The Year in Review: The Tramp's Top Ten Films of 2012

As the year that saw the Avengers finally Assemble, the Dark Knight Rise, the Sky Fall and Joseph Gordon-Levitt Loop comes to a close, it's time to look back at the best of this year's cinematic offerings. It may surprise you that, try as I might I didn't see every single film this year. I missed out on treats like Rust and Bone and The Raid, and have not yet gotten to see the Oscar-tipped Silver Linings Playbook. Similarly,  I've not seen Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained, which isn't due for release in the UK until next month. Accordingly, this will be a very subjective list of my personal favourite experiences at the cinema this year. Initially, I'd wanted to do a top five, but given that this year has furnished us with some of the most interesting and diverse offerings for some time, I'm going to present a special top ten of the year, which is in chronological, as opposed to preferential, order. Enjoy!

Michael Hazanavicius' tribute to silent cinema was released in most countries late last year, but it took me until January this year to see it, so I'm sticking it in this list. The Artist was simply one of the loveliest films I saw this year, with a fantastic conceit, lovingly executed with extraordinary craftsmanship. A tribute to the joy of film itself, The Artist was a wonderful way to start the year and offered one of the best cinema experiences I've ever had.

One of two releases by director David Cronenberg this year, Cosmopolis beats A Dangerous Method to the top ten as an often obtuse, inaccessible and frustrating work that is equally fascinating, dark and nihilistic. Robert Pattinson, best known for the risible Twilight Saga films, gives an enigmatic and engaging performance here, announcing himself, somewhat unexpectedly, as a serious and talented actor. The trailer proclaims Cosmopolis as the first film about the new millennium; I'm not sure about that, but it certainly gave me an experience like no other in 2012.

Speaking of unique experiences, Ron Fricke's dialogue-free, staggeringly beautiful documentary presented us with something that literally no other film came close to this year. Made over the course of five years, Samsara has some of the best cinematography I've ever seen in a film, let alone this year. If any film justifies the purchase of an HD television and Blu-ray player, it's this, but to fully appreciate it, it's essential to see it in a cinema.

William Friedkin, director of classics such as The Exorcist and The French Connection gave us one of this year's darkest and most twisted films in the shape of pitch-black comedy Killer Joe. The film told the story of a father and son (played by Thomas Haden Church and Emile Hirsch respectively) who hire a hitman, played by a top-form Matthew McConaughey, to kill Hirsch's estranged mother and collect on a life insurance policy. Killer Joe plays with the tropes of film noir and exhibits some of the most disturbing and nauseatingly comical scenes of violence this side of Blue Velvet, giving us one of the most absurd, unsettling and memorable climaxes of the year.

While we're on the subject of endings, Christopher Nolan's magnificent, bombastic and audacious trilogy capper marvellously concluded his seven-year long Batman saga. While lacking the narrative clarity of its predecessor, and proving more divisive amongst critics that both The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises was a fantastic third chapter and great movie in its own right, and finally broke the curse of the Terrible Superhero Threequel. For me, it was one of the most enjoyable, thrilling and satisfying movie events of the year.

Andrew Dominik's follow up to The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a sprawling epic, was a much smaller affair, in both historic and geographic scope. Garnering mixed reviews, for me Killing Them Softly proved to be one of the most interesting and ambitious crime films of the year, reminding me of the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s, and of the early work of Martin Scorsese. Tying the events of the film to the 2008 Obama / McCain US presidential election didn't work for some, but by the film's final, brutal last line, it damn sure worked for me.

With Looper, Rian Jonson gave us one of the best and most original science fiction outings for years, standing alongside Moon, District 9 and Inception as part of the recent resurgence of intelligent, popular sci fi for grown ups. Despite distracting prosthetics, Jospeph Gordon-Levitt gave a reliably nuanced and engaging performance of Joe, a hitman tasked with killing his future self. He and Bruce Willis, who played Gordon-Levitt's future counterpart, had great chemistry together, and in drawing on films such as Twelve Monkeys, The Terminator and Blade Runner, Johnson crafted a fully realised futurescape for his noir-inflected time travel story.   

