Even the Batman has limitations- and now he is going to have to rise past them if he is to save Gotham.
Novelization by: Greg Cox
Screenplay By: Jonathon Nolan and Christopher Nolan
Story By: Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer
What They Say
Eight years have passed since Batman was last seen in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne’s alter ego is hunted by the law, and nothing- it seems- can bring him back. Not even a brazen theft committed by the enigmatic and seductive cat burglar Selina Kyle- inside the walls of Wayne Manor itself.
But then a deadly new threat appears, as if out of nowhere. Bane. Huge, powerful, and terrifyingly methodical, Bane is bent on spreading chaos and death. Commissioner Gordon and the GCPD are unable to stop him and have nowhere to turn. But after so many years, can the Dark Knight once again save Gotham from its gravest threat yet?
The Review:
Eight years have passed since the Joker blew through Gotham challenging its citizens, criminals and its champions in a brutal maelstrom of madness lined with malevolence. Though the city survived and looks to be stronger than ever from the outside the signs of cracks are still present to those who know where to look and two men know that the current peace and stability was built on the lie that Harvey Dent was able to withstand the Joker’s methods and temptation while the cities masked avenger was the one who succumbed and killed a number of people pursuing the Clown Prince of Crime in the shadow of his Machiavellian scheme.
In the wake of the events and Batman being used as a scapegoat, Harvey Dent’s saved legacy was used to pass laws making it easier to imprison members of organized crime and keep them off the streets which has helped the police greatly but the truth eats at the soul of their commissioner every day that he is forced to pretend the monster who tried to kill his son was a saint. He isn’t the only one still haunted by the events of that time either as the city’s former hero has retreated back into his sanctuary as the loss of his childhood friend that he loved and the wounds he suffered fighting both men turned monsters that night have played a high cost on Bruce Wayne. Hobbled with a bad knee injured in his fall protecting Gordon’s son as well as the effects gathered over his career of fighting crime have worked as a form of almost betrayal by his body, robbing him of his mobility but perhaps it was the moral fall of Harvey Dent on whom Bruce was willing to bet everything turned out to be that last straw as he has become a recluse that no one outside of his faithful butler Alfred and perhaps some of the other staff of Wayne Manner have seen in eight years. But time waits for no man and in a South American country a mysterious mercenary named Bane has been assembling an army armed with loyalty money can’t buy and has just kidnapped a nuclear physicist and turns his sights onto Gotham for his own secretive reasons.
Events swirl and start to draw the recluse hero in as Bruce Wayne is slowly brought back into the world he has cut himself off from, first thanks to an invasion of his home by the skilled and suspected (though being caught in the act kind of removes suspicion) cat burglar Selina Kyle who uses an event honoring Harvey Dent on the estate to sneak in and collect a set of Bruce’s fingerprints (along with a necklace for her efforts) which have him visiting his cave to gather information in what seems to be a rare act since he last took off the Batman cowl. What really brings him out though is the temporary abduction of Jim Gordon which sets off a string of events that show Bane is in Gotham’s sewers as a young detective, John Blake, confronts Bruce both with his knowledge that Bruce is Batman but Blake also wakes the former hero up to some of the other realities that Bruce Wayne has been ignoring since he stepped off the stage and hide himself in his own pain as Blake tries to push Bruce into once again become the incorruptible symbol he once created as he attempted to clean up Gotham.
And Bruce Wayne’s troubles that he has just been alerted to may be as serious as Batman’s as someone is attempting a hostile takeover of his family company, a company that has been unable to provide its philanthropic support since Bruce pulled the plug on a fusion reactor meant to revolutionize Gotham’s power supply and which has left it vulnerable to new ownership. To hold off these multiple dangers to both his families legacy and the city, Bruce Wayne is going to have to test the limits with some old allies while also acquiring some new ones, but not all of the people he wants to trust will have the same motivation to help or be willing to pay the price he is asking of them. When Bane’s plans start to show fruition though both aspects of the hero may find they are unable to challenge the mysterious man as time has taken its toll on Bruce’s body and dulled his former reflexes while this new adversary is incredibly powerful in his physical prowess and has been honing himself on an even finer edge over the same period of time but even more dangerously this menacing man may be a match for the hero’s intellect as well- if not superior. With everything on the line Bruce Wayne is going to have to take Batman to a level he has never been before in order to save his city…and even then it may not be enough as this time the the city’s guardian may not be able to climb high enough to overcome his greatest challenge.
