As Alan Moore once famously cribbed from Roman poet Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? Today, SVA grad Skye Greenfield is papering the Lower East Side with Wanted posters for superheroes that go one step further, accusing our childhood heroes of the most heinous crimes imaginable.

"It started as a thesis project in college, when I would photograph the toys of a kid I was babysitting for," Ms. Greenfield told The Observer by phone after we called the number listed on an enigmatic poster exclaiming "Stop Superheroes Now!" after accusing Spider-Man of stalking Lois Lane.

"But the project never felt finished, and after I graduated, it just hit me. I was creating this fantasy world where superheroes are outlaws. We live in the world where we villainize and criminalize the people who are supposed to be our role models."

While not exactly a new concept--Christopher Nolan explored a similar theme in his Dark Knight reboots--Ms. Greenfield's choice of medium was interesting. Why paper the town with flyers? Was this still part of an ongoing art project?

The 22-year-old admitted that she was currently just collecting the stories of people who sent in tips to the email address she provided on the sheets.

"The best one was this high school student," she remembered. "He wrote this page-long story about all these horrible things he saw Superman do. They were ridiculous. He stole his grandmother's fake hip, and he stole a Ferris wheel with full of orphans, but he couldn't tell if the orphans were screaming or laughing. It was insane."

Though based in fantasy, Ms. Greenfield's work does have a message. "I want us to think about those bigger figures we look up to, and how we go along with whatever they tell us. From our parents to people on a podium, citizens believe whatever someone in a place of authority tells them."

Despite this credo, Ms. Greenfield claims her work isn't exceptionally political. "I just want people to join me in the quasi-fantasy world," she said, before adding, "But if someone said they wanted to put me in a gallery or make a book about me, I'd be all for it."

Click through to see the rest of the Stop Superheroes Now project.

Bale in The Dark Knight Rises.

“Get with the program!” scolds another letter from a brainwashed fan of the Batman-as-seen-through-the-pretentiousness-of-the-Christopher-Nolan trilogy, “You are a dinosaur!” He’s probably right, and I probably would—if I could only make one lick of sense out of what this nonsense is all about. Silly pop-culture comic book cinema about grown men in rubber masks and Styrofoam jock straps is bad enough, but incomprehensible gibberish to boot is just plain unacceptable. Halfheartedly, I give The Dark Knight Rises—the third and final Batflick in the Nolan trilogy—one star for eardrum-busting sound effects and glaucoma-inducing computerized images in blinding Imax, but talk about stretching things. That’s all most immature audiences require for their hard-earned money these days. The rest of it should not be reviewed by anyone over the age of 12.

As caped crusaders go, I prefer Superman, Spider Man and, above all, Captain Marvel, who has been criminally ignored by the movies so far. (Can’t you just see Michael Fassbender staring into the camera hissing “Shazam!”?) And as Batman goes, I had a lot more fun when he was fighting off Catwoman and The Joker at the Saturday afternoon double features of my youth in his campy bat cave with his jailbait roommate Robin. Drat! Christopher Nolan sent Bruce Wayne to a shrink and Batman lost his mojo. I like one caption writer’s description of the Batman epics as “car porn for geeks and gearheads.” But that doesn’t make The Dark Knight Rises any better. Trash is trash, but when it costs an estimated $250 million (bat food compared to The Amazing Spider-Man’s $137 million), the charges turn criminal and someone should subject the garbage man to a citizen’s arrest.

Like all previous flicks directed by Christopher Nolan and written by his brother Jonathan, this one defies logic and reeks of repulsive, bloated self-importance (not to be confused with anything resembling narrative) and the arrogant conviction that no matter how slick, obtuse, confounding or incompetent it gets, the fanboys will slobber approval. Only a fool would tackle a synopsis, but briefly: We open eight years after Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) vanished in disgrace, recovering from wounds inflicted by The Joker (Heath Ledger) and taking the fall for the death of phony hero and secretly corrupt D.A. Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckart). Haunted by the pain and tragedy of past losses and living in seclusion under Gotham City, the 73-year-old superhero—having first risen under the tutelage of Bob Kane in 1939—is lured back into the daylight by neo-noir villains like sexy cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and a monstrous drug-fueled terrorist with a mumblecore voice named Bane (British muscle McGurk Tom Hardy), who commands an army of killers living in the sewers with a face covered by a gas mask (he speaks through a wind tunnel); old friends like police commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman), corporate officer Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) and Bruce’s longtime butler Alfred (Michael Caine); and new allies like idealistic cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and the cunning, enigmatic billionaire socialite philanthropist Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), who joins the board of Bruce Wayne Enterprises to save the empire from going under and turns out to be too good to be true. The coherence ends there. Sick and bent over—his X-rays have him looking like matchsticks—Batman comes out of retirement to the musical accompaniment of Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte,” digs the Batmobile out of mothballs and hobbles off to bring the world back into balance, starting with the Stock Exchange. The rest of the movie, which runs just under three hours, is an interminable barrage of exploding football fields, flying cars, computer-generated images of crumbling skyscrapers and bridges and raging mobs fleeing the nuclear destruction of Gotham City. When all else fails, Bane threatens to destroy the human race in 23 days with one brash act, and Bruce ends up flat on his back, in more ways than one.

