'Batman' series and in general the super-hero movies are supposed to be popular entertainment. Their 'literary sources' if they can be named so are in the comics books enjoyed by the kids and teenagers of the 30s and 40s which grew older and did not really know to much other literature, and then passed the same taste for direct action, plots that many time passed the border of the credible and 'deux-ex-machina' solutions of the story involving in most cases the super-heroes with their super-powers. After a first generation of movies building the premises of their success from the visual effects that tried to equate the thrills on the printed paper later productions emphasized other aspects of the story - like the romantic aspects (the 'Lois and Clark' TV series that I enjoyed greatly) or the growing pains of the hero on his path to become a reluctant superhero.

Comes now this Nolan adaptation. I must say that I greatly admire Nolan for much of his early work, but my feeling was that in the New Batman series he simply failed. The million of dollars invested in special effects or in paying the superb cast (or I should say the cast of superb actors) are mostly lost in a story that grew too much became too complicated. I loved some of the early work of Nolan, movies like 'Memento' or 'Insomnia' with true characters faced with credible dilemmas in real life. Even in the later more sophisticated (and more expensive) movies like the Prestige or Inception his characters have their own truth despite the twist and a-reality of the stories. Here there are two many characters some of which are redundant with other, and the story becomes too complicated with no real reason (it can be easily told in 5 sentences and 50 words, but the film lasts close to three hours).

Christian Bay, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine (where does his character hide for most of the film?), Marion Cotillard, Ann Hathaway, and the splendid Joseph Gordon Lewitt are all fine talents. Christopher Nolan is a fine director. The film they made? - not fine and even not fun.