Ah, Skyfall, let me count the ways. It's difficult to think of a Bond film that adheres to the formulas and cliches of the 007 franchise while somehow elevating them into a meditation on the series at fifty years old. A meditation with explosions, car chases, and a man in an electronically-sealed glass cage, of course. Skyfall, in the more-than-capable hands of Sam Mendes, was this year's best blockbuster, the best Craig iteration of Bond to date, and dare I say it, the best Bond film ever made (though my personal favourite remains On Her Majesty's Secret Service, your Goldfingers and You Only Live Twices be damned). After the disappointing Quantum of Solace, everything in Skyfall came together effortlessly. Welcome back to work, 007, we missed you.

In 2008, Paul Thomas Anderson gave us There Will Be Blood, a huge, menacing portrait of greed, obsession, and ambition. This year, he gave us The Master, which while lacking the scope of his last, was at least equally as menacing, and twice as unsettling. Jonny Greenwood returns too, providing one of the best scores of the year, perfectly complementing the tension between Philip Seymour Hoffman and Joaquin Phoenix, who, by the way, as a pair give not simply the best performances I saw this year, but amongst the best performances I've ever seen. While the film, with its lack of an eventful story, was not to everyone's tastes, its difficult to imagine a more finely crafted and expertly executed character study than The Master.

The last time I saw Mads Mikkelsen was in Casino Royale, weeping blood as he crossed wits and playing cards with Daniel Craig. Here, under the fine direction of Thomas Vinterberg, he finds himself in no more enviable circumstances, as Lucas, a nursery teacher wrongly accused of child molestation. Rather than the central premise being the question of whether or not he did it, Vinterberg makes it explicit that the warm, kind Lucas is most definitely innocent, and allows the story to play out as a sickening, unravelling nightmare as Lucas' friends and colleagues succumb to suspicion, hysteria, and ultimately violence. Very much a modern-day parallel to Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, The Hunt was one of the most intense cinematic experiences I've ever had, and one which I surely shared with the rest of the audience: throughout the film exhalations of discomfort were audible, stoked by the unbearable tension of the film. As an examination of hysteria, paranoia and people's capacity to reason themselves into madness, The Hunt is unparalleled.

So there we have it, my top ten films of the year. As I said, this was a personal list and I make no claims to this being a definitive 'Best of 2012' list. There were many other films I would have liked to have included, and so honourable mentions go to the cleverclogs Cabin in the Woods, the underrated Brave, the strange Beasts of the Southern Wild, the exhilarating Avengers Assemble, and the tender Untouchable. Happy New Year, and I'll see you all on the 1st January for a special Tramp Announcement!

The Friday Tramp Review: Skyfall

Skyfall, directed by Sam Mendes, screenplay by John Logan, Neal Purvis, Robert Wade, starring Daniel Craig, Judi Dench, Javier Bardem, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris.

On the fiftieth anniversary of Agent 007 on film, Bond 23 arrives like a thunderclap, with an effortless confidence, style and charm that has been absent from the series for years. Yes, Skyfall utterly erases the disappointment of 2008's Quantum of Solace, not only challenging Casino Royale for Daniel Craig's best outing to date as the eponymous spy, but also as one of the best instalments in the entire series. There is no question that along with Casino Royale, Skyfall is the best Bond film since the days of Connery, and in certain respects it is the most complex, emotionally satisfying and thrilling of the lot.

Where the emotional core in Casino Royale came from the relationship between Bond and Vesper, Skyfall not simply expands on the relationship between 007 and M: it uses their fraught alliance as the central plot mechanic. Indeed, Judi Dench's has always brought depth and ambiguity to the character: Goldeneye saw her bollock Bond for his recklessness and assure him that she was quite prepared to send him to his death, before warmly telling him to come back alive. In the otherwise risible Die Another Day (sharing more similarities than you might expect with Skyfall - more on that in a moment), Dench leaves Bond to rot in a North Korean prison until it's strategically sensible to reacquire him. In contrast, Quantum of Solace sees one character mistakes M for Bond's mother, with Bond quipping that 'she'd like to think' that she is. In Skyfall, she, well you'll have to see for yourself, but suffice to say M's responsibility for Bond hangs heavily over the entire film. After seven films Dench is second only to the original M, Bernard Lee, as the longest-serving actor in the role, giving a series-best performance here, and being given almost as much screen time as Craig himself. Several critics have already described her as the true Bond girl of the series, and it's not hard to see why. More to the point, Dench assures her position as by far the best of the three actors to have officially played Bond's boss. 