Christian Bale mumbles and whispers through an echo chamber, changing his appearance and his voice for reasons known only to Mr. Nolan. Michael Caine chews holes through his dialogue with a peat-bog Cockney accent so thick you can’t understand what he’s talking about anyway. You can hoke it all up with crushing violence, but that doesn’t make it pleasurable. Amid an endlessly contrived pile of red herrings, Marian Cotillard’s character seems like something they went back and invented in post-production, while Anne Hathaway, who turns out to be Batwoman in mufti, comes off as a cold, karate-chopping zombie with cleavage. There are so many plot twists I stopped counting. The Nolan brothers seem to be making it up as they go along. Not one character is developed beyond a flat, one-dimensional cardboard paper-doll construct without heart and soul, not to mention flesh and blood. Not one of these distractions invades the plot for any purpose except to extend the running time. Speaking lines they cannot possibly understand, not one actor makes any attempt to be believable. So manufactured and synthetic that they eventually lose all sense of reality, they’re like reconstituted orange juice and processed cheese. If The Dark Knight Rises is finally the funeral of Batman forever (promises, promises!), trendy technology once again triumphs over artistry, professionalism, taste and good clean fun.

Turning a mosh pit of mystical comic book gimmicks into a money pit of metaphysical mumbo jumbo, Christopher Nolan gives new meaning to both DUI and DWI—“Directing Under the Influence” and “Directing While Intoxicated”—while raking in millions. I’ll have what he’s having.

rreed@observer.com

THE DARK KNIGHT RISES

Running Time 164 minutes

Written by Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer (story)

Directed by Christopher Nolan

Starring Christian Bale, Michael Caine and Gary Oldman

1/4

Bat-berg. (Peter Lettre)

Everyone in Gotham City is lining up to see the third and final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises. It officially opens at midnight on Thursday—well, technically Friday—but tickets have been soldout since January. Why is all of New York agog over watching The Caped Crusader fight some relatively obscure villain from the D.C. universe?

Michael Bloomberg, of course. Think about it: Our own mayor is essentially Bruce Wayne and his vigilante alter ego. The mayor is the 11th-richest person in the United States, with a $22 billion net worth, while Mr. Wayne has a paltry $6.5 billion. (And that’s coming from an honest-to-God Forbes article about the hypothetical bank accounts of fictional characters, so you know it’s true.) They both operate giant eponymous corporate entities, though both Wayne Enterprises and Bloomberg L.P. are run by trusted advisers—Lucius Fox and Daniel Doctoroff, respectively.

Both fancy themselves crime fighters, though connecting with the people is neither’s strong suit. (They’re both a little too 1 percent-y.) And if you need a visual, just check out the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, where a giant mob scene was filmed right next to Zuccotti Park—during the Occupy Wall Street protests.

If this movie has Batman fighting a supervillain who can harness the power of 16 ounces of soda, we might start getting suspicious. After all, Mayor Bloomberg and the Dark Knight have never been photographed together. Or have they?

You can probably imagine that The Dark Knight Rises is going to be a hot movie ticket this weekend, and The Dark Knight Rises in IMAX 3D an even hotter ticket. But as many a movie-goer in this city knows, despite advertisements to the contrary, there's only one, true mammoth IMAX-sized screen worth paying the extra few bucks to get into: The Lincoln Plaza AMC, on 66th and Broadway. Its Dark Knight screenings are already sold out for opening weekend. That doesn't mean you can't get in.

