The Dark Knight Rises Review

Many consider The Dark Knight to be The Godfather of the superhero genre. It was the game-changer that took iconic superheroes out of the realm of kiddie entertainment and in the land of serious art. It raised the bar impossibly high, not just for the superhero films that would come after it, but for its own sequel. The question concerning The Dark Knight Rises was whether or not it would be a masterpiece in the vein of The Godfather 2 or a misfire like The Godfather 3.

The answer is that it’s neither. Wildly uneven at times, The Dark Knight Rises feels like two great films jammed together to be one decent mess. It would be impossible to talk about the film’s issues without revealing important plot details, so consider this your spoiler alert.

On the positive side of things director Christopher Nolan continues to be a master at casting. In addition to strong work from series regulars Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman Batman, newcomers Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt do some of the best work in the film. There are also some fun cameos, including one by Cillian Murphy, who almost steals the show as he returns once again to play The Scarecrow.

Nolan also has an eye for spectacle. The introduction of a flying Batman vehicle adds new depth to the chase sequences, and the scenes of Gotham’s destruction are unlike anything scene in the series so far. It’s a credit to the writers that they managed to make these new elements feel like an organic extension of the technology we’ve seen previously.

Still, for the things they do right, the writers also get a lot wrong. Nolan chose to stick to his guns and keep the series as a trilogy, even though he still had a lot of story left to tell. Chopping down a five-hour story to fit in to a two-and-a-half hour runtime isn’t easy, but some of the decisions made are head-scratchers. Rather than give the audience time to see the developing romance between Batman and Miranda Tate, which plays an important part of the climax of the movie, we focus on a boring subplot involving a cowardly cop we have no reason to care about.

Stretching the movie out in to two films would have allowed the story to breathe. Breaking up Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows into two films may have been a controversial decision when it was announced, but it allowed the filmmakers to keep in the small character moments that are important to maintaining audience sympathy.

The film even has a natural place to cut the film in half, when villain Bane reveals his cunning plan to the world. At that point the film jumps forward in time five months and we get a series of montages showing us how the world changed. Batman hits his lowest moment and the audience only gets glimpses of it because the film needs time for the big action sequences in the third act.

For fans of the original comic book Batman, this incarnation may be a bit much. We’re told that Batman stops fighting crimes for eight years because of what amounts to a broken heart. The “real” Batman, they argue, would never give up on his city that easily.

Still, if you’ve enjoyed the series up until this point it’s likely you’ll enjoy this one too. The film is never bad, just occasionally very frustrating.