The Dark Knight Rises…..
So finally saw the latest Batman movie tonight, The Dark Knight Rises. Definitely a better overall movie than The Avengers, with less plot flaws. Here’s what I saw as the pros and cons (SPOILER ALERT from here onward!):
Pro – great acting, cast and plot twists. Bane goes for broke and you believe all along he doesn’t give a crap save to destroy everything, just like The Joker in the last film. The ‘ultimate evil’, to be sure.
Pro – more great Batman gadgets, this time the crazy motorcycle and ‘the bat’ flying machine, while his tank-vehicles get turned against him by Bane’s army. Also well done on making Tom Hardy (Bane) look like he’s 7 feet tall (he’s actually only 5′ 10″) and towering over Christian Bale (who is actually two inches TALLER than Tom Hardy at 6′ in real life).
Pro – they (again like in Batman Begins) return to Batman’s membership in the obscure Eastern martial-arts school, because Bane was ‘excommunicated’ from the same, and yet again the movie isn’t another run and gun comic book fight mashup (one of my gripes with The Avengers‘ big end battle, actually).
Pro – couple minor things – funny seeing the Lambo get towed when Bruce Wayne gets kicked out of his company’s Board meeting; great Cillian Murphy cameo as the ‘sentencing hearing’ officer (although it would have been even better had he been wearing his Scarecrow burlap head-sack and then taken it off at a key moment); and the true genuine human moments (Bruce Wayne with Marion Cotillard at the fireplace; Michael Caine has at least two great short speeches). And Matthew Modine‘s turn as the dufus Police Chief attempting to be the next Commissioner Gordon – a bit overacted but still good.
Pro – NO 3D!! It doesn’t add anything, guys! We saw the movie in IMAX, which is cool – but not silly, even though it of course costs more.
And now, the list of nits:
1) In the (few) quiet times of the movie – do you HAVE to have the background music still noticeably building tension and sounding like the Jaws theme in the background? It isn’t consistent with what’s happening onscreen and is a distraction at best…
2) When Batman, C. Gordon and Catwoman are standing there in the street staring at Marion Cotillard dying for a minute or more – WHILE THE BOMB IS STILL TICKING AWAY with only MINUTES left to go – hel-LO?
3) 5 months(!!!) go by and THE ENTIRE UNITED STATES GOVT/MILITARY leaves the USA’s biggest city alone to an insane warlord while 3,000 police are trapped in a subway? Bomb or no, that’s just fantasy, guys. And then to top it off, Batman shows up at (literally) the 11th hour and wins the day? Ok, I know why THAT is, but still a bit farfetched…?
4) How they are talking early on about the nuke becoming more and more unstable as time goes by when Bane pulls it out of the reactor system – yet later they act as if it’s timer is the most precise thing in the world (because they are all trying to stop it at the last minute, of course 🙂
5) The sound could have been a bit *lower* than ’11’ guys – I was already into the movie enough without having to go deaf too!
But definitely the best (new) movie I’ve seen yet this summer, even if I think the first two Christopher Nolan Batman movies are a wee shade better than this one? But Batman has definitely been ‘saved’ movie-wise from the terrible earlier movies, of which only the first one in 1989 was even tolerable, the rest just dreck.
Other voices:
The Dark Knight Rises: Review (ScreenRant)
Anne Hathaway is the best Catwoman ever (Vanity Fair)
There’s still Brave, Moonrise Kingdom and a few others out there yet to see, but summer isn’t over yet, either 🙂
candybowl