Ordinarily, it would be vainglorious to screen the first few minutes of a yet-to-be-completed new motion picture, unless it’s presented in film festivals as a work in progress. Perhaps the best use of this was in 1991, when Disney screened Beauty and the Beast using then-new computerized animation blended with traditional hand paintings, heralding a renaissance in animated film. Perhaps the most recent example was Madonna’s W.E. at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, which secured it a distribution deal through The Weinstein Company. Whether or not the film is a masterpiece waiting in the wings or a misbegotten vanity project (if you believe some of the early reviews accorded W.E.), it’s a great way to gauge audience interest before a project is completed and can be fine-tuned.Beyond industry screenings, few films warrant a public viewing the way that Christopher Nolan’s eagerly-anticipated The Dark Knight Rises can. Considering its predecessor’s massive box office (the third highest domestic total in history), its canonical status as one of the greatest American films of 2000s, and its magnificently ghostly Oscar-winning performance by Heath Ledger, it more than justifies a public screening, even if they only show the six-minute prologue. Tonight, Warner Brothers quietly screened the prologue for select audiences.
Nolan has a lot to live up to. The franchise was rejuvenated in spectacular fashion with Batman Begins in 2005. The Dark Knight was haunted not just by the genius of Ledger’s embodiment of the Joker, which I consider one of perhaps the ten greatest performances ever committed to celluloid, but by the knowledge that its tragic star burned his essence, including his chaos, pain and primal scream, into the role. The Dark Knight Rises is burdened only by the genius of its predecessor. To be fair, Warner Brothers did a similar launch in December 2007, launching the preview seven months before that mercurial film opened to a rapturous response the following summer.And how was tonight’s screening? Can we expect to be disappointed? Is this purely a marketing tool or is it a legitimate way to gauge fanboy feedback? (Mild spoilers after the jump.)
