The Dark Knight Rises

Logline: Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham's finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

Cast: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Marion Cotillard, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Cillian Murphy

Directed By: Christopher Nolan

I waited 'till morning to do this because I needed to sleep on it - plus the movie ended at 3AM.

I've chosen to add a spoilers section which will be made pretty clear of before you read it.

So, what did I think of The Dark Knight Rises?

In a nutshell, this is how I saw the movie play out as a whole: Act 1- Cluttered, Act 2- some great action sequences filled with a great villain, & Act 3- Epic.

When people asked me if I liked it coming out of the theatre, my only response was "I'm not sure yet."

After a night of dwelling on it, this is what I have come up with:

Act 1 was an utter mess. There were numerous scenes of people talking about nothing. The story was jumping all over the place and at times it was hard to keep up with because it was unclear as to what conversations were important. It starts off right where The Dark Knight left off with Bruce Wayne beaten and retired while Gotham City views Batman as Public Enemy No. 1 for killing city hero Harvey Dent. The formula is there for this movie's story - the debate as to whether or not to come out of retirement, the rise to the call when the city is in serious danger, etc. But, with the introduction of new characters and the lack of Batman it becomes a bit of a bore.

However, I must add, Anne Hathaway made the first 40 minutes of the film watchable. When she was first cast, I was so disappointed, but she proved me wrong in every possible way. As Selina Kyle she plays innocent and sleek. As Catwoman she is deceiving, edgy, clever & self-centered. Her performance blew me away.

Then Act 2 was better, but still lacked the cleverness of the film's predecessor.

Enter Bane, a mercenary that was exiled from Ra's Al Ghul's League of Shadows. His goal in this movie was to fulfill Ghul's destiny and destroy Gotham so that the rich become poor. Tom Hardy killed this role. He mimicked the character of Bane to a "T". If it weren't for the times where his voice was so muffled that it was reaaaalllllyyy hard to understand, he would go down right behind the Joker as one of the best villains in movie history. He might even still be considered that. I hope he is, because he was everything I wanted him to be.

The third Act was epic - cannot say any more without spoiling it.

SPOILERS & Lessons Learned

Okay, let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Act 1 was unclear for the reasons mentioned above, but Act 2 took a moment to tell the audience everything that happened to clear up the confusion. There is a moment in the movie where Bruce Wayne says to Alfred - OK, we know that Bane is controlling the sewers, we know he broke into the stock exchange, we know he has my fingerprints, we need to find out what he is up to. He set up the first actual goal of the movie. I didn't have my stopwatch out, but this felt like forever to get to. This was the moment in the movie where things started to go up for me, but they didn't stay up.

Act 2 is filled with intense Bane action. His humour and violence combine to make him memorable. His sheer size and voice make him powerful and unique. His first scene in the stock exchange was just a preview, we see him dismantling guards within seconds.

Then the showdown. This was easily one of my favorite parts of the whole movie. Batman and Bane duel in the sewers in a fist fight. Batman throws everything he has at Bane to no avail and then Bane breaks his back, staying true to the comics.

Bane locks him up in a Middle Eastern prison known as "The Pit" where people are thrown in to die. Only one man has ever made the jump that allows one to escape it - BANE.

While Batman is locked up with a broken back, Bane overturns Gotham and makes it his own. Explosives go off everywhere, a football stadium, sewers, the bridges fall down, and no one can leave the city. He releases a statement that if the government's army attempts to enter Gotham he would pull the trigger to an Atom Bomb that would leave the city in ashes. This is all done REALLY well.

Then things start to go wrong again. Batman is in The Pit. He learns the story of Bane. Bane was born inside the prison - his father was Henri Ducard/Ra's Al Ghul from Batman Begins. One day after the prisoners take his mother, he runs up to the opening and starts climbing without a rope - because he has no fear, he makes the jump and is the only one to ever do so. Pretty cool, right?

So, Batman is there with a broken back and time is of the essence because every moment he lays there is a moment that Gotham is in complete havoc. I want to reiterate three things that happened in this prison that ticked me off.

1) the people giving him food & water worked for Bane, yet they were intent on helping Batman without any reasoning as to why. Bruce Wayne asks them to kill him and they say that the pleasure of watching him die isn't worth what Bane is paying them - then all of a sudden they're helping him get better.

2) they fix his back by literally punching one of his vertebrae back into place.

3) time is of the essence, but it is soooo unclear how much time actually passes from when Wayne is put in there until the time he makes the jump out. I believe there is a scene with Gordon saying he had been gone for 3 months or something, but it didn't seem that way. Confusing.

So, he escapes from a prison in the middle east with no money to his name and only the clothes on his back with no communication to the outside world - then all of a sudden he is back in Gotham and talking to Catwoman again - the same person who hand fed him to Bane. For a person that lives with so much anger, he was very forgiving, no? I found this to be way out of character. Then they start up a relationship? C'mon...

However, Batman is back, even if it was sloppy execution in getting him back. This sets up Act 3.

Act 3 is worth every penny of your admission. Although the story is sloppy up until this point, the last 30-40 minutes cap off one of the best trilogies of all time.

It does not go without fault, though.

The day has come where Bane's deadline has arrived - the bomb will go off. Batman tracks him down as he is holding Miranda Tate hostage (a relatively minor character up to this point). Officer Gordon meanwhile searches the streets to find which truck is carrying the atom bomb as there are many decoys.

Batman finds Bane and this time, after conquering fear and building up his strength, he has Bane beaten and all he has to do is put the nail in his coffin.

And then, out of the blue, Miranda Tate stabs Batman in the side and reveals her true self. She was actually the child escaping from the prison, Bane was her protector on her way out, and she was Ra's Al Ghul's daughter. Ticked off with The Pit, she comes back and slaughters its inmates - finding Bane almost beaten to death - hence the mask he wears.

OK. Hold on a minute there. I was sooooo mad when this happened. Sure, it explained how Bane knew where a lot of essential components to his plan were and it explained how easily he took over, but all of that awesome backstory...is now Miranda's? WHY? I had no attachment to her character for the entire film and as far as I was concerned Marion Catillard was cast just because Nolan loved her work in Inception and wanted to get her name out there more. So Bane just... does her dirty work for her?

Apparently if you follow the comics then it would have been obvious the whole time because Ghul has a daughter and not a son. I, myself, do not, so I was taken aback a little. I wasn't as surprised as I was disappointed though.

Then Catwoman comes back, changing from her old selfish ways, and saves Batman by blasting Bane with a cannon. This is the last we see of Bane and it is never truly told if he died from the hit.

The bomb is triggered - Gotham has 11 minutes to live. But, not if Batman has anything to do with it. He locates the bomb with the help of Gordon and straps it on a cable to his aircraft and flies off with it over the ocean away from the city. Everyone survives. It is done in EPIC fashion. My words cannot describe how satisfying this scene was.

I missed so much, but that kind of adds to my conclusion that this movie was cluttered. John Blake was totally left out of this summary/critique - he was a big character in getting Batman back (which is another bone I could pick, but chose not to) and at the end it is revealed that he is actually named Robin.

I missed the emotional conversations between Bruce and Alfred which lead to a revealing scene that Bruce Wayne is in fact alive at the end and in a relationship with Selina Kyle.

2hrs and 45 minutes, I'm bound to miss out on some things. I think I got most of the major plot points though.

Consensus

The Dark Knight Rises is an epic conclusion to a classic trilogy - but it suffers from a cluttered plot and too many characters. It does however, provide a satisfying ending and a cast that delivers great performances.

8/10