Why The Dark Knight Rises will be Epic (or not)

If you've read even half my posts, you may have gathered that I'm quite a fan of Christopher Nolan (although not quite to the extent that you might think), a veritable Orson Welles among Batman film directors (his other films deserve credit as well though). Therefore I am naturally very excited about his next film, The Dark Knight Rises, out on the 20th of July. So here are five reasons why it's going to be good:

1) Tom Hardy - I initially thought that was an odd choice to play Bane, since I'd always thought of Hardy as the suave British guy from Inception. How can Bane be suave? That doesn't make any sense. But when I heard he was in Bronson and Warrior, it started to make sense. And he actually put on some extra muscle to play the part too, so he ought to be suitably bulky to play Bane, yet I'm sure he'll give the character his own unique twist. He may just be the first good Bane ever to grace the screen (except maybe the Bane from Batman: The Animated Series, which was pretty good).

2) Hans Zimmer - In case you haven't heard his soundtracks for Christopher Nolan's previous films, I shall say that they fit each of the films perfectly, and are in fact good songs just on there own. I can't really phrase Zimmer's composing abilities enough so I won't try to, I'll just say that they're good.

3) Inception - Well if his last film was good, surely his next one will be too? Okay, maybe not. But nonetheless, I can hope.

4) Anne Hathaway - On IMDb, it describes Hathaway's trademark as 'sassy, free-spirited women who attempt to remain independent', which pretty much fits her role as Catwomen. Besides, she can't be worse than Halle Berry (Catwoman, 2004).

5) The Prologue - The first six minutes of the film were released a few months back, so I read a review of it which seemed pretty positive. Overall reception is good (although not great), so can the rest of the film really be much worse?


Well... perhaps. Because there are some things the film has got going against it. Here are a few of them:


1) Heath Ledger - In my opinion, the two best single things about The Dark Knight were the the Joker and the soundtrack. Now, without Heath Ledger as the Joker, it's all down to Hans Zimmer to serve up a stellar soundtrack, but that won't make the film great on it's own. I can only hope that Tom Hardy is a suitable replacement villain.


2) The Trailer - The trailer was pretty poorly received by critics, but to be honest this factor can be ignored because the prologue provides much more detailed information.


3) The Ending - No matter what they do with the ending, it won't work. If Batman dies, it will be the end of that continuity and many people will be annoyed. If Bane dies, it will be too simple. If Catwoman dies, it will be a cliche. If no one dies, it will be too happy for such a dark series.


4) The Bat... thing - How can they possibly explain this? Seriously, when I saw that all the film's realism and grittiness died. Just look at it. Admittedly, it looks good for what it is, but really.


What do I personally think? To be honest, I expect it to be the worst of the trilogy. I know that's going against pretty much everything I said to begin with, but it's true. I just can not see the setup they've got working.

-PWN-

Television Review: Sherlock Season 2

WARNING: This review contains spoilers

Episode 1: A Scandal in Belgravia

I'm not trying to be the clever person here, so I'll admit that I prefer the new Sherlock series to many of the books. While it may not be fair to compare the two mediums, in my opinion the television program is wittier and more imaginative. That's not to say I didn't like the books, I loved them, but after a few years of popularity they slowly started to decrease in quality. Thank God I don't have to say the same thing about this show. I saw the first season back in 2011 on DVD and instantly loved it, spending hours watching it while I should have been doing homework, so it would have been almost as great a disappointment for this to be inadequate as if Batman Begins had been bad (I saw The Dark Knight first).


Irene Adler proved a suitable villain/antihero/love interest, although it threw Watson into the shadows somewhat. Fortunately he is often able to break up Sherlock and Irene with hilarious quips, making this the funniest Sherlock episode so far. There's not much more to say about it, except that it was amazing.

Episode 2: The Hounds of Baskerville

Reviews of this episode have been positive. Why? For goodness' sake, this was by far the worst Sherlock episode of the season, even the worst episode ever. That's right, I said it. What was Mark Gatiss thinking? Was he too busy acting Mycroft to write something decent? Quite possibly. More likely is that he used up all his good ideas on Doctor Who, but that doesn't make sense because Doctor Who is terrible too.

Anyway, maybe I'm being a little harsh on the episode. What exactly was wrong with it? Well it was just too slow, too obvious and not at all Sherlock-y. I generally turn off my brain while watching Sherlock, not because it's too simple, but because I would get so confused if I tried to work out what was going on that I would have to smash my TV screen. This time, however, even I figured out what the end was going to be halfway through. Mark wrote The Great Game (Episode 3 of Season 1) and that was brilliant, but the characterization of the minor villains was non-existent. Maybe this wasn't such a bad thing, but doing it in The Hounds of Baskerville doesn't work. I mean the villain must have had about five minutes of screen time, and his motivations were never explained. And the plot is not original. Firstly it was based very heavily on the book, and secondly, everything else is stolen from somewhere else. A Chemical weapons factory, a secret government project, a homicidal scientist in a gas mask, hallucinating worst fears...


Alright, I may be focusing on the bad stuff. I guess I did like the way it was shot, the acting was excellent (as usual) and the first twenty minutes lacked the problems of the rest of the episode. Also, the plot did allow for some expansion on the relationship between Holmes and Watson, but it wasn't quite funny enough. There were only two witty moments in the script. But I don't want to go back into that rant, so I'll just conclude. If I were to put a number (out of ten) on this it would a seven, which isn't bad, but the standard of writing is normally so much better I was thoroughly disappointed. It just felt like a typical detective show, not the best live-action television series I have ever seen.

Episode 3: The Reichenbach Fall

Good grief. It's good. It's very good. You liked the last finale, you'll love this. The rooftop scene, the graveyard scene, the heist scene... every scene was memorable. And the bit where (if you didn't read the earlier warning about spoilers, read it now) Moriarty shoots himself. I don't have to talk for long about this, because everything was almost perfect, I'll just do some nitpicking. My only real problem with the episode was that I never really believed that Sherlock might not be everything he said he was, and I also never really believed that he was dead (well... maybe for a second or two). I would have liked it if it had actually made these possibilities a bit more believable, but it was so packed with emotion that I didn't really mind. It's just a shame that that was it...


Fortunately the writers have said that 'hopefully before the year's out', Season 2 will air on BBC 1. That means I have something epic everything six months, with The Dark Knight Rises coming out in the summer. I can't wait to review that.

-PWN-