Directed by Christopher
Nolan
Starring
Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt,
Marion Cotillard, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Caine.
*** Contains spoilers in the second half. I will indicate where so please READ CAREFULLY.***
The review is as much for me as it is for anyone else. The Dark Knight Rises release marked the
culmination of six months’ anticipation and, unlike the two previous Batman
instalments, it was sorely disappointing. Since I knew this stance would be an
unpopular one, I have spent much of last night and today pondering why I
thought the movie was such a huge letdown. In effort to describe what I thought
was faulty about The Dark
Knight Rises, I have synthesised a review in two parts.
The first I will try to keep spoiler-free (since trailers have done a good job of piquing interest while revealing little
of the plot) and the second part will be
full-on, spoiler-filled but will more thoroughly address the core failings
of the film. I will note when this review segues from part I to II.
Part I: Spoiler-free
The narrative picks up eight years after the events of The Dark Knight. The deaths of Harvey
Dent and Rachel Dawes have thrust Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) into a reclusive
lifestyle and also provided Police Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) with a
strong mandate to rid Gotham of organised crime. In these détente times, both
crime fighters seem listless and impotent.
Soon enough, however, a madman following in the footsteps of
Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul and Heath Ledger’s magnificent Joker threatens to
plunge Gotham back into violence and chaos. Bane is played as a force of nature
by rising star Tom Hardy, replacing Joker’s sinister, sociopathic menace with
brutish physicality and surprising intelligence. It is clear that he and his
plans for Gotham are pure evil and stopping them will require every ounce of
Batman’s waning strength and resolve.
The road to their final showdown is two-and-a-half hours long and the
climax unsatisfying.
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| Hathaway: underdeveloped but hot damn that catsuit |
For a 165 minute movie there isn’t much to sink your teeth
into. The film introduces this new villain, the slinky, ambivalent
Catwoman (Anne Hathaway), young heartstrong cop John Blake (Joseph
Gordon-Levitt), and a slew of other characters and ideas but fails to develop
any of them substantively.
This is what’s wrong with the movie. It’s the first time
that Chris Nolan has failed as a storyteller, a quality that has always been
his greatest career asset. Rather than letting the plot unfold, he hurls it at
you. The film is like watching almost three hours of back-to-back montages. I
struggle to remember any scenes in
this movie; points where it exits Ludicrous Speed, the Huge String Section Epic
Movie Score relents, and characters interact for more than 15 seconds before a
cutaway. Granted, Nolan films habitually move along at a brisk pace, but he’s
always found time to produce great character moments; like Leonard’s
description of his wife to Natalie in Memento
or when a naive Bruce Wayne confronts crime boss Carmine Falcone early in Batman Begins. These moments simply
don’t exist here.
Perhaps even more problematic are the myriad plot
deficiencies. I was willing to forgive the ones in Dark Knight (like that nonsense escapade to Hong Kong) because they
were less glaring and because that movie ultimately owned. But Chris and brother/screenwriting
partner Jonathan Nolan are just asking for way too much slack this time around.
It’s difficult to expand on this point without over-revealing, so more to
follow in the spoiler section.
The last nails in the lid of the coffin are the characters.
Don’t misunderstand, Bale, Hardy, Oldman, Hathaway, JGL, and Michael Caine all
do the absolute best with what they’re given. The performances are beyond
reproach. It’s the characters themselves that are hugely inconsistent. In most
cases their motivations are muddled, and the way they execute them defies reason and ignores
the character roots that Nolan spends an hour establishing. What made the Joker
a great villain (beyond Ledger’s singular performance) was that he was a great
character. Sure, he was a complete lunatic but, in the scope of the Dark Knight, was internally consistent in
his lunacy. His actions always made sense in a Joker sort of way.
Lesser complaints include the surprising lack of action in
the film, too little/too much emphasis being placed on certain characters, and
the climax not being as exciting as I thought fitting for the “epic conclusion”
to this Batman saga. As with Dark Knight’s
deficiencies, it would have been easy to overlook some of these if, at the
core, Rises actually worked. But it
doesn’t. In any way.
***Beyond this glorious picture of the Joker lies part II of
the review during which I literally SPOIL THE ENTIRE FILM. Please read only if
you have already seen it. You have been warned.***
Part II: Spoilers and discussion
Alright, I’ll expand on what’s been discussed in Part I;
that nothing about the plot or its characters makes a lick of sense.
 |
| Caine as Alfred, one of many unjustly treated characters |
My earliest major objection was to disappearing Alfred
within the first half-hour. I’m one of the rare few who generally dislikes
Michael Caine’s performances (and most of his movies) and I still thought he
acted the living shit out of Rises. Beyond
that, his character has always been a moral and emotional compass for Bruce
Wayne, and a necessary one in the absence of a Robin character. Even if you
liken his departure to Katharine Ross in Butch
& Sundance (i.e. being unwilling to watch the man he loves die) it
still doesn’t ring true. Alfred knew the dangers that Bruce Wayne faced from
the onset and was never so lily-livered that he’d bow out when the going got
tough (anyone remember Dark Knight and
his huge speech on ENDURING?). I think this decision was made purely to speed
the movie along, like dispatching Franka Potente two-thirds of the way through Bourne Identity when it became expedient
for the plot. The irony is that Rises continues
for two hours beyond that.