Judging the situation dispassionately: Judi Dench in a tough moment.

So what of those similarities with Die Another Day, roundly viewed as one of the lowest points for the franchise? As Skyfall is released on the fifty-year anniversary, so Brosnan's swansong, released ten years ago, fell on Bond's fortieth birthday. But where DAD, like a squawking teenager, insisted on reminding the audience it was the newest and bestest Bond film yet, featuring invisible cars and very visible CGI, and cramming scenes with embarrassing and obvious references to 007's better adventures, Skyfall looks back at the series with affection, wit and charm. There are probably more nods and homages in Skyfall than in DAD, but they never feel hackneyed or shoehorned in. Skyfall is aware of its heritage without being in thrall to it, reintroducing familiar tropes that were largely absent in Casino and Quantum, but doing so without feeling regressive. Moreover, the nods to other entries (I counted allusions to Goldfinger, You Only Live Twice, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Live and Let Die, The Man With the Golden Gun and Licence to Kill, and I suspect that there are more), rather than providing shallow, fan-boy pleasing distraction, actually help to augment the themes of the film: those of legacy, relevance and mortality. And it's here that Skyfall provides a wonderful counterpoint to the convention-breaking Casino Royale: where that film openly distanced itself from the other films, rebooting the franchise and jettisoning almost all the conventions and clichés of Bond, Skyfall rehabilitates the best parts of the classic series without jeopardising the good work done by Casino Royale. There is a conscious stylistic move away from the Bourne-esque trappings of Craig's previous films, which is entirely welcome. After all, how long could the grittiness have continued without becoming a cliché itself? Bourne managed three instalments before Legacy became a victim of its own formula, and so Mendes skirts that pitfall by changing things up with a sense of fun hitherto absent from Casino and Quantum. Much of Mendes' stylistic success comes from the stellar work by cinematographer Roger Deakins, who has collaborating both with Mendes and the Coen brothers numerous times. Deakins provides some of the best cinematography this side of The Dark Knight; shooting on digital he makes the scenes in Shanghai pulse with light and colour, with neon lights swirling behind silhouetted figures. Shadows hide killers who, stepping into the light, reveal cold, ice blue eyes, and in London, the reds and blues of the union flag, draped over half a dozen coffins in a row, have never been more vibrant.

Sometimes the old toys are the best.

Come to think of it, with Deakins, Mendes and John Logan, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade on scriptwriting duty, that's something else that Skyfall gives us: the sense of a large, incredibly skilled team in front of and behind the camera, working towards a singular end. Director Mendes has spoken of the influence The Dark Knight had on Skyfall, but to refer to another superhero mega-hit, this is the first entry into the series where it feels is as if, Avengers-like, Bond is playing as one part of a highly skilled and professional unit. Without question, we have the best supporting cast in a Bond flick yet, with the aforementioned Dench playing alongside a terrific Naomie Harris as field agent Eve, and Ralph Fiennes portraying meddling committee chairman Mallory with relish. Not to mention Ben Whishaw, who does a wonderful job as the new Q, brilliantly reimagined as a spotty twenty-something. And let's not forget the magnificent, malevolent and very naughty Javier Bardem as the villain, Silva. With his weird, Christopher Walken-esque blond locks and powerful, effeminate voice, Bardem creates a character with all of the idiosyncrasies of a classic Bond foe, while somehow making him consistent the film's heightened realism. Mads Mikkelsen impressed in Casino Royale as Le Chiffre, but in years to come Silva will be ranked amongst Auric Goldfinger and Blofeld as one of the most iconic adversaries Bond has faced. The supporting cast, along with the surprisingly simple plot, all work like clockwork, with none of the main characters ever feeling extraneous or unneeded, while at the same time giving them just enough development to feel like real people, rather than narrative cogs driving Bond's story. In that respect, Skyfall's lavish visuals are countered by an incredibly lean, focussed narrative that is all the more refreshing following the twisty-turny-selling-water-at-over-the-odds nonsense of Quantum of Solace.

