The Dark Knight Rises
Preface by saying Batman is far and away my favorite superhero. It's not even close.
Also preface by saying that while I enjoyed the 80s version with Keaton and Nicholson for what it was at the time I've grown to dislike that movie over the years and come to fairly loathe the silly ass sequels that followed.
I greatly liked Batman Begins (with the exception of the affected voice Bale elected to use).
I thought The Dark Knight was as good as a Batman movie could possibly be. Heath Ledger's Joker was brilliant. The only drawback was the colossal waste of the Harvey Dent character and the complete and utter ugliness of that Gylenhall cow. Still, it was a fantastic movie.
The Dark Knight Rises I saw at the midnight premiere tonight. I can't say I was disappointed, but I left definitely less than awed.
The movie will suffer badly in comparison to the far more entertaining Avengers film. While I'm no Marvel fan and am a DC guy all the way you can't deny that Iron Man and The Avengers got the superhero movie right. Both of those films had just the right mix of humor and action and didn't try to reflect some grand overarching message. the message? Rich folks are evil and got there on the backs of the poor. Let's riot!
They really should have titled this thing Batman: Ode to the Occupiers!
Batman, particularly Rises, is dark, dingy, dirty, morose and brooding. I wasn't impressed at all with the plot, got no spark whatsoever from Hathaway as Catwoman and was completely underwhelmed with the Bane character. I also grew weary of Gordon.
Question: Does EVERYBODY in Gotham know Bruce Wayne is Batman?
Like all third acts this movie preached too much, brooded too deeply, pondered its own navel for what seemed like hours on end and despite its ridiculously excessive three-hour run-time left plot holes the size of Canada and allowed multiple story threads to unravel. It was far, far too long. I think it would have been better had it wrapped up in 90-135 minutes instead of a full 180.
For fans of the comic the "big surprises" will come as no surprise. The end takes seemed rushed. Not going to post any spoilers but some of the supposedly awesome finale had my audience groaning instead of cheering.
Finally, I wasn't really pleased with Batman's portrayal either. Yeah, he has to fight people that's part of the schtick. But Batman is always Ali. He's got something up his sleeve, he's a showman, he has a trick or two that you don't expect. This movie made him more of a brainless brawler brute. More Frazier than Ali. Batman can do more than just stalk around and punch the shit out of people.
It's really not fair to compare this movie to its predecessors or to the Avengers, but you can't escape that. As a stand-alone film it's pretty good. Held in contrast to Avengers or The Dark Knight, it was flatter than a three-hour flitter. Easily the worst of the three Nolan-helmed Batman films and with none of the self-mocking humor and awareness that made Avengers great.