The Dark Knight Trilogy Blu-ray review

By the late ’90s, Batman was a punchline. The moody film franchise that launched in 1989 had, over time, become the butt of fanboy wisecracks about nippled Batsuits and Chris O’Donnell’s Robin, the boy blunder. Then came Christopher Nolan, who proved that just because a story comes from a comic book, it doesn’t have to be kids’ stuff. His Gotham was a shadowy, big-screen reflection of our post-9/11 anxieties. It was a superhero movie adults could love and engage with. Like a lot of you, I’m still in denial that Nolan’s Caped Crusader cycle has come to an end. But until he returns to tell another Bat-tale (let a man dream), we can revisit Christian Bale’s billionaire Bruce Wayne and his menagerie of first-rate foes in The Dark Knight Trilogy (2005-12, 7 hrs., 38 mins., PG-13). The new box set has more EXTRAS than Arkham Asylum has unhinged villains, including two discs’ worth of making-of docs and a slick 64-page booklet. But the main course is high-def transfers of Nolan’s three revolutionary films: 2005’s Batman Begins, 2008’s The Dark Knight, and 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises. One of the unexpected pleasures of watching this set from start to finish is seeing just how interconnected all of Nolan’s films (and their themes) are. He’s telling one epic story. From the opening chapter’s bold reinvention of a myth we all thought we knew to Heath Ledger’s jaw-dropping evil in the series’ masterpiece, The Dark Knight, to the timely class warfare of the muzzled baddie Bane in the saga’s coda, Nolan has created the closest thing to The Odyssey that the 21st century can claim. A