Every once in a while the staff at In The Bagg like to single out a specific trailer for some ad naseum analysis. I, JKrengel, will still be your main guide but a few staff members might stop along the way to throw in their two cents or debate the merits of a particular trailer. Baggs himself will be dropping in for The Dark Knight Trailer 3. You should know that he and I are big fans of Batman beyond the films. We dig the animated series, graphic novels, and after the release of Batman Begins we even drafted a treatment for The Dark Knight and Rises. So, please excuse our nerdom and enjoy our rant.
TDKR (Trailer 3)
Baggs
This is epic right off the bat! I’m loving the lack of music. Too often, especially in trailers now, they rely on music to tell you how to feel. Without the music, or the very minimal music in this one it lets us put our own emotions into it, and for me it definitely has a creepy and mysterious tone; random high octave piano notes.
JK
I agree that the tone is well crafted, but you have to understand that it’s not the lack of music that’s causing this, it’s the lack of diegetic sound. This is the director that brought us Inception. He knows how to use music to punch up the adrenaline. Here he just cleverly used a minimalistic track under a ton of silent action. It’s an eerily satisfying combination.
Baggs
Very true. I’m loving the first shot of the, we are assuming, beginning Bruce. The one that has given up the cape and cowl and is just sitting all depressed in his mansion. He looks ragged and tired and in a bad place. Maybe he gets some peace by the end but at the beginning everything can’t be hunky dory. It’s also interesting that most of the dialogue revolves around Selina Kyle. She’s sort of the narrative focus in this particular trailer, even though many of the images are Bruce/Batman and Bane-centric.
JK
This is a good trailer. Many have mentioned to me how much this one excites them. It’s strange, I don’t have the same excitement I did for The Dark Knight.
Baggy
Neither do I. Batman Begins was completely surprising and delightful. It was something unexpected and it showed a lot of promise and potential so of course we were more hyped for the 2nd. Dark Knight generally fulfilled much of that promise but there were still some things wrong, some sloppiness to them that we found to be disappointing and so instead of being able to enjoy that fully it is tainted for us because it wasn’t exactly as we wanted it to be
JK
…and it has taken me a lot of time to get over that. I’ll admit, however, that the first trailer released for TDKR did rejuvenate some of my love for this franchise.
Baggs
See the first trailer and the prologue for me just made me even more worried.
JK
Well, the prologue didn’t inspire any confidence in me either. The first trailer, however, used the words “Epic Conclusion.” The thought of finality to a Batman story arc certainly peaks my interest.
Baggs
For me, I was worried the prologue was too planned out and lacked heart, which the Dark Knight suffered a bit from as well. Like I said, until this trailer none of the trailers had me too excited, but then this came along, focusing a little more on the plot, allowing everything to build and that generally excited me.
JK
I’m getting excited just by proxy of your excitement. Besides the sound design what about this trailer speaks to you? Explain the technical aspects of this trailer that really entice you.
Bags
Well, I think it builds incredibly well. I think we go from a nice mysterious place, where we are allowed to imprint ourselves on the images while we are getting a general plotline of the film, and as the music builds the story builds until the middle, where we go right back to all hype, which is how it should have been all along.
JK
The football field still sits wrong with me, but I’m starting to understand what kind of movie this is. It’s Nolan’s attempt at a Frank Miller story line where the sh*! really hits the fan.
Baggs
Very true. Maybe a little less weird. I mean he did say he pulled from Dark Knight Returns for this one. I’ll wager that not only does the sh@$ hit the fan, but clearly Bane is supposed to be more of a force than Joker was in the last film. He really was a sort of random (or seemingly random) disaster waiting to happen but, while his plans had menace, they were still more playful. Here it looks like Bane’s plans are literally going to be tearing through scenes and Gotham. Bane actually wants to destroy while Joker only wanted to toy with Batman.
JK
We know going into this next film that Bruce is in a tough place. This might be the first trailer that sets the right tone on what I assume this story will have.
