The final sprint

Almost there.
Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy ends on July 20th – or the week after that for German speaking countries. I am currently entering this strange state of realizing that the wait is about to end. This movie is no longer something that has just a title. It went on to surprising us from time to time – back then we thought that it would just end a trilogy chronicling the first year of Batman and lay the foundations for future directors to pick up.

Instead we get a finale of 2:45 hours inspired by the Charles Dickens novel A tale of two cities. Batman will face a villain not many suspected for a Christopher Nolan installment and he might even not make it out alive.

Four years ago I had the same feeling of anticipation when I was waiting for The Dark Knight and while I doubt that this last installment will wow me as much as the second Batman movie I have more than high hopes for it.

Half of the movie has been shot in IMAX and will be presented in glorious 2D on a fantastic IMAX screen. Sadly the Austrian pendant of an IMAX is just a gloryfied screen where you don’t really see much difference to a regular sized one. Which makes the current advertisements in Austria for the Batman experience in IMAX a bit laughable.

Compared to the United States Europe has precious little real IMAX cinemas
In Europe the BFI IMAX is one of the few IMAX cinemas showing the 70mm prints of movies (and also not being an Imax used for museum – tours)

Having been to the BFI three times now I can say that the viewing experience is unmatched and I can understand why Christopher Nolan is so fascinated by the IMAX format. Watching the prologue of The Dark Knight opening with the view of Gotham had the audience gasping in surprise. The clear image and the scale of the screen (20 x 26 meters) is one of the most marvelous experiences possible.

Forget 3D – with the scale of IMAX you don’t need a gimmick to feel like you are in the movie. I hope that the success of The Dark Knight Rises will cause IMAX to spread.

But this is probably wishing for the impossible.

About The Dark Knight Rises:
I will try to get impressions up monday after having digested the movie premiere on friday a little bit – rest assured they will be completely spoiler free and as vague as possible.

Speculation corner:
I have not read any spoilers but I want to  speculate a little bit (I am a notorious gambler and when there is no Oscar time I have to bet on something else):

• Batman survives the movie – he lets himself get arrested at the end to answer for the laws he’s broken
• Alfred or Fox are going to die
• Gordon survives but gets beaten so much over the course of the film we might think he’ll die
• Batman gets publicly demasked and this is the reason the story ends – if everyone knows who the Batman is he kind of dies
• This means that Bruce Wayne himself will inspire the people of Gotham
• It will be the most optimistic superhero movie showing us the hero getting up from rock botton and still prevailing

 

Anywho – I hope you have a great time watching this movie and let’s hope that it delivers.