The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox

Novelisations of blockbuster movies are always going to suffer in comparison to the finished product. The Dark Knight Rises suffers especially, because it can’t adopt any of the approaches other novelisations have taken without damaging the final product. The book versions of Marvel Comics films, especially Spider-Man, tend to add a little humour.

The novelisation of Flash Gordon is notoriously filthy (ridiculously so) where the film was laden with innuendo. Most interesting of all, the author of the Star Wars novelisation was contracted for two books, Star Wars, and a prospective sequel that could be made cheaply should the film fail. It didn’t of course, but the prospective sequel, Splinter of the Mind’s Eye was still written, and is a sought after piece of Jedi apocrypha amongst Star Wars fans.

The tone of The Dark Knight Rises would suffer from the addition of humour or innuendo, and the author certainly can’t produce a sequel. The book does contain some extended scenes from the film, but this extra content is generally dull enough to show why it was cut. This book, presumably written to a tight deadline, is a proficient page turner which races through its plot, but no more than that.