The movie theatre is my home, and the idea that someone would violate that innocent and hopeful place in such an unbearably savage way is devastating to me.

— Christopher Nolan

I saw The Dark Knight Rises approximately 24 hours after the tragedy that occurred in Aurora, Colorado. I didn’t think twice when I purchased the tickets, even though I had heard about it all the way to work that Friday morning. It wasn’t until a security guard entered the theatre right after the house lights had dimmed and checked the emergency exits that I found my eyes and mind wandering. I scanned those same exits. I looked at the folks around me, especially those who had gotten up to leave. Returning with no concessions or evidence of purpose only sent my imagination off. I had to decide whether or not person X was likely to commit a violent act. Surely that old man here with his wife wouldn’t brandish a weapon? That group of guys? That mother of three?

Part of me was embarrassed that any of it had even crossed my mind. Aurora’s Cinema 16 security was not prepared for such a random act of violence precisely because it was unthinkable. To my knowledge, nothing like it had ever happened before. The last time I can recall any violence linked to a movie screening was in the early 90’s after the release of New Jack City. I confess to being ignorant as to whether or not any gun violence actually took place (mostly fights, if memory serves), but I feel confident in saying that no one was shot IN a theatre, and certainly not over 50 people. But yes, it has happened now and we tell ourselves we must do something so it can never happen again.

But we do not live in the world of Minority Report. We can’t predict individual acts of violence. We can only react. There isn’t a place we can go that will be completely and absolutely safe, but there are places where violence is far less likely to occur. The movie theatre should be one of them. I believe that it still is.

Time will tell, of course. This appears, so far, to have been the act of a lone and probably unbalanced individual. There will always be crazies. There will always be acts of random violence in public places. Are we to live in fear? Are we to walk out of our front doors every day expecting the worst? Of course not. But we feel the need to react. There must be something, anything that can be done.

I must admit to being pleased that the result hasn’t been a return to the argument that the film itself was responsible for inciting violence. We know that to be at best a gross oversimplification. Films themselves are reactions to the human experience. They hold up a mirror. It may be wiser to look at America’s appetite for violence. Violent films are made because they make money. A violent culture, or at least a culture with a taste for consuming violent images, leads to violent films, not the other way around.

There were more than a few scenes in The Dark Knight Rises that made my wife shield her eyes, all involving guns. I looked for her reaction because I was affected as well. But I did settle a bit as the film continued. I cannot pinpoint when, specifically, but I know that I eventually did what I had come to do — I watched a movie. And though the Aurora tragedy never fully left my mind, I was able to push it into the background. My hope is that in the future other moviegoers will be able to do the same, their fear dimming with the theatre lights, not forgotten, but not triumphant either.

—

Kevin Mattison is co-editor of The Idler, and a filmmaker and videographer. You can follow him on Twitter at @kmmattison.

Inception is really just a heist film. Never mind that it actually involves planting something rather than stealing it. Its story involves a career criminal gathering up a core group of specialists to help him complete a job. The job is, of course, bigger than anything they’ve ever done before. In this regard, Inception is simple, straightforward storytelling. We’ve seen this movie before. Its elegance is in its execution. It’s not the story you tell, it’s how you tell it and Nolan has chosen to tell his heist story inside the mind.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio, singularly named, which is another heist film tradition), the career criminal in question, specializes in breaking into people’s minds via their dreams and extracting information, a high-tech corporate spy. He’s hired by a mysterious man named Saito (Ken Watanabe), not to steal an idea, but to implant one. His target is a CEO with some serious daddy issues played by Cillian Murphy. This planted idea is meant to bring about the CEO’s ruin.

As with any great heist film the joy is in the process. We watch Cobb assemble his team, each bringing their unique skills and character foibles to the job. One of the team’s rookie recruits, a young woman named Ariadne (Ellen Page, whose character name means “Most Holy”) allows Cobb the opportunity to explain the process to the audience as he walks her through inception 101. I won’t go into detail because there is simply too much detail to go into. Suffice it to say that Nolan has thought of just about as much as anyone could regarding the logistics of dream infiltration. Also, there’s a Jim-dandy of a scene where Paris folds in on itself around them. It’s sweet.

I’ve neglected to mention that Cobb’s deceased wife keeps showing up in his dream state, serving to make his job (and his crew’s) a bit more difficult than need be. The nature of their relationship is the heart of the film, driving Cobb’s character and leading to one of the more interesting endings this year. Its ambiguity will lead to many great post-film conversations.

Inception continues Nolan’s streak of creating compelling, intelligent blockbuster films, but will the Academy hand out best picture to such a mainstream success?

Inception is nominated for Best Picture, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing & Mixing, Best Visual FX and Best Original Screenplay

Leslie H. Martinson, for example, brought us Batman: the Movie (1966) (BAM!) a camp-schlock extravaganza (POW!) starring Adam West as Batman and Burt Ward as Robin (KERFUFFLE?). The film, which grew out of the 60’s TV series, concerns Batman’s primary rogues gallery (the Joker, the Riddler, the Penguin and Catwoman) joining forces in a fiendish plot to. . . dehydrate people. Yes, fiendish. It contains some truly brilliant moments, including Batman fending off a shark attack with his handy bat-shark-repellent and a delightful little game of free association culminating in Batman, Robin, and the Commissioner miraculously (and hilariously) uncovering just who is behind this fiendish (soooo fiendish) plot to give everyone cotton mouth. The only thing more fun than watching this nonsense is listening to the DVD commentary provided by the dynamic duo of delusion, West and Ward themselves! (KAPLOOEY!)

