The Dark Knight Rises: The Most Anticipated Summer Movie

July 20, 2012

This summer is shaping up to be one impressive season of movies, but with everything out there, The Dark Knight Rises easily takes the role of my "Most Anticipated Film".  While The Avengers has already taken the summer by storm, breaking records and setting the bar high, and Ridley Scott makes his return to sci-fi flicks in June's Prometheus, the Cape and Cowl get a little more attention, simply because there are more of an attachment factor to this film. Here's a rundown of why the new Batman installment gets my prestigious title.

1. My Favorite Superhero

Batman Beyond: a younger Batman, who also has dead parents

Growing up, two of my favorite cartoons involved superheros: Spider-Man and Batman: The Animated Series. Being in the early 90's, these are probably some of my earliest memories with comic book characters.  In the years that followed, these shows had re-runs and then branched out, with straight-to-VHS movies and spin-off series.  1997 gave us The New Batman Adventures, where Nightwing was introduced on TV.  1999 brought our generation Batman Beyond, the futuristic Gotham City under protection from an old Bruce Wayne and a new, younger Batman.  Recently, I have found 4 volumes of Batman: The Animated Series on DVD.  But it wasn't the cartoons alone that made Batman stand out over Spider-man: Batman had live-action movies to back him up.

Batsuits: Now featuring nipples.

Around the same time frame that I'd have my grubby hands snatching the remote to tune into to Batman on TV, my family bought the VHS that would help shape my Batman-loving future: Batman & Robin.  Now, before you start thinking, "Wait, wasn't that movie absolutely horrible?" hear me out.  (And for those who are saying, "Hey! That movie was so good, they should turn it into a musical!", it has already been done. )  Being that we owned it, I was able to watch Batman & Robin over and over again and every time I would get to the end of the movie, where they all run out in front of the Bat Signal, I would wish they made "Batman & Robin & Batgirl". (I was six years old when it came out. I didn't know about commas.) Yes, Bane was turned into something everyone hated.  Even my mom remembered him as "the big green guy who was a henchmen", something Bane should never be considered.  Mr. Freeze was... well, the two links above describe his part, and this movie, best.  Looking back, it deserves the 3.6/10 it received on IMDb.  But the fact was, it was a live-action superhero!  As a kid, I ate up all the cheesy fight scenes and the un-realistic ice weapons, and I LOVED the fact that Freeze's goons played hockey.  But more importantly, the movie franchise, despite progressively getting worse, brought Batman to life.  It would be 5 more years until we got Spider-Man on the big screen, and Sam Raimi did a great job with Peter Parker before the hiccup known as Spider-Man 3.  But eight years after the "wonderful" Batman & Robin came out, Christopher Nolan would change the way I saw the World's Greatest Detective.

2. Christopher Nolan

"I know if it was a dream or not."

While Batman Begins renewed my passion for the Caped Crusader, I had also discovered a brilliant man behind the piece of art.  After Batman Begins came out, The Prestige was released a year later and boasted the same director from the last Batman film.  Intrigued, I checked it out, and found it was exceptional.  In the 2 years that passed before we would get The Dark Knight, I found other movies he had made, in Memento and Insomnia.  After watching these movies, I discovered the man couldn't make a bad movie if he tried.  After The Dark Knight came out in 2008, which I saw twice in theaters, I knew that he was the best thing to come along to the Batman franchise since creator Bob Kane.  Rather than just making action movies, he was storytelling with the best of them.  More importantly, he was making my favorite superhero more realistic.  Well, as realistic as a story about a boy who has his parents killed and inherits a multi-million dollar company can be. Two years after he set box office records with TDK, he came out with Inception.   While it could just be some fanboy love for the director, all of his films listed other than Insomnia are featured on IMDb's list of Top 250 movies of all time, two making the Top 20.

3. My Day With Bane

Last August, I had plans to go to Cedar Point with some friends. One of my friends had found a link to a website that talked about being on the set of The Dark Knight Rises and being in the movie. As sketchy as the site looked, we signed up and got our passes to go out to Pittsburgh.  Upon arrival, we did, in fact, sign up to be in The Dark Knight Rises and not some shady scam.  The scene we were set to be in was a football scene.  The same football scene featuring Hines Ward and a bunch of guys blowing up in the trailer.  The whole experience was awesome as we got to scream and cheer on the Gotham City Rogues.  Of course, it is August and unbelievably hot out, and the scene is supposed to be set in the winter, so we will see how that turns out, but still it was awesome.  Later on, Bane came out for an appearance and even did some of the raffle drawings we had.  Here's a little behind the scenes from the day: 

Field prior to explosions...

Field after explosions...

Tom Hardy doing raffle drawings, decked out as Bane.

The man behind it all: Chris Nolan.

Two Villains: one of Bane's army and the lady sitting next to us.

And with less than two months until The Dark Knight Rises, I couldn't be more excited to see it.  This film is the fruition of years of watching and waiting for the ultimate Batman experience, and on July 20th, it's here. When you see the movie, because everyone needs to, be sure to look for the guy wearing a construction vest and helmet, cheering on the Rogues. 

While other movies this summer like The Avengers or The Bourne Legacy will satisfy people's desires for action movies, this is the movie that everyone needs to see.  Or better yet...

Not the movie we deserve, but the movie we need.