When Casino Royale was released in 2006, a friend commented to me that it felt like the first Bond film to really feel like a good film in its own right. What Skyfall achieves may be greater even than that: to give us not only a terrific movie in its own right, in contention with The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises for this year's best blockbuster, but also, arguably the definitive Bond film. Those are big words, but Skyfall takes the best elements of the series while ditching its worst excesses. Moreover, instead of merely electing to thrill us (and, boy oh boy, thrill us it does), Skyfall actually has something meaningful to say about its characters and the rapidly-changing world they inhabit, tying those concerns into a surprisingly nuanced, honest and emotive reflection on the series itself as it turns fifty. Skyfall shows us not just that an old dog can learn new tricks, but that the old tricks still have the capacity to delight. Finally, on his third go around, Craig has finally, inarguably, wonderfully, grown fully into the role of 007. He gives us the confidence and comic timing of Sean, the one liners (minus the cheese) of Roger, the damaged menace of Timothy, and even a little of the schoolboy swagger of Pierce. But Craig does more than merely imitate his predecessors; his performance is studied, yes, but Craig has brought his own qualities to the fore, and gives one of his best performances in any film to date. I've often said that the only actor to truly embody, rather than merely play, Bond, was Connery, but from now on there will always be two Agents 007. Daniel Craig is James Bond, and I can't wait for him to return.

A Relic of the Cold War: Why Is Bond Still Popular?

When it comes out on Friday, Skyfall will be the twenty-third official entry into the James Bond series, the most successful and longest running film franchise of all time. Although the previous film, Quantum of Solace, was met with mixed reviews, popular affection for the series remains at an all time high. But, after fifty years of being on screen, what is it about Bond that makes the character, and the series, so enduring? Sure, there are the gadgets, the beautiful women and the wish fulfilment, and those are great for the mid-life crisis demographic, but there surely must be more to the success of a franchise that has endured for fifty years. Moreover, I'm curious as to why audiences have consistently tolerated a series that is often defined by outrageous and dated sexism, terrible puns and atrocious acting.

Indeed, many of the films throughout the series are notoriously risible: A View To A Kill, for example, features a 57 year-old Roger Moore performing such feats of derring do as slowly climbing down a ladder, riding around on obviously fake horses, and spending an evening with Grace Jones. Die Another Day, the final film starring Pierce Brosnan, is a smug, effects-laden shambles with all the charm and sophistication of a fourteen year-old boy screeching about his antics with alcopops and late night soft porn. Die Another Day seemingly buried the franchise for good until it was completely rebooted and rebourne (see what I did there), with Casino Royale. But even the more celebrated entries - Live and Let Die, for example, is teeming with truly offensive and, even for 1971, dated racial stereotypes - are often pretty ropey. The quintessential Bond flick, Goldfinger, features a bizarre plot involving irradiating US gold, a henchman with a deadly bowler hat, and a climax involving a squadron of impossibly sexy pilots. Don't get me wrong (racial and sexist attitudes notwithstanding), I love Goldfinger and I like Live and Let Die, but the point I'm making is that the Bond films - even the Craig ones - are daft, frequently offensive, and often feature plots that are incoherent to the point of shoddiness. Audiences know this - Bond has been lampooned countless times, and most people can cite at least one stupid line or scenario from the series - and yet the series has endured, with consistent popularity, for fifty years. Fifty years! That's longer than Star Wars, longer than Die Hard, longer than Indiana Jones. Hell, it's even longer than the interminable Simpsons, a once brilliant show that refuses to die despite everyone's acceptance that it has outstayed its welcome by about a decade.

If Bond is so silly, so shoddy, so damn offensive to vast swathes of its audience, then how has it thrived for so long? I think there are several demonstrable reasons for this, and for audiences' continued affection for the series. Here are three of the most important ones:

The Formula

You must be dreaming:
Honor Blackman as the quintessential, and best, Bond girl.

