Review of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) by Redxleader — 21 Jul 2012

After watching The Dark Knight, I knew right away that Rises wasn't going to top it. That was the mentality that I had going into the theater, hoping to be pleasantly surprised, yet expecting, at the very least, a satisfying conclusion.

I got neither. To put it simply, this was both underwhelming and dumb. The movie opens with an entirely too elaborate plane heist for what amounted to the abduction of some arbitrary nuclear physicist that doesn't become relevant again until halfway in, only to be killed off just as soon as his importance is explained.

If you really think about it, he wasn't necessary. All it really amounts to is some pithy moment at the football stadium where Bane establishes that the physicist was the only person capable of decommissioning a bomb, then kills him immediately to shock everyone.

That was **** stupid because he wasn't even in Gotham before he was abducted, but I know everyone else in the audience was mesmerized and got chills. Idiots. Speaking of which, Bane's voice was impossible to understand and surprisingly wimpy sounding behind that mask.

Maybe it's just me, but I seriously had no clue what he was saying when he talked in the microphone, further distorting his already hard to comprehend voice. Honestly, the movie jumps from plot point to plot point so quickly that you barely get the gist of what is going on before the shot changes again.

Something else that was noticeably absent was the grittiness of the first movies. The emotions felt more genuine in the first two movies, whereas the acting in Rises felt phoned in. No one character really gets a whole lot of screen time.

You don't get a chance to give a damn about them before the scene ends. Lotta plot holes in this movie, too. First, the movie establishes that Bruce Wayne has no cartilage in his knees any longer for some reason, forcing him to walk around with a cane.

That's remedied by a quick scene showing him using high tech joint support devices that solve this problem while also enhancing his strength to the point that he can break through stone without effort, but then as Batman, he gets the case of the stupids and gets his dumb bat ass kicked by Bane, captured and stripped of his Bat Suit as well as joint support gadgetry, and abandoned in some underground prison.

Not only that, his back is broken. So, magically, he's cured of his joint problems with absolutely no explanation, and being hung by a rope fixes his broken back. Dumb. Catwoman barely has any screen time, and arbitrarily wears a fetish leather suit with goggles later in the movie.

Also she is an implied lesbian/bisexual with the scant couple of scenes and dialogue with her blonde friend or perhaps roommate. It's not really explained or necessary, but does it really matter? You're not doing the math when all you can think about is sex, are you stupid? Robin is a cop who actually doesn't help the situation even one god damn time.

Nothing he does actually affects anything, so I have no clue why he's in the movie other than for the one line where someone tells him he should use his full name, "Robin." Wow, was that supposed to shock me? You think I didn't know who he was supposed to be? Oh, and somehow Batman is able to fly a nuclear bomb out to sea with his Bat copter thing with only 40 seconds left on the timer, then escapes from a 6 mile blast radius, when just two scenes before we see him just barely outflying tank missiles inside the city.

The movie even confirms he somehow did this by indicating that he flew his copter back to Luscious' weapons depot without being noticed. I found this movie very hard to watch because of how brain-dead it was.

This movie obviously wasn't meant for me. It was meant for morons with 3 second attention spans. Frankly, I'm shocked more people aren't pissed.