So, I watched the movie today. I can't say I was blown away, but then it's very hard to blow me away. I have a low center of gravity.
I walked into the theater already knowing that the movie was not up to the mark. All the early reviews, Rotten Tomatoes, Twitter... that's just too much information. I guess that's just the... Bane of the Internet?
*bows*
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| You can't tell, but he's laughing hard at that joke. |
There's one thing that I have to get out of the way because it has become sort of a cliched way of complimenting a good long movie: it didn't feel like three hours. Far from it. It didn't even feel like time had passed or was passing, and even as the movie was clearly winding down to its climax, the thought that there was still maybe an hour to go was bouncing around my head like a tennis ball on meth.
What I loved
1) Without a doubt, Catwoman. Anne Hathaway absolutely nailed what wasn't a greatly written character. I wasn't sure whether to narrow my eyes in suspicion or widen them to see more of her. Self-serving for pretty much the entire movie, she had an inexplicable change of heart at the end both in regards to Gotham as well as romantic interest in Bruce/Batman, neither of which the writers attempted to develop for two and a half hours. Hathaway made it work, though. She and Marion Cotillard were definitely an upgrade on Maggie Gyllenhaal and Katie Holmes from the first two movies.
2) Alfred had a larger role in this movie. And that meant more of Michael Caine saying cockney things. Sorry Avengers, but this is what you're missing. Iron Man's butler is a disembodied robot voice that won't cry when he dies.
3) "WHERE'S THE TRIGGER?" - Batman, in similar fashion to his Joker interrogation.
4) Ah yes, Bane. The Scottish Darth Vader voice, the total pwnage of Batman in their first encounter. The single tear falling down his cheek... er, I'll get to that later.
Actually, I'll get to that now.
What I didn't like
1) That tear down Bane's cheek: what the hell? (yeah, that's it. I'm no rager.)
2) The "twists". I haven't read many Batman comics in my lifetime. In fact, I've read only two, and those were in my pre-pubescent days. One of those comics happened to involve Ra's Al Ghul. In it he had a daughter, Talia, not a son. And that's how I knew that Miranda was the mastermind, because there were a grand total of two women in this movie, and one of them was Catwoman.
3) The post-ending ending. Okay, why on earth would you have Joseph Gordon-Levitt be Robin and tease us with an ending like that? We know you're not making a Robin movie, Christopher Nolan. I don't care if you don't want to explain how Batman survived a blast with a six-mile radius, but bringing Robin in at the end was just. Not. Cool.
Overall, The Dark Knight Rises was still a way above average movie, with a wonderfully gloomy tone and flat-out superb performances from the stellar cast. Unfortunately, no one compares it to the average movie, only to its predecessors - and it fails to live up to those expectations, the writing being weaker in the final quarter. Having said that, I could have easily watched three hours more.
A solid 8/10. I should probably devise my own rating system. How about feet? Pizza slices? Oh, how about brains?
