Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

If you haven't seen this movie yet, don't read this post.  I'm going to assume that if you are reading this post, you have seen the movie and that I won't be spoiling it for you.

I have to say that this movie was not nearly as good as the second movie, which is not in any way surprising.  However, it is certainly much better than many third installments to trilogies and it is in no way a bad movie.  My main issues with this movie were the pacing and the predictability.  The beginning of the movie, especially, seemed to move very slow.  But it was interesting in that it felt like it was paced the way a comic book would be paced, which is kind of neat.  And the plot was incredibly predictable.  That didn't necessarily make it less satisfying as an end to the trilogy, but it made it a little less interesting.  The plot of this movie really went back to Batman Begins, and I had the exact same problems with that movie. 

Here's the problem.  Ra's Al Ghul has always been my favorite Batman villain.  So when I watched Batman Begins I knew immediately that Liam Neeson was Ra's Al Ghul, which apparently was supposed to be a surprise.  I'm sure that I'm not the only person who knew it, but I think that the other people who knew were similarly non-plussed by the "reveal" toward the end of the movie.  However, knowing that he was Ra's Al Ghul throughout the movie didn't make it any less enjoyable.  Then, of course, The Dark Knight happened and Heath Ledger changed comic book villains as we know them.  How can you possibly top that?  You can't.  Plus, Christopher Nolan chose not to even mention the Joker in this film, a decision which I can completely respect. 

And then we get to this final movie.  Now, one of my favorite storylines with Ra's Al Ghul (and, one of the best ever episodes of Batman the Animated Series, if you watched that) is that Bruce Wayne/Batman falls in love with Talia Al Ghul.  Well, this movie starts talking about the League of Shadows and Ra's Al Ghul and here's Bruce Wayne sleeping with some woman.  I mean, of course she's Talia Al Ghul.  How can you not see that?  It was just so predictable, and I was really frustrated with Bruce Wayne's gullibility on that.  It didn't ruin the movie for me or anything, but I just wish there had been a slightly better villain.  Talia Al Ghul + Bane are clearly not as interesting as Joker/Two-Face, but they're not even as interesting as Ra's Al Ghul/Scarecrow.  So, boo on that.

A related problem I had was that the foreshadowing in this movie was terrible.  Alfred tells the story about the restaurant in Italy, well, there's your ending.  The little quips about the autopilot on the "Bat", I mean, come on.  All the stuff with Selina Kyle and her fresh start and all of that stuff.  The ending was just too obvious. 

Having said all of that, I still thought the movie was fun.  I liked watching it.  I think it's a decent end to the trilogy.  The two best parts of the movie were definitely Joseph Gordon-Levitt and (as much as people might disagree) Anne Hathaway.  Gordon-Levitt's character was well written, interesting, and he makes a great future... I'm going to go with Nightwing.  And Anne Hathaway's Catwoman was very well done.  I thought she really understood the character and inhabited her well. It felt like a somewhat fresh take on Catwoman that made sense in the universe this Batman trilogy created, and it felt like a good ending for Bruce Wayne.

At the end of the day, the entire trilogy was great, it changed comic book movies, I can't wait for the new Superman movie next year.   But as for this summer, the Spider-man movie was better and the Avengers was probably the best of the comic book movies.  Now we wait until next summer and the next crop of superhero movies.

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