Here’s the thing: Throughout cinema history, there’ve always been blowhards, hucksters, and exploitative filmmakers, the types of people who want to get butts in seats by any unscrupulous means possible. The difference between the type of trash they tend to make and Boll’s output is that the former actually wish to entertain people, whereas Boll seems to have contempt for his work and the audience. Even a movie that should’ve been a lay-up of ’00s genre cheese, 2005’s “BloodRayne,” was hobbled by Boll verbally abusing screenwriter Guinevere Turner, putting her first draft script into production, and then letting actors and others change the script during shooting at will, according to this interview with Turner. Add to this dubious work ethic Boll’s now-infamous practice of antagonizing (if not outright fighting) his critics, and you can see that it’s not the art that Boll is concerned with.
Apparently, Hammer is now interested in Boll’s method of antagonization, making a movie out of spite more than anything else. Signing on to “The Dark Knight” feels like Hammer getting some weird sort of retribution for the rumors that he may have actually played Batman back when George Miller was to helm a “Justice League” movie. In all seriousness, there was a time when Hammer could’ve been a legitimate contender for Batman, having made films like “The Social Network” and “The Man from UNCLE” before allegations of sexual misconduct against him broke in 2021. Now, he’s happy to join Boll in a movie that, according to Variety, involves a man named Sanders “who takes justice into his own hands as he sets out to hunt down criminals,” with the vigilante becoming a social media hero despite the authorities seeking to stop his actions.
If that sounds extremely close to the plot of Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” producer Michael Roesch claims that “our movie is very different from Chris Nolan’s movie, so there is no danger of confusion.” That’s a lot of tosh, of course; sewing confusion is exactly what these fellows hope to do. At least, given Boll’s reputation and Hammer’s rapid descent into mediocrity (if not obscurity), we likely don’t need to worry about anyone becoming confused when it comes to the quality of this cinematic grift they’re calling a film when it eventually releases. If it’s their intention to try and stir up controversy and antagonism, then the sweetest revenge isn’t throwing invectives back, but simply ignoring their noise. Don’t call it a comeback; they haven’t really been here for years.