Review: The Dark Knight Rises

I’m not just saying this to be the dickhead who disagrees, but I didn’t enjoy it at all and I really feel like I’m pointing at a fat naked dude whilst everyone else is genuflecting.

I loved The Dark Knight, more than I can possibly say. Batman Begins; also good.
However, I found this instalment weak, poorly paced, and the sound is all over the place. Bane sounds in pain, yes, but he mostly sounds like Sean Connery and once that was in my head I couldn’t get it out. I couldn’t marry the Darth Connery voice up with the eye-acting that Hardy was doing (and doing marvellously might I add).
Hathaway is grand, but hardly Catwoman.
JGL is lovely and was great.

My favourite bit was *Ichabod Crane!*

I just wish I’d seen the film you all saw. I’ll watch it again on DVD. Maybe if the prick next to me hadn’t been rustling his popcorn for 3 hours straight I would have enjoyed it more. But I didn’t.

It's still fairly difficult to put forward a cohesive review on this because I want to believe that, this being Nolan, it has more depth than I'm picking up on. Instead I'm simply going to offer up some bullet-point thoughts. Don't even think of reading unless you've watched the film.
*
+ Bane is a very interesting character and something of a tragic villain. He deceives as a revolutionary when infact he's simply a love-struck destroyer, you suspect with nothing else to live for but Talia. Physically awesome in that first fight, truly unstoppable.
- The fact that he was unstoppable in that first fight makes the 2nd fight look completely stupid. He was defeated far too easily.
Understanding what he says is a problem unless he's talking loudly, even in Imax, but the voice is spot-on. He sounds like he's in pain.
He deserves a much MUCH better ending than the one he got. That was pathetic, he should have been left to die after his mask was damaged and the pit reveal.

+ The score is phenomenal, seriously, see it in Imax. The stock exchange escape when that famous war-like percussion strikes up will raise the hair on your arms.

+ It is very well shot. I had concerns about The Bat standing out as ridiculous but it works.

+ Hathaway is excellent as Selina Kyle
- She gets portrayed more as an ass-kicker than the thief she is. You never get a full sense of what she can do.

- It's all a bit A to B to C predictable. There really are no important twists. Batman gets an absolute beating, he rises, he wins. Nothing else is given much focus.
There is an important theme of letting go of pain and finding something to live for but it's much more subtle than in The Dark Knight and it is the only theme here, in comparison to previous films that had a whole host of ideas to address.

+ Talia's plan is pretty ingenious, if predictable. Befriend Bruce Wayne, attack the financial sector in the guise of a revolution, bankrupt him and then offer help so you can access the bomb. It ticks all the boxes.

- The best moment was given away in the trailer. It never should have been.

+ The pit reveal was very good, it's just a shame anyone with knowledge of Talia saw it coming a mile off.

Ah it's also certainly worth mentioning JGL. Unsurprisingly he's excellent and really the shining light in terms of the story. Right at the end of The Dark Knight, Gordon talked about the hero that Gotham needs, the role that Dent failed in, and it's strongly hinted that John Blake is that hero. Then they go and reveal that his name is Robin...
*

Summing up. Technically brilliant, story is well-told but lacking much explored depth. Just about worth 8/10

Edited at 16:03 on 22/07/12

I'll almost certainly have more to say once Ive fully processed it but I feel disappointed right now. Its very well made & the score is phenomenal but I feel like these things mask what is actually a fairly average story. It is also horribly HORRIBLY predictable, barring 2ultimately irrelevant moments.

T-Bone's seven word review:

I was violently erect throughout the movie.

Okay, maybe not throughout the entire movie, because it is a bit slow in parts, but the first scene of Batman back in the bat-suit? Erect. Violently.

And, my god, I was damn near misty-eyed toward the end. Superhero movies aren't supposed to prod my emotions like that.

I'm with Ali: it's long, it's flawed, but it's also a fucking perfect ending.

Watched it this afternoon. Personally I didn't notice it being slow. Good spacing of action pieces kept the film running at a smooth pace for me.

Only had trouble with that Bane voice. I didn't so much get used to it as learned to live with it. Not just the occasional missing of one of his lines, since I usually got the jist of what he was on about. No, for me it was his voice sometimes going quite high, taking a bit of his sinisterness away.

Also Anne Hathaway basically just becomes Han Solo later, right?

Imaxing it tonight. This is the best review I've read this week, by simple virtue of being the only one that contains no spoilers at all.

Loved it - flawed but thoroughly impactful. Lots of story niggles, but they're the kind of thing that you are left wondering after any superhero/comic-book/sci-fi/fantasy film.

The fact is, this is an expertly filmed, epic finale to the series. Perhaps not a Batman film that you'd want to see over and over again, but a perfectly suited, powerful conclusion to the whole story.