funny and bad-ass and stole almost every scene she was in.
But then, in general, The Dark Knight Rises manages to hit all the right notes. And here and there, they hearken back to the two earlier movies without hitting the audience with a sledgehammer. There are mirrored lines and motivations and scenes that vibrate along those sympathetic wave lengths that make you turn to the person next to you and say, “Remember from Batman Begins when that thing with the thing happened?”
And at the end, satisfaction, because it feels like this was how it was always going to end. It doesn’t feel contrived or forced. It’s a natural outcome of events as dictated by the actions of the characters.
And it was the best ending for a series I’ve been following for seven years.
Godspeed Batman.
-D-
The Dylan Charles Blog 
The American Hero
If you want to learn about a society, you look at the people they revere as heroes; the men and women that they hold up on a pedestal.
For example, if you look at the old Greek myths, their heroes were bloody warriors with long lineages that stretched back and far. They were men of honor who bore their burdens with savage ferocity.
With Americans, you have to look to our comic books.
As silly as this might seem to someone who hasn’t been paying attention to the major box office draws of the last decade, comic books reflect who we, as a culture and a people, worship as heroes.
First, there is The Individual. It is always someone who has, by Fate or by choice, who has gone alone. They have shunned (Bruce Wayne) society or been shunned (Peter Parker). They must define themselves by themselves. They cannot allow society to dictate who they are. Even when it’s a team of heroes working together, they’re on the fringes of society (see: X-Men).
Second, The Vigilante; we like the hero who is apart from the Law. This builds off the earlier point: we like someone who doesn’t allow legal red tape to stand in their way. We want someone to stand up and strike a blow against what’s wrong in the world without having to wait for cops and judges and juries. We want speedy justice.
Almost never do we see the legal ramifications of a hero’s actions.
Thirdly, he cannot kill. At least, not willfully. There must be compassion. There must be mercy. The hero must be better than the rest of us. He will not let bloodlust or rage govern his actions. The hero stands apart from us in every, emotional, way. They must make the decisions we would not be capable of making, which is why we trust them in the role of the Vigilante.
Our heroes, the ones we revere in culture on television and movies and pulp fiction, are men and women emotionally unavailable, socially on the edge and disregard the law as beneath them.
In short, Americans revere sociopaths in flashy garb and gaudy dress.
-D-
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