The Dark Knight Rises…Just Not High Enough…
Grab your seats, class is in session.
Today’s lesson is about the other movie comic book heads were desperately waiting for this year: The Dark Knight Rises.
The final showing in the Nolan Batman trilogy, this one had a hard movie to follow. The Dark Knight was a huge success, mostly (in my opinion) due to the amazing performance by the late Heath Ledger as ever Bat Fan’s villain, the Joker. Let’s be honest, the guy was amazing. With his performance, the bar was set very high for another sequel. Unfortunately, I think this didn’t make the jump. That’s not to say I didn’t like the movie, I did, but for me, it just wasn’t as good. Let’s take the normal look at what I was good with and what I was not.
You can start the good with the central character. I have always been a fan of Christian Bale and personally find him to have been the best Batman/Bruce Wayne to date. I know people argue Michael Keaton, but it’s all about opinion, and mine goes to Bale. His performance here is on par with the other movies, which is to say good. Yeah, like other people, I’m not a fan of his “Batman” voice, but I can look beyond that. He just fits the role well. Do I really even need to say anything about Gary Oldman? This guy is one of the greatest actors of our time and his Jim Gordon is great. Honestly, how could it not be? For sake of time, that’s all I’ll get into for him. Same with Michael Caine. You can really put him in anything and he’ll be great. His Alfred is just spot on. So then, let’s look at the newcomers. I’m a fan of Tom Hardy. I enjoyed Inception, I loved Warrior. When it was announced that he was Bane, I was a little leery about the choice. I’m mostly familiar with the comic character and wasn’t sure how it would work. The more I thought about it, though, I realized they would have to take the character in another direction for a live movie and was ok with that. It really couldn’t be the same as the comic character as that would be a large stretch for people who don’t know the comic to go with. While not blown away with his performance, I thought he did a good job. He definitely captured the imposing feel the character needed and you could feel it watching the movie. He’s a powerful, frightening presence and it definitely came through. The voice…well…we’ll get into that later. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Joseph Gordon-Levitt as I really had no idea who he was supposed to be in the movie. When you find out at the end of the movie, it makes sense, and I think it worked. I won’t reveal that here, naturally, but suffice it to say when it happened, it was a “Oooooh, ok” moment for me. Again, though, he wasn’t a real stand-out character for me until then. Yes, he is a major player but kind of forgettable. I never really found myself wondering “hey, what’s her up to during all this”. The surprise for me, which I hate to admit because when she was announced I thought I would hate her, was Anne Hathaway. Now, I’m not remotely a Hathaway fan. I don’t really think she’s drop-dead gorgeous like others seem to think, and I’ve never been a particular fan of her acting ability, but she did really well as Selina Kyle, a.k.a. Catwoman. She brought a sensuality and a sleekness to the character that it really needed to work onscreen. The character has to have that aura of lack of morality and selfishness that makes you despise her long enough to be surprised when the heart of gold comes out instead and she delivered it. While I still think Kate Beckinsale would have been better (course, I would put Kate in everything if I could) I think Hathaway did a great job.
Ok so, the bad. The obvious one to start with is the Bane voice. Everything you read or hear about it from early previews is right. It’s difficult to understand at times. The mask he wears throughout the entire movie obscures it and the accent/tone of voice Hardy used was weird. I found myself on more than one occasion having to ignore the movie temporarily just to figure out what he said. Bale’s Batman voice, well…that’s probably been done to death so I won’t get into that. My other issue with the movie was the story. I think the best description was something I saw on Twitter. I forget who said it, so I apologize for plagiarizing their words, but it was something like “It looked like Nolan wrote two scripts, shuffled them together, and made the movie.” For me, there was no solid flow to the story. It jumped around a lot and just felt bloated, too much going on at the same time. I wonder if he had another movie planned and just decided that three was enough, so let’s get as much of the fourth into this as possible. I think the story was really what hurt this movie the most. Another thing I wasn’t a huge fan of is the surprise appearance of a new villain at the end of the movie. While an important character, it really felt forced and out of place to me. I’ll never understand why some of these movies feel the need to have multiple major player bad guys in the movie. Stick to one, it makes the movie much less confusing and much easier to follow. I mean, there was actually another villain in the movie, but their appearance was short and surprising, and really nicely placed. They had maybe 5 minutes of screen time and it was the perfect amount. If more movies used that method of adding characters, we’d have a lot less Spider-man 3’s on our hands. This is why I really worry about Iron Man 3. Time will tell. Finally, the end of the movie was just odd. They both leave the movie open for another, but at the same exact time give the movie a finality that closes the door on one. I understand what he was trying to do, it just came off weird.
So, overall: I didn’t hate the movie, but I didn’t love it. If using a grading scale, I would give it a solid B-. I just can’t give it more than that and I really wanted to. I think this one just fell victim to the “hype machine” and fell flat because of it. It definitely did not surpass The Avengers as the best comic movie of the year.
On a side note, there was a Man of Steel trailer before the movie, and oof. If the trailer is any indication of what the movie is going to be like, it’s going to suck hard. I really hope future trailers show something better.
Until next time…
Class dismissed.
