'The Dark Knight Rises' destined to fail revisted
Posted Friday, July 13, 2012 at 5:05 PM Central
by John Couture
Six months and five score news stories ago, I postulated that it was entirely possible that The Dark Knight Rises might fail. Not you know, make a ton of money because short of nation-wide power failure, that's going to happen.
No, when I wrote about its potential (key word) failure, I was talking more about failure from the standpoint of reception, both with fans and critics. Let's face it, after letting our expectation levels grow so high in the last four years since The Dark Knight came out (yes it has really been that long, I double-checked), it's quite possible that The Dark Knight Rises will falter simply under the weight of these unrealistic expectations.
That was the thrust of my argument back then and I think that the main tenets still ring true. In addition, I think there are a couple of more things that might spell doom for The Dark Knight Rises.
Ultimately though, as Rob Payne wrote for Pajiba back then in response to my original article here, the saving grace for The Dark Knight Rises might just be the wild card I pointed out, Christopher Nolan.
The Trilogy Curse
I got a lot of feedback from the original article about the trilogy curse, but most of it was subjective. Now granted, all of movie appreciation is based on subjective measures. You can't measure enjoyment in degrees on both the Fahrenheit and Celsius scales.
So, some people wrote in declaring that The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King was better than the previous two movies so it discredited my entire argument. First, even if this was true one exception would cripple the mountain of anecdotal evidence that says that third films in trilogies suck. See the infographic below (and yes, I just wanted an excuse to pose this infographic yet again).
Now, I'm not going to sit here and try to convince you that The Return of the King wasn't as good as the first two films in the trilogy. I tend to agree with the above infographic that all three films were equally good, which is a huge win for the opponents of the trilogy curse in and of itself.
Instead, I'm simply going to say that one exception doesn't disprove the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. But I will admit that it does take a bite out of the trilogy curse.
Some of you correctly pointed out that the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy was directed by the same guy (Peter Jackson) and since we all know that Nolan helmed all three Dark Knight movies, there's the basis for the exception. From there, everyone with this argument extrapolated that there's no way that The Dark Knight Rises could fail since the same person directed all three.
Well, for every Peter Jackson, there's a Wachowski brothers (or is it simply siblings now?) and Sam Raimi who disprove the single director breaks the trilogy curse theory.
I think the trilogy is real and it's certainly something to be worried about here. As Damon Lindelof can attest, coming up with an satisfying ending that pleases everyone is next to impossible. So, here you are with impossibly high expectations and you have to say everything that you want to say in one last movie.
That's a lot of pressure and you know what they say about being able to please everyone.
Impossible Expectations
As alluded to earlier, these expectations remain high which means that even a great movie might not be able to live up to them. Since I wrote the original article, we have gotten to see a lot of footage (a ton more than previous Christopher Nolan films - more on that later) from The Dark Knight Rises.
For the most part, the footage and trailers have been top-notch. They haven't really gotten into spoiler territory and they have done a decent job of priming us for the film. The continuation of the "Journey Ends" is a double-edged sword in my opinion.
On the one hand it helps the movie as everyone will flock to see Nolan's last Batman movie. Of course, because it is his last film, that will only drive up the expectations even higher. There's also an inherit level of awesomeness that comes with the end of something. The audience has been building to this point, so you better make sure and deliver on it.
I think this is still a real concern, but the footage that I've seen has helped to alleviate my concern that Nolan just phoned it in for the third movie. This wasn't really a big concern at all - miniscule really, but you never know. No, I'm convinced that Nolan was at the top of his form for this film, so this is huge, but more on that in a bit.
Heath Ledger's Death/Bane
These were two separate arguments earlier, but I decided to combine them here because they really deal with the same thing. If this is the last Batman movie (at least from Christopher Nolan), then Batman's nemesis has to be the biggest and the best.
Nothing has changed concerning Heath Ledger. He's not in The Dark Knight Rises obviously and it's going to take a Herculean effort from all involved to make us forget that fact when we sit down to see the film.
However, the one positive is that it seems that Bane is quite the adversary for Batman and Tom Hardy delivers a top-notch performance. Also, it seems that Bane's raspy voice just gets cleaner and cleaner with each release of footage.
