The Dark Knight Rises

John and I went to see the Dark Knight Rises marathon at the Regal Parkside Stadium 16 last night with friends. There were some hiccups, but it wasn’t bad.

We arrived about six pm and settled in with friends and like minded geeks alike. Nine hours in a chair, even a very comfortable chair like those in the RPX theater. If you aren’t familiar with RPX, or Regal Premium Experience, this is from their web site.

RPX involves converting individual screens into premium environments. The upgraded theaters will feature luxurious seats that have high-back head rests. The theaters will also have large 60 foot wide immersive screens and dual 30,000 lumen digital projectors capable of showing Real 3D and 2D movies. They will also be equipped with state-of-the-art 100,000 watt 9.1 digital audio speaker systems with 273 loudspeaker components including eight 21 inch subwoofers.

The seats were comfortable, and the sound was good, but I wasn’t aware of any real difference between this and other times I had visited Regal’s other theaters without RPX.

All of these ‘premiums’ are designed to simply increase ticket prices because people just don’t go to the movies any more. Revenues are up slightly, but only because of increased ticket prices. The number of patrons is falling dramatically. The number of patrons will continue to fall as home viewing technology improves, and prices skyrocket. Two large sodas and a large popcorn costs just over twenty dollars. The tickets for John and I were $25 each.

Someday either movie studios are going to change, or disappear. I am a betting man, and I love film, but I am still betting the latter.

Batman Begins stands up well, and is still a better experience on the big screen. After our first twenty minute intermission between films though, we had a problem. It seems the hard drive containing the Dark Knight arrived corrupted. We had no second film. I was appalled.

You see the projectors require a locked hard drive to function, and there was no way to download a new copy of the film. The movie studios are fighting inertia and good customer service to protect their intellectual property for a few days, if that. All that being said, the studio handled it as well as they could.

The General Manager came into the theater and personally apologized, a nice touch. They also gave us all passes to see another RPX film at a later time, and showed us Spider Man to fill up the time. My hat goes off to the GM, it was handled as well as we could have hoped.

About 12:15 we got to see the Dark Knight Rises and what a ride it was. I will keep the review spoiler-free, but let me say this. What an awesome capstone to the series. I think that Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy is amazing in that only a few hours after the lights came up I am already remembering the three films as one continuous story. Fantastic film making.

For those who doubted Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle I say balderdash. I think she did a great job of being Catwoman. I disliked Michelle Pfeiffer’s characterization in Batman Returns because it strayed too far from the comics. Her look and performance was great, it just shouldn’t have been called Catwoman. Ms. Hathaway was both dead sexy and pretty damn tough as a woman of questionable means and questionable morals in a very nebulous world.

Tom Hardy was physically impressive as Bane, and did manage to act well with about 75% of his face obscured. His eyes were awesome, and his physicality was impressive. All of Nolan’s Batman villains will pale in comparison to Heath Ledger as the Joker, but I think Hardy does as good a job as Aaron Eckhart did as Harvey Dent. Special mention should also be given to Joseph Gordon Levitt. I like him in this film, and that is all I have to say about that.

I won’t reveal the twists and the big reveal. Folks on the interwebs have done a bang up job of spoiling the film for many people. Suffice it to say I think that the film is very true to the spirit and mythology of Batman, though not slavishly worshipping the canon. I think that the film was better written and better acted than both The Avengers and John Carter, the two other ‘tent-pole’ releases this year. I couldn’t have asked for a better ending either.

See the Dark Knight Rises.

After we left the theater we saw a half-dozen police cars outside. I was unaware of the tragedy that occurred in Colorado, and I send my deepest condolences to the victims and their families.