But it'll cost you. Via The Price Hike, one Craigslister with tickets for this weekend explains:

I have four tickets to the only real IMAX IN THE CITY. The IMAX at Lincoln Center is sold out until Tuesday as it's the real deal within the five boroughs. These are for the 6:15pm show on the opening Friday night. I want $85 ticket or $$350 for all four.

Correct he is: The shows are sold out until Tuesday, that part's true. But the real deal? No. The "real deal" is paying face value for these tickets, and waiting until you can actually see the film. Or not dignifying this guy with his offer, which Price Hike blogger (and Bloomberg food critic!) Ryan Sutton notes as a 228% markup. If you so happen to take this guy up on his offer, and have also read this post, please interview him: His name, his profession, and why he must profit at the hands of desperate fanboys or people who just weren't around to buy the tickets when they went on sale, and if he believes in the concept of karma, and how he feels about the rage those like this writer feel when they see things like this, a feeling which, this writer truly believes, he can not be alone in having.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

The Gotham Observer (DewGothamCity.com)

When picking publications to model your fictitious newspaper on, we obviously have a bias. Still, it's nice to see that the Warner Bros.' viral marketing team agreed with us, as their late-June campaign for The Dark Knight Rises included clues to unlock the Gotham Observer, a newspaper that bears resemblance to our own organization in title only.

(We would never lead with a cover story on a 'Festivity Day'...even if it was in honor of a fallen district attorney. Or if we did, we'd make the led much snappier.)

Here are the pages of the fictional newspaper, which you can click to enlarge:

Well, obviously there are glaring discrepancies between Gotham's Observer and its New York counterpart. For one, we don't have a horoscope section. Secondly, these stories belie weekly publication...this seems more like a daily rag.

Still, if you want some clues about the upcoming film--which opens in eight days!!--the sports section gives a little more information on what those football stadium shots are all about. And now we know that Matthew Modine is in the film, we guess. Did we know that already? It's hard to keep track of the gazillion things Christopher Nolan is stuffing into epic finale of his Batman saga.

The sound of a million geeks screaming (Warner Bros.)

Since the tickets sold out in January for the July 20th premiere of Christopher Nolan's third Batman installment, Warner Bros. probably doesn't have to hype The Dark Knight Rises any more. We mean, obviously they will spend a billion more dollars on advertising and marketing tie-ins, but for once we'd like to see a big blockbuster just completely stop all promotions one month before it hits theaters.

Although that would probably lead Copyranter or someone at Ad Age to claim this as the most ingenious viral marketing stunt ever. And then everyone would do it. And then movie trailer editors and distributors would be out of business in months. We need this hundredth The Dark Knight Rises trailer. For the good of Gotham, and all its residents.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ASQqjK47c04#!

Too bad this is the most confusing trailer to the movie we've seen yet, and somehow manages not to include either of its female leads (Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate). It's just a lot of mob scenes, and Tom Hardy trying to outdo Christian Bale in a "ridiculous voice" contest.

We liked it better when they were just exploding our bridges backwards.

I am Kimmelman... I mean Batman. (i09)

Who needs Paul Goldberger and Michael Kimmelman when you have Batman? The Observer knows where we will be on May 30, when three of our favorite things collide: Chip Kidd, Gotham City and architecture criticism.

Mr. Kidd has created a new Batman Graphic novel for DC Comics called Death By Design that he recently previewed with Gawker’s geek webside i09 (we saw it first on Curbed). It’s funny, because the famed book jacket designer and author claims a poverty of ideas on what to write when approached by DC with the offer to pen a comic book when in fact it is clear he knows exactly what he is doing and has come up with one of the best story lines since Grant Morrison’s Arkum Asylum.

I got this extraordinary opportunity where [DC Comics editor] Dan DiDio said, "Do a Batman graphic novel for us." It became a case of the "be-careful-what-you-wish-fors." Even though I'm a lifelong Batman fan, I didn't have the Batman novel in my head I had been dying to write for 20 years. What I came up with first was the title, as it sounded like a story I could bring something to.

I started thinking about living and working in New York, and one of the great tragedies was the destruction of the original Pennsylvania Station in 1963, because it was a beautiful building needlessly torn down. As somebody who has to use the modern Penn Station, it's a horrible, stifling thing, after they threw it in the basement of Madison Square Garden. And there were these Manhattan crane collapses in the spring of 2008. I thought, "How could these two things possibly be related?" Batman is very much about architecture, as he uses the buildings as transportation and defense. Great Batman stories always incorporate architecture in some way, but I hadn't seen a story that particularly dealt with that."There's a cliché that Gotham is "hell opening up on Earth," but that's not the way I approached it. I see the architecture as much more hopeful than a zoning board gone berserk."

