The Dark Knight Rises

⭐ 6.0/10

(Originally written by Tim)

I had not seen this movie since it was in theatres, and I remember not loving it, but I thought now that so much time has passed I could experience it without the hype that was around it at the time. It's too bad that this movie is just not good.

Now there are some cool moments, like the climb out of the pit, or the broken back scene, or even the idea of an aged and beaten down batman. But for the most part I was kind of bored. The action is pretty generic, and the movie starts with an insane amount of exposition. Moving 8 years from the last film is a great idea, but they don't have a better way to tell us what has happened other than 2 cops dumping exposition on us.

The best part about the last movie, the villain, is severely lacking. Bane is scary in that he is very unknown, but I am not the first to think his voice is ridiculous and impossible to understand at times. And when the true villain is revealed, they are killed in the most boring way possible. I like the connections it makes back to the first movie, but it doesn't really pay off. And what is their plan exactly? They use a bomb to gain control of the city, but their final goal is to destroy the city. Why not skip the control step, not put the bomb on a timer, and just set it off? Then the good guys won't have time to disarm the bomb!

I was as disappointed this time as I was the first time. The actors, the characters they play, it's a promising recipe. Anne Hathaway as the catwoman is actually pretty good, but they don't give her anything interesting to do. Joseph Gordan Levitt as the young cop turned sidekick is also good, but he just kind of does what commissioner Gordon did in the other movies. The fact that he also just knows that Bruce is Batman because they are both orphans is pretty dumb.

And that final scene. It is supposed to be moving, but it is foreshadowed in one of the first scenes so heavily that calling it foreshadowing is an insult to the grade 9 English class foreshadowing lesson. They basically tell you that's how it ends, so it feels cheap once you get there. Batman's final sendoff to Gordon was pretty good though. Maybe its not a co-incidence that the best parts are callbacks to earlier movies...

Anyways, a whimper to end this epic series. Shoulda just watched the 2nd movie again. MVP to Michael Caine, who carries all the emotional weight of this movie.