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Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises
Unless you've managed to not watch anything in the past three weeks, you're aware that Chris Nolan's final Batman movie is out. With Christian Bale as the low-talking caped crusader, The Dark Knight Rises is two hours and forty-five minutes of of fun. While it lacks a stand-out personal performance like Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight, it is still a decent ending to this round of Batman movies. There are plenty of familiar faces, and a few new ones as well. Read below for my take on the movie, but be warned: there might be a few spoilers.
The movie starts out eight years after The Dark Knight. Batman has taken the blame for the death of district attorney Harvey Dent, and has disappeared from the public eye. Thanks to the passing of "The Dent Act," organized crime has been wiped out in Gotham, and the police find themselves increasingly obsolete. That all changes with the arrival of the villains. Since it was decided at some point in the 90s that all comic book movies needed at least two villains, in The Dark Knight Rises we have Bane and Catwoman.
Bane is played by Tom Hardy. Despite what Rush Limbaugh suggests, Bane is not connected to Mitt Romney, but was introduced in January 1993 and is best known for breaking Batman's back during the Knighfall comic series. He was even played terribly by a professional wrestler in 1997's Batman & Robin. I must admit that I was worried after reading reviews about how hard it was to hear Bane speak that the movie would degenerate into a low-talking competition between Hardy and Bale. They must have fixed the audio issues, because Bane's voice is certainly loud, if not the clearest at all times. To get an idea of what Bane sounds like, imagine Bill Cosby speaking with an English accent through a Darth Vader filter. The Bane in the movie shares little with the Bane from the comics, so he might not be to the liking of the purists, but he does a decent enough job of being a moderately intelligent juggernaut, and is the main villain in the story.
Ann Hathaway dons the cat ears as Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. All to often, female characters are little more than Kung-Fu cliched eye candy in comic movies. Nolan avoids this with Hathaway, but barely. Instead of a hot chick in a skin-tight, black leather outfit who is one bad fall from becoming the headliner at the local furry convention, Hathaway is a hot chick in a skin-tight, black leather outfit who plays a small but important role in the overall story arc.
Plenty of old characters reprise their roles, including Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred. Some old villains even show up for this final installment. New to the mix this time are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Modine, who play the cop everyone likes to love and the cop that everyone loves to hate, respectively.
For those of you who like the military look of Nolan's Batman vehicles over the more stylized Bat-vehicles of past movies, this one does not disappoint. The Batbike gets plenty of air time, as well as multiple Batmobiles driving around the city. This time around, the Batcopter makes its debut. While I think it looks more like something the Space Marines would fly around while fighting Aliens, it is consistent with the franchise's aesthetics.
Overall, a large portion of the story reminds me of a post-apocalyptic movie, with a Gotham that has existed in anarchy for many months. There are some decent fight scenes, including a small army of mercenaries fighting thousands of police in the streets while Batman and Bane duke it out in front of City Hall. There aren't a lot of surprises, and there aren't any stand-out performances, but there isn't a lot to dislike either. This was supposed to be the last of Nolan's Batman movies, but the ending leaves the possibility of another wide open, and I would not be surprised if another was made (assuming Rises makes enough money). So many movies — comic movies in particular — degenerate quickly with each sequel, and having to exist in the shadow of Heath Ledger is a daunting task. The Dark Knight Rises does a good job of stepping out of that shadow, however, and delivers for me, the best story of the series.
Bane is played by Tom Hardy. Despite what Rush Limbaugh suggests, Bane is not connected to Mitt Romney, but was introduced in January 1993 and is best known for breaking Batman's back during the Knighfall comic series. He was even played terribly by a professional wrestler in 1997's Batman & Robin. I must admit that I was worried after reading reviews about how hard it was to hear Bane speak that the movie would degenerate into a low-talking competition between Hardy and Bale. They must have fixed the audio issues, because Bane's voice is certainly loud, if not the clearest at all times. To get an idea of what Bane sounds like, imagine Bill Cosby speaking with an English accent through a Darth Vader filter. The Bane in the movie shares little with the Bane from the comics, so he might not be to the liking of the purists, but he does a decent enough job of being a moderately intelligent juggernaut, and is the main villain in the story.
