The Dark Knight Rises...and Falls

Today was my annual trip to the movie theater...although I can't remember for the life of me what I saw at the theater last year...hmmm....anyhoo, today I took in a viewing of 'The Dark Knight Rises'.  I walked out of the theater with an overwhelming feeling of 'meh', which has since given way to full blown disappointment.


Now, I'm going to be honest here...I don't give a rat's flying ass about Batman comics, video games, canon, legends, fan fiction, etc.  What made 'Batman Begins' such a breath of fresh air was the fact that it was a very good movie about a comic book character, not a comic book movie.  Christopher Nolan set the bar even higher with 'The Dark Knight', a movie that had more in common with 'Heat' then it did with any other comic franchise...and Heath Ledger as the Joker was sheer brilliance, in the hands of a lesser actor that role would have torn 'TDK' from the hinges of the story Nolan was trying to tell.  'TDKR', sadly, felt too much like a comic book movie, intermingled with 70's Roger Moore era James Bond, and served up with a heaping helping of Lucas Suck Sauce.

'Hold on,' you are probably asking yourself, 'are you saying this movie was Star Wars Prequel/Moonraker bad?'  No, not at all...what I'm saying is that Christopher Nolan's last Batman installment felt as if there was a better story that he was wanting to tell that, for whatever reason, didn't get told.  The plot holes and shoddy character development/motivations are a lot to overcome.  Part of me thinks that Nolan felt some pressure to please the studio, and if so, it is a crying shame.  If that is the case, Nolan should have made the film he wanted to make and given the studio a gigantic 'eff you' flaming middle finger.  In the current climate of film making an eventual Batman reboot is inevitable, so why not do what you will with the story-arc you created?  The scenes that are obvious in their intent to hand the reigns of the series over to Joseph Gordon-Levitt are handled in such a hamfisted and clumsy manner that they almost feel tacked on.  At one point Batman tells JGL's character, 'wear a mask when you are working alone'.  Okay then, why not just give him the address to the Batcave as well?  Oh, yeah....

There are so many things wrong with 'TDKR' that it's almost impossible for me to start...but I'll give it a shot...

Christopher Nolan tries to make us believe that Bruce Wayne hung it up as Batman because he went all emo billionaire recluse after the death of Rachel Dawes in 'TDK'.  Also, something called the Harvey Dent act locked up every criminal on the streets and threw them into a maximum security prison in the middle of downtown Gotham City.  Yep.  On the Rachel Dawes bit I have to call 'bullsh!t' because the Bruce Wayne/Batman from the first two films was obsessed with fighting evil and darkness, letting his own hate and pain consume him...but in this film he's moping around stately Wayne manor like the world's most physically fit Morrissey fan.  Gotham no longer needs Batman, and Bruce Wayne is too busted up about a girlfriend that died 8 years earlier to do anything about it if they did...which really diminishes the motivation Bruce Wayne used to become Batman in the first place.  If anything, the death of Rachel Dawes should have made him even more unstable.  Mopey Bruce Wayne was worse than sad lumberjack Wolverine...

Bane as a villain is introduced as more than just brute force, there's an intelligence to the character that puts some muscle behind the hustle he's trying to put over on Gotham City and Batman.  However, there were times I just wanted to laugh at Bane because of the ridiculous voice used to deliver his lines...he sounded like a demonic Winnie The Pooh mixed with an old timin' carnival barker with a liberal sprinkling of Humongous from 'The Road Warrior'.  By film's end Bane is reduced to nothing more than a love sick pet with awesome deltoids.  I will say that Tom Hardy, when allowed to unleash Bane's physicality, was brutal...but those moments were few and far between as the dust ups with Batman were blocked in annoying close-up tracking shots.  Also, every time Bane did snap a neck or rip off a face, it was done off camera, so the audience is never really given an opportunity to witness what Bane was capable of.

Not being a Batman nerd, I'm not entirely familiar with Bane's back story (fires up iPhone and pulls up Bane's wikipedia page) - Huh.  Apparently, the Bane of 'TDKR' has very little in common with the Bane of the Batman comics.  I'm surprised there hasn't been an uptick in violent and bitter nerd rage over Nolan's treatment of Bane...

