Nailed it. This is a fantastic image. It kind of recalls the poster for “Batman Begins” with the Caped Crusader dropping from above, it carries in the urban nature of “The Dark Knight” and gives the overall vibe that all hell is gonna break loose. Check out the full teaser poster for “The Dark Knight Rises” after the jump.
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52 responses to “‘The Dark Knight Rises’ teaser poster”
Wow
Awesome, awesome design.
I’m not loving it as much as everyone else. I liked the Joker’s why so serious poster a lot more.
Quite ominous…
It’s what a poster for this movie was always going to be. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Not in love with it
Looks likes “Inception.”
I think it’s perfect. Perfectly captures the tone for this final film, and I think it certainly gives the message of massive destruction and chaos.
I liked the desaturated look of the Bane picture and I’m liking the desaturated color scheme of this poster as well. Hopefully these two things are a sign of the visual style of the film. With BB/TDK, the brown and blue poster art turned out to be a good indicator of each film’s visual style. It would be pretty cool to see what Pfister and Nolan can do with a desaturated look.
That’s one of the first things I asked Pfister when I interviewed him for Inception last year, what kind of color scheme this film would have. He was still working it out at the time but he seemed to indicate some combination of what we’ve seen would be in the cards. But yeah, the desaturated look would be interesting.
Seems like Inception 2 IMHO…
The white section in the middle is a splash of fanboy jizz. :P
I wonder if this image represents a real event in the movie or is just a marketing artwork.
How does it look like Inception?
As it’s been pointed out elsewhere, reminds me of the “No Man’s Land” storyline.
red_wine: “The white section in the middle is a splash of fanboy jizz. :P”
Hysterical.
I like it. It looks very Nolan.
I went and re-watched Ebert & Roeper/Phillips & Roeper reviews of ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘TDK’ last night. Their enthusiasm for both got me excited for TDKR. And it’s so damn far away. :)
Anyone knows which was the first teaser poster for The Dark Knight??
Madiezga- I’m pretty sure it was the Joker “Why So Serious” poster. Also, there was that one with Batman looking out of a window over Gothem.
I’ve already heard from people who are dreading the onslaught of this viral marketing campaign. But say what they will, when everyone is trying to make their movie into an “event movie,” these Batman movies actually succeed at that.
Robert,
It actually appears that the viral marketing this time is significantly toned down. This poster was released without a viral marketing game.
I like the idea that it looks like something heavy is falling on me. Danger and hope in one sheet.
gaaah so excited about this film. anything Nolan touches is magic. my favorite director.
Mark: Originally I was gonna comment something about its likeness to Inception’s poster: it’s not the first time a Nolan movie uses buildings to design the film’s logo/name. http://goo.gl/NJUrA
The guy has a hard-on for architecture.
How many people have their knives out for this one?
Meh…
I seriously thought TDKR was a false title — that sucks as a title — I rather they call this movie Batman Ends.
The title should have been more epic – and a stand-alone title like the first two.
It should have been called GOTHAM CITY or something like that.
Or The Caped Crusader, haha!
Yeah the title is awful. I almost can’t get excited for this movie because of that. Not that I was ever really excited for Batman in the first place. But still.
I hope there isn’t a trend starting with sticking “Rise” in the title of a sequel or prequel. Next month we get “The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” which is also a stupid, clumsy title.
It makes no sense (conceptual, physical or symbolical) why the damage on the building would be in the shape of the bat symbol. Sure, it may seem cool but what is the point?
Unless Batman becomes the vilain in this one, which, I don’t think is the case.
Looking at that image again, it’s almost like the building are closing in on each other and it is very Inception-like.
Off-topic, but onto more important things that could impact this industry, what does everyone think of Netflix’s latest hike in prices?
At the risk of over-analyzing, I’ll try to answer your question Maxim.
The answer might lie in Nolan’s fascination with architecture.
In architecture, there’s a big fascination with Solid/void compositions. Instead of designing the walls that shape a room, you reverse the process and shape the room (void) instead. Or, if you have a solid block, you remove mass from the solid (digging out) to create the void, just like it’s happening in this poster.
In an architecture school (which I am a student at), a typical assignment is to design like this, and it’s a visual and cognitive exercise to try and imagine the “reverse”, and visualize the room you are doing as a shape instead of a space, or vice versa.
Look at this image: http://www.uic.edu/com/eye/LearningAboutVision/EyeSite/OpticalIllustions/Images/facevase.gif
It’s a classic solid/void exercise/optical illusion. If you look at it at first, most people will see a vase, the white figure. But now, focus on the black, and you start to see two faces facing each other. Try and shift your mind to see one and then the other. When focus on the vase, the black is the void, and when you focus on the faces, the white is the void.
Like the design method where you deconstruct a solid to create the void, in the poster, the buildings (solid) are falling apart, creating the Symbol of Batman (void). The fact that this is happening in the present tense (you see the debris falling) is very significant to me. The symbol of Batman literally Rises out of the city that is falling apart.