Ann Hathaway dons the cat ears as Selina Kyle, better known as Catwoman in The Dark Knight Rises. All to often, female characters are little more than Kung-Fu cliched eye candy in comic movies. Nolan avoids this with Hathaway, but barely. Instead of a hot chick in a skin-tight, black leather outfit who is one bad fall from becoming the headliner at the local furry convention, Hathaway is a hot chick in a skin-tight, black leather outfit who plays a small but important role in the overall story arc.
Plenty of old characters reprise their roles, including Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, and Michael Caine as Alfred. Some old villains even show up for this final installment. New to the mix this time are Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matthew Modine, who play the cop everyone likes to love and the cop that everyone loves to hate, respectively.
For those of you who like the military look of Nolan's Batman vehicles over the more stylized Bat-vehicles of past movies, this one does not disappoint. The Batbike gets plenty of air time, as well as multiple Batmobiles driving around the city. This time around, the Batcopter makes its debut. While I think it looks more like something the Space Marines would fly around while fighting Aliens, it is consistent with the franchise's aesthetics.
Overall, a large portion of the story reminds me of a post-apocalyptic movie, with a Gotham that has existed in anarchy for many months. There are some decent fight scenes, including a small army of mercenaries fighting thousands of police in the streets while Batman and Bane duke it out in front of City Hall. There aren't a lot of surprises, and there aren't any stand-out performances, but there isn't a lot to dislike either. This was supposed to be the last of Nolan's Batman movies, but the ending leaves the possibility of another wide open, and I would not be surprised if another was made (assuming Rises makes enough money). So many movies — comic movies in particular — degenerate quickly with each sequel, and having to exist in the shadow of Heath Ledger is a daunting task. The Dark Knight Rises does a good job of stepping out of that shadow, however, and delivers for me, the best story of the series.
This was awesome clahbpah
too many guns and killings. I fear that some impressionable youth will try to imitate batman and get himself hurt. Or even worse, someone will imitate the villain and kill innocent bystanders will guns.
The government needs to step in and forbid such violent movies that glorify guns and violence. PG-13 ratings by MPAA isn't working. And guns need to be banned, period. Only military and police should have guns.
I didn't like it much.
It felt like the script needed another good once-over and a trim. It's a thematic mess and takes about twice as long as it ought to to introduce the characters and (poorly, repetitively) present their motivations. Some of the delivery was pretty wooden, especially in the first half, but that may have been the result of mediocre editing (there were also a couple awkward cuts, IMO, so maybe that was it) or the piss-poor dialog. Filled with painful talking-to-the-audience exposition that's so bad it was comical—again, a writing issue.
For the entire first half I was worried that I'd walk out hating the movie, but fortunately improved somewhat, nearer the end.
The audio was poor. A fair bit of the dialog (not just Bane's) was hard to pick up. Bane sounded like he wasn't even in the same room—more like a voiceover— an effect which, it seems to me, can only be called an outright mistake on the part of the filmmakers.
The ending's OK I guess?
for Warners to make a Batman movie as good as Mask of the Phantasm
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
Way too soon. Not even a CAM release available.
100 people die per day on our roads.
We cannot review cars?
And you should have been in your English classes.
Saw it yesterday after the the Citrix Wow to How 3 seminar (great job on that Brad Peterson, very informative and well done presentation!). (PS: To any Slashdot geeks support Citrix, sign-up for next year to get an early preview of whatever movie is going to come out then.)
The movie was pretty good. It had a nicely flowing narrative with the main story and plenty of other side stories to keep it flowing nicely. Christian Bale performed as expected with a top notch performance, Tom Hardy did a great job as Bain showing a completely calm and serene villain standing up to anything that Batman threw at him and then outmatching him. Great performance there, hope to see more of Tom Hardy in future movies. The audio from Bain's filtered voice mask was very loud and clear and fully understandable with a very nice English accent. The mask did cover a lot of Tom Hardy's face and you really had to look down at his neck to even notice that he was actually the one talking because you can't see any movement. The performances of the other cast members were also very good with great character play.