How the hell did Bane find the time to fly Bruce Wayne to the prison that looked like the well Leonidas kicked the Persian messengers into in '300'?  You would think the military would be tracking any aircraft or ships that left Gotham, and with this fancy pants stuff called satellite imaging the military would have been able to see the prison hole from goddam Neptune.  Not in this movie - Bane is able to leave Gotham, fly to Whereevertheeffistan (or South Africa/America?  where exactly was this place?), drop Bruce off, set up a sweet 27 inch Trinitron for Bruce to witness the destruction of the city he fought so hard to defend, and then fly back to Gotham. 

Better yet, how the hell did Bruce Wayne get back to Gotham after escaping from the prison well?  He's broke (Bane's stock exchange raid was executed to remove Bruce Wayne from his wealth...Bane must have used Wayne's money to take long positions in Facebook and GM...zing!), he has no ID, his back was recently busted up by Bane, yet he shows up back in Gotham clean shaven and sporting a Burberry jacket looking like he stepped out of the pages of Men's Health. 

Speaking of broken backs, Bruce Wayne is able to heal up thanks to the prison doctor having him hang from some rope for a while and then punching his vertebrae back into place.  Screw stem-cell research, more back punching and rope hanging for spinal injury victims!

Commissioner Gordon has no idea that Bruce Wayne is Batman, although Gordon is the one person that has probably spent the most time with Batman.  Yet, a rookie cop is able to figure out Wayne is Batman from a brief orphanage visit several years back...something about seeing pain on his face.  Okay then. 

Anne Hathaway is definitely the most attractive actress with a face that looks like it was cobbled together from spare doll parts to play Catwoman.  She looked great in costume...but it sometimes felt like she was acting in an entirely different movie.  The playful, campy tone of her character was in contrast to the overall bleak tone of the film.  Perhaps that was what Nolan was going for, making Selina Kyle/Catwoman a light in a very dark world...someone to give Bruce Wayne hope for a life outside of being Batman, etc.  Then why have Bruce get it on with Miranda/Talia? 

The plot, itself, was one big McGuffin Chase.  See, Bane kidnaps and fakes the death of a Russian scientist and then has some rich guy named Daggett hire Selina Kyle to steal Bruce Wayne's fingerprints to pull off the stock exchange plan that puts control of Wayne Enterprises into the hands of some gal named Miranda who turns out to be the daughter of Ra's Al-Ghul so she can have access to the fusion reactor she and Wayne Enterprises developed so she can turn it into a bomb to destroy Gotham thus fulfilling Ra's Al-Ghul's master plan from 'Batman Begins'.  However, Ra's and the League of Shadows want to burn Gotham to the ground because it has become a corrupt and crime-ridden hellhole.  By the time of 'TDKR', Gotham is all but crime free...so why would the League of Shadows want to destroy it?  Exactly - Nolan turns the League Of Shadows into nothing more than a gang of hired thugs employed by Talia Al-Ghul to exact revenge for her father's death.   Everything else in the movie is done to move this revenge plot forward...

Speaking of hired thugs...where do super villains find all the lackeys that do their bidding these days?  Labor Ready?

How did Bane know where the Applied Science division of Wayne Enterprises was when it was off the books?  Not even Miranda/Talia knew where it was, yet Bane builds his super bad guy base directly below it.  

For a city under siege, Gotham was mighty orderly...it even looked like garbage service was running. Thanks to the Waste Management strike in our area, my neighborhood looks more unsightly than Gotham City...and we don't have a crazy buffed out dude wearing a vintage microphone goatee on his face running the town. 

Alfred gave the ending of the movie away and at no time did I ever think Bruce Wayne was dead.  That just wasn't going to happen, which really diminished any tension or urgency from the plot. 

I've gone on quite a bit here and really kind of piled onto this movie.  I didn't hate it, but it was definitely a let down and a very unsatisfying end to a very ambitious project.  Part of me thinks Nolan was tired of the subject matter and took the easy way out, but he also hinted at being limited in scope by the studio.  Perhaps he had a darker ending in mind for Batman, we'll never know. 

If I had to rate this movie on a scale of one to five, I would give it a two.  There's one Talia scene near the end that almost derails the entire film due to some of the worst acting ever put on film...we are talking Sophia Coppola and Padme's death bad...I almost laughed out loud.  That scene alone cost this film half a star in my book...