The Dark Knight Rises

These comic book movies deserve more love.

At some point we’re all going to have to stop asking, “Is this real life?! Is this really happening right now?!” The daily proliferation of surreal news headlines will never feel normal (nor should they), but it’s the frequency our country is operating at now, and it will likely continue at this pitch for the next four years, which officially kicked off today. In the latest episode of The Surreal Life, Donald Trump basically plagiarized Bane, Tom Hardy’s mush-mouthed villain from The Dark Knight Rises, in his inauguration speech.

In today’s superhero movies there’s no such thing as a finite ending. Everything feeds into a sequel, spin-off or remake within Marvel and DC’s larger cinematic universes. Superhero franchises have become giant movie making machines where endings become teases for the next installment. But the one outlier of that cyclical trend was Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight trilogy, which began before Marvel dominated movie screens.

Anne Hathaway memorably played Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises, but she very nearly played another catty superhero. The Oscar-winning actress was set to play Black Cat in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 4, which would have also featured John Malkovich as Vulture. That film was canceled shortly before filming and Sony eventually decided to reboot the whole franchise. That’s just one of the facts packed into the latest episode of You Think You Know Movies, which goes completely batty with The Dark Knight Rises!

The comic book movie craze may have exploded in recent years, but there have been movies and TV shows based on our favorite comics for decades. For all the action we see on screen, however, we hardly ever get to see behind the curtain at how it all comes together. Fortunately, we've managed to uncover dozens of behind the scenes images from your favorite comic-inspired movies. From The Dark Knight to Dredd, and Conan to Kick-Ass, we now have a little bit of an idea of what life was like on set during the creation of these beloved adaptations.

The last time Christopher Nolan released a movie, film critics got death threats. That was back in 2012, when Nolan released ‘The Dark Knight Rises,’ and the first writers who dared to stray from the positive consensus about the film received waves of overwhelming backlash. After Marshall Fine published his pan, his site and his page on Rotten Tomatoes were both bombarded with angry comments politely requesting he “die in a fire” and hoping someone would beat him into a coma with a “thick rubber hose.”

Batman's movie and TV adaptations have had varying degrees of success over the years, but one aspect of the DC Comics franchise that has been almost universally good for the past five decades or so has been the music. As if to prove it, the Piano Guys -- a duo consisting of a pianist and a cellist (shouldn't they be the Piano and Electric Cello Guys?) -- have taken three iconic Batman themes, arranged them for their own instruments, and mashed them up in a really creative and compelling way. Not only that, they put it all in an absolutely beautifully shot video.

A Twitter user by the name of Ryuuchan spotted something you don't see every day on the roadways of Japan's Chiba Prefecture last weekend: Batman, in broad daylight, riding around on a Batpod similar to the one from The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The Batman costume looks spot-on, and while the Batpod isn't quite the design from the movies (it's got three wheels instead of two), it does look pretty doggone cool.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.

Each weekday, ComicsAlliance brings you a carefully selected variety of links from around the web about comics and comics-related media, including movies, video games, toys, and whatever else might be worth noting. Quite frankly, these are items you may just need to know about to have a productive day. Take a look at today's hand-picked links after the jump.