There were of course a few plot issues and unbelievable things that you had to ignore with the police being trapped underground for 3-months and then finding out that it was only 3,000 officers. I grew up in NYC and I know that the NYPD has 36,000 officers so it was very hard to imagine so few out there in Gotham as the GPD force. That didn't jive with me. Also if you're trapped underground for 3-months without light and no access to clean water and food things don't go very well for you. Also NYC (Gotham in the movie) has so many access tunnels into the underground that it seems far fetched to be stuck down there without a way out.
Anyway, like the movie overall and am looking forward to the next set of Batman movies in the future. I don't mind this franchine being remade every few years because it attracts a lot of money from the studios and talented actors. (Heath Ledger being the most memorable, damn those Olsen twins!)
I hear the special effects in Colorado were killer.
I am so going to hell for that one.
How was the film?
Does the whole world have to stop every time some crazy person snaps? If you knew the victims, I'm sorry for your loss. I didn't, so I'm more interested in the review.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I am intrigued by your comment and wish to mail-order your Asperger's Handbook.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Are we ready for frank discussions of people getting shot at the theatre, and the likelihood that their traumatized kids will turn into becaped vigilantes?
I never thought of that - the irony of this whole incident.
Usually when shit like that happens, people blame the object of the killing and not the individual.
Kid dies from a drunk driver? Not the driver's irresponsibility! It's the fact that drunk driving laws aren't strict enough and we need to search everyone randomly at checkpoints regardless of probable cause. And if you protest then you approve of drunk driving!
More than likely, those kids who lost their parents or other loved ones in that ridiculous incident will make them life long proponents of gun control and even the elimination of our Second Amendment right here in the US. They won't blame that individual - they'll blame our gun laws and our gun "culture".
I'm sure if the nut case used molotov cocktails, they would be screaming at the ease of getting gasoline or some such.
We always want to blame the one thing that "caused" the problem. The trouble is that there are always a multitude of reasons and causes. Time will tell if the killer was mentally ill, a member of some sort of anti-movie militia, neo-NAZI, or just some very angry person that needed to "get back at society" or any combination of those and then some. And then there is the issue of why he felt that way. What primed the pump? Was he abused as a child? Did he grow up in an alcoholic family? And so on.
It's easy to blame an individual or his methods but we should really ask ourselves why is our society producing these people? Or why aren't we discovering ill folks and getting them the help they need or if necessary confining them? We can eliminate the methods (guns, gas, fertilizer, CO2, car exhaust) but these disturbed folks will find a way. And some folks in the past of convinced their countrymen and their military to do it for them.
Batman is probably the biggest anti-gun superhero around. He knows the dangers. His parents were killed by a gun. And he beats the people with the guns. Does he use violence? Sure, but it's only when he has no other choice.
Yeah, I bet they'd get years in jail once the MPAA got involved.
The mass murderer, or the bootlegger? Since you mentioned the MPAA, I'm going to guess you meant the bootlegger. The shooter would probably get out of jail decades before the guy filming the movie.
For me, the villian is the most important part of a batman comic. Joker & Bane have been portrayed really well, that I cant complain about anything else.
Nooo..... Joker was portrayed excellently.
Say what you will about the first movie, but Heath Ledger made the 2nd movie stand out all on its own with his performance. It was eerily good.
Make a violent movie where people shoot each other, advertise it 24/7.
It hasn't yet been established that the fact that it was a Batman movie was relevant.
Maybe it was circumstantial, e.g. he knew the guy that stole his girl would be there, or something.
Maybe it was coincidental: e.g. he wanted to kill some random people, and noticed from the media buzz that a full house was expected for opening night.
And even if the movies batmanness was relevant, his acts might not have had anything to do with the movie's violence. Maybe he's just a member of a cult that thinks movies and comicbooks are the ultimate symbols of degenerate society.
So save your moralizing until we actually know something about what happened.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I thought he was about to have a conversation with the characters from Peanuts.
