One of the most influential movies of the 21st century, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight ushered in a wave of blockbuster filmmaking that’s either copying it or working in opposition to it.  If a superhero movie is being made by Warner Bros or Fox in the ensuing years, it’s going to have to attempt to be a gritty/grounded film with a philosophical background on society.  If Disney’s at the helm, the demands of the market force their superhero movies to leave the dark stuff to someone else and lean heavily into a jokey tone with little connection to the real world.  The success of the latter strategy implies that the wrong lessons have been taken from The Dark Knight, that only this group of actors and filmmakers at this point in time could pull this off, as demonstrated by the insufficiency of The Dark Knight Rises four years later.  It’s not like every facet of The Dark Knight is pulled off as successfully as some others.  What does work here is some of the best of Nolan’s career and is worth emulating, but by so clearly aiming for profundity and seriousness, the film invites an interrogation it can’t hold up against.  One wishes that a reckoning with the War on Terror didn’t have to be wrapped up in a superhero movie, but we live in the cultural world that Nolan helped to create.  ​

​Tim Burton’s been a caricature of his former self for more than a decade now, but for the first chunk of his career, he was a major pop auteur.  Burton’s instantly recognizable style and aesthetic is established from the beginning, whether he’s making original ideas like Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands or adapting big franchises like Batman.  His first five films, ending with Batman Returns, have all the Gothic architecture, domestic satire, and Danny Elfman musical scores that would make him successful and recognizable.  Of those five, Batman Returns is the most off-putting, including the one about a crass demon.  Burton seems to be signing his own resignation letter and daring the studio to kick him off the franchise, and after seeing audiences both flock to and be recoiled as a drooling Penguin bites the nose off a flunky, Warner Bros. obliged.  Batman Returns leans hard into the silliness of superheroes by making so many big choices that, whether they work or not, are at least the kind of independent creative thinking that make the film into a fascinating mess.

​There’s a distinct possibility that a major international conflict will erupt in the South China Sea over which country owns this or that chain of tiny islands.  Taiwan continues to float out in its waters, a thorn in China’s side and a constant counter-example to authoritarian rule, at least in recent history.  In the year 4000, assuming a future where China takes over these islands and whatever other land it considers itself the rightful owners of, someone might very well make a historical epic justifying the bloody wars of unification as the only way to have true peace.  Future humans watching that movie might be as queasy as I am after watching Hero, Zhang Yimou’s stunning collection of top-tier actors and martial artists that is also a politically untenable argument for iron-fisted top-down control.  Iconic tableaus and peak wu xia wire work bring the viewer in for an entrée of herrenvolk unification.