Friday, July 20, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises




Runtime: 164 minutes

Directed by: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard

From: Warner Brothers

Before I get to talking about the film, I have to mention a few things. What happened in Colorado last night was quite sad to hear about; I get sad whenever that sort of thing happens, no matter where or how it takes place. I just hope that there aren't various scapegoats made (such as gun control or blaming the movies themselves) and instead the blame is put on the A-hole who was clearly mentally ill and anything could have set him off and he chose a popular thing to make that attack to get attention.

I ended up seeing all three Nolan films on an IMAX screen. My opinion on Batman Begins is that I still ultimately hate it for various reasons. The Dark Knight is still quite enjoyable aside from some stupidity, especially after the hospital blows up. Still, I dig the story and the idea behind it and Ledger was still awesome as The Joker. The auditorium was almost sold out so there had to be at least 250 people in there. It manly went fine, except that one fat ginger guy got escorted out by a cop during The Dark Knight. I have no idea why but there were applause for this so he must have been quite the disrupter.

As for this film, I will not reveal too much aside from the general idea presented in the trailers. The hugely muscular Bane (Hardy) appears in Gotham. Batman is away and he has to return to try and save the day. There are several important new characters, such as the young cop (Gordon-Levitt) and a comely young lass (Cotillard) who happens to have a lot of dough herself.

I'll give my take on the movie without spoiling anything; in various ways it will remind you of Batman Begins. You know, the theme and all that. For me, that is not really a good thing. I would have preferred a more original story that tried to present some of the ideas you saw here. This is definitely more comic book-y than the other two movies. Think of that how you will. There are some good ideas... along with some bad ones. The general idea was nice; just how it was executed that I did not enjoy. There are various surprises, some better than others, and some things revolving around comic canon and some not so much, from what I know of limited comic knowledge and Wikipedia searching. And sad to say, Bruce Wayne comes off as being a whiny emo dick. That was a real turn-off.

Still, I have a feeling most will enjoy this more than I did. The action for the most part was pretty satisfying. Batman vs. Bane is pretty cool. And while he's not quite like The Joker and Ledger, Bane and Hardy ended up being pretty cool. And thankfully you could understand most of his dialogue. The cast in general is fine acting-wise.

It is just a shame it could not measure up to The Dark Knight; talk about a difficult task but while not having the highest of expectations for it, I still felt let down as if the story overall would have been different and better then I might have enjoyed this more. It's not awful and enrages me like Batman Begins does. Like I said though it's no Dark Knight.

I'll be back tomorrow afternoon and I'll talk about Batman Begins.

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