Normal poker service will be resumed shortly. I sense fierce debate is possible over The Dark Knight Rises so I'm putting all my thoughts on it down here, not that more than three people will probably ever read it but meh... it is required for my own personal sanity. Obviously this is going to be spoiler heavy so if you haven't seen it yet and want to do not go on.
I have only watched TDKR once so far so I might revise my opinion a little on a second viewing but the more I think about the movie the more I doubt it is likely to shift much. For me both 'Batman Begins' and 'The Dark Knight' were five star movies. They were well conceived and well executed and they carried a real emotional wallop to them. TDKR is a three star movie. I know that some people will enjoy it more and have no problems with it but for me it was disappointing. Please feel free to argue differently in the comments below. The best thing about a democracy is everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I would love it if some one could convince me that I am wrong and that I could actually enjoy it more than I did. For as much as possible I will work my way through the problems from start to finish.
I'll begin with the initial set up. This Batman world clearly stands on its own, Nolan has grounded as much as he can into reality, so I am willing to let it go its own way on a lot of things. Even if you totally ignore the comic base of the character though I have a major problem with Bruce Wayne being holed up in his mansion as a virtual recluse and an eight year absence of The Batman. If they had told me he carried on for a bit after The Dark Knight and then faded away I might have bought it. If they had instead SHOWN us how Bruce Wayne got to this point I might have been wiling to swallow it. This for me ends up as a recurring issue in the film... there is space for a lot of quieter emotional moments that would have given it real gravitas and impact and too many times they skip it for the sake of plot or moving onto the next action set piece. The emphasis on plot negates much of the emotional impact that the film could have risen to. Even in this world version of Batman Bruce Wayne does not strike me as a quitter. Considering how effectively Batman Begins covers a lot of ground initially to get us engaged with the story of Bruce Wayne I think a five minute look at how he ended up as such a recluse could have gone a long way.
I have a major issue with Alfred in this film as well. I don't get why he waited so long to walk out on Bruce or give him a kick up the backside. If Bruce was moping this version of Alfred would have had it out with him years earlier, the whole Rachel letter thing would have come up much sooner. Again I might have swallowed this version of the story if Alfred had come back prior to where he reappears in the story. Even if it was a shot as simple as Alfred picking up Bruce at the airport of whichever country the prison is supposed to be in. Again one simple little heart warming scene could have made the next one of him stood over the grave that much more powerful. He just disappears from the movie, mainly because there are too many characters and too much plot to shoehorn in.
The other major gripe I have with the set up is this so called 'Dent Act'. This really is lazy storytelling. Of course Gordon would have used the death of Harvey Dent to help get a grip on crime on the city but the suggestion that Gotham has become some sort of nearly crime free paradise is ridiculous. There will always be crime in major cities and this is why there will always be a need of The Batman. I like the idea of Bruce trying to put his effort into something that will help save the world but if anything I would have thought that his failure there would have likely driven him back out to do what he has dedicated so much of his life too... the protecting of innocent people from crime. Even if he moved to another city that needed more help. Everything in this story is too easy, none of the plot points are earned and because of that nothing carries the weight the film really should possess.
Despite these issues I think the first act ticks away quite nicely. Selina Kyle and John Blake are good additions to the story. Bane is introduced well and it is nice to see him get a chance to shine compared to the utter embarrassment of the way he gets used in 'Batman and Robin.' Clearly they have overhauled his speech radically despite anything Nolan says to the contrary. I saw the first scene on the Imax before Mission Impossible 4 and you barely got a third of what Bane said. Here I think I missed half a sentence all film and that was probably because something was being blown up. I also think tying him into The League of Shadows works very effectively in the context of the trilogy.
Where things start to unravel for me is the first fight between Bane and Batman in the sewer. This fight should be as brutal as it possibly can be within the context of a 12a rating. You should feel every one of Bane's blows and you should be upset by the destruction of the hero. It didn't really work for me. The more I think about it the more I feel that hand to hand fighting is an area of weakness in Nolan's otherwise impressive arsenal of directorial skills. 'The Dark Knight' was a relentless movie but for me it has one fight sequence too many. The bit towards the end with the hostages and the SWAT teams feels stylistically no different to the punch up in the garage at the beginning. The action is in danger of becoming a bit samey but is saved by a much cleaner and superior story arc. This first major TDKR set piece could have been so much better. When Bane uses the iconic back breaker move the audience should be wincing from behind the safety of the chair in front.
