The Dark Knight Rises- NOT Spoiler Free

 There will be spoilers below, read at your own risk.

This is a gaming blog, but in the summer finding news to write about can be challenging.  However, since this weekend has been highly anticipated for another form of media, motion pictures.  I will not discuss my feelings and views on what has happened in Aurora, Colorado for a lot of reasons.  I will say that my heart and condolences go out to all that were affected by those tragic events.  Let me also say, once again, that my comic book knowledge is very limited, especially in my childhood.  My knowledge of all things Batman were due to TV, movies and video games. 

Now onto the fun stuff.  Batman gone though some interesting changes in my life time.  Early in my life, I was exposed to the tail end of what I like to call the "Adam West Era."  By the time I was born, the Batman TV show staring West had been off the air for 10 years, but his influence on the character carried on through re-syndication and the Hannah Barbara cartoons that resulted in guest spots on Scooby Doo, and the Super Friends.  However, in 1988, director Tim Burton released a darker version of Batman universe.  Not only did Batman receive a dark make-over, but so did his arch nemesis, The Joker.  The result of this movie spawned 3 sequels, and what I consider to be the best animated show of my lifetime, The Animated Series.  After the first sequel, Batman Returns, Tim Burton was booted off of the series due to how dark the series had gotten.  His replacement for the next two movies, Joel Schumacher, managed to produce one decent movie, Batman Forever, and then the death of the entire franchise, Batman & Robin. 

However, in 2005, Christopher Nolan decided to reboot the series, and start over from square one.  (I heard he never planned on making this into a trilogy, and intended his first film to lead into the 1988 Batman movie.)  Batman Begins came out and blew away all expectations set before it.  The sequel, The Dark Knight, was easily one of the most anticipated films of my life time.  While Nolan tapped one of the more obscure villains from  Batman's line up of baddies, Ra's Al Ghul, in his first film; the second one put the spotlight on the most well known comic book bad guy out there, The Joker.  The Dark Knight not only showed that a movie based off a comic book hero could be a work of art, but raised the bar to which all other comic book movies have been compared to since.  So needless to say, there were a few people looking forward to the last in the Christopher Nolan Batman Trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.  Can it be as good as The Dark Knight?

In a word, no.  Honestly, though, after how good the last movie was, saying that any movie isn't as good as it is really not an insult.  That being said, it's still an epic, action packed, kick ass flick.  It is also dramatically different from the first two movies.  Batman Begins was a movie about Bruce Wayne's journey to becoming Batman.  The Dark Knight put Batman as a secondary character, putting all of the emphasis on the Joker.  The Dark Knight Rises shows a masterful, multilayered, destructive plan that is actually carried out farther than any comic book movie has done before, then pulls a serious plot twist at the end (which I will get to).  

First let's look at Catwoman.  Everyone who wanted to complain about Anne Hathaway being cast, please actually see the movie before you start throwing stones.  Her portrayal of Catwoman was far different from Batman Returns' Michelle Pfeiffer.  While Pfeiffer took the character into a more dominatrix style role (being a strong woman who focuses on being sexy), Hathaway was much more feminine in the role.  She's never referred to as Catwoman in the entire movie, nor does she use a whip.  Instead, Hathaway is a very confident jewel thief who uses her feminine side to camouflage herself from suspicion.  Pfeiffer's version wanted confrontation, almost to prove her superiority to her male counterparts.  Hathaway only fights when she has to, and much prefers the escape to the confrontation.  I find this to be much more believable than the Pfeiffer version, and fits this universe far better.  Bitch all you want to about her goggle ears or whatnot, the truth is that she did a fine job with the role.  I didn't care for her "romance" with Batman, just simply because it seemed very out of place for her character.

