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Hello and welcome to Learn English Vocabulary. My name is Jack and I’m making this podcast for you to learn or revise English vocabulary. You can find a transcript of this podcast on LearnEnglishVocabulary.co.uk. There’s a page for this podcast with the transcript, an activity and a task for you to do in the comments section.

This week, I have three podcasts about films. These podcasts cover some of the language from the English Focus Conversation course lesson on films. In each of these podcasts, I am going to describe a film and I want you to try to work out what film I’m describing. After that, I’ll talk about the vocabulary and then I’ll replay the film description so you can hear the language again.

Here is the second film description. What film am I describing?

The second film that I want to describe is part of another film franchise. There have been over 10 big feature films about this hero and some have been good and some have been OK. The films are adaptations of a famous comic, though I think more people will have seen the films than have read the comics. As they are based on a comic, the films are stylish and not supposed to be realistic. The fictional city where the action happens is a dark and dangerous place and the criminals that live there are not regular gangsters. The film I’m describing is the second film in a trilogy made by the director Christopher Nolan. Nolan’s trilogy are more realistic than some of the earlier films and this makes them more dramatic as the villains that the hero faces seem more dangerous.

The film is long, but I was gripped throughout. Some films feel like they are just non-stop action and are exhausting to watch. There’s a lot of action in this film, but the tension builds and releases throughout the film. 

As with Bond films, these films depend upon the villain and in this film, the villain was played by Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger played a crazed maniac who just wanted to create chaos and confusion and tried to corrupt the lead character. His performance is brilliant. Every time he’s on screen, the scene is so tense. You don’t know what’s going to happen. 

Lots of movie critics have called this the greatest comic book adaptation and it’s certainly my favourite. I like that the film is quite realistic, but still stylish enough that it feels like a superhero movie. 

Do you know what film I’m describing?

The answer is The Dark Knight Rises which is the second film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. 

I said that there have been over 10 big feature films about Batman. You often hear the phrase feature film. A feature film just means a full length film that was made to be played in cinemas. In the past, this was to distinguish the main film from the newsreels and short films that would also be shown. The main film would be the main feature. However these days, if you go to the cinema, you only watch films. You can also use feature films to distinguish cinema releases from TV movies. Though that has also changed now that so many films are made for streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. Perhaps in the future, the use will die out. For now, though, it means a major film.

An adaptation is a film made from a book or a play or in this case a comic book. There have also been a number of video game adaptations. You can call the original format the source material and say that the film is adapted from the original. However, I think that the noun form adaptation is more common.

Another way of talking about the source material for a film is to say what a film is based on. So comic book adaptations might be based on specific comics or stories from comics or they might be new stories that just use the characters and motifs from comics. In both cases, the new films can be said to be based on the comics. You often see notices at the beginnings of films to say that a film is based on real events, though some aspects have been fictionalised, that is, they are just made up to make the story work as a film. 

The director is the person who manages the filming of a movie. So they are like the boss on the set. When all the people get together to make the film, the director will instruct the cinematographer and the technical team and the costume designers and people who make the sets and finally the actors. Everybody does what the director tells them. The director calls to start filming and will say action or something like that and when they want the acting and filming to stop, they say cut. 

I said that the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy has a more realistic style than some of the earlier Batman films. The films are still about a man who fights criminals dressed like a bat and the baddie is an insane criminal mastermind who dresses like a clown so they are still not terribly realistic, but the way that the  film is shot is more believable than some of the earlier films. I’m not sure that realism is that important in a superhero film, but Christoper Nolan manages to make this absurd character more believable. 

I said that the film was more dramatic because it was more believable. Drama in films has two meanings. It can be a genre of film that is serious and explores realistic subjects. But within any genre of film, there can be moments of drama which are full of excitement and tension. If a film or a story is very dramatic, then the story moves from happy to sad to calm to exciting very quickly. The more these changes affect you, the more dramatic the story. So some superhero films have crazy action scenes and amazing effects, but they don’t feel real so you don’t really worry about the characters. If it feels too much like a superhero film, then you know that the hero will be OK in the end. So added realism can make a film more dramatic.

I said that the film was long but I was gripped. I could also have said that the film was gripping. If something is gripping, it grips your attention. To grip means to hold something very tightly. If something grips your attention, then you watch it very closely. You do not get bored and start wondering about dinner or check your emails on your phone. If you are gripped, then you concentrate on the film. The adjective gripping is similar to exciting, though some films are gripping because of the relationships between characters and might not be that exciting, but you still can’t stop watching.

I said that there is a lot of action in this film. Action usually means fighting or chasing or doing dramatic and dangerous things. You can use the word action to talk about anything that is happening in a film, but we normally use it for exciting and dangerous things. Often, you hear film critics talking about action sequences. This is because big fights or chases can take ages to create and some directors have a clearer idea about the action that will happen in a film than they do the plot or the story. I read that one famous director planned all the action sequences before they thought about the plot.

The way that an actor plays a character in a film can be called their performance. So If an actor plays a character really well, they will be praised for their performance. The verb to perform just means to act or do something. But for films, it‘s really just used to describe the work that the actors do. You also hear people say that a director got a good performance out of an actor in a film. So the director might also be praised for supporting an actor so that they can deliver a powerful performance.

OK. That’s quite a lot of vocabulary. Listen to the description again to hear the language in context.

The Dark Knight Rises

The second film that I want to describe is part of another film franchise. There have been over 10 big feature films about this hero and some have been good and some have been OK. The films are adaptations of a famous comic, though I think more people will have seen the films than have read the comics. As they are based on a comic, the films are stylish and not supposed to be realistic. The fictional city where the action happens is a dark and dangerous place and the criminals that live there are not regular gangsters. The film I’m describing is the second film in a trilogy made by the director Christopher Nolan. Nolan’s trilogy are more realistic than some of the earlier films and this makes them more dramatic as the villains that the hero faces seem more dangerous.

The film is long, but I was gripped throughout. Some films feel like they are just non-stop action and are exhausting to watch. There’s a lot of action in this film, but the tension builds and releases throughout the film. 

As with Bond films, these films depend upon the villain and in this film, the villain was played by Heath Ledger. Heath Ledger played a crazed maniac who just wanted to create chaos and confusion and tried to corrupt the lead character. His performance is brilliant. Every time he’s on screen, the scene is so tense. You don’t know what’s going to happen. 

Lots of movie critics have called this the greatest comic book adaptation and it’s certainly my favourite. I like that the film is quite realistic, but still stylish enough that it feels like a superhero movie. 

I have one more film description for you to try to work out later in the week.

If you have enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a comment or a review and don’t forget that you can read the transcript for this podcast and complete some language activities on LearnEnglishVocabulary.co.uk. 

Thanks for listening.