Hunting the Dark Knight: Twenty-First Century Batman

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Publishing on the eve of the world premiere of the third of Christopher Nolan’s Batman movies, The Dark Knight Rises in July 2012, Will Brooker’s new book explores Batman’s twenty-first century incarnations.  Will Brooker’s in depth investigation into Batman Begins and The Dark Knight uncovers the complex relationship between popular films, audiences, and producers in our age of media  convergence. He addresses a myriad of questions raised by these films: did Batman Begins end when The Dark Knight began? Does its story include Burger King’s “Dark Whopper,” the Gotham Knight DVD, or the “Why So Serious” viral marketing campaign? Is it separate from the parallel narratives of the Arkham Asylum videogame, the monthly comic books, the animated series and the graphic novels? Can the brightly campy incarnations of the Batman ever be fully repressed by The Dark Knight, or are they an intrinsic part of the character? In other words, do all of these various manifestations feed into a single Batman metanarrative?

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Will Brooker is Reader and Director of Research in Film and Television at Kingston University, London.He isa leading expert on the Dark Knight, author of the cultural history of Batman, Batman Unmasked. His other books include Using the Force and Alice’s Adventures. He edited the Audience Studies Reader and The Blade Runner Experience, and wrote the BFI Film Classics volume on Star Wars.