1. Escapism
A comic book opens up worlds which remove you from the miseries of day to day life. You have superheros with extraordinary abilities like Superman or normal people who are thrust into horrible and difficult situations like Rick in The Walking Dead. You still see parallels with your own real life existence but the boundary line is there so you can escape, have fun and enjoy yourself. This is also the primary job of any movie, especially a comic book movie. Nolan is so preoccupied with the notion of forcing outlandish characters like Batman, Joker and Bane into the world that we actually went to the cinema to escape from, his films loose everything that made Gotham so popular in the first place. We have ponderous conversations in Wayne Enterprises boardroom, Bane makes speeches about the poor reclaiming the city from the rich which has been put in to be topical and reference the Occupy Movement that swept the globe. Gotham City is no longer a grand gothic metropolis but rather a real world city with glass skyscrapers that can be found in any financial district. Where it might sound like a good idea to try and juxtapose the Batman world with the real world, on screen it causes problems when you try to preach to us about how a man taking the law into his own hands is detrimental to society, we know this, it's not the reason we went to see a Batman film. When you try to make us accept the idea that Bane's mask somehow relieves him of pain, it doesn't work in the real life setting because you cant imagine how it works, surly a large dose of paracetamol would be better. Most of all, it makes the Batman world gloomy and dreary and not in the Gotham way. You just have to see how Nolan's set pieces fail to ignite any level of excitement because they try too hard to be realistic. Burton made a Batman film that understood the source material and he understood that characters like Batman and Joker only work within that fantasy world. But that didn't stop him from making a film that was full of style and energy and that is why it blew audiences minds when they saw it. Nolan in contrast took all the possibilities that the Batman world offered and made it dull, drab and mundane, just like real life. Burton gave us escapism, Nolan gave us that Monday morning feeling. Do you agree? Share your thoughts below in the comments thread.