Officially, no one with the film will admit that they've cleaned up Bane's audio, but it's pretty obvious to anyone with ears that we can know understand Bane. This is huge and I'm fairly certain that if The Dark Knight Rises fails, it won't be Bane or Tom Hardy's fault.
Now, if they can get me to stop thinking about the Joker is a different story altogether and the way they handle that will go a long way to insuring that the film does not fail.
The Nolan Effect
And here it is. As was the case back in January, I think the entire success of this film comes down to Christopher Nolan and his ability to overcome all of the challenges above and the new ones below.
As I have mentioned before, I'm a huge Nolan fan so I'm sure that he'll have no problem making a great film. But there's still so much that is out of his hands. He can't control our unreasonable expectations and despite the rumored existence of the Lazarus Pits in the film, the Joker won't be making an appearance.
Rob is right, Christopher Nolan has yet to make a bad film, although I think some would argue that Insomnia clearly doesn't measure up to his other projects. But, that argument can swing both ways.
Since he hasn't made a stinker yet, he's sort of due for a clunker according to the Law of Averages. No filmmaker has gone through his entire career without a single blemish. Everyone has their own Jersey Girl on their resumé.
Let's just hope that this isn't his first miss after so many hits in a row.
The Run Time
AKA I've got to pee and my bladder is going to explode. The running time for The Dark Knight Rises is 165 minutes. That's almost three hours of sitting in a theater trying not to succumb to the pressure of an oversize and definitely overpriced Coke.
Granted, The Dark Knight is no romantic comedy clocking in at 152 minutes, but there's a whole world of difference between two and a half hours and nearly three hours when your bladder is pounding.
Talk about your catch-22, you want to make sure that you tell your story as completely as possible so you opt for a longer movie, but you risk alienating the audience because it's too long. Quite frankly, there are some people out there who will hate this movie simply because it's too long.
Obviously this is wrong, but it's a genuine concern. Not only will I be battling my own bladder to the end, but everyone else in the theater will be in the same predicament. Nothing takes me out of a film faster than a bunch of people getting up and going to take a leak.
Beyond the bladder issues, three hours is a lot of time to keep someone's attention and while I don't have any doubts that Nolan will be able to do it, the longer the film is, the greater chance of people getting bored with it.
The Avengers Effect
Since we last talked about this subject, a little film called The Avengers took the world by storm. Had you asked me in January what the top film of 2012 would be, I would have said The Dark Knight Rises without skipping a beat.
Now, I'm not so sure about it being able to come close to The Avengers' number let alone surpassing it. And as I said earlier, this isn't about being a box office failure. There's no chance that it won't put up somewhere in the neighborhood of $450-$500 million.
Actually, this is back to the age-old Marvel vs. DC fight. It seems that all the Marvelites are up in arms about The Avengers beating The Dark Knight Rises at the box office. So much so, that I've actually seen boycotts online that diehard Marvel fans are refusing to see The Dark Knight Rises in theaters, despite their personal desire to see the film.
How much will this play into the overall failure of the film? Personally, I think it will be negligible, but there's still a chance of an Avengers backlash that could hurt box office receipts.
Where I think The Avengers effect is most damaging though is in its nearly universal approval. Everyone LOVED that film. Because of that, the expectation levels for The Dark Knight Rises continued to rise. Had The Avengers flopped, then the pressure to succeed wouldn't have been so great.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, it all boils down to the film and those people behind the project. If you have faith in Christopher Nolan, then it's likely that you will enjoy the film and it won't be a failure.
To that end, I think my main takeaway from the first article still stands. Nolan will have to do something completely and totally unexpected to overcome each and every one of these obstacles. Killing off Bruce Wayne or passing off the baton would certainly fit the bill.
Everyone is pretty much expecting Bane to "break the Bat" like he does in the comic books, but is that enough? Can a film in which Bruce Wayne is broken and then "rises up" to defeat Bane truly overcome the high expectations?
And really, would that provide the necessary closure on this trilogy that everyone wants? Remember the key to success in those trilogies in which the third film was good is that the last film did have a certain finality about it.
Frodo does toss the ring into the Mount Doom. The DeLorean is crushed to pieces by a train. The toys are given away to the next deserving child.
The story was done, without a doubt. I think that if Christopher Nolan leaves even a shred of doubt about the finality of the story, then it will haunt this film forever.
In a week, we will know for sure. Until then, we wait. What do you think?