When the first batch of reviews came in for The Dark Knight Rises, the Internet did what it does best: flamed the bad reviews. But then some more negative reviews came in. Then the movie launched and some people were going “wait, it isn’t that good after all.”
Listen, I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. The Dark Knight Rises is a great movie; you just hyped it up to be the second coming of Jesus. Either that, or your not one to think during movies.
Quick, name the remaining big-name movies to be released for the rest of the year. Chances are, you said Skyfall, The Hobbit, and Django Unchained. If you said any of these three, especially if you mentioned all three, then you can go about your day. This article does not apply to you. But if you’re looking forward to the likes of The Expendables 2 and Total Recall, well, I have some news for you: Sometimes you have to actually use your brain while seeing a movie. The Dark Knight Rises is an example of one of those movies.
First and foremost, I’m not buying the connections between the movie’s plot and Occupy Wall Street, nor am I buying into the ensemble cast of characters being too much. Not only does everyone has their purpose, but Christopher Nolan and company actually do the best job that they can to adapt the end of the trilogy while still trying to stay relatively true to the source material.
Does the movie suffer a bit from pacing in the first act? Most definitely, but that’s only because we’re comparing it to either the movie’s final act, which hits all the right notes, The Avengers, which is a special-effects-filled super hero ensemble action flick, or The Dark Knight, which, you know, contained Heath Ledger’s Joker. This is completely unfair on all levels, simply because the movie needed pacing for the final act to be as climactic and thrilling as it was. In addition, The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises are two completely different movies
Then there are the comparisons between The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. It’s like comparing Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, only there are no Ewoks accompanying Bane. While, yes, Heath Ledger stole the show as Joker in the second film, there’s a lot more going on with Bane in the third. Not only does wreck absolute havoc, but he casts a shadow across the entire landscape of Gotham, leaving viewers wondering if Batman can actually save the day this time. This alone is what makes the movie so great.
Coincidentally, this is also why I hate The Lion King. There’s never any doubt that Simba won’t come back to save the day.
But Bane has left Bruce Wayne so battered, so broken, and Gotham is completely helpless and any hope for a bright future is destroyed. There’s a sense of doubt throughout all of The Dark Knight Rises; that’s why it’s such a great movie. We’re unsure if Batman is ever coming back. We’re unsure if he can handle Bane. We’re unsure if Gotham will be saved. While an Inception-esque ending would have been absolutely brilliant, the movie alone, despite a slow start, ultimately picks up steam and is highly rewarding. Instead of comparing it to everything else on the market, second coming of Christ included, we should take it for its own value: the final chapter of a highly satisfying and gritty take of a beloved comic book character.
For that, we thank you Christopher Nolan.
Great article, completely agree. Too much nitpicking with this movie… yes it has its flaws, but so does BB and TDK, and every other movie that has ever been made.
Well I can give you many reasons why the movie was flawed and maybe you can explain it to me. SPOILER ALERT BELOW!!
First, the bomb. She had the detonator the whole time. Why not just blow it up? Why wait for the timer? Made no sense. Been wracking my brain on this one. Just had plenty of oppurtunities to detonate it. I can understand torturing wayne, but still even in the end she could have hit the button instead of waited for the timer.
Second, character development. Talia sleeping with wayne… didnt seem romantic, seemed like she was a slut. They barely even had a conversation and next u thing u know they were going at it.
Third, The climb and falls from the prison. Since when does having fear make you jump farther. Please. Worst kind of explanation ever.
4th, No real connection to catwoman. I mean they had a dance with about 2 1/2 lines of dialogue. Worked a lot better in tim burtons batman returns. Didnt work at all in this one. They had no connection.. no romance .. no nothing. It was all just so rushed.
5th, How the hell does catwoman know how to make that batcycle go sideways. I mean shes riding that thing like she grew up with it. lol… lame.
6th, no cartilidge in his knees. Your kidding right? How can he even fight. And lets say those mechanical things on his knees that aid him… remember how he kicked through a brick wall… wasnt anyone else wondering how that didnt break his ankle? I dont care how strong your knees are now… your not superman.
