THE REVIST – THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
I agree that Nolan’s take on the caped crusader was the best of any other director, while I do not feel Bale was the best Batman, I still appreciated the first two movies in this trilogy very much, I wish I could say the same for The Dark Knight Rises. This had to be one of most hyped sequels in the past 10 years, and I think that had a lot to do with the (somewhat) mixed reactions among fans.
The biggest flaw here is that Batman hardly shows his face during the 165 minute runtime, with his first appearance after 45 minutes, and he’s only in the film for a total of about 35 minutes! The best, or perhaps most looked forward to character here would be Bane, and the fact that Hardy was playing him certainly helped the character’s chances of doing well on screen, and he was handled great, for the most part. This leads me to my second problem – Bane’s voice. No, not because it’s jumbled, or distorted, or whatever other adjective one would choose to use. My problem was with the volume of his voice, he sounds like a fucking narrator! For some reason Nolan decided that Bane’s voice needed to be “adjusted” to clear up anything that may have been inaudible…ok, well why were things re-recorded and the volume turned up, why not just turn down the distortion effect while recording Hardy? That isn’t the only problem with Bane that I have, he was brought down too quickly in the end, and was ultimately used as a puppet, nothing more.
Then we have Catwoman, for some reason portrayed by Hathaway. There wasn’t one redeemable aspect of her character. She looked great in the black latex/leather, but nothing about her blew me away. The fact that she killed Bane in such a lackluster way had me saying “wtf!” to myself when I first saw it. Quite simply put, she is a cunt who doesn’t deserve to be liked in any way, shape, or form. She is a typical character in that she wants the shit to hit the fan, and will go to drastic measures in order for it to do so, but then immediately decides that she was on the wrong side of things, and decides to be “good”. Characters starting out bad, then turning good are one of the more clichéd plot points to happen in movies, she should have been good, or bad, that’s it, no flip flopping.
As for the movie itself, the length didn’t bother me, nor did the overall plot. When Batman first shows his face after the eight year layoff, everyone in the theater was cheering, it really was a great moment seeing him back after the 4 year gap since The Dark Knight. I mean, the first fight with Bane and Batman is one of the most epic/sad/discouraging fight scenes that have ever happened in a comic book related movie…well, a fight scene between two people and no special effects. Then Batman vanishes again for about 1/3 of the movie, because his back was broken, and placed in a subterranean jail in an unknown country. Then his back is fixed by someone punching it, and who needs rehab, right? I think anyone with a serious back injury can be strung up by ropes, do some pushups and sit ups and that’s all you need. But I get it, this is a comic book movie, and our beliefs are to be suspended, even though Nolan’s Batman was supposed to be an ultra-realistic take on the character/universe, but that’s neither here nor there.
Regarding the ending, I’m not sure what to believe, I guess you could say that he is alive, given that he fixed the auto-pilot of the Bat, and Alfred does see him with Selina at the end. Even with that said, Nolan likes to trick people with his endings, so who knows. I wish this wasn’t Nolan’s final Batman film, the ending set up Blake’s character perfectly as being a replacement for Batman. Sure it was a little bit cheesy hearing that his legal name was Robin, but who cares, the origin stories of all characters differed from their source material. Seeing Robin walk into the bat-cave left so many things to be desired, personally I was expecting some sort of Batman Beyond type of story.
I watched this movie just before I wrote this, which makes it the third time seeing it, but it was really a chore to get through, and I probably won’t watch it again.
petemc
November 26, 2013 @ 9:48 am
I did not enjoy “rises”. Nice article
Steve Wood
November 26, 2013 @ 9:50 am
Is my complaint for Bane’s voice justified? I can’t be the only one that is annoyed by the volume of it.
petemc
November 26, 2013 @ 11:02 pm
you’re right on steve. jacked way up
Jack Falvey
November 27, 2013 @ 10:10 am
I’d love to write a counterpoint column about this. I see what you guys are saying, but I still think the flick gets some really critical things right that not only take the Batman mythos to a few places it hasn’t really gotten to before but also give a justifiable end for Nolan’s iteration. I think we all can agree that it is a shame Joker couldn’t be in this film, as I’m sure his inclusion would have been spectacular.
steve wood
November 27, 2013 @ 10:16 am
I don’t “hate” this movie, but I dislike more than I enjoy, if that makes any sense. There are certainly some things that are done right, as I brought up in the re-visit, but the cons massively outweigh the pros. Not sure if you know this, but the Joker was supposed to have the Scarecrow cameo as the judge in the new “court”, that was the intention if Ledger was still alive, he was never meant to be part of the actual plot.
I much preferred The Dark Knight over this one, and I’ll be re-visiting it and writing something about it in the next couple of days. I do have problems with that one, however, so we’ll see what kind of feedback I get on that one.
Jack Falvey
November 27, 2013 @ 10:47 am
Well, actually, the story hadn’t been written when Ledger died. There has always been speculation about how Joker would have fit into the plot, but I have always like the theory that he would appear in a Hannibal Lecter-like capacity to Batman at some point. The specific callbacks to Begins and complete absence of any mention of Joker in Rises speaks to the idea that Nolan was paying respect to the actor but also that he hadn’t devised the story as far out as that might suggest. I know Nolan does a good job not spoiling his films but he has gone on record saying that the third film was written after Inception was finished. It would have been cool to see Joker as the judge but that wouldn’t really make much sense in the framework of the world, as he is such a dominant presence on his own. If he was loose, I’ve got to think he’d factor more into the overall plot.
steve wood
November 27, 2013 @ 10:55 am
I completely forgot about the Joker being left out intentionally, I thought that was such a bad decision. Yea, eight years passed by, but The Joker was responsible for both Dent and Rachel dying, you would think during the Alfred speech just before he leaves, the Joker would be brought up at least one. Then with all the talks about Dent at the beginning, and then with Bane later, how was The Joker not brought up?
That bothered me, I get that Nolan wanted to pay respects to Ledger, but was intentionally leaving his character (arguably the best character he has done) out of the movie really the best way to pay respects to his legacy?