For the past hour on my drive home I’ve been trying to think how I can put into words what I just saw. Thanks to “Operation Early Bird” I got to see The Dark Knight Rises’ prologue this evening at my local IMAX theater. Warner Bros. representatives were there, and I was able to score both of the t-shirts they were handing out. A Batman shirt that reads “Legend” and a Bane shirt that says “End”, which are pictured above. This was just the start of an awesome night. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow description, if that’s what you’re looking for check out my post from last week. I’m just going to try to summarize everything that’s going through my head right now after seeing the first six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises.
For the past three years I’ve been wondering how Christopher Nolan could top The Dark Knight. Well, it only took him six minutes into The Dark Knight Rises to do it. Nolan told Empire that this would be the introduction of Bane, and give us a taste of the rest of the film too. It’s clear as to why Gary Oldman keeps saying this movie is going to be epic, I can’t think of a better way to describe it either. To put it simply, the opening sequence involves an airplane heist… which is already a step up from The Dark Knight’s bank heist — on paper. But Nolan delivers, in a way that only Nolan can. You’ve never seen anything like this before, and the crazy part is… most of this stunt was probably done without the aid of CGI. I did have one complaint though, which probably won’t surprise you if you’ve read other reviews. Bane is very hard to understand. Keep in mind, the scene takes place on a noisy airplane, so maybe if they tone down the background noise it won’t be so bad. But as it is now, it’s a struggle to keep up with what he’s saying.
Driving for two hours to see six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises was definitely worth it. If you have the opportunity, go see it in front of select showings of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol! After the prologue there was a montage of clips from the rest of the movie. We get a good look at Batman and his new gadget, a nice look at Catwoman in full costume (she looks fantastic!), a quick stare down between Batman and Bane, and lastly, as hinted by the new poster, a shot of Bane tossing aside a piece of Batman’s cowl. If nothing else, this got me extremely excited for The Dark Knight Rises trailer #2 which will be hitting theaters on Friday.
So what did you guys think? If you were lucky enough to attend a screening tonight, share your thoughts in the comments. I’ll try to answer any questions you might have too.
