A story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Maybe that’s why the trilogy is such a satisfying structure for so many epic series or curious corners of cinema history. This year in Triple Threat, Ken Lowe revisits another of cinema’s best trilogies each month, including some unofficial trilogies that have come to define a director, actor, or time in film history. You can follow the series here.
As a character, Batman is of an archetype that predates any medium he’s appeared in. He is the vigilante, the antihero, one whose sinister appearance hides pure intent. Like Robin Hood, his heroics are against the law. Like Zorro, he is a blue-blood masquerading as a hero of the common people. Like the Shadow, the persona he affects is calculated to fill evil-doers with terror and despair. There have now been innumerable interpretations and reinterpretations of the character—just recently, Batman: Caped Crusader hit streaming, bringing the character back to his 1940s roots in a Gotham filled with Tommy gun-wielding gangsters in sharp suits.
Superheroes dominate the box office now, and as I have lamented, they largely have grown away from the populist roots that underpinned the genre when guys like Batman originally ran the place. In film, you can pinpoint the exact year this started to happen: 2008, when Iron Man and The Dark Knight released mere weeks apart from one another.
For most filmgoers, Christopher Nolan was an unknown quantity when word came out that he was directing 2005’s Batman Begins, a movie title you just know the studio had to twist his arm to get him to agree to. Those of us who had already seen Memento and Nolan’s rough and cerebral debut Following already knew what he was capable of, of course. And, as I mentioned then, there was something else: On the door of a character’s apartment in Following, there’s a Batman sticker. It’s exactly the sort of detail that, rewatching the movie after this trilogy of Bat-films, you can’t help but allow to simply send your brain spiraling into conspiracy.
That’s how watching a Nolan movie feels, a lot of the time: As if you are being tricked, and that you are happy that you are being tricked. The Prestige isn’t Nolan’s best, but it really is his most honest, because he’s explaining to you, the viewer, how you are the mark. It is sort of incredible that Nolan turned in one of the most successful superhero movie trilogies ever, but he almost wins “most complete-seeming superhero trilogy” by default. Because, by 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, the game had already changed. That same summer, Marvel’s The Avengers came out, and the era of the standalone superhero film definitively came to an end. It’s all universes all the time now, and in that regard, Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy seems older by far than the nearly two decades that separate us from its first installment.
The Movies
Batman Begins now seems as if it was the only possible evolution of Batman movies, when you look at how the character has progressed. From Adam West’s high camp to Tim Burton’s Gothic Impressionism and back into camp with Joel Schumacher’s two hyperactive, “toyetic” follow-ups, the pendulum was set to swing back to a grimdark Batman whose M.O. was terrorizing criminals and wallowing in the trauma of his dead parents. Nolan decided that the way to do this differently was to dedicate about half the movie’s runtime to painstakingly building up his Batman by showing how Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) eventually becomes him.
While the thought of going baroque on Batman’s origin has been razzed recently, it’s worth it to remember that other storytellers judged it unnecessary, too: the creators of Batman: The Animated Series are on record as have purposefully avoided Batman’s origin, reasoning that viewers already knew his whole deal (and, I imagine, that they’d have had a hard time getting it by censors). Nolan just happens to have done a really good job at it: Bale’s Bruce Wayne is an intense and driven man whose training in ninja bullshit is a completely new direction for the character in movies. Going with Ra’s al Ghul as the villain (Ken Watanabe but, spoiler alert, actually Liam Neeson) was a daring move in 2005, when comic book movies couldn’t stray too far from characters your grandfather could easily identify.
In a corrupt cesspit of a Gotham City, Bruce Wayne returns to find his family’s company slipping from his grasp, organized crime entrenched and emboldened, and a police force full of crooked cops who can’t be bothered to enforce the law. (Why did they choose to film in Chicago?) The movie follows Bruce as he slowly builds up the training, resources and gadgets to become Batman, collecting allies in a pre-Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), loyal butler and apparent urban warfare expert Alfred (Michael Caine), sidelined weapons designer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and crusading prosecutor/childhood friend/love interest Rachel Dawes (Katie Holmes).
This is a mere fraction of the movie’s star power, and the cast fires on all cylinders—Mark Boone Junior and Rutger Hauer play minor baddies, Cillian Murphy plays an alarmingly creepy version of the Scarecrow, and Tom Wilkinson even shows up as a smart-mouthed gangster who gets the highest honor ever afforded to loser criminals in a Batman production: That of giving Batman an excuse to declare that he is Batman.
As slow and deliberate as Batman Begins seems in the early going, it delivers on every promise. Iconic line deliveries abound, Batman leads police on a chase that wrecks an entire fleet of cruisers, bad guys get beaten up and/or the bejeezus scared out of them. It ends in a swarm of bats, a brutal fistfight and a ton of explosions. It is no surprise it raked in money and truly anointed Nolan as A Director Who Can Do What He Likes.
And then The Dark Knight lapped it. Nolan’s billion-dollar hit delivered on the promise of the Joker (Heath Ledger, who died by accidental overdose before the film hit theaters), and told a violent and distressing tale of a city reeling under a campaign of terrorism. Comic nerds will often say that “Nolan understands Batman,” or something like it. The Dark Knight and Ledger’s unhinged and sardonic Joker are mostly the reasons they say that. Much ink has been spilled (some of it by me) about how important the Joker is to Batman.