Novelizations can be tricky things at times as the author is placed in the position of having to take a film’s shooting script and figure out how to change the often stark setups found there and translate that to another form, often with little idea of how the dialogue is going to be delivered by the actor as emphasis can add so much to what the audience takes away and can be left for the actor and director to see what they feel is best while shooting the scene. Authors rarely have the time or opportunity to see much (if any) of the work in progress and have to rely on scripts that they may suddenly find have undergone revision which forces them to do rewrites of their own or which may leave them in an odd position if there is an emergency reshoot or an edit that changes the flow of things. On top of that they can only describe settings as well as the script does unless they are given access to either concept art or production material so the work establishing the setting may not feel as strong -and when an environment is practically a character itself (as Nolan’s visuals manage to do in no small part for Gotham) it can feel like a major piece is absent from the finished product.
On the other hand though what a novelization can do is present a look into characters and their motivations in such a way as they are there in black and white without an audience member having to discern certain factors from how a line is delivered at times or reading an actor’s face while trying to pick out a certain message or theme that can get buried in the midst of other visual components that may distract the attention- In the case of the novel for example the illusions to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is much clearer than in the theatrical form where it is only clearly delivered once and a number of the other allusions got swallowed up by the visual elements which didn’t do the film a lot of favors as it created some muddled messages.
An adaptation novel can also explore ideas that may have been conceived in the process of creating the script but which were not brought out in scenes in the film for one reason or another. To this end, fans of the franchise will find a few gems throughout as references to the Joker in the film are nonexistent yet the novel points out how some of the set pieces like the ramps around the stock exchange were developed in response to his reign of terror and it also plays to the character with a mention that even in the time of this film his current whereabouts are as unknown to the masses as his history is to everyone before he started his crime wave.
With that idea in mind a novelization is sometimes a tricky thing to judge as one has to try to figure out just how much the original script plays a role in the final product as well as how good a job the author does in taking some dialogue, descriptions and (sometimes vague) screen directions and turning them into a product that stands as an entertaining work in its own right. In that the book falls a bit at times in comparison to its visual counterpart as Nolan created an incredibly lush environment for his characters to live in that the books more minimalist approach to the city just doesn’t really even seem to try to match. While it isn’t a deal breaker in itself, there is probably no way one could read just the book and come away with anything close to what the feature shows in terms of Gotham and some of the important areas that scenes take place in and that feels like a bit of a loss.
On top of that the book carries a number of the scripts problems from a sort of floundering second act with the occupation of Gotham and Bruce trying to become Batman again to the attempt to weave in a double arc of Batman overcoming his troubles which in theory could work but in practice kind of dampens some of the emotions of things as generally a film has three arcs to it in construction to build up the hero with Rises attempts to work in a repeat of the hero having to climb back out of a dangerous peril which dilutes both the previous attempt and the secondary one. Probably a middle ground issue is the removal of a scene with detective Blake that could either been seen either as a further motivation for his character to revitalize Batman or just an excuse to work in an item that then was used in both the film and viral marketing but which doesn’t add much when taken on its own merits to the picture. Where the adaption shines however is in its ability to work in events from the past story that the feature did not in small bits that don’t change the focus to the previous films but which feels more realistic than the whole city suddenly forgetting much of what went on in the past. The book manages to weave these little events in a way that strengthens events and its clarification of certain scenes really does a favor to the story that the feature desperately could have used in one of its more chaotic points.
Unlike the novelization to The Dark Knight however the work here on Rises isn’t quite as insightful and vivid enough to consider a fantastic telling of the same story that holds its own merits completely, but perhaps that is a factor that The Dark Knight’s adaptation was done by Dennis O’Neil who has written or edited tales of the Caped Crusaders comics for decades and which gave him some more familiarity with the material and which gave him more latitude in delving into aspect of the character not as defined on the silver screen. From experience I know Greg Cox can put out some amazing work (his Iron Man: The Armor Trap is one of my favorite adventure of Shellhead in any medium) but here his talents seem to be shackled by having to stay as close to the script as possible which leaves little area for individual flourish that might have helped some of the areas where the action and environment just doesn’t translate as well on paper as Nolan pulled off on film. In the end it is a solid but not special adaptation with a few new bits that will catch the fans attention and tease their imaginations but which feels much like the version that made it to the silver screen adaptation- some strong moments but enough places lacking that it can’t quite reach the heights it seemed to be trying for. Fans of the movie will find a few new nuggets but most people probably won’t find it as dazzling simply because it can’t match the films dizzying and breathtaking visuals as it mostly doesn’t try and some of the dialogue just doesn’t seem to carry the power without the actor’s interpretations of the lines.
In Summary:
Batman has one last task ahead of him and this one may take everything he has- and then demand more when he comes up short. With a fearsome new opponent in town and a set of traps around him Bruce Wayne may find himself outmatched physically and intellectually as he faces off with someone who hasn’t taken the last eight years off and who fights with a dedication even Batman may not be able to match. With the fate of the city and its inhabitants lives on the line Batman is going to push his boundaries and have to make new allies in order to become what Gotham needs in a hero one last time.
Content Grade: B-
Published By: Titan Books
