Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises PROLOGUE!!!!

The Dark Knight Rises prologue (2011)

 Starring: Tom Hardy

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

I saw it. Thanks to one amazing friend of Jetpack, I was lucky enough to catch a free screening of the first 6 minutes of The Dark Knight Rises. So how was it?

Stunning.

I’ll try to keep this spoiler-free for those who want to try and see it in IMAX before Mission Impossible 4 (or online), but I will say that Nolan has really outdone himself with this. Much like the prologue for The Dark Knight, which introduced audiences to Heath Ledger’s Joker, the newest footage from Christopher Nolan’s third film introduces Bane, played by Tom Hardy. Hardy is definitely an intimidating figure, and his portrayal is very, very creepy. He’s extremely imposing, and the mask is very awesome and disturbing, even if it does make it nearly impossible to hear what he’s saying.

Essentially the prologue shows Bane attacking a CIA plane and kidnapping a doctor under their protection. We learn that Bane had offered to hire this doctor, and wants to ensure that he didn't reveal his plans to anyone. We also get hints and clues that this is the beginning of a much bigger overall plot. While previous villains in the Nolan Bat-films had their sites on Gotham, one gets the feeling that Bane’s plans, while including Gotham, also stretch far beyond the city’s borders. From what little information gathered from the footage, it’s obvious that Bane is a very powerful figure to his men, so much so that he has an almost fanatical following.

There’s an incredible feeling of tension in the prologue, even though it’s only six minutes long. A large part of this is Nolan’s decision to film the sequence with IMAX cameras, and my god; he is a master with this format.  For everything that James Cameron did (for better or worse) for 3D with Avatar, Christopher Nolan has done for IMAX. This is truly the ultimate way to see the prologue, which is really unfortunate since there are only 100 screens that fit Nolan’s specifications for viewing the prologue.  Nolan has stated that he’s a huge James Bond fan, and this footage solidifies my hopes that he gets the chance to direct one of that franchise’s future installments.

There has been a lot of talk around the Internet that Bane’s dialogue was completely incomprehensible. While he was a little hard to understand in some of the more action heavy parts of the footage, I didn’t have nearly has hard of a time understanding him as others did. That might have been because I had heard of the problems beforehand, or maybe I just have better hearing than most.  I’m fairly certain that Nolan will address this issue for the actual film, he’s way too smart to not listen to the public on this, or allow something that can affect the narrative of his film.

You think you know, but you have no idea

Despite this quibble, the footage is spectacular. Everything about it is incredible and ensures that the film starts out with something that you have never seen before in an action movie.  The sizzle reel of some quick scenes afterwards sent chills down my spine, especially the final shot we see before the now famous bat symbol logo. The strange thing is that this sizzle reel actually featured many scenes that we’ve seen from set photos that were leaked online. However, even though we’ve seen these scenes being shot, we still have no idea what they are in the context of the film, which is probably the reason why Nolan included them.  There are definitely more questions than answers now after seeing the prologue, and it makes the wait for July 20^th that much harder…..