The Bond Formula is often cited as a failure of the series, when in fact it's one of its greatest strengths, both commercially, and, surprisingly, artistically. Beyond the usual serving of objectified women, fast cars, and cartoon villains, there is a rigid formula that almost every film sticks to. Even the Daniel Craig versions are no exception, demonstrating that they're not as distinct from the series as they first appear. The bloody gun barrel, the pre-title sequence, and the obligatory song are the most obvious formulaic components, but just as important are Bond's reporting to M, his initial foray into the field and return to MI6, before he goes back out for a massive action scene, a one on one fight with the henchman, and then the finale with the main villain. During this broad, five-act structure, Bond will usually encounter 1) A sexy female who later turns out to be working for either another intelligence agency or is on a mission of revenge; 2) A sexy female who initially works with him but ultimately betrays him, before being killed at about act four or five; 3) A barman or similar, merely so he can order a martini; 4) The henchman, who invariably has some sort of physical defect or attribute that makes him more than a physical match for Bond; 5) The villain. Usually he'll either spot the villain at a distance in the second act, or won't encounter him until after the halfway mark; 6) Q, who at around the second or third-act mark will kit him out and send him back out, with just the specific gadgets needed for his mission. More often than not, the most ridiculous or frivolous gadgets will be the last ones he uses, and will unexpectedly save Bond's life. Other tropes involve Bond 'going rogue', before being inexplicably reintegrated back in MI6, being watched remotely by M, Q and the Defence Minister in an epilogue as he gets it on with the girl from point number 1, and in the earlier films, greeting Moneypenny by caddishly tossing his hat on to a stand in M's office.

Not all of these elements appear in every Bond film, but all of them are integral to what makes up the basic Bond formula, and every instalment contains at least some of them. What makes the formula so important is that the best Bond films actively comment and react to it: In On Her Majesty's Secret Service, Bond tosses his hat to Moneypenny just as he marries Theresa, and in Casino Royale he snaps at the barman for asking how he wants his martini prepared. Without the formula to react against, much of the cleverness and pleasure of these films would be stripped away. Even in the most formulaic examples of the series, the fun is in the ways that audience expectations are played with, met or stretched. Goldfinger, which provided a great deal of the formula, uses audience expectation in its most famous scene: when Bond, strapped to a device with a laser beam between his legs, asks Goldfinger if he expects him to talk (which is what the audience has learned to expect from this type of scenario). The villain, half chortling, replies with the now famous line, 'No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!' It's funny, unexpected and delivered with perfect timing from actor Gert Fröbe. The trick was repeated with different, but equal brilliance in Casino Royale, when Bond, captured by Le Chiffre, is tortured with nothing more than a wicker chair and a length of knotted rope. Le Chiffre explains that elaborate torture machines are unnecessary: only the simplest methods are required to cause someone more pain than they can bear. The reason that both of these examples work is because they subvert our expectations of the situation; like blues music, they play with the details of the structure whilst remaining within its broader strictures.

Escapism

Much of Bond's appeal is rooted in its (very) heightened sense of reality, and the function of Bond himself is as an escapist avatar for the viewer. Of course, this raises all sorts of problems over assumptions about its audience: that they're exclusively male, heterosexual, and don't have a problem with neo-colonial world policing, to name a few. But there's little denying that the recurring tropes of tuxedos, bowler hats and mountain / volcano / space fortresses are just cool, or that gadgets like the submarine Lotus in The Spy Who Loved Me are intrinsically desirable toys. The Bond series is often attacked for being childish, but that criticism is inaccurate. Bond is undoubtedly juvenile, puerile even, but as a child I found most of the Bond films, with their convoluted plots, over-my-head innuendoes and dated special effects interminably boring. As an adult, I can appreciate them better for what they are: cinematic playgrounds for grown-ups. Even the Craig versions, for all their gritty and realistic trappings, are spaces for adults to imaginatively act out their fantasies. It's easy to dismiss this sort of thing as 'bubblegum for the eyes', but, in moderation at least, I think that Bond-esque escapism is an extremely important component of cinema. Christopher Nolan recognises the importance of fantasy in movies, citing the Bond series as one of his major influences, overtly alluding to the films in sequences throughout the terrific Inception, a film that engages directly with the notion of cinema as dreaming. The Bond films, all of them, are inherently silly. The worst ones are stupid, and push the escapist component too far, as in Moonraker, a film that tries and fails to mimic the success of Star Wars, or Die Another Day, a film with a car apparently on loan from the Predator franchise, not forgetting of course A View To A Kill, a film with a star apparently on loan from Age Concern. In contrast, the best entries tread the fine line between outrageous scenarios and characters, and a world grounded just enough in reality that we can live the adventure vicariously.

As if you don't want one.

