The Dark Knight Rises Poster
Poster art is (or should be) its own art form and this one’s a great example of creative use of the medium.
Explicitly workin’ the 9/11 imagery, huh? . . . interesting.
Skyscraper destruction has been a staple of action/distaster movies since long before 9/11. Wasn’t a city (mine) just blown up in the current Transformers film? Nolan’s Batman films do have a political subtext, but I’m not ready to read it into the poster.
It’s not just the destruction that’s evocative, Brad, but also that it’s specifically the ultra-low perspective and the emphasis on falling debris rather than the plume of an explosion . That’s not something I recall seeing in films prior to 9/11 . . . .generally those kind of explosions would have been shown via either a crane shot or a helicopter shot. Obviously this may or may not have much of anything to do with the actual film, but it makes for an interesting approach to marketing.
There’s no explosion it’s an earthquake
Meh. Most skyscapers can withstand a pretty good quake with just a little swaying. Hopefully Nolan can do better than that.
I feel like he has to have gotten that out of his system with INCEPTION and DARK KNIGHT.
28 Days Later… and The Dark Knight alike responded to familiarized contemporary forms of anxiety, destruction, and terror—just as Last House on the Left and Bonnie and Clyde did. Most of the time it’s intentional, sometimes not, but in both cases it doesn’t matter—the audience recognizes and responds alike.
—PolarisDiB
I still recall with faint interest those theories espousing the notion of the Hollywood Superhero Movie and its appeal as a direct, unconscious reaction to 9/11 and the ensuing psychical climate. Wish fulfillment, catharsis etc.
The problem is that most of those theories were developed so close to 9/11 that it had not really shown itself in cinema yet. There was for the first five years after 9/11 all these ideas of how society would be based on previous things that had happened, but were not really backed up by how people were actually acting. Superhero movies are more a result of the ability of CGI to reach cheap and effective standards than any specific need of people to feel good about 9/11 or whatever.
—DiB
When I first saw this poster I thought it was like a line of coke or something. I don’t do that shit but my brain went dumb there for a minute trying to figure out the image.
“Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon?”
It reminds me more of the low-angle upward shot of the trees in Pocahantas than anything, peeps.
—DiB
For some reason I can’t find the image I want from Google. So here’s the image immediately preceding:
—DiB
yeah… i get what you’re saying. still looks like drugs on a black table to me.
What does this look like to you, Mary?
lol y?
Drugs on a white table?
nah
Ink on white paper?
One of my few double posts. The shame is overwhelming.
@Polaris
Yeah, I too am indeed uncertain about the plausibility of those notions, intriguing as they seem. I mean, in regards to the public, of course the story of the righteous hero will always bear a mass appeal outside of history. And from the production side, yes, technology has a lot to do with it as well.
I think perhaps a more tangible line of theory would be to examine the very thing has been mentioned in this thread; the manner in which the imagery of our current age has found itself manifested into films, intentionally or otherwise, and particularly into Hollywood films, where it is generally not something intended to be recognized and examined on a conscious level.
Of course, the pervasive psychological climates of the culture have always integrated themselves into cinema, from WWII to the Cold War and so on. But I think it happens a bit differently nowadays. We live in an era saturated with image more than ever before, and in a lot of ways we seem to think of a cultural/historical event immediately in terms of its recorded image before anything else. Anyway, what I mean is that, while ‘Cold War anxiety’ once ran wild in the movies(surely just as ‘Age of Terror anxiety’ is now reflected in cinema), there is now this additional thing of the currency of pure imagery, the recorded imagery we’ve all come to know—in this case, the icon of the falling building(low-angle, as Matt points out)—haunting popular films. In some of these instances, there’s no tangible substance(however misguided or shallow the films with post 9/11 substance may be[i.e. action films etc.]) anymore, just the even colder component of the provocative image. I suppose at one level it’s just cheap exploitation we’re looking at(wasn’t the criticism lodged at Spielberg’s War of the Worlds?), but on another level there does seem to be a unconscious conjuring of these things that displays how the saturating force of the media integrates itself into our consciousness—collective and individual.
See below.
via doodleofboredom.com
@ Roscoe
I have to say that’s a pretty good comparison sir. ;)
@ Mary
“yeah… i get what you’re saying. still looks like drugs on a black table to me.”
Hmm…could it be, eeh gad! Batman turns to cocaine to deal with the pain from the last film?! XD
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Oh great, now all I’m gonna think of when I actually go to see the film is unicorns and blow! XD
VincentVendetta
I know this isn’t such a big deal to make an entire topic based on it but… Holy Sh-