The Dark Knight Rises
I saw it on Friday night and enjoyed it immensely. Only real downside was that there was probably two movies worth of story in Rises and I would happily have sat through another two hours if they'd chosen a five hour running time. Lots of characters and events that will take a few viewings for it all to sink in. Anyone else seen it yet?
Comments
And seriously, if you're here, you've no reason to complain about spoilers. Go away until you've seen the movie, or don't.
Just saw it this morning. Its a giant wallow, but that's fine, I was ready for a giant wallow. The Lord of the Rings is another giant wallow, and for that matter, one of my all time favorite movies, Lawrence of Arabia is a giant wallow.
Ann Hathaway was just fine as Selina Kyle (I hesitate to say Catwoman in this case.) I was pleasantly surprised that what we all took for some dopey looking cat ears were her goggles flipped up. A nice design touch.
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
I got that Miranda was Talia from the get go (her balance statement right in the beginning made that obvious) but that she was the child in the prison - nope. And in retrospect, the clues are there. So well played, Nolan.
I did kind of like the last scene.
I think Miranda's comments made it fairly obvious she was indeed Talia but they did have me believing it was a benevolent Talia who was going to side with Bruce, so I wasn't expecting stabbity at the end. It also provided a decent counter arc to Selina's, who went in the opposite direction. I liked Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle a lot, she was ambiguous until the end and had the right amount of attitude to never be quite certain of where she stood.
My only real grumbles are that the story seemed like a messy merger of the Knightfall and No Man's Land stories from the comics but it really needed some device to pace the third quarter, which was supposed to take place over six months or so (?). Also, the John Blake character was too knowing and characters accepted him too easily. We know why he was there but he seemed shoehorned into the script to be Robin without the stigma of admitting the character was actually a sidekick.
Below is the spoiler-free review that posted today on my website, and Friday on my FB:
Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Director: Christopher Nolan
Cast: Tom Hardy, Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Gary Oldman, Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine
Plot: It’s several years after the end of the previous
Batman movie, and Batman (Bale) hasn’t made any public appearances after
the death of Harvey Dent. Neither has Bruce Wayne, for that matter.
He’s holed up in Wayne manner, with his faithful servant Alfred (Caine)
looking after him…and trying to get him to settle down with a lady.
Promoted to Commissioner, Gordon (Oldman) has successfully cleaned up
the streets and all but eliminated organized crime in Gotham.
However, not all’s well in the world. A nuclear scientist is being
transported back to the United States and during this exchange, is
broken out against his will by mercenary Bane (Hardy). Bane bee-lines it
for Gotham City, where he has dastardly plans for the good scientist.
Turns out Bane’s running the League of Shadows – the same group from
Batman Begins that trained Bruce, and was also trying to destroy Gotham.
Meanwhile, during a fundraiser held at Wayne Manner, cat burglar
Selina Kyle (Hathaway) sneaks into Bruce’s secluded wing and tries to
steal his mother’s pearl necklace…as well as his finger prints!
As Bane and crew start laying the foundation of their diabolical
scheme, police officer Blake (Gordon-Levitt) is investigating why orphan
kids are dying in the sewers of the city.
Bane’s master stroke is finally revealed, forcing Bruce Wayne to done
the mantle of the Batman yet again. However, with a more fragile body
and having been out of the game for a while, does Batman have a chance
to defeat the elite mercenary and his army of the League of Shadows?
I saw an advanced pre-screening of Batman 3 on Thursday night, and
really found myself enjoying it. It’s certainly the movie that resembles
a comic book the most in the Nolan universe – which isn’t a bad thing
by any measure. The budget was bigger, so the stunts and action set
pieces were as well. Nothing really stood out as spectacular – but
that’s mostly because the entire flick has been beefed up to be
incredible.
For those of you who don’t know, the previous Nolan Batman flicks
were shot in Chicago – but not this movie. And it shows. The city looks
completely different. And it’s not necessarily a bad thing, but a
nit-picky thing several people in my group also noticed. However, we are
all from Chicago….
The acting in this flick is top-notch. The entire cast does a great
job of playing within this comic book world. The stand out performance
was, for me, delivered by Caine’s Alfred. He under-goes the most
emotional journey of the entire trilogy, and you feel his pain
throughout. Gordon-Levitt does a good job as well, eating up the scenes
he’s in. He does a good job playing this up-and-coming officer with that
go-get-’em attitude that any good cop would need in Gotham City. And
Hathaway does a serviceable performance as Selina, which is a trick role
to play in a more realistic Batman universe like we’ve seen in Nolan’s
flicks.
Bale does a great job as Bruce, playing the tortured soul who just
can’t let go of the tragedy of his parents death. Although, his Batman
still needs some work. I’m told it’s difficult to work in that suit, but
he still sounds like he is short of breath and needs a cough drop.
Despite numerous revisions to his voice as well, Bane is still
incredibly difficult to hear and understand through most of the movie. I
almost wish they had included some subtitles for him…or had a sound
mixer with worse hearing….
Fans of the movies will be glad to know that the previous flicks do
get call outs, and do affect the characters and the story. While Joker
isn’t mentioned (due to respect to Heath Ledger’s passing, according to
interviews with Nolan), the events of that movie are mentions. Here’s
what you need to remember for this flick:
Batman Begins:
1) Bruce Wayne is a rich orphan, who was comforted by Gordon when he parents were killed
2) Bruce traveled the world for 7+ years, eventually joining the League
of Shadows before finding out they were evil, and destroying them –
killing their leader, Ra’s Al Ghul
3) Batman forms an alliance with Gordon to take down organized crime
The Dark Knight:
1) Harvey Dent is the district attorney who made a difference, teamed up with Batman and Gordon to fight organized crime
2) Harvey Dent was turned into Two-Face, and died at the end of the flick
3) Batman took the blame for Two-Face’s murders (and Dent’s murder) to keep Dent’s reputation clean
I didn’t want to put any plot spoilers into the review, but suffice
it to say I saw some of the twists and turns in this flick coming from a
mile away. However, I was probably the only person in the theater
that’s actually read a Batman comic book, or watched the Batman The
Animated Series.