7th, how did they know where the military stuff from wayne enterprizes was. Luscious had hid it away from the company and made it disappear so talia wouldnt have access to that sort of information. I mean wtf? No explanation.
8th, why again is talia trying to commit suicide? She had a remote detonator.. she could have left gotham and blown it up. Talia said she hated her father, why be mad at wayne about him dieing?
9th, what point was bane trying to make to the city? about giving it back to the people and the unjustly imprisoned. I mean who gave a crap about harvey dent and his act? I dont understand what point he was trying to make… u were still holding a city hostage with a nuke… why convince people otherwise?
It was a good movie, but it was a mess of plot holes and stupid explanations.
1. You got me.
2. Talia had ulterior motives for sleeping with Wayne; she was manipulating him. Wayne was just emotionally wrecked. It wasn’t about romance, and, in the real world, sometimes sex isn’t about romance at all.
3. It was more than just the fear. It was what that fear did to his determination. Also, there’s a real-life parallel with adrenaline. Fear causes an adrenaline rush, causing a temporary enhancement of athletic abilities. What makes less sense is that Wayne was able to get back to Gotham after climbing out of the well.
4. Wayne and Catwoman (Selina Kyle) didn’t need to have any sort of romance. They had sexual tension, and I think that’s how their relationship is generally played off in the comic books.
5. Catlike intuition?
6. To be honest, this seemed like a bit of a stretch to me too.
7. Bane found it. We don’t know how, but he did. I don’t think he got the info from Talia.
8. I don’t remember her trying to commit suicide. Maybe I zoned out during that part.
9. Bane was trying to “set the city free” from the “tyranny” of Gotham’s political system, which was a spiderweb of lies and half-truths. Yeah, it was a bit hypocritical, since he was essentially holding the city hostage himself, but who says he has to be of a sound mind? The scariest part about it was that his logic made at least a little bit of sense. “See these people? They’ve been lying to you for eight years. How do you feel about Gotham’s peace now?”
for #4 they had romance enough at the end of the movie to end up together to mirror alfreds dreams of wayne finding the love of his life and starting a family away from gotham. Its just the movie never elaborated on any of that… plus i felt absolutely no sexual tension at all either. This was one area where tim burton actually beat nolan sad to say. Batman returns relationship with catwoman was way more thought out.
#7 hence why its a plot hole.
for #8… suicide in nuking herself. Thats suicide. Not like she can get away from the city with 15 min to go.
for #9 still doesnt make sense. His goal was to kill everyone.. not to make them see how hypocritical their peace is. Not to mention that he isn’t really making his point by releasing all the inmates and giving them assault rifles. None of that made sense… And even if the harvey dent act was built because harvey dent got killed, its a law that seemed to be working. What does it matter that harvey dent lost it. I understood the dark knight and the jokers point… and i understand why batman had to say he did it, but i dont understand how any of that has any baring at all on the current law. I mean honestly how do u feel about gothams peace now? I would say i felt just fine about it until you brought a nuke here.. asshole lol.
SPOILERS BELOW
1) she does press the detonator when batman’s beaten the crap out of Bane, however Gordon had managed to fit the signal blocker onto the bomb. The whole point was that Batman knew what was going to happen but couldn’t stop it; failing was pretty much the only thing he was scared of at this point and the league of shadows is based around using fear to manipulate their enemies and take revenge/punish. Also I don’t think she was of sound mind….
2) I think that was mostly fan service as she has a relationship with batman in the comics? (and I think has his child could be wrong) plus I think her plan was accelerated by gordon going into the sewers and seeing bane/Batman returning and confronting bane; she suggests at the end her original plan had been to ensure he loved her and then turn on him.
3) Fear/adrenaline do allow you to perform slightly better under stress; and mind over matter I think was the point they were trying to get with this; witht he rope there was no consequence to failing other than you didn’t leave.
