 |
| Pictured: two good actors. |
The Dark Knight
Rises was not
at all what I was expecting, but neither was I at any point surprised while
watching it. In short, The Dark Knight
Rises was really just another superhero movie, despite all the hype. Many
have gushed over the ostensibly intellectual nature of Christopher Nolan’s
Batman trilogy, but The Dark Knight Rises
is not a superhero movie for the thinking man. It is, however, a great
superhero movie.
Of course, spoilers ahead.
The plot is fairly coherent, despite clearly suffering from the loss of Heath Ledger’s Joker. The plot instead goes back to the first Nolan Batman movie for its villains’ motivations, which works surprisingly well even though it turns The Dark Knight into a rather jarring break in between the first and third Nolan movies. One can hardly blame Christopher Nolan for having to change some details following the death of his main villain, but many of the characters in The Dark Knight Rises fail to attain the appropriate development because there simply isn’t enough time in the movie to properly introduce and build up their character.
 |
| "I'm too good for this movie." |
The
best example of this is the actual main villain, Talia al Ghul, (Marion
Cotillard, playing roughly the same role as she played in Nolan’s Inception) who is intended to be one of
Bruce Wayne’s allies who then reveals her true nature and betrays him.
Unfortunately, the punch of this betrayal is lost because her character isn’t
given enough development for her relationship with Bruce Wayne to feel genuine.
Although
Talia al Ghul is the mastermind of the evil plot of The Dark Knight Rises, her lackey Bane is far more interesting of a
villain, and it is disappointing that in the end, he gets roughly zero actual
character or motivation. For the entire first half of the movie, Tom Hardy’s
massive, imposing, masked villain dominates the screen, and his iconic showdown
with Batman midway through the movie which culminates in the famous breaking of
the Bat is possibly the best part of the movie. This makes his ending all the
more anticlimactic. We discover that Bane has no personal motivation and has
simply been acting on orders from Talia the whole time. Even his final battle
with Batman is interrupted, first by Talia and then by Catwoman, when he is
summarily blasted out of the movie without even the dignity of a death speech.
Part of this is due to the unfortunate sound design choices with Bane, whose mask
garbles his speech somewhat. The fix for the mask problem is only to make Bane’s
voice jarringly louder than everyone else’s, which makes him more
understandable, but hurts the sound quality of the movie.
 |
| In unrelated news, that coat is fantastic. |
The
biggest disappointment of the movie, however, is Batman himself. It has long
been clear that Christian Bale is not actually a good actor, but this movie
makes that fact painfully clear. The movie persists in revolving around Batman,
even as it attempts to thematically focus on the necessity of Batman moving on,
and even as it becomes increasingly clear that Christian Bale’s Batman is just
not that interesting any more. Bale is convincing only in the first half of the
movie as a burned-out relic and in his defeat to Bane at the end of the first
half of the movie, but he is unconvincing and boring during the entire “rise”
part of The Dark Knight Rises.
 |
| Stupid perfect baby. |
The
biggest casualty of this focus on Batman is the supporting characters, who
suffer from caring more about Batman than about most of their own motivations.
The only supporting character who pulls this off is Bruce Wayne’s butler,
Alfred Caine, but all the other characters unfortunately have the same tendency
to act like Batman’s humble servants. One example of this is John Blake, the
scene-stealing beat cop played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who spends the whole
movie wishing he was Batman but never gets a chance to actually do anything.
 |
| Also stupid perfect baby. |
The
same goes times a million for Selina Kyle, whose potentially interesting
character and excellent actress gets stuck with the most trite character arc in
the movie. Her femme fatale betrays Batman to Bane, feels bad about it, comes
back to aid Gotham only because Batman asks her to, and then makes out with
him. The worst part is that if Selina Kyle didn’t spend all her time focused
only on Batman she could be an excellent character. She shows occasional
flashes of her own budding heroism independent of just doing what Batman tells
her, and Anne Hathaway does a stellar job of turning what could easily have
been an awful cardboard character into a relatable human being, albeit one who
spends all her time worrying about Batman.
 |
| Pictured: the actual climax of The Dark Knight Rises. |
The
ending of the movie makes it abundantly clear that while you thought you were
watching a gritty movie for the thinking man, you were actually just watching
your average fluffy superhero movie. The climax is a painfully cheesy
bomb-defusing scenario that may have also been in The Avengers, and all the good guys lived and got what they wanted
and probably lived happily ever after, a jarring contrast to the grim tone of
the rest of the movie. However, at least some of the elements of the ending
seem almost too good to be true. We are led to believe, for instance, that
Bruce Wayne has finally reached the point where he can accept not being Batman,
and has left to live a normal life while letting his friends believe he is
dead, but then also he has apparently taken Selina Kyle with him on his normal
life? Firstly, it seems strange that he would let everyone except her think he
was dead, secondly it makes no sense for Selina, who has just discovered her
own inner heroism, to just up and spend the rest of her life frolicking in
meadows with Bruce Wayne, and thirdly, our only reason for believing this is
that we see them together in a scene observed by Alfred, who has previously
described the exact scenario as his “personal fantasy.” It may be a stretch,
but I prefer to believe that Bruce Wayne did not take any of his old life with
him, not even Selina Kyle.
Plus,
this paves the way for my dream: in five years, everyone gets tired of all the
gritty reboots of superhero movies, and Joss Whedon gets hired to direct a
happy, fluffy Batman reboot that continues from the Nolan canon, with Joseph
Gordon-Levitt as Batman and Anne Hathaway as Catwoman cavorting around Gotham
arguing about the best way to beat up bad guys and secretly being in love, and
the movie is actually basically a rom-com. Except that because it’s Joss
Whedon, the movie ends up being way more heartbreaking than The Dark Knight Rises.
At the end of the day, you
should go see The Dark Knight Rises,
because it is a truly stellar movie, and especially makes for an excellent foil
to The Avengers. However, you should
not expect anything more than a superhero movie with a dark tone, or you may be
disappointed.
Review: Like
