Ever since 2008's 'The Dark Knight', I've had extremely high expectations for the next installment. Well, after 4 years of eager anticipation, it's safe to say that Christopher Nolan's 'The Dark Knight Rises' has successfully lived up to it's hype. Now I will be honest, the movie had it's flaws but I'd have to mention spoilers so I won't get into that.
Basically, this movie is a masterpiece. Truly the ending us fans deserved, the movie is heavily based on the story-lines ''The Dark Knight Returns'', ''Knightfall'', ''Legacy'' and ''No Man's Land''. Nolan brilliantly blends all of these stories with his own ideas and creates a highly enjoyable movie.
Whilst this was a spectacular conclusion, I have to say that the first 30 minutes were rushed. There has been an 8 year gap from ''The Dark Knight'' and we see a broken Bruce Wayne, but about 20 minutes later he's Batman again. I'd be lying if I said I liked that, I wanted to see Bruce build himself THEN let him become Batman. After all, the movie had 3 hours so they had more than enough time to build Batman's return. However, Batman's comeback was pretty kick-ass and enjoyable. The thing we do see is that Batman wasn't in the best condition even when he returns, his first fight with Bane was a complete rape. Very brutal fight. Moving on.....
Christian Bale gave us the best performance as Bruce Wayne/Batman that I've seen so far. Wayne in ''Batman Begins'' had to deal with fear, in ''The Dark Knight'' he had to deal with chaos. But in ''The Dark Knight Rises'' he had to deal with pain. Without revealing too much, the Wayne we see in this movie is broken, both physically and mentally. Since Rachel's death in the previous movie, the legend has fallen. Bitter, alone and distraught, this is Wayne at his worst. Having given up the Cape and Cowl in ''The Dark Knight'', Wayne simply could not move on. Bale really gave an emotional performance as a broken man. As the film progresses, he get's stronger and learns to fight his pain. Trust me on this, Batman does rise both physically and mentally. The transformation of a broken man back into Batman was very well done in this movie. Bale really did impress me with his character here.
However he wasn't my favorite part of the movie. I'd have to say that it was Tom Hardy's Bane!
Tom Hardy was a pure bad-ass. He was pure evil, you could see the evil in his eyes. He was seriously a scary guy. He definitely portrayed a more intimidating Bane than the one we saw in ''Batman and Robin''. Bane really didn't have a clear motive here however he was very imposing and definitely a physical match for Batman, it was shown that he was physically superior to Batman. Bane was easily the smartest villain we've seen in the Nolan movies, everything he did was carefully planned out. He was a tactical genius, and systematically broke down Gotham City. I felt that he was a bit under-developed and a little less interesting than Heath Ledger's Joker but the life Hardy put into was great. Bane's voice was altered in the movie, it's not what we saw in the trailers and prologue. He sounded more polite in the final version, but I got past that. But it was clear and understandable for me, for others it was not.
Hathaway surprised me with her performance and really captured the sassy, sexy portrayal. She was all that I hoped for, I'd put her ahead of Pfeiffer. And the rest of the cast was brilliant, Michael Caine as always was magnificent but was largely left out of the latter half of the movie. Joseph Gordon Levitt was very likable and an ideal cop, he had a very interesting character, Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman were again magnificent as always, though more could have been done with them, they did a good job. Though I will say, Oldman did a good job on portraying that cop that couldn't move on. It's clearly shown that he too has struggled to move past the events of ''The Dark Knight''.
The tone of the movie was definitely lighter than the previous installments. Which is something I didn't like, the tone could have been set grittier and a little darker. Though as a stand alone the movie was dark, that's for sure. The thing about this movie is it is a War movie, simple as that. This movie has a-lot more action than the previous movies, the fight scenes have also been improved and so has Batman's fighting style.
The plot was a bit weaker than the previous Nolan installments but the acting, tone and style helped ''fix'' that. Nolan's Batman films have been known to be realistic but this is easily the least realistic. That was a big weakness IMHO, though I accepted it, Nolan's realistic vision was pretty much thrown in the toilet.
What I did notice is that this was closer to ''Batman Begins'' than ''The Dark Knight'', so many elements such as The ''League of Shadows'', etc was used. As ''The Dark Knight'' was more of a crime-thriller than a super-hero movie. Was this better than ''The Dark Knight''? Despite the praise I've given this film I'm gonna say no, but this surpasses ''Batman Begins'' and nearly reaches ''The Dark Knight''.
Overall, I loved this movie. It had it's flaws but it was a spectacular conclusion.
I'm giving it a 9.5/10.
My ratings for the trilogy:
- Batman Begins - 9/10
- The Dark Knight - 10/10
- The Dark Knight Rises - 9.5/10
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