4) Actually I semi disagree with you here; there were points where I was confused because clearly wayne was having a relationship with Miranda Tate, and Batman was angling towards a relationship with Selina Kyle; ofcourse him having a relationship as implied by the end with Selina made more sense as in many ways she was similar to him in that she had multiple persona’s, could fight etc (she just stole stuff instead of fought crime) but I think that their relationship reflected the one portrayed in the comics very well.
5) Who know’s, she’d seen him do it on TV? Idc much it was pretty cool and wasn’t a big point; maybe it’s automated when in a situation where it’s needed?
6) Yeah the cartilage thing was wtf, also I know it was about 5/6months from him being put in the prison to escaping and they skipped chunks of time; however his spine was snapped he was lucky to not be a paraplegic if he’d had proper medical care instead he was tied to the ceiling till he could stand by a rope and had the snapped bone slammed back into place :S (ok so assuming it was a clean snap and no nerves or anything were snapped and nothing shattered… but come on?)
7) I suppose if you had access and you were looking even with Luscious covering it up if you have the resources and access somewhere there is always a trail of some sort? So as the league have pretty much unlimited money and alot of influence she might’ve been able to track this down and tell Bane but I too thought this seemed abit convenient.
8) Um she wasn’t of sound mind, she didn’t care if the nuke killed her; she just wanted revenge. I.e:She was insane
9) The point was Bane was bitter and twisted about how Talia had been treated in her life (the prison) and his own time there; and they were taunted by the possibility of escape if somehow they could scale the walls; Bane was abit like a schoolchild that is bullied so they in turn bully someone else? He wanted to get a kick out of watching the people do whatever they could to stop that nuke going off, the message he was giving was scary because he had to an extent, a point but what he was saying and what he/his men were doing were 2 very different things and demonstrated his hypocrisy.
10) You missed the fact that he got a neutron bomb out of the reactor for a nuclear fusion device? not Fission but fusion; fuses atoms of an element no need to split them with a neutron so why would the core be designed to do that?
Overall I think the film was excellent and yes it had a few issues however overall they were tiny compared to how epic and great the film was
************** SPOILERS! **************
I watched it and I was thinking. The whole everyone knew who Batman was kind of stepped on the Gordon revitalization, which should have been the most powerful. How Blake knew who Batman is wasn’t explained well. Catwoman had no whip, seems like an odd omission. Bane had no venom, which reduced his mask to a pain killer for bad face surgery also he was never a member of the League of Assassins (called League of Shadows in the Nolanverse). Other than that it was a good movie overall.
My biggest disappointment is the movie ended with just short of a cliff hanger. Nolan has setup this great next movie that will likely be ruined by another director.
There were too many plot holes, agreed. The movie was still very enjoyable, I guess the one thing that I really disliked besides all the plot holes, was that Batman really only appeared like 2 in the whole movie, and there wasnt that many “impressive” scenes, when the action was on, special effects werent all that. Maybe Nolan grounded this movie too much to realism and in doing so, we are left with very little to rave about. I watched Spiderman and loved how the Lizard and Spidey fought at the highschool classrooms, memorable, I watched the Avengers and loved it when Hulk and Thor teamed up, with Batman there isnt a memorable action sequence like that
Uh no, it’s called Nolan was off his f’ing leash and took way too much “artistic license” with the movie. It’s called “Dark Knight Rises” yet the Dark Knight was in 15%-20% of his own god damn movie! It’s called wasting characters like Bane, hav ing crappy fight scene with Batman, unexplained crippled main character, and so on and so on.
If the damn thing was so good, you wouldn’t have to write an article to defend it! Nuff said.
1. Why would you even stay in the city while a neutron bomb goes off? How did they expect to survive, duck under a desk and pray for the best?
2. Shit and giggles. She was thrown in probably because they remembered last minute that Ghule even had a daughter. That’s why her death scene was so pathetically bad.
3. Plotkai/Space Magic – you choose your explanation
5. Plotkai/Space Magic
6. Plotkai/Space Magic
7. Plotkai/Space Magic
8. Plotkai/Space Magic
9. Bad Script/Bad story.