Mumbling Towards Gotham

The Dark Knight Rises: written by Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, and David S. Goyer; directed by Christopher Nolan; starring Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Tom Hardy (Bane), Michael Caine (Alfred), Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon), Anne Hathaway (Selina Kyle/The Cat), Marion Cotillard (Miranda), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (John Blake), and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox) (2012): I enjoyed seeing this again, this time on the small screen, but unlike The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises doesn't become more understandable on TV.

And by 'understandable,' I mean, 'What the hell was Nolan thinking with the godawful sound-mixing on this movie?

Either Christopher Nolan is deaf or the sound mixing on The Dark Knight Rises was designed for some ideal, 100-channel speaker system that most homes and theatres don't have or Christopher Nolan was trying to make the action-movie equivalent of Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, with its purposefully muffled dialogue. Whatever. Add in the periodically incomprehensible electronically altered voice of Tom Hardy's Bane and the periodically self-parodic growl of Christian Bale as Batman and you've got a movie that should be sub-titled.

I suppose the other funny thing is that the Nolans lifted a bunch of stuff from Batman comic books for the TV show Person of Interest, and Person of Interest is a better take on Batman than any Batman movie. So it goes. I mean Jesus, Fusco IS Harvey Bullock! Recommended.