Adaptability 

It seems as if every iteration of Bond consciously distances itself from the last, none more so than the gritty, Bourne-inflected Craig versions, and it's difficult to overestimate the success of this strategy in keeping Bond feeling fresh. After 2002's ridiculous Die Another Day, audiences had grown weary of the constant barrage of innuendo, Brosnany smarm and over-use of gadgets. So when in 2006 Casino Royale completely rebooted the franchise, giving us an almost unrecognisable Bond, with - shock horror - blond hair and a believable, straightforward plot, the sense of surprise and refreshment was palpable. But while Craig's debut was bold and refreshing, it was merely the lastest example of a strategy that Eon - the studio responsible for all the official Bonds to date - has employed since the 1960s. For example, 1969's On Her Majesty's Secret Service, is a methodical,  relatively realistic and surprisingly violent film, in stark contrast to the previous entry, You Only Live Twice, which involved a giant volcano hideout, a huge spaceship that ate rockets, and unforgettably, Sean Connery disguising himself as Japanese. Moreover, it makes overt references to being a new beginning for the series, with the opening sequence holding back on revealing the new Bond, played by George Lazenby, before he ends the scene by quipping 'this never happened to the other fella'. And of course [SPOLIER ALERT!] having OHMSS end with the death of Bond's new wife, played with surprising depth and complexity by Diana Rigg, provides a shockingly downbeat ending to a film that gave us a sensitive, human Bond. When Lazenby left the series after only one film, Eon quickly rehired Connery for Diamonds Are Forever, a silly and forgettable entry, before the revivified Live and Let Die. With a new Bond in the shape of Roger Moore, producers Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli were able to change things up again, with a far more camp, self-parodic approach to the series. When that direction had run its course they were able to change tactics again, with a realistic, moody Bond in the shape of Timothy Dalton. Without a doubt, Saltzman and Broccoli had an uncanny ability to give their audience what they wanted, especially considering Lazenby's not-unreasonable belief that by 1969 the Bond series had become outdated and would soon lose favour with the public.

The shift from ultra-silly Moore to serious Dalton is essentially the same thing that happened in 2006 with Craig. On its release, Casino Royale really felt as if the film makers were admitting that Bond had become outdated and irrelevant. Craig's rebooted entry felt utterly distant from the other films; almost like it was part of a different franchise altogether. But have you noticed that feeling subside over the past six years? Casino Royale, while still a radical departure from the rest of the series, feels less like a disavowal of its predecessors, especially with Quantum of Solace showing signs of slipping back into familiar territory, and Skyfall introducing Bond mainstay Q whilst utilising the trope of a blond villain with Javier Bardem in a wig. (see also: Christopher Walken in A View To A Kill, Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love, Gert Fröbe in Goldfinger). By the time Craig leaves the series it's almost guaranteed that we'll all be groaning at the dreary grittiness that will have defined his tenure, and I'd bet all the gold in Fort Knox that the producers already have a vision of Bond, radically different from Craig, already lined up and ready to go once his run is over. Incidentally, if that vision doesn't involve either Michael Fassbender, Idris Elba, or a female actress (I wouldn't hazard a guess as to who could pull off a female Bond, mind. Oft-rumoured but never delivered, a female Bond would work terrifically as a subversion of the core trope of the series), Saltzman and Broccoli want their heads looking at.

The fact is, Bond gives us something that nothing else does. Given the way that it's constantly spoofed, parodied, critiqued and stolen from, it's astonishing (and not immediately apparent) that there is literally no film property like that of James Bond. No one character has lasted for so long in cinema history, with Bond films coming out on average 4.4 times a decade since the 1960s. And despite the glut of hyper-masculine action heroes from the late 1970s onwards, there isn't really another character that is comparable to Agent 007. It sounds mad, I know, but think about it for a second: who else is there? Indiana Jones is possibly the closest (after all, his dad is Sean Connery), with the globe trotting and the womanising, but Indy's films lack the intrigue, the gadgets and contemporary setting. Bourne is the obvious modern comparison, but even that franchise is a reaction against Bond, as opposed to an imitation or challenger to it. Batman, in many ways, is similar to Bond - the money, the secrecy, the gadgets - and to be sure, Nolan's Bat trilogy made many  references to Bond. But their worlds, stories and and character motivations are wildly different, not to mention the fact that Batman's history on film is far shakier and less consistent than Bond's. It makes me a little sad for the rest, but the fact is nobody has done it better, or, ahem, for longer, than Bond.