Re-watching Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy in 2024 has been…intriguing. I remember seeing these movies when they were first released and feeling them resonate with contemporary issues. Yet, here we are more than a decade after the last installment, The Dark Knight Rises, which opened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street movement. And here I am experiencing these films during different times, with different concerns, and still finding them resonant.
I always approach this newsletter from the premise that our movies (like all other forms of cultural production) emerge from, and therefore reflect, both the moment of their creation and the moment of their reception. I can watch these and other stories at different periods of my life and come away with something new every time.
Anyway, hello, welcome, and thank you for stopping by. For new visitors, here’s what this situation is all about:
With Savor the View, we’ll watch, think, and talk about movies and the things that matter. A special welcome and thanks to our regular crew!
Each Monday, I share brief, spoiler-free remarks and questions to frame viewing a movie on our own.
Each Thursday, I share post-viewing questions to poke at the issues, ideas, quandaries, inspirations...whatever...that movie might have summoned (spoilers, ahoy!).
Paid subscribers can talk it all out in a weekly Discussion Thread.
Overview
The Dark Knight Rises (2012): Once more, Christopher Nolan shows up as director and as co-writer with David S. Goyer and his brother Jonathan Nolan. The Dark Knight Rises completes their story of Batman. That won’t, of course, stop Warner Bros. from keeping the franchise going. But those are tales for another time.
The Dark Knight Rises enjoyed box office success and a favorable critical reception. This time around, the DC Comics movie came in second to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s (MCU) The Avengers among the year’s highest grossing films. In 2012, Hollywood was big on franchises, from James Bond in Skyfall to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2. Which is to say, it was pretty much a year like any other.
I mentioned earlier the 2008 financial crisis and the Occupy Wall Street movement, but the War on Terror was also still in the mix in the summer of 2012. For The Dark Knight Rises to present contemporary viewers with familiar, but challenging, scenarios and themes, Nolan sought to stir a thick story stew. Grotesquely, though, dominating the headlines of the film’s release: a mass shooting at an Aurora, CO theater during a midnight screening.
The universal/general
More Big Themes! Be ready to contemplate truth, trust, the body vs. the spirit/soul, war, peace, politics, and hope…
And even more Big Themes! Does anyone have clean hands? Is it even possible? What about a clean slate or the “fresh start” that some characters imagine and invoke?
The specific/unique
Try to track, as you watch, elements (sights, sounds, settings, scenarios, risks, themes, etc.) that seem related to recent history and contemporary events for viewers in the summer of 2012.
The viewer is always present
In The Dark Knight, the Joker (Heath Ledger) explicitly calls for the people of Gotham to enter the fight for their city. In The Dark Knight Rises, fighting for the city takes a literal turn. Why? Why can’t we all just outsource heroism to the designated “heroes?”
Also, if it feels like Glen Powell is in literally everything these days, consider him an Easter egg to find in this film.
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