Batshit Crazy

So, the Dark Knight Rises is at last upon us. What is it about this movie that makes it so special? Why have we waited for so long for a comic book movie, when most of us never read a Batman comic? How on earth did Christopher Nolan make something so patently silly feel to some like the second coming? It's got nothing to do with comic books, really. Instead, it's got everything to do with time and place, and the man who knew how to leverage those things into making himself a better filmmaker. Many of us have been utterly captivated by Nolan's Batman Triology, and I'm here to talk to you about why, at least, I am. So, here goes.

The Dark Knight and Inception sold me on Nolan. Really, it was just Inception, but that film's very existence, I have the success of The Dark Knight to thank for.Even though all Nolan's films are strong – and in the case of Memento, great –, they feel an age, an era away from where Nolan is now, and part of the fever of Nolan fandom is knowing that the man grows tremendously with each film outing. On Inception, Nolan finally seemed to harness the war between complexity and emotion, making it into a great moment of catharsis, and the result was like fire in the veins.

All of Nolan's films, too, have a dense, and heaving muscularity to them. They're bold in a way that's meticulous, but not brazen, not even completely self-assured. There's a powerful sense of humility to the sprawling stories he tells; everything and everyone is fallible, and I think audiences really appreciate that. But I also think the real reason we all love Nolan so much, is that he's the originator. Nolan's films, tap into a currency that's immediately identifiable with; The Dark Knight was about abject terror-causing, of purposeless anarchy at a time when people needed a vengeance fable. Heath Ledgar's The Joker was a lament to senseless violence, as the villian Bane in the Dark Knight Rises, in contrast seems like a protest Nolan's trademark 'gritty' approach to superhero films validated geek culture in the mainstream and made rabid, on-the-sleeve fandom a popular and acceptable mode of appreciating popular art in modern culture. To flip that back around, this new spate of Superhero movies – the run of Marvel adaptations – couldn't have been so successful in their return to their cartoony roots without the validation of gritty Bats. And what makes him the ultimate populist director, is that he integrates all of these things – complexity, muscularity, emotion, philosophy. Nolan has a way of tapping into topicality, and making a film feel relevant and vital without us really grasping that level of its narrative immediately. Like he's made of himself, Nolan has a great sense for building something heroic; for making man into myth. Nolan made pop-heroism tragic, and lonely, and existential.

The Dark Knight Rises will be in cinemas nationally from Thursday 19 July.