Tim Burton stepped up to the plate with his own darker version of the Batman in 1989’s lazily titled Batman, with an unlikely Michael Keaton pulling on the cowl in the title role. Keaton, while a bit older and more quirky than the Bruce Wayne we’ve come to expect, manages to fit pretty nicely into Burton’s more stylized, film noir Gotham City. And although Burton has done away with much of the campiness of the 60’s series, Batman‘s often over-the-top dialog and repeated use of Dutch camera angles definitely hints at a certain fondness for the bat-camp of the past. Jack Nicholson’s Joker is certainly more Cesar Romero than Heath Ledger (More to come on that).

As is often the case when a director is allowed to do more than one entry into a series, Burton’s second dance with the devil in the pale moonlight was a bit too much of a good thing. Batman Returns, released in 1992, featured some even sillier dialog, a lamer villain (the Penguin, eh? Oh, and he controls real penguins? AND he’s played by Danny Devito?!), a slightly cooler villain (Christopher Walken, simultaneously adding and subtracting from the film with his weirdness), a purrrfectly over-the-top Catwoman (I don’t care what anyone says, I don’t like this character and Michelle Pfieffer did little to change that) and even Dutchier Dutch camera angles! Keaton is given little to do but wade through the weird.

In 1993 directors Eric Radomski and Bruce Timm brought an animated Batman to the silver screen for the first time with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Drawing from the phenomenal animated series, Mask was a fine entry into the filmography, but was largely ignored by moviegoers outside of the series’ fans. Mark Hamill (Yes, THAT Mark Hamill) always seems to be having a great time as the voice of the Joker and I’ve long held the opinion that Kevin Conroy’s Batman voice should totally be overdubbed into Christian Bale’s lozenge craving throat.

Speaking of too much of a good thing, that’s exactly how Joel Schumacher started his bat-reign with 1995’s Batman Forever. Taking the baby-step backwards that would lead to the giant leap (see below), Forever built upon Burton’s silliness while disregarding most of the noir element that helped make the silliness more palatable. The shadows were replaced with brightly colored gel lighting and the villains became larger than life. It’s not a terrible film, but it’s certainly not a good one either. Val Kilmer is, in my opinion, the most bland and forgettable of all the Batmen, and we are finally (and regrettably) introduced to Robin, played with unfortunate zeal by Chris O’Donnell.

Schumacher followed it up by throwing a rock into the bat signal with Batman and Robin (1997), a ridiculous spectacle that would play quite nicely as a sequel to Martinson’s ’66 film. Remember when I mentioned Val Kilmer being the most bland and forgettable Batman? George Clooney should be so lucky. He’s officially the worst Batman of the bunch, although, to his credit he is quite aware of that fact as he has publicly blamed himself for “single-handedly destroying the franchise.” Bless his heart. Because I think Clooney’s too classy to, I’ll plop some blame for his unfortunate portrayal into Schumacher’s lap as well. Couple that with another dose of Robin’s inanity, the introduction of Batgirl, Uma Thurman’s ham sandwich performance as Poison Ivy and Schwartzenegger’s nightmare puns as Mr. Freeze (Everybody chill!) and you’ve got Batman on Broadway with the Andrew Lloyd Weber tunes traded for a few bat-nipples.

Then, in 2005, Christopher Nolan brought us Batman Begins. Dark, realistic and intelligent, the film takes Batman to places not yet explored outside of the comic book sphere. It is the first of the films to really take any time with Bruce Wayne, here portrayed by Christian Bale as a determined, haunted man. The loss of his parents and, in particular, his father has led him to confront his fears and eventually embody them. And even though the handling of the villains is superb in Begins (Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow is killer), they really take a backseat to Bruce’s story. I believe that it is in Batman Begins that Bruce becomes more comfortable in the cowl than outside of it. His mansion, his cars, his fancy suits are the real disguise. This is Batman’s inception (See what I did there?).

If the villains took a backseat in Nolan’s first bat-flick, then they take the driver’s seat (and probably stole it) in The Dark Knight (2008). It’s safe to say that crazy attracts crazy, and Bruce begins to see some of the ramifications for his particular brand of street justice when the Joker decides to use Gotham as his personal psych project. I will not spend time praising Heath Ledger’s Joker performance (Okay, maybe a little: It’s phenomenal!), it’s been praised to death. What I will praise is the Nolan brothers’ screenplay, which focuses more on the big picture this time around. Batman/Bruce is forced to confront himself in the face of a villain whose motivations are far less black-and-white than his own. And even as he turns to Harvey Dent to be the “white knight” he cannot, his hopes are crushed by tragedy, Dent becoming another victim of the system, anarchy’s cold indifference and the Batman himself. It may not be the perfect Batman film (Begins is actually a lot closer to my ideal Batman, despite being a lesser overall film), but it’s a near perfect crime saga.