The fire Rises – Batman marketing

Even though we have had a lot of photos and exposure of The Dark Knight Rises most of it were set videos and nothing official from Warner Brothers. This has now changed as the marketing for TDKR has kicked in full gear.

Full IMAX attack
Premiering with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol fans will be able to see a six minutes prologue introducing the character of Bane in a similar way as the bank heist introduced us to Joker in The Dark Knight.
The prologue will only be shown in high quality IMAX cinemas – so this means that no cinema in Europe except the Odeon (Manchester) and the fantastic BFI (London) will show the first six minutes.

I know that this is very frustrating, but Christopher Nolan wants to push IMAX as the best format to view a movie and therefore they draw attention to REAL IMAX. Having watched The Dark Knight on the incredible 20 x 26 meter high screen I must say that I can understand why Nolan is such a fan of the format. Watching the Hong Kong sequences on this enormous screen just had me shiver and worry I might fall down the skyscrapers – it was probably the most immersive movie experience I have ever had without any Threee deee distractions necessary.
The IMAX we have in Austria is a laughable joke compared to the real IMAX which uses 60 millimeter negatives and where the BFI is truly worth every extra cent the cinema in Vienna is just pretending to be anything else but a gloryfied canvas. I doubt that there will be a real theater in Austria anytime soon, but one can only hope that this marketing tactic is raising awareness of the potential of IMAX.

The bootleg rises
There is one thing that comforts me about all this marketing: Warner Brothers is not afraid of exposure – quite the contrary: before the prologue was shown infront of the fourth Mission Impossible there was an extra screening on December 8th for critics so that the positive buzz for a simple preview could already start.
And apart from complaints about Bane’s voice being inaudible at times the reports have been overwhelmingly positive. Inception meets Batman and jaw-dropping is what can be read between the lines. So much that one might be tempted to watch a bootleg version of the prologue just to know what everyone is talking about.

I can only advise you not to do this. When the bank robbery prologue of TDK was shown before I am Legend I watched a recorded version and while I found it ok it was nowhere near to the amazingly shot opening. It will be the same here and much like The Dark Knight I am sure that the prologue will be released in some form – the bank robbery was included in a special edition Batman Begins Blu Ray one month before The Dark Knight arrived in theaters.

The Batman must have a trailer
So with all the buzz starting we naturally crave for moving images and this will be the case with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, which will have the new trailer (2 minutes running time) attached. I doubt it will be attached in the German-speaking countries, but don’t be sad. The trailer will go online next tuesday december 20th.

So stay tuned for an explosion of The Dark Knight Rises images.

the hype rises…