But despite my uncanny ability to predict a lot of movies, I really
enjoyed this flick. It’s not as fun of a movie-going experience as The
Avengers was (few flicks are, and I knew this one would keep with the
dark, brooding tone of the previous movies), but it’s still well worth
your hard-earned dollars to see it in theaters.
The run time is long, coming in around 2 hours and 48 minutes. My
recommendation: don’t drink a lot BEFORE the movie, or too early. The
last thing you want to do is have to pee the entire movie…or have to
leave during the grand finale.
The movie will hold your attention, keep you hooked from beginning to
end, and really let you connect with the characters we have come to
love in these roles (for the last time) in the Nolan Batman universe.
Go see this movie.
It did a have a theme: The past doesn't have to define you. It's there for pretty much all the main characters, and the movie is about whether you can let go of the past before it destroys and start over. Heck, it's even there for the entire Gotham PD in the end. It doesn't really have a political theme, despite making nudges towards it.
I disagree that it's inconsistent with the end of DK - at the end, he has lost the woman he loves, saw a man he considered the person he took up the fight turned into a monsters, is going to be hunted by the police and has seen that the people of Gotham are fundamentally good and decent people. That he quits being Batman is pretty reasonable continuation of where he was then.
That said, while I feel the movie justified it, I'm not entirely happy with it. I think it would have been more satisfying to have had him being Batman until he couldn't, but it is what is. Fundamentally, this is a different Batman than the comicbook one - Bruce setting up Batman as an enduring symbol, something bigger than one man, something that could people that are other than him - that's been there in all three movies. This is a Batman who could walk away someday. And did.
LIkewise, I don't necessarily think having him only have been active for a year is the choice I'd have made but in that year: he was involved in a mass breakout at Arkham, a chemical attack on the city, a very public crusade by the Joker against him, and the scourging of the criminal element. Yeah, people, even kids, are going to remember and talk about him.
Still, its a classic superhero comics approach. Determination and hard work, that's the ticket, my son.
You may feel that its empty rhetoric, or could have been expressed better, but I found it to be pretty clearly stated and it reaches back into the first movie.
I'm not entirely sure how out of shape he was meant to be, though. Leg not withstanding, he was at least practicing archery and doing something with his time.
(Although I was bothered by, and would consider this something of a plot hole, by two things related to his leg: First, no one mentioned that he suddenly when from being cane guy to perfectly fit without even a limp as Bruce Wayne and second, he apparently didn't need the doodad that allowed him to work normally after that first scene, because he presumably didn't have it during the prison scenes.)
Interestingly, Bane had essentially superhuman strength, which was....interesting? I mean, during their first fight, he casually strolls with Batman held up by one hand and Bale weighs somewhere between 180 and 200 pounds. Now, yeah, there are people who can lift that above their head with one hand, but probably none who could do it the way Bane did.
One of the things that remains true is that Nolan STILL hasn't figured out how to film solo fight scenes. He's gotten better at filming Batman or Catwoman fighting multiple people, but the fights with Bane should have had more impact. It's not the choreography, it's the cinetography and editing.
Which is a shame, because Hardy is capable of absolutely terrifying speed (you see it a bit in their second fight) - he puts it to excellent use in Bronson and Warrior - and he could have done a lot more in those scenes.
couldn't get over how Bane/Talia knew Bruce Wayne was Batman. If so,
why lure him into a bat suit just so he can watch his city die? Just
grab him as Bruce Wayne-with-a-cane. They already had his fingerprints
and the ability to ruin him. They already knew where to get all his
batmobiles and toys. Batman was already *gone* and believed to be a
murderer (Harvey Dent), so why bring batman back again? Just to frame
him again, as still a bad batman?"
I don't think Bane and Talia meant to do that. They were trying pretty hard to not let anyone know what was going on with their plan until it was too late to do anything about it. What I think was meant to happen was that Wayne wasn't meant to come after them until after the part where they attack the stock exchange. Selina getting too curious (amusingly - cats and all) looked like it jacked up their plan. Note that Talia had been in Gotham for YEARS, and Bane was there for, probably, six months or so before Batman had any idea they were there.
But I mean, them knowing is fine. I mean, the whole League of Shadows knew, and they appeared to mostly survive Batman Begins. Likewise, they were trained by the League of Shadows and would recognize the tactics.
"
believe Bruce Wayne escapes Bane's prison the very *day of* the bomb
going off. He is half way around the world... yet, without a penny in
his pocket makes it back to Gotham on what should've been a 12+ hour
flight, after months in captivity, without jet lag on a still-mending
broken back. And he wins without doing anything different than his
first fight."
He doesn't. It's twenty one days before the bomb going off, so it takes him several weeks to make that journey.
Gotham without any indication of what resources he utilized to do it
(Wayne's broke and in Morocco and then he's in Gotham)."
That one didn't bug me - he had plenty of experience travelling the world during Batman Begins, without money or identification, so even if you don't go with "He's Batman" as an explanation, he definitely has that skillset. Especially when it takes him a few weeks to do it.