Review of The Dark Knight Rises (2012) by Fanguychris — 01 Aug 2012

Easily the best film of the year so far, The Dark Knight Rises manages to reach its insanely high expectations and delivers a brilliant conclusion to the best superhero film trilogy ever made (in my opinion anyway).

Despite the plot taking place 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight, there is still a fluid continuity of the first two films here which is great, Christian Bale himself has described TDKR as a blend of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and he is right.

The Performances in this film are brilliant as always. Christian Bale is great as the older crippled Bruce Wayne and is still awesome when he becomes the Batman again. Michael Cain is brilliant as Alfred once again despite having less screen time than he did in the other films which was disappointing but seeing how many things needed to be resolved in this film, it was probably necessary.

Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman also give brilliant performances once again. The new cast members also do a great job, the most notable are definitely Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and of course Tom Hardy as Bane.

The Character of Catwoman is nailed brilliantly and fits in Chris Nolans Batman universe perfectly. Despite all the preparation required to get in the role and having to wear a mask the whole time, Tom Hardy managed to give a fantastic performance as Bane, his brilliant voice and the spectacular expressions he can deliver with just his eyes is just awesome, and while it doesn't match Heath Ledgers performance as The Joker, he is still amazing to watch.

The action in this film is the best it has ever been! Chris Nolan has always had a thing for practical effects over special effects and it has paid off, the scope and size of some of the action pieces are outstanding and highlight just how brilliant a film maker Chris Nolan is.

Han Zimmer does the soundtrack once again and while I wouldn't say it is his best work, this film still has some awesome music. There are some flaws, some loose ends from The Dark Knight were not even brought up in this film which I found a little annoying but in the context of what does happen, they don't really matter.

I was also a tiny bit disappointed with how Banes Character ark was resolved, what happened did work but I felt like it could have been done a bit better. The films few flaws are not reasons to give it anything lower than a 10 though, this is one of those cases where the good is so good it trumps the bad in every way.

Amazing acting, brilliant writing, fantastic directing all come together to give The Dark Knight trilogy the ending it deserved, it will stay with you long after you walk out of the cinema and the ending will likely be the subject of many conversations to come.

Is it better than The Dark Knight? That's a tough one because I have seen The Dark Knight many more times than I have seen TDKR and they both have different tones and themes so it's really down to a matter of opinion.

It's rare the third act of a superhero trilogy gets it right but to say that The Dark Knight Rises "got it right" is a huge understatement. You simply have to see this film, Chris Nolan has done it again.