Bit late to the game, yeah, but I finally got around to seeing The Dark Knight Rises over the weekend.
Worst. Batman. Film. Ever. Yes, I'm serious. It's fucking shit. Even Batman and Robin doesn't get to stink as bad as this. I swear, I wanted to love the film, I did. But there is nothing about The Dark Knight Rises to like. It is dreadful. In every possible sense.
It's a mess. The story lurches all over the place, taking one clumsy ill-positioned jump after the other, on and on, so much so that it genuinely feel as if they're making the thing up as they're going along. As a narrative, it fails on all fronts. Like it's predecessor, it suffers from an over-abundance of half-ideas and not quite thought out set-ups that don't pay off.
The acting chops aren't too bad, as these things go, except for Christian Bale, who dutifully suffers throughout the proceedings with all the conviction of a stick. Anne Hathaway's Catwoman isn't nearly as insufferable as you might expect, and Tom Hardy's Bane does what it sez on the tin. But Gary Oldman and Michael Caine are wasted. If you've ever seen Caine in his more recent( ish ) efforts like Little Voice or Harry Brown, or Oldman in just about anything he's ever been in, then you know the gravity that they can bring with them, and here, in The Dark Knight Rises, none of it's there. It's flat.
& here's the spolery bits.
I've blanked them out, 'cause I'm a pretty stand-up kinda guy like that, but if you want to read them, left click & highlight.
Why didn't they just call him Dick Grayson, and be done with it? Calling him Robin at the end was not a big reveal, it was ham-fisted.
Speaking of big reveals: really? We all knew Ra's Al Ghul's daughter was gonna be in it, and there was only one woman in the film, apart from Catwoman, so her turning out to be Talia did not qualify as a big reveal, although it might win the Oscar for Most Bleeding Obvious.
So a complete stranger walks into Bruce Wayne's house, and sez " I know you're Batman " and Bruce Wayne doesn't say " I don't know what you're talking about, you barking mad loon person, now get the fuck out of my house. " No, he sez, " Gosh, bloke what looks a lot like that kid who was in 3rd Rock From the Sun, ya rumbled me, so you have! " Way to keep a secret, dougnut.
How did Catwoman learn how to ride a Bat-pod?
And Alfred would NEVER turn his back on Bruce. It just wouldn't happen. He's Alfred, for fuck's sake. To even think it shows a complete ignorance of your characters and their motivations.
And no mention of the Joker. At all.
& that's the end of the spolery bits.
Batman Begins was a terrific Batman film, it brought with it a sense of something new and exciting and the promise of great things to come. The Dark Knight partly delivered on that promise, but, almost inevitably, for a sequel, it fell just short of the first film. The Dark Knight Rises offers nothing, and, worse, reduces the second film to little more than a flashy set-up for the not-nearly-as big as-they-thought-it-was-going-to-be finish.
So, yeah. Turns out Chris Nolan wasn't the best thing since sliced bread, after all. Who'd'a thunk it?
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