Review of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) by Logan W — 27 Jan 2015

First off, I'd like to point out that the title of this movie could not have been worse. Would have been better off called Gotham City Rises. All I saw of Batman rising was his sympathy for Gotham strong enough to let his ship be destroyed instead of his city at the end. I think that the beginning of this movie, it made out Batman to be this useless, old, lazy (definitely not "rising") man who sits around for the first third of the movie letting anything and everything get the better of him. The whole deal of his non-cartilage filled knees in the beginning wasn't explained as much as it should've and could've been. Why he wasn't able to bring himself out of that in the outside world filled with hospitals although he could climb up a 100 foot wall that included a 10 foot jump while walking straight from a protruding broken spine pushed back in by some random medically unqualified dude in the dungeon he was thrown in, I don't know. (Huge run-on sentence, I know, but it got my point across hopefully.) Anyways if this was Nolan's main interpretation of Batman "rising", (which from my perspective, it looked like it was) it should have been more cleverly thought out. Batman, I'm afraid, even in the course of this devastatingly 3 hour long movie, never in fact "rises" in my opinion. He's been harshly reduced to this pitiful shell of himself and is never quite able recover even a shred of his former glory shown in the Dark Knight.

Now, on to Bane... First off I do wanna say that Nolan is, however, for the most part a wonderful trilogy writer, ending off the story of his batman in a "mostly" intelligent way. But anyways, I would like to say, of the whole Bane deal, I personally think that no matter how good a job Tom Hardy could possibly have done with Bane, however, living up to Heath Ledger as the Joker in "The Dark Knight" was simply too difficult. Ledger set the bar to unreachable heights. Sadly the tip of that iceberg melted with Bane. Maybe, they should have ended the trilogy with Joker as the villain.... if they could have.....moment of silence........ Anyways, about Bane, besides the fact that his mask was on too tight in the movie {this made him sound like a New York City subway operator, Count Chocula, and General Grievous all rolled up into one} making him near-incomprehensible throughout (strenuous on my poor lil ears), all this guy was was a glorified cheater in my opinion. A roid-raging pro wrestler jacked up on morphine, so he couldn't feel pain no matter how hard Batman tried to fight back in those boring fist battles between the two that showed off Batman's lost greatness as well. I have although seen all this toe to toe one on one crap before in past movies. NOTHING new or exciting in the fights. However, story-wise, I get it, he's Batman's equal as opposed to a counterpoint and that's what caps off the trilogical structure.

Quick point by the way, before I move on to my view of catwoman, Ms. Marion Cotillard in the movie playing Al Gul's daughter/Miranda Tate died the most unrealistic death I think I've EVER seen in a movie. Awful acting skills at that moment. A lot more normal dialogue than dying is what I saw. She has to do this double-slouch technique almost falling out onto the floor, she's eye-raping the camera, and 1,2,3 poof she tilts her head at a 45 degree angle. I half-expected her to stick her tongue out. Very bad.

Off that subject, on to Selina Kyle playing a very mischievous thief known as Catwoman. She was never actually considered Catwoman in the movie, but honestly had no reason to be. What I saw of her, besides kicking butt, and stealing, showed NO resemblance to the catlike personality shown in past movies and the comics. Maybe this happened because there was absolutely NO introduction to this woman whatsoever!! Where the heck did she come from, how'd she know Bruce?!? Some moments of her career in this movie, also, I must say were not as well played as they could have been. I don't see what the big fuss was about her. She was good, but she most certainly wasn't great.

I must say this movie was not deserving of the amount of time it took out of my life. I'm satisfied, though I guess. It was good enough to semi-fulfill my expectations story-wise, but could've been much better.... Still a benchmark movie in so many regards. "In Nolan We Trust.".