Review of "The Dark Knight Rises" (Major spoilers)

Bruce Kanin   July 22, 2012

Just came back from a 5:20AM showing of this movie. I wanted to see it in IMAX 3-D but two-thirds of the way through realized that no one offered me the 3-D glasses and that the theater was only featuring it in "plain old" IMAX. Chalk that up to the early start and missing out on my morning coffee, but then again, the film provided all the caffeine needed.

The final installment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy can be summed up as "non-stop action" or "busy and confusing". The confusing part partially comes from not being able to understand some of the characters' dialogue. This includes The Batman himself, who still sports an annoying, raspy voice that can be characterized as a strong whisper on steroids. (It was, perhaps, less annoying than in the prior two movies, though.)

But it also includes the new villain, Bane (not to be confused with the company Mitt Romney ran, "Bain Capital"), who, along with his own often unintelligible voice reminded me all too often of Darth Vader (uh, on steroids). Bane was menacing and someone to be feared, but not as colorful (literally and figuratively) as either the Jack Nicholson or Heath Ledger Jokers. All one had to do was to disable Bane's face mask, as Batman does near the end, and Bane becomes no more threatening than, say, Hulk Hogan.

Bane aside, my biggest issue with "The Dark Knight Rises" was the same trouble I had with "Batman Begins", and that was the villain's motive. In both cases, it was the destruction of Gotham City. Mind you, in this movie, this unfolds in spectacular fashion that is unfortunately all-too reminiscent of not only 9-11 but even the horrible movie massacre outside Denver at a midnight showing of this movie.

Anyway, I didn't get Ra's Al Ghul's (why does he deserve two apostrophe s's?) motive for destroying Gotham in the first one, and didn't get it here, except for the fact that Bane turns out to be Ra's son, and is following in his footsteps - revenge in Pa Ghul's name.

Speaking of Bane, what renders him anemic, in the end - literally near the end of the movie - is his sister - yes, sister, the Daughter of the Demon herself, Talia, who reveals herself as the true revenger against Gotham in the name of her dad. In the end, she is shown to be Bane's boss, and for me, it knocked him down a few notches on the villain scale.

As for the end - the end before the end - in which Batman saves Gotham City by transporting an A-bomb out to sea - that seemed very familiar. Didn't that happen in "The Avengers"? Or something similar, at the end?

There was a lot of confusion and some inexplicable sequences. Why did Blake, the cop (more on him soon), go to rescue Gordon in the hospital and at the same time Bane's goons were going there? I thought the bomb was disarmed by Gordon - but it wasn't? I guess I just didn't hear the explanation for that from, perhaps Talia.

Does it sound like I didn't like the movie? Maybe it sounds that way. However, I really did enjoy it from start to finish, the start being the "Man of Steel" teaser during the coming attractions. They included several elements from the comics, somewhat faithfully, if jumbled together, e.g., the mini-series on Gotham's destruction; "Knightfall"(in which Bane breaks Batman's back and then a crippled Bruce Wayne comes back to defeat him); Catwoman's background, including a suggestion of her liking female companionship; the first appearance of Talia (and apparently her last), with a nice surprise about her past, in prison; and other aspects I am momentarily forgetting.

I utterly loved the end of the end, in which (REMEMBER THE SPOILER ALERT) we find that Bruce Wayne is alive and hanging out with Selina Kyla in Paris - and Blake, the cop, well, that's not his real name, his real name is apparently ... Robin. He's shown discovering the Bat Cave, perhaps planting a seed for another Batman movie series. Too bad, though, that his real name wasn't Dick Grayson. Wonder why they did that, other than "Robin" being a more well-known name than "Dick Grayson".

My favorite movies are about heroes who are seemingly defeated. Their chips are down - way down - and then they come back to vanquish evil. For all its faults, "Superman II" was like that, because a powerless Clark Kent saw that the world needed Superman on a diner's TV and found a way to come back to defeat the Phantom Zone criminals.

In "Face Off", Nicholas Cage (as John Travolta's character) is at rock bottom with the wrong face and a hopeless situation in prison - and comes back to defeat his adversary.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise are about to be thwarted in their quest to recover Mr. Spock's body to join it with his Katra - thwarted by Klingons and an exploding Genesis planet. But they manage to overcome those odds and even greater heights via that movie's sequel.

So in "The Dark Knight Rises", it was a thrill to see Bruce Wayne at rock bottom - his back broken by Bane - and off in a prison on the other side of the world. He actually comes back a bit too easily for my taste but there was no other way it to happen I guess.

To sum it up... "The Dark Knight Rises" is like the other two Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Exciting and a solid portrayal of Batman / Bruce Wayne (although his Batman is still not as dark as I'd have made him) but, like the other two, a movie I'll probably only see once, because it's too long and too intense...

...unless I go back and see it in 3-D ;)

-Bruce