Catwoman is also completely mishandled. I was comfortable
with her being a burglar/modern day Robin Hood. But here’s the problem: if her
character is one of principle, there’s no way that she’d shank Batman and ally
herself with a megalomaniac and his army of zealots. The argument that she did
it for survival is facile and weak. Bane had bigger fish to fry, looser ends to
tie up, and she should have known that. A career criminal of her calibre could have escaped
pre-ruin Gotham with little difficulty. If, conversely, she was completely
nihilistic (which seems rather unlikely from her dialogue), there’s no way she
stays and fights at the end. If this incongruity is meant to be her character’s
“journey,” then Nolan really has done a poor job of getting her convincingly
from point A to point B.
Christian Bale has zero romantic chemistry with either of
the two female leads. Having said that, when has Christian Bale had any
romantic chemistry with anyone? Why bother?
The movie comes majorly off the rails with the Bane
character. Making him an ostracised disciple of Ra’s al Ghul, still determined
to carry out League of Shadows work, is a gigantic problem. As artistic liberties go it's a
completely unnecessary one, born of some misplaced desire to make the trilogy come
full circle. If Bane is trying to finish Ra’s work, and Ra’s plan was
to destroy Gotham, why doesn’t he just
destroy Gotham? Why is it necessary for the city to live as a would-be
anarchist state for five months before it explodes?
Ra’s readily admits in Batman
Begins that he tried and failed to kill Gotham the slow way (through
economic stagnation). Undaunted, he travels there with a small army and
disperses a destructive neurotoxin across the city. Bane, supposedly brilliant yet
somehow completely unwilling to learn from his predecessor’s mistakes, twiddles
his thumbs for half a year and leaves Batman, the one man capable of
unravelling his plan, alive and unguarded. Why does he stick him in a prison in
South America? How does Bane even GET THERE? Why is Wayne’s escape [insert gas mask voice] “Impossible!”?
He’s a MOTHERFUCKING TRAINED NINJA!
Nevermind that. It’s cathartic. Just watch and accept, right?
Even more ridiculous is Bruce Wayne’s escape and return to
Gotham (conveniently) 15-or-so hours before the bomb goes off with no money or
passport. Speaking of which, the fact that all the characters also somehow know
exactly when the bomb is going off is
in itself absurd and inexplicable. The “time bomb” premise is predicated upon
the nuclear device becoming unstable. By definition, unstable explosives do not detonate by timer. It’s like this movie
was written by monkeys.
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| Bane vs. Batman: the epic showdown is hardly that |
The conclusion of the film is a giant goddamn catastrophe.
The epic final battle between cops and mercenaries should be worthy of all the
clashes in Braveheart, Gladiator, and Star Wars. This trilogy
deserves that. Instead, its scope is essentially restricted to some close shots
of Bane and Batman trading blows – a final mano-a-mano that is not nearly as bone-crunching
or emotionally involving as their sewer fight. On the whole, adherence to a
PG-13/12A rating keeps their battles from being primal, visceral, and brutal as
they should be.
Revealing Miranda Tate as Talia al Ghul straight up kills
the movie. It weakens – to the point of invalidating – Bane as a villain, and
Batman by extension. Bane could have been an effective nemesis with no mention
of the al Ghul family. He unmasks and cripples Batman. He takes control of
Gotham. He’s surrounded by an army of highly-trained zealots who literally die
at his command. Then, for no reason and to little positive effect (because what
does it ADD to the movie, really?), it’s revealed that he’s not actually the
mastermind. He is in fact no more than Talia’s attack dog – unwaveringly
obedient and willing to sacrifice himself out of idolatry for her. Bane, the
beast, the monolith, the man who broke the Bat, is no different from the horde
of automatons that does his bidding. It makes him pathetic and Batman’s defeat
at his hands even more so.
The second reason why revealing Miranda as Talia is stupid
is because it’s fucking stupid. Are
we expected to forget that she spent all her time in post-ruin Gotham embedded with the resistance?! Wouldn’t
she have, oh, I don’t know, blown the whistle on them a thousand times over?
Wouldn’t that have nullified any chance of her master plan being thwarted?
 |
| JGL: on point but misused |
The final minutes also reek of foul play by Warner Brothers.
I already thought that JGL played too prominent a role in someone else’s film.
This is Batman’s last film and it
almost felt like JGL was the main character. Revealing him as Robin in the
denouement was hackneyed studio trickery. It transforms Rises from a concluding chapter (which has been its tagline from
the beginning) to the introduction of yet another money-making superhero
spinoff sequel. Beyond that trespass, Nolan has always adamantly opposed
to the inclusion of Robin in his films. To not only include him but give him
lion’s share of running time is a violation of the Batman universe Nolan set
forth to create. It strips authorial control from one of cinema’s last
remaining auteurs.
I wanted so badly to like this film. Stepping into the
theatre I was in fact unshakably convinced I would. Whether Nolan was strong-armed
into doing the studio’s bidding or whether he dropped the ball on his own is
inconsequential. Rises’ failures are
irrefutable and absolute.