The Dark Knight follows Batman as he first dares to hope that he might be able to lay aside his nighttime persona in favor of a life with Rachel (recast as Maggie Gyllenhaal). Batman’s hope, and the city’s, is new district attorney Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart and his jawline), whose crusade against the mob has put organized crime on its back foot in Gotham. The Joker sets out to tear down that hope, and everything else the heroes believe in.
The Dark Knight’s action sequences are louder and more awe-inspiring, its plotting more intricate, its stakes even higher, and Bruce Wayne’s bad behavior in service of concealing his secret identity even more blatant. Nolan somehow managed to tell the profound downer of a story he intended to while adding requisite Batman scenes like an exclusive gala being interrupted by the villains and Batman humiliating multiple squads of gun-toting cops. Nolan blew up seemingly half of Chicago to film the thing. It set the new high bar for superhero fare, easily.
But Ledger’s tragic death hung over the series, and the distance between 2008 and 2012 ended up being a long one. The Dark Knight Rises chose to forsake any follow-up on the Joker—the last we see of him is him dangling upside down cackling at his last-minute victory, and we presume he must be in some hole somewhere during the events of this movie, which rejoins a depressive and reclusive Bruce Wayne eight years after Batman’s disappearance. We learn that he has been successful in his attempt to frame himself for the murder of Harvey Dent—who we know had actually become Two Face and ruined Dent’s sterling reputation. Batman hasn’t been seen since, though apparently the sacrifice resulted in a whole lot of mobsters being locked up and Gotham’s crime falling to new lows (and its skyline magically transforming into Pittsburgh’s).
This final installment brings the trilogy full circle, forcing Bale’s Batman to return to the basics in his fight against the hulking brute Bane (Tom Hardy, whose voice choices in this have been the subject of endless parody, and whose every other line I only caught on viewing #2). Bane has an elaborate plan to stoke populism into a peasant’s revolt and eventually destroy Gotham with a nuclear bomb. Playing both sides against each other for her own gain is Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, never called such in the movie. All of this is incredibly complicated and takes more than an hour to spin up, during which time Batman barely figures in, and during which he is betrayed by not one, but two women (the other is Marion Cotillard, who we discover is Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter).
When Batman does finally get back in the saddle, when he finally rises, though, it becomes a triumphant return to form. I love The Dark Knight Rises, but it seems to have truly tested audiences: I was in one screening where a kindergartener loudly complained about how little Batman was in the movie and I don’t even blame the little guy. A friend told me that in one of theirs, a theatergoer who could’ve waited just a couple more minutes threw up his hands and angrily lamented that “They killed Batman!!” before storming out.
Nolan, I am convinced, sneaks jokes into his movies that are only funny if you are as obsessive as he must be. It’s the only reason anybody could’ve cast Nestor Carbonell, the guy who played Batmanuel in the live-action The Tick, to play the mayor of Gotham City in The Dark Knight. And I will go to the grave convinced that the ending of The Dark Knight Rises, which features Batman racing to get a nuclear weapon clear of Gotham, is joshing on one of the most iconic Batman scenes from any of the movies.
Best Entry
I am shameless in arguing that all three installments, while not without their problems, are great movies and endlessly entertaining rewatches. If we’re being honest, however, there’s no contest: Like many trilogies, the middle entry is the clear winner. The Dark Knight stands head and shoulders above the other two films for its propulsive opening, Ledger’s all-timer of a Joker, and the fact it feels relatively fleet and straightforward compared to how complicated Rises ends up being. I remain convinced that Nolan wanted to name Batman Begins “The Dark Knight” and the studio wouldn’t let him release a Batman movie without “Batman” in the title. With his second outing, it really feels like he sat the studio heads down and said “I’m doing it my way.” The Dark Knight could stand apart from the other movies in the trilogy with almost nothing lost. No surprises in this category.
Trilogy Trivia
Proud Illinoisans will note that many of the first two movies’ Gotham scenes were filmed in Chicago, and a stroll through downtown (or a claustrophobic drive under it via Lower Wacker Drive) will take you on a tour that includes several iconic scenes, including the mayoral assassination and Harvey Dent-prisoner chase in The Dark Knight, to name a couple. For Rises, though, a good chunk of the photography meant to transpire in Gotham City was filmed in Pittsburgh. In the spirit of intercity fellowship (and because I’m from Arlington Heights and cannot claim Chicago), I decline to say whether I consider this a downgrade. One thing is clear though: Points to Nolan for blowing up Heinz Field (home of one of the most hated teams in sports) in a scene where he actually got some real-life Steelers to portray the football players. A master class in passive-aggression.
Marathon Potential
Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is meant to be blasted through over an afternoon and evening, and feels like one blessedly complete thought after the last decade-plus of Marvel movies have turned superhero storytelling into a perpetual motion machine where no story truly feels as if it has a beginning or an ending any longer. Dress your friends up in sharply tailored suits and pretend it’s a political fundraiser for a crusading public servant in a city that doesn’t deserve them. Don’t forget to invite U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy.
Tune in next month, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel, as Triple Threat celebrates Spooky Season with Dario Argento’s The Three Mothers unofficial trilogy of Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears!
Kenneth Lowe is big, for you. You can follow him on Twitter @IllusiveKen until it collapses, on Bluesky @illusiveken.bsky.social, and read more at his blog.