The trilogy has ended. Batman has been immortalized in bronze at city hall while Bruce Wayne anonymously lives out the remainder of his years with Selina Kyle. Happy Ending?
Not quite. In all honesty, the film was pretty boring. Let’s ignore for a minute that Chris Nolan did to BATMAN what M. Night Shamalamadingdong did to THE LAST AIRBENDER–that would be to abandon established lore in favor of writing your own stripped down, anorexic bullshit–the only major difference being that Chris Nolan can actually direct actors. That has never been my problem with the new Batman; the actors generally deliver decent to good performances, my problem is that I just don’t care about them.
Mr. Nolan did his best to reboot the series into a dark, gritty world more akin to our own reality than it is to the comic books. The problem he forgot to address is that in reality life is fleeting and people die. In THE DARK KNIGHT RISES nobody of concern ends up getting killed. You never feel afraid for any of the primary characters. Again, that is not necessarily a problem with movies in general, but it is a problem in this film because of how they have tried to depict the world of Batman. Strip away the violent, dirty exoskeleton of Gotham and you’re left with a run of the mill super hero movie.
The movie, at first, appears to suffer from the trying to do too much in too little a time frame dilemma that many modern movies subscribe to. After closer examination you find that the movie does the opposite–it attempts to stretch the little it has too far and too thin. Here’s a quick timeline: Batman returns to the scene after eight years of absence, Batman has his ass handed to him by Bane, Bane threatens to blow up Gotham with a nuclear weapon, Batman returns (again) and this time manages to win with the help of Catwoman. You need three hours to tell that story? I suppose you should tack on an extra hour for all the whining Alfred ends up doing.
Speaking of Catwoman. I absolutely love (read: loathe) how Bruce Wayne keeps giving her the benefit of the doubt, despite the fact she’s burned him several times throughout the movie. She’s given him no reason to trust her, or even like her, but he still follows her around with puppy-dog eyes. In the comic Catwoman fights an internal conflict over her life as a cat burglar and helping people. She’s not inherently evil in the comic, she’s more indifferent than anything, but she does give Batman reasons to trust her from time to time other than flashing her finely manicured backyard so he begins following the Bat-cock instead of actually thinking.
There was also zero chemistry between the two actors. None. Maybe they just grazed over those scenes and did them in one take. Who knows? I don’t. We’re also constantly reminded throughout the film that Bruce Wayne could have gone anywhere, done anything, but instead he decided to put the cape back on and save the people. As if we needed the movie itself to tell us that we’re watching Batman, what the fuck else is he going to do if not save Gotham for the nth-hundredth time? In the end these scenes serve only one purpose: TO SHAVE PRECIOUS SECONDS OFF OF MY LIFE. Filler dialogue does not make for a good movie going experience.
The usual suspects continue to plague this movie: the “bat voice”, for one. Even when he’s in a scene involving characters who already know that he’s Bruce Wayne he feels it necessary to keep laryngitis bat going. Not to be outdone, the boys in post added so much shitty processing to Bane’s voice that it makes it difficult to not press STOP and EJECT on the DVD. Was there no one around when they were dicking with this shit? No one to say “Hey guys, his voice is coming in WAY louder than everyone else in the scene, and it’s in full stereo. Why don’t we pull our heads out of our asses?”
What do I mean by full stereo? When you watch the movie you’ll notice in scenes where Bane does any amount of talking that his voice seems to fill the entire room. The other actors in the scene have their voices mixed directional, so that if someone is on the left side of the screen their voice is coming out slightly more on the left speaker than on the right, but Bane’s voice fills the entire aural spectrum. It instantly ruins any amount of immersion you may have had in the movie up until that point.
All in all the movie floats somewhere between bad and average. I don’t understand the hype. I would only recommend it to fans of super hero movies. Everyone else should stay clear.