The Swan Song Has Been Sung, Goodbye Dark Knight.

You’ll get most people reviewing The Dark Knight Rises as a feature film itself, but I am going to give you a review of the entire Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy of movies. If you are someone like me than your favourite movie would be Batman Begins. The initial interpretation of Batman was an epic movie. Christian Bale’s first foray as the Dark Knight was well performed by Bale and the story was great and kept you interested and waiting for the second installment. Which was also amazing and left you waiting for a third and final installment, which like the second was also amazing.

As an entire body of work from Batman Begins to The Dark Knight Rises, I have no problem in proclaiming that the 2006 - 2012 Batman Trilogy is the greatest movie trilogy of all time based on the following. The character growth from the frist movie to the concluding film, the continuous mythos in the series of films, and a continuos storyline. Then there are the obvious criteria such as acting, soundtrack and the usual stuff people look for in movies.
As a whole trilogy the Batman franchise is well acted, obvious Bale does a tremendous job, but other actors like Cillian Murphy who plays Scarecrow, Michael Caine as Alfred, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. Christopher Nolan made sure that his characters were important and every single one of those characters served a huge purpose to forward the main storyline of the franchise.

In fact you could really look at Dark Knight Rises and Batman Begins as direct sequels withthe amount of flashbacks to the Begins in Rises and the similarities with the League of Shadows coming back to try and destroy Gotham City. The way that Nolan brings together everything that Bruce Wayne goes through from the death of his parents, to the death of his childhood friend Rachel. In DKR you can see that everything has taken its toll on Bruce Wayne, and that it has affected his mental state. Nolan in this entire franchise makes a huge effort to make us care about Bruce Wayne from the little boy who couldn’t get out of the well in Batman Begins to the man who struggled with his affection to Rachel, to the grey haired man who had to  work hard to escape Bane’s prison in Dark Knight Rises, Bruce Wayne is the more crucial character in the trilogy between Bruce and his altar ego Batman.

One of my favourite parts of all 3 movies have been the soundtracks. I am not sure which one is the best, it’s a toss-up between The Dark Knight OST or Dark Knight Rises OST. But like the movies the OSTs they build on each other, Hans Zimmer is a masterful composer and great compiler, in every movie the accompanying music adds to the scene. In some movies you’ll watch a scene and the background music will only hamper the overall mood of the film not with any of the Nolan movies. I have all 3 soundtracks and yes I am that person that listens to movie soundtracks. When you listen to the track called Fear Will Find You on DKR soundtrack you will automatically think of the scene in DKR where Bruce is trying to escape the prison. In Dark Knight the music picks up and slows down with every one of Joker’s moves. It moves to a frenzied pace as Joker controls the action. The opening bank scene listen to the score that Zimmer has put together. 

Of the 3 villains in each movie there is no clear cut number 1. Liam Neeson as Ras al Ghul was tremendous, as Liam Neeson is normally tremendous in his roles. Heath Ledger was great as the Joker and Tom Hardy was equally great as Bane. Each actor was able to provide Christian Bale a great screen partner to match acting chops with. Tom Hardy was more recently able to do it with only his eyes and voice. His eyes portrayed a relaxed man and his voice gave Bane the sense of a man with a plan. Heath Ledger portrayed Joker with a sense of a man who enjoyed just doing things. While Joker was not as physical with Batman as Bane (Hardy) and Al Ghul( Neeson) he matched Batman on the mental and emotional side of things. Liam Neeson’s Ras Al Ghul was a perfect opening villain for Batman/Bruce Wayne. Being the mentor to Bruce Wayne and the man who taught Batman everything he knows, Neeson was able to match Batman blow for blow in physicality and mental abilities. As they normally are Morgan Freeman and Mic

In closing if you want a trilogy of movies that put you on the edge of your seat in every single movie, the batman trilogy is it. Not only is it the best comic book trilogy, it is the best movie trilogy period. It would great if Nolan and Bale rethought their decision and made 3 more Batman films, but that is wishful thinking. So now we wait until someone else decides they want to make another Batman movie. Unfortunately for that person, it will not be able to top Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, or The Dark Knight Rises.

- Steffan Leroy Watson

@SteffanWatson23