From that point the second act becomes a mess. I like a long film but TDKR felt twenty minutes too long in the context of how the story is presented and most of that comes from the flabby second act. The Gotham stuff works okay but the prison story is borderline silly. All the elements are there for greatness but again the composition of the cake stops it rising to greatness. Bruce's redemption feels too easy. There needs to be more pain and more soul searching. Doing lots of press ups and hallucinating Liam Neeson doesn't really cut it. The sequences would either benefit from being shorter as is or longer with more emotional breathing space. Again the emotion is not present because the film is too busy wanting to take us through a crazy number of set ups to get all the elements of the third act in place.
The ultimate laziness in the story telling is in the No Mans Land Gotham. What a wonderful set up, what a horrifying proposition... what a poor execution. The cops in the sewer - it was so nice of Bane or Blake to provide all of them with new clean uniforms and an ironing board. Obviously they filmed the shots of them entering the sewers and leaving them in the same few days. Shame in a 250 million dollar movie (or thereabouts) they couldn't afford to make it look like these guys had actually been stuck in a sewer for over three months. It is also very nice of Bane to keep everything looking relatively clean on the main streets. Everything about this should have been dirtier and messier. The suffering of the ordinary people would have again been fertile ground for emotional depth. Instead of seeing the reality of a nightmare situation we get a few shots of people being made to walk to their death on ice. Crane as the judge was a nice touch though. I may as well address 'The Bat' being parked on a rooftop as well here. The city is under occupation by a group of paranoid nutters, how likely is it that a big camouflage tent wouldn't have been spotted at some point? If not by Bane then at least by a Gotham citizen looking for resources to survive with.
Let us get into the meat of the third act. The race against time element here felt less effective than in the previous two films. To be honest maybe the fact that this was the third straight Batman film with a strong race against time element against the destruction of all or part of Gotham is why it has become a bit same old same old.
The whole Talia issue. On the one hand I want to give the makers some kudos as despite it being reported very early on that Tate was Talia they somehow managed to re-smokescreen it to the point that the knife stabbing actually caught me by surprise. Despite that if any part of the story could have been cut for the benefit of the rest it was this part. Talia serves no purpose other than to tie it back into the first film more. Having Bane as a pupil of Ra's Al Ghul achieves this anyway so all that is left is a slightly pointless plot twist. I sometimes feel like Nolan is not entirely sure what to do with women in movies as so many of the films he has now made are very male heavy in the casting balance. A lot of the people feeling negatively about the film are big fans of the Batman comics and obviously a lot of people are saying accept the films for what they are - different. This would be fine if it wasn't so blatantly obvious that this twist is there exactly to try and wrong foot the people who think they know what is going on. Making it Talia who escaped from the prison and not Bane is only there to subvert the expectations of the fans of the comics. This highlights a major problem for me in the whole series of third act endings. This film lacks the courage of its convictions, it wants to be all things to everyone and instead of delivering a fitting ending to this Batman world it tries to hoodwink comic fans then hoodwink the entire audience with the nuclear explosion. I really wish some or all of the main characters had snuffed it in interesting ways... they could have got so much more powerful with the individual sacrifices. The final part of The Lord of Rings had a similar string of endings but it earned the right to them by taking us on an emotional roller coaster all the way up to that point.
Almost there now. The final niggle for me. Lets just ignore the joke of John Blake really having the name Robin. When he enters the Bat Cave in this world it is pretty obvious he is not going there to become Robin, he is the new Batman... or at least he should be. Bruce Wayne is still out there so with the nudge, nudge, wink, wink series of endings they are saying well we could do one more if we wanted. This trilogy made great pains of creating Batman the symbol. A symbol greater than one man. The only way this should have ended was with Blake out on his first trip into the world as Batman... proving that the symbol Wayne created has become more powerful and important than he as one man could be. It might well have been more poignant if this was after Bruce Wayne really had been killed saving Gotham. Oh, and at what point are we supposed to believe Bruce Wayne adjusted his will to leave a bag for blake to collect? Did he bribe everyone after his fake death? Or did he do it in the thirty seconds he had spare before getting back into Gotham to save the day?
So despite all that it isn't a terrible film, it isn't a bad film... but it is just a mediocre film when it should have been an epic film. It borrows heavily from elements of' 'Knightfall', 'Bane of the Demon' and 'No Mans Land' yet it would probably have done far better to go off further in its own direction as ultimately it will enrage a large number of fans of the comics. If you can switch off to some of the sillier logic failures and enjoy the action you probably liked it a lot more than I did. Feel free to tell me if you did.
