They weren’t the Batman movies we deserved, but they were perhaps the Batman movies we needed. Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy (encompassing Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises) is returning to IMAX screens for a special five-city tour to mark the 80th anniversary of Batman’s comic book debut.
On Saturday March 30th, the three movies will be screened back-to-back at the Universal Cinema AMC at CityWalk Hollywood, with attendees getting the awesome bonus of Nolan himself appearing in the interlude between the second and third installments for a Q&A.
The films will then be heading to the AMC Lincoln Square in New York and the AMC Metreon in San Francisco on April 13th, followed by screenings at the Cinesphere Ontario Place in Toronto and the IMAX Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis on April 20th. Nolan won’t be attending the latter screenings, but his Q&A from the March 30th show will be screened.
The director’s Batman trilogy represents one of the last gasps of a particular type of superhero cinema, one with the aim of telling a closed story rather than a cinematic universe that could theoretically continue into infinity. One of the most striking things about The Dark Knight Rises is that it actually has an ending for Batman, and a surprisingly happy one.
That decision caused a bit of a fan controversy at the time, but from a modern viewpoint, it’s actually kind of refreshing to be able to follow Bruce Wayne’s journey from childhood to retirement and judge it as a whole. It also allowed Nolan to develop themes across the course of his trilogy, with each villain acting as a kind of prism through which we can reconsider Batman.
As you can probably tell, I’m a big fan of these movies and I honestly don’t think there’s been a superhero film better than The Dark Knight in the years since its release. Sadly, none of these screenings are taking place in my city, but if they were, you can guarantee I’d be there on March 13th at 9 am when these tickets go on sale.
