Dark Knight Rises (Inkritic Review)

The Dark Knight Rises takes place 8 years after the previous Dark Knight movie. As should be expected, there is a lot to live up to. And how did it do?

I personally believe that this movie could have been handled in a much better light. The movie has a number of great factors. No one's acting really leaves anything to be desired from a technical standpoint. There is a legitimate sense of urgency. The cinematography is beautiful the score is excellent, and everything in the movie falls into place. That said, this movie has a number of problems as well.

There are a number of story arcs that go nowhere, characters completely disappear from the movie with little mention afterwards, there are some instances where consequences aren't made clear, the movie is predictable in several moments, the fan service is distracting, Christian Bale, as Batman, still isn't the best choice particularly that voice, and, of course, there's the issue of the major twist in this movie being something you can predict in a total of 30 minutes into the movie. You aren't half as invested in the characters here as you are in the last movie either aside from the character of Blake. The major story arc Batman has to deal with is constantly being stated as if Nolan thought the audience would forget about it. It's an incredibly long movie that FELT like a long movie. The movie recycles the Batman Begins plot and almost entirely throws out the previous movie with only mentions of Harvey Dent when the entire story arc of Batman's now being a 'criminal' goes nowhere. There was no point to most of the decisions made in the last movie when you take this one into consideration. Anne Hathaway's performance as Cat-Woman, while good, did not fit this movie well enough. It was decent but the performance she gave seemed more like it belonged in a different Batman movie series. That big climactic scene in the end also fell a bit short when compared to the climax of the previous movie. One could easily tell that from the first movie to the second, Nolan was taking notes on what worked and what didn't. Then he fixed most of what didn't work in Batman Begins and threw it into the Dark Knight. However, this time it seems like he actually regressed.

The movie's problems outweigh the good in the movie in quantity. But the quality of what was done well overshadows the bad. When I look into this, the movie is not as good as the previous movie. I was never engaged, never invested in what was occurring. By the end, I honestly didn't care about what was going to fall in place and where. The movie is well made but not made with the same heart that the last movie or even the first movie had. It just comes off as the weakest of the franchise and an overall slightly above average movie.

I'm not one of the people who kisses the ground any director walks on because I know that everyone makes bad calls and I don't consider Nolan some god of movies. Perhaps this will be the one that gets people to wise up and stop worshiping directors since apparently Spider-Man 3 didn't do it.

3.5/5 Stars