Dear Christopher Nolan,
You did it.
You made us cry. You made us cry over a grown man in a rubber suit with a cape who talked funny. That shouldn’t happen. But it did and it was all because of you. You made us care for a movie franchise we had lost all faith in; a movie franchise that got relegated to nipple jokes and the worst acting of Arnold Schwarzenegger ever. We didn’t expect a lot when you came on board. Sure, you had plans. You said you wanted to start fresh and you even brought a formidable Bruce Wayne in Christian Bale.
But we were still backing away. We were afraid of being disappointed again. We should have known better.
In 2003, you made us care about Batman again. You did it by giving us one of the best superhero movies ever made. Batman Begins to this day is the bar of how origin stories should be done. We’d argue it’s even better than Richard Donner’s Superman and Raimi’s Spider-Man. A couple of years later, you made an even better superhero movie with The Dark Knight. You gave us the villain we deserved in the Joker, but you also gave us the villain we needed in Harvey Dent/Two Face. We have to confess that we watched The Dark Knight at least five times in the theaters just to memorize Harvey’s speech at the end. You got our attention with Batman Begins but with The Dark Knight, you got a lot more than that. You got our loyalty. And you haven’t let us down since.
With your swan song to Batman, expectations were never higher. Everyone was wondering if you could outdo yourself. People were demanding that you do better than The Dark Knight. There was also Marvel’s The Avengers that showed the world a truly “fun” superhero movie. It was a sign that people might not want your “version” of heroes anymore and rumors of the movie’s ending threatened to spoil the plans you had for us. It was getting too much. But you climbed out of that hole like Bruce Wayne climbed out of that pit and you gave us the most perfect Batman movie we’ll ever see.
Now back to the crying. We couldn’t hold back our bat-tears. First when you led Batman down those tunnels, we shed tears of sadness. How dare you bring Batman to his death? How dare you let Catwoman betray Batman and send him to Bane? With every punch, we cried. We really thought you were going to kill Batman then and there. We should have known better.
But after the rise, after the police were freed, you sent Batman back to Bane. With every punch Batman gave Bane, every time Batman screamed “Where is the trigger!? Where is the trigger!?” we cried. It felt like the final scenes of Rocky III*, but this was better. Because this was the hero we deserved and the hero we needed and the greatest of heroes deserve the greatest of endings. And you gave him just that. So for the last time in possibly ever, we cried again for Batman and we said goodbye.
Thank you for making us cry, Christopher Nolan.
Sincerely,
Jiggy and Jonty
* * *
* That scene from Rocky III? It’s when Rocky takes every blow Clubber Lang has to give until Lang is all but tired and that’s when Rocky goes to work.