Now we come to Bane.  I'm sort of torn on Bane.  He's not a classic Batman villain.  Plus, every version I've seen has him as a severely pissed off Mexican wrestler.  He never struck me as a very intriguing character.  In fact, when I saw Bane was going to be the focus of the 3rd film, I remember saying to several people that I didn't think he could carry the movie as being the "big bad" on his own.  (I remember saying "Bane is a plus one.")  To the credit of Tom Hardy, though, he managed to make Bane into a very strong villain.  He was intelligent and always in control of each situation put before him.  I love the idea of someone receiving the same training as Batman, yet very much his physical superior.  It's quite obvious that Bane's superiority over Batman was never in dispute.  Even during the fight at the end, Bane is bigger and stronger than Batman, and only loses the battle due to his mask.  Ah, yes, the mask.  Yes, Bane is hard to understand due to the mask.  Some of the scenes, he speaks quite clearly, while others will require multiple viewings in order to figure out what he's talking about.  That aside, I do like this side to Bane I've seen.  Plus Tom Hardy is jacked.  I mean seriously, he's built like a brick shithouse.  His working over Batman at the end of the flick with those body shots were bone crunching.  It should be noted that while I've seen tons of super hero movies, and there's always that saving the world at the last possible second, Bane's plan is far more drawn out and devastating.  He rules over the anarchy of Gotham City for 5 months before being challenged at the end.  He pretty much...wins.  The 5 months was only there to torture Bruce Wayne, just so he could watch his city being torn apart by the people he fought so hard to save.  If you go into DKR without knowing much about the Batman universe, Bane is quite believable as the big bad.

The big bad.  Yes, Bane is not the big bad.  I must say, I correctly predicted the twist at the end.  When I saw that Bane was tapped, and I made the "plus one" comment, my mind immediately went to Talia al Ghul. (Meaning that I never consider Bane to be a really good villain, he's a plus one) Personally, every medium I've ever seen Talia in, I've loved her.  The Animated series Talia was excellent, as we her portrayal in Rockstead's Batman Arkham City.  In this movie, they tease Marion Cotillard's character, Miranda Tate, to be the daughter of Ra's al Ghul so much, that even someone as unsavy as I am with comics wasn't surprised.  Miranda shows up on Bruce Wayne's doorstep for no real reason, and ends up having sex with him with no real build up or reason for it.  Then afterwards, she askes Bruce to fly away on a jet with her, foreshadowing that she knew something was coming.  One thing I did love about it, though, was that every scene she was in with the good guys, finding out something that Bane shouldn't know, when Bane would show up in the next scene to break up the plan, the movie made it look like Bane was actually brilliant instead of him being tipped off.  (As I told my brother today after seeing it, "If Lucius Fox was baking cookies with Miranda there, the next scene Bane would show up and before anyone could say anything, Bane would say, "Lucius, dude, I hook a brotha up with a cookie."  Anyway, Miranda throws off her false identity at the end, and I personally feel like if you KNOW about Talia al Ghul, this is an awesome reveal...but if you're not a fan, like my mother, the full impact of the reveal would be wasted. 


I am disappointed with the lack of a real romantic story here.  Any Batman fan worth their salt will tell you that Bruce Wayne has two re-occurring female weaknesses, Catwoman and Talia al Ghul.  Putting both characters in the movie could have played up to an interesting love triangle between the three, but in the end, the romance seemed to be rather forced and lacked any sort of compassion.  Honestly, that's far more of a nit pick than anything, just because Nolan didn't write the movie I wanted him to write.  I just figured that he would have put a little more meaning behind Bruce Wayne's relationship with Talia al Ghul than a one night stand.  I did, though, like the underlying themes

Lastly, I'll touch on the ending.  It was very emotional.  This movie took everything Bruce Wayne had; his company, his money, even his best friend and butler.  It seemed only natural that Wayne would also lose his life.  However, the jerk at the end with Wayne surviving the explosion, and his recruiting Blake (who's real name happens to be Robin) is an interesting direction to take.  It was a real fitting end to the trilogy.  It ties up everything nicely, and does leave room for Batman (and Robin) to continue their crusade against evil in a new world of Batman.  I personally think the franchise will be rebooted though, if for no other reason, to cast a new Joker.  By the way, I think that Dr. Crane's part in the film would have gone to the Joker if Heath Ledger was still alive.

So now you're gonna ask yourself, is this better than the Avengers?  Guess what, I'm going to cop out on the answer.  These two films are apples and oranges.  Christopher Nolan's Batman is a gritty, realistic look at a super hero that doesn't have anything supernatural or alien to make him into something greater.  He already is greater, and all three of these films take Batman as close to being realistic as possible, without completely jumping the shark.  In short, this could be the greatest trilogy of comic book heroes ever made.  The Avengers, on the other hand, is very much a comic book movie.  It has aliens, magic, technology, unbelievable acts of destruction, and does not even try to make it feel gritty or realistic.  Instead it just felt like a movie to show you how awesome it would be to be an Avenger.  Good.  That's what it needed to do.  Honestly, Avengers will probably keep the title of making the most cash, but saying that it's better than Batman really isn't fair to either title.  They should be judged on the types of films they are.