Christopher Nolan
The Dark Knight Rises

Here we are. After four years of waiting, the Batman saga returns to theaters in what is expected to be the final chapter of Londoner Nolan's personal reinterpretation in trilogy form. With the eerie and paradoxical "promotional spot" of the Denver Massacre, "The Dark Knight Rises" had the ungrateful and demanding task of satisfying the curiosities and hunger for spectacle of fans of the character born from the minds of Bob Kane and Bill Finger over seventy years ago. Ungrateful because it is difficult to close all the parentheses left open by the ending of the previous episode (The Dark Knight), and demanding because picking up the legacy of a Mephistophelian villain like the Joker of the late Heath Ledger wouldn't have been easy for anyone. But just when the cinematic challenge becomes tough, Nolan brings out the best in himself, giving up 3D in favor of using IMAX technology, perhaps the only one that could withstand the visual impact of the spectacular chases and explosions featured in the film, and focusing everything on shedding light, making things clear, rather than leaving them in the shadows.

Unaware of everything seem to move only the characters in the film, who find themselves crashing against a more hallucinating terrorist force than that of the Scarecrow and more muscular than that of the Joker. But for the rest, during the almost three hours of screening, all the doubts that have kept the fans on edge in recent years are resolved: what happened to Batman after taking on the city's evils? How does Gotham City live now that the hero who protected it by flying over the rooftops of its buildings has become the most wanted man by the police? To these and other important questions, Nolan finds a more than plausible explanation, taking the discourse started seven years ago with Batman Begins to its extreme consequences: never before has the Bat found himself as fragile and alone, in his war against Evil, and as in no other superhero film, the good and the bad are confused, putting the viewer in the impossibility of dividing the characters according to the logic of the "chalkboard", on this side all good, on that side all bad.

In such a context, the new villain, Bane, is probably the most brutal of the saga, even considering Burton and Schumacher's films, but he is also the one for whom the aspect of 'human' suffering that hides behind acts of psychological terrorism, even before physical, is most thoroughly explored. This is the keystone, the revolution brought by Nolan in the field of superhero films. After such a trilogy, it will no longer be acceptable for anyone to wash their hands by fleetingly touching upon the vicissitudes that led the characters — all the characters — to become what they are, to better focus on special effects and witty lines.

In "Rises," explosions, collapses, and 'gags' serve the plot's development, and are not mere pyrotechnic stopgaps to compensate for script shortcomings. Crucial to the film's success are also the characters of Catwoman and Gordon, Blake, and Alfred, and the whole array of old and new faces that will draw final conclusions in a film that should be action-oriented (as recalled by the spectacular opening scene) but that, as demonstrated by the intense finale, was conceived as a drama.

"...a storm is coming, Mr. Wayne. It's best you and your friends prepare for the worst. Because when it arrives, you'll wonder how you ever thought you could live so large, leaving so little for the rest of us."