Quite delightfully, he goes on to say: "There's a cliché that Gotham is "hell opening up on Earth," but that's not the way I approached it. I see the architecture as much more hopeful than a zoning board gone berserk."

Really does sound like New York.

It’s true that no comic book character is more architectural than Batman (with the possible exception of personal favorite Transmetropolitan). Superman may be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but he does not rely on “the buildings for transportation and defense,” as Mr. Kidd points out Batman does.

Indeed, The Observer was recently taken with the backwards bridges Christopher Nolan blew up in his final installment of the Dark Knight series, a disguise that would be unnecessary in almost any other movie. Aliens and monsters invade New York all the time. To play the part of Gotham, it takes three cities or more.

Nowhere does architecture play quite the role of sidekick as in a good Batman story.

mchaban [at] observer.com | @MC_NYC

How much would you pay to see justice served?

Sorry fan boys (and girls!): If you want to see the third installment in Christopher Nolan's gritty Batman reboot, you're going to have to wait until after opening night. The midnight screenings for the July 19th premiere of The Dark Knight Rises have already sold out in select cities. How is that possible, you ask, since the movie is still six months away? And how much are greedy Craigslist scalpers already charging for their coveted golden tickets online?

The answer is one, nonsensical word: Fandango. The ticket company quietly began selling tickets to theaters in Los Angeles, New York, and San Francisco on Monday. Of course the super-fans noticed, but they were in no rush to tell their friends, and by the time the news hit Variety, all the IMAX screenings in NYC were sold out.

Don't worry though: If you're intent on seeing the movie the second it comes out, and you have to see it in IMAX, and you refuse to take the PATH train...well, you can always buy a ticket on Craigslist. Too bad the starting price is hovering around $100.

Batman vs OWS

So Commissioner Gordon is going to get fired by the mayor because he a war hero, and this is peace time? And Anne Hathaway literally spouts off some OWS rhetoric during a masquerade ball:"Because when it's all over, you and your friends are going to wonder how you ever lived so large, and leave so little for the rest of us."

Well, at least Catwoman is part of the 99%, even if Bruce Wayne isn't.

Batman versus Anonymous

It just keeps rolling in today: first MTV decided that when seven strangers get together and stop being polite and start being real, at least one of them should be protesting in Zuccotti Park. Now a tipster "involved in the production" of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises has leaked to The LA Times that Liberty Plaza would be a great backdrop in Gotham.

But are these the smelly hippies that are city deserves? Would the Batman tolerate the General Assembly? Let's discuss!

We do know that the latest Batman film will be shooting in New York, because we went to the auditions. But could a high-budget movie really use all those protesters in a scene without their consent? That's a boring hypothetical question! Here's a more interesting hypothetical: if transplanted in Gotham, would OWS immediately start picketing outside Bruce Wayne's mega-mansion, or wait a couple days? And as for the Dark Knight himself, what side of the picket line would the vigilante fall on?

In Batman Begins, we are introduced to the Wayne family by way of Bruce's father's contribution to the city... a buzzing transportation system. Never mind that the union of this train would probably be on strike with the Occupiers, since Batman himself  destroyed it in his epic battle with Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul at the end of the first film. So now a mother of three with two part-time jobs and no health insurance will have to walk to work instead of taking the Wayne Monorail (or whatever)? Thanks, Batman. Point: 1 %

On the other hand, Batman hates corporate greed, as evidenced by the fact that he fires Rutger Hauer as the head of Wayne Enterprises and replaces him with Morgan Freeman. Point: 99 %

But wait, doesn't he actually use most of Wayne Enterprises - most likely a publicly traded company - as cover to buy and expense all his "wonderful toys"? Point: 1%

Add to that his George Bush-era surveillance tendencies as well as a complete disregard for the laws that govern society, and you basically have a Tony Balogna-on-steroids situation. One thousand points: 1 %

Batman may protect Gotham from itself, but he's a moral grey area when it comes to tourists who don't contribute to the city's economy. Occupy Wall Street could even make a good villain for Batman in the form of "Anonymous Man," who would wear a Guy Fawkes mask at all times and speak in an annoying computer voice, of course.