Kid dies from a drunk driver? Not the driver's irresponsibility! It's the fact that drunk driving laws aren't strict enough and we need to search everyone randomly at checkpoints regardless of probable cause. And if you protest then you approve of drunk driving!
One of the problems with drunk driving deaths, in the past, was that prosecution wasn't strict enough. They'd just say, "the alcohol made him do it, it wasn't his fault" and the killer would walk free. Our (USA) culture used to be extremely tolerant of drunk driving and the inevitable accidents that resulted. This may be part of what caused certain groups of citizens to push so hard for strong measures to combat drunk driving.
I doubt this guy, like any other mass shooter, is going to be treated very leniently like that.
And you're right about the molotov cocktails. There isn't much that would stop some nut from throwing a bunch of those into a crowded theater, though I doubt it'd be quite as effective as firearms. But there's plenty of other ways to go on murderous rampages, such as just driving your car into a crowd of people. Some old guy did that in California about a decade ago, and last I heard, they basically let him walk free, even after he blamed the pedestrians (in an open-air market) for not jumping out of the way fast enough.
Jack.. is that you?
Bruce Wayne is the mask
That's the most important thing you could say about it. The big failing of the Nolan movies for me is that Bruce Wayne is toying around with the idea of being Batman, and he thinks he likes it.
That said, I enjoyed the second one as a good film, if not good Batman.
Ah, well - maybe they'll get JMS to pen the next reboot.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I would like a source for the statements "He apparently thought he was the Joker" and "disarming the booby traps in his apartment".
CNN: "The suspect in the mass shooting at an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater screening of the new Batman film early Friday had colored his hair red and told police he was "the Joker," according to a federal law enforcement source with detailed knowledge of the investigation."
Denver Post via Mercury News -- "Aurora shooting suspect left apartment "booby trapped," music blaring": "Oates said Holmes made a statement to officers about possible explosives in his home. That prompted police to evacuate five buildings nearby and begin searching his third-floor apartment using a police robot and camera attached to a long pole. Inside, officers found trip wires attached to 1-liter plastic bottles that contain an unknown substance. Police Chief Dan Oates said the explosive devices were "pretty sophisticated." "We could be here for days," he said at midday."
Well, this is all conjecture of course, but I'm thinking if someone threw a handful of molotov cocktails into a crowded theater, people would run for the exit; it would take a minute or two for the room to be engulfed in flames most likely, so most people would escape. Of course, some people would get burns, and some people might get injured in the stampede, there might even be a couple deaths from those two factors, but I'm thinking the death toll would be lower than with guns. Also, I'm not sure how well molotov cocktails would work in a crowded theater anyway; aren't they basically glass bottles filled with gasoline? Well, to break them open, they'd have to hit something hard, like the concrete floor, and they have to hit it hard enough to actually shatter. Some glass bottles are surprisingly strong these days (probably to avoid shipping breakage). And a crowded theater is full of human bodies, which are fairly soft; hitting someone with a molotov cocktail isn't going to engulf them in flames, it'll just give them a bad bruise, so you'd have to make sure your bottles actually hit the floor directly with high speed, rather than bouncing off a nice soft person or a padded seat instead. With the tiny amount of space between rows in a modern theater, that could be pretty challenging; you'd probably have to settle for just throwing the bottles in the aisleways.
First of all, don't call people mate if they are not your friends.
Second, don't assume someone who doesn't share your view of mandatory empathy has Asperger's.
Most people can discuss a movie and not let a tragic event control their life or prevent them from enjoying something they have been waiting for.
Asshat.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I'm autistic. Autism has no inherent relation to lack of empathic response.
Psychopaths don't feel at all, and so don't express it. We feel, but we generally don't know how to express it in ways which are consistent with social norms, and so end up offending/upsetting people as a result.
There's a big difference.
I have nothing against guns myself... but picture yourself there:
Dark theater, loud sounds from the movie itself is playing, smoke suddenly appears out of nowhere, then someone dressed up like a good percentage of the other patrons starts going on a rampage.
Now people are panicking, you still can't see shit and aren't sure what's going on, and your response is to whip out your firearm out your firearm and start shooting in a room full of innocents. Puh-leeeze...