That (and the fact that you can force your mind to focus either on the logo/void or the crumbling buildings), Maxim, holds great conceptual and symbolical value, as:
1. The relationship between destruction&creation is basically what Batman’s origin is all about and also the motivation for The League of Shadows’ idealistic terrorism in Batman Begins.
2. In The Dark Knight, it was hinted at by the Joker that all the freaky/bad shit that happens in Gotham (ei. the Joker appearing) is because Batman started to dress up as a Bat in the first place, implying that his presence is hurting more than helping. The poster is dualistic because it hints at the fact that the buildings might be falling apart because of Batman, or Batman might be there because the buildings are falling apart.
3. It’s called The Dark Knight Rises! The title is basically portrayed symbolically in the poster.
4. And to answer your final remark on Batman being the villain: Batman actually ended up as the villain in the eyes of Gotham at the end of The Dark Knight, and will likely keep his “villain” status for a good part of Rises. The Gotham PD (led by JGL/Gary Oldman) hunting down Batman is likely to be cause for a lot of the action scenes and crumbling buildings.
…
Forgive me if you think I’m off, I’m an architecture student, Batman-fan (my childhood hero) and film-nerd and thus it’s inevitable that Nolan has become one of my favorite directors. Call me a fan-boy if you will, I don’t care :)
P.S. I was disappointed with the title as well, but it’s still better than any other suggestion I’ve heard, and we don’t know how it will relate to the content of the film, so I’ll hold off my critique of the title until I see the movie.
/Chris
http://hwcdn.themoviedb.org/posters/d34/4bc905ef017a3c57fe001d34/batman-begins-original.jpg
Oh yeah Kris, nice observation. Maybe it’s a deliberate throwback. Even the angle of the symbol is the same in both posters.
Awesome points, Chris!
Drew: It’s 4 bucks. I can deal. It would be a different issue if it was like a ten-dollar hike, but it’s still a bargain, IMO.
In the short term yes, but in the long term, and the way the media is reporting this, I am curious to see how many will hear hike in price and turn to torrenting or other means of finding entertainment. I hate to sound like an oldie, but this brave new world ain’t doing much economically. At least it’s doing more than republicans.
I’m interested in seeing what comes of this thing with netflix.
I think they’re trying to drive down DVDs and drive up streaming. So it makes sense to me.
Eh, Netflix is going to force me to choose DVDs. Maybe I view things differently than others, but I want something specific, so if it is not on streaming, I am unhappy. The specificity overrides the many advantages of streaming.
If that’s the case I’m not sure how customers will take to it. The proof is in James D’s comments.
However, to quote the great Aaron Sorkin (yeah I referred to him as the great) “We lived on farms and then we lived in cities and now we are going to live on the internet”
I’m not sure James D. represents the average consumer, necessarily. It’s all about ease.
Chris G, thanks so much for taking the time to write your response and providing so much great insight! A lot of what you said make sense and rings true, at least as far as the filmmaker’s intentions are concerned.
I’m familiar with spacial/visual/architectural concepts you discussed but I must admit I’ve approached the poster from a completely different point of view altogether. I don’t tend to take loaded images, especially ones of destruction lightly in advertising and because of that I thought that the bat logo literally eating away at the buildings around it didn’t necessarily make much sense. What you said made me reconsider my point and certainly confirmed that there is much more thinking involved here than I expected . Thanks!
““We lived on farms and then we lived in cities and now we are going to live on the internet””
Or on the cloud ;). Or at least our data will.
Kris is right. I imagine the amount of people who seek out specific titles is rather low, and not where Netflix is aiming at. For casual Netflix users, it is a tremendous improvement over traditional cable. After all, cable has always had a limited selection, whereas Netflix has a huge streaming library, available to watch at your leisure. However, if I want to watch something as specific as La Strada or A Night at The Roxbury, I am going to be unhappy with streaming-only.
I went down from 3 at a time to 1 at a time because the availability of streaming titles struck a good balance for movie watching in between Netflix processing my mail queue. Truth be told, I will probably just take the price increase. It is less than the cost of a Long Island Iced Tea, after all.
[…] (From InContention) […]
“Yeah the title is awful. I almost can’t get excited for this movie because of that.”
Oh jesus christ. I just… I just… jesus christ.
Also, if you squint the logo looks like a unicorn.
[…] Batman fans are going wild about it. “Awesome, awesome design,” says Andrej on incontention.com. On the same site, Tye-Grr adds: “I think it’s perfect. Perfectly […]
[…] Batman fans are going wild about it. “Awesome, awesome design,” says Andrej on incontention.com. On the same site, Tye-Grr adds: “I think it’s perfect. Perfectly […]
hahaha, it does look like a unicorn.
Kris, I know you don’t post about them, but have you seen the leaked trailer? I’m getting a Begins vibe from it, which I think is very promising.
[…] Batman fans are going wild about it. “Awesome, awesome design,” says Andrej on incontention.com. On the same site, Tye-Grr adds: “I think it’s perfect. Perfectly […]
I have seen it, yes.