Tracking Transmedia

Director Christopher Nolan's dramatic re-envisioning of the Batman franchise comes to a thundering end with "The Dark Knight Rises," a spectacular noir epic that's equal parts murky, bloated, flashy and triumphantly cinematic. Four years after Nolan's "Batman Begins" sequel "The Dark Knight" rattled audiences with a similar audiovisual overload, the new movie falls into the same rhythm and remains viscerally satisfying even when the story falters. Once again, Nolan's monolithic take on Batman is a jarring, fractured experience fraught with tension right through its daringly open-ended conclusion.

 

Among the recent spate of superhero blockbusters, Nolan's Batman movies have stood out for conveying both mature direction and fiercely intellectual screenplays, but they move so quickly that it's often hard to tell if they earn the pervasive reverence. At the end of the day, the three movies follow the same formula, blending dreary CGI spectacles with grave pontifications and brutal action. People scowl and whisper as often as things blow up, which in these times is something of a Hollywood anomaly...