Baggs
It is. What we get, specifically from this trailer, is that Bruce is in a bad place, Bane f%^ks some sh@# up, Catwoman is worried about Batman and scared of Bane, Batman gets captured but Bane wants to play with him, and we get all these overtones about how Batman could die, which might be the most important part! The question we should be asking here is if we think they are going to kill Batman off or not. Does Bruce Wayne die? All signs are pointing to yes.
JK
DC doesn’t have the balls, even if Nolan does, they’d never let him kill off Bruce Wayne. At best, he’ll mysteriously disappear and weak evidence of his demise will surface. Somehow, I don’t see that happening.
Baggs
If you think about the trilogy as a whole a main underlying theme seems to be that it is impossible for one man to save everyone, which could lend some weight to the a group of Batman Mercenaries by the end of the film, ala Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns.
JK
It’s an interesting thought and they’re definitely pushing this possibility hard. Let’s switch up to discuss what we learn in this trailer about Catwoman… and the flying car.
Baggs
The flying car is easy. From what I’ve seen, that’s the tackiest sh#$ in the movie.
JK
ahem… blowing up a football field …. ahem
Baggs
Well, we already got a cheesy comic book line revolving around the flying car. We have yet to get one for the football field.
JK
Point well taken! So, how are you feeling about the treatment of Catwoman? Let’s start by discussing the casting of Anne Hathaway.
Baggs
I’d say this trailer eased some of my qualms about Hathaway as Catwoman. Most of the other trailers didn’t show much of her, it was almost like they were hiding her. You had the ballroom scene and a couple choice shots but that’s about it. Here she’s a focal point of the trailer and she sounded good. I think she’ll end up being a better Selina Kyle than Catwoman (much like Bale is a better Bruce than Batman) but it was nice to see them actually give us a little catwoman in this trailer.
JK
Her lines have an air of genuine concern and thoughtfulness, which is different from how I had envisioned the character. It actually makes sense for a Hathaway-Catwoman, although it’s not very Catwoman-ly. In the comic books, at least, her motives tend to be more self-serving and/or ambiguous. That’s not to suggest that there isn’t room for another version of the character. If anyone can dream up a worthy re-imagining of a DC character, it’s Nolan.
Bags
I assume this trailer exhibits more middle and end-of-movie Catwoman as opposed to beginning-of-the-movie Catwoman. Her little ballroom shtick seems pretty Catwoman-ly, so I’ll reserve judgment.
JK
The misunderstanding of Batman is what I really like about the character. The beginning of this film should give us some of that. After all, he is the perceived villain in the beginning here. The Dark Knight if you will.
Bags
I’m just afraid that we won’t get a sense from him that he finally feels he is Batman and must be Batman. I get more of a feeling that he’s being roped back into this thing he doesn’t want to do anymore. If they don’t somehow get to the point where Bruce has the realization that he must be Batman and that he has to begrudgingly accept the responsibility the movie has failed.
JK
We’re pulling a lot from these trailers.
Bags
Speculation my friend. We can’t help ourselves when it comes to Batman.
It’s hard to get passed the first sentence of this article with it’s que horrible pun.
I think I’m a Catwoman hater. Can someone please justify why she is an interesting character. Specifically why we’re suppose to believe she can beat people up.
All the talk this Summer has really been for The Avengers and Prometheus (seem to really go for the Inception sound thing in their trailer also where we get those loud off key screeches randomly that build in tempo), and for me it has led to an air of mystery for this that has me pretty excited. Catwoman is an interesting character because Anne Hathaway in tight leather is interesting…. Bags and JK, was this how Bane’s voice was in the Prologue? They really made him out to sound unintelligible, but he sounds fine here.
Oh no, Bane’s voice sounded like a digitally garbled mess in the prologue. They’ve redone the entire sound mixing and probably rerecorded his foice.
Oh no, Bane’s voice sounded like a digitally garbled mess in the prologue. They’ve redone the entire sound mixing and probably rerecorded his voice.