One Week Later: The Dark Knight Rises

I was going to write this review on July 20, the day The Dark Knight Rises opened.  I had been preparing myself for weeks for this movie, rereading my collection of Batman comics and watching the previous films in the series over again, and went to a midnight showing with some friends at our local movie theater.  But as we were having a great night out at the movies, people at such a midnight screening in Aurora, Colorado, were being wounded or killed by a mad gunman.

Upon hearing the news of the shooting the next morning, my enthusiasm for the movie (and reviewing it) dissipated.  I had been so eagerly awaiting it for over a year, and I had almost forgotten about it less than 24 hours after seeing it.  In the face of real life tragedy, a simple movie, even arguably the biggest movie of the past few years, seemed kind of trivial.

In the week since the shooting, as the news cycle went from grief and sorrow back to election year politics, I went to see the film again.  That’s a luxury not usually afforded to a reviewer, but I felt in this case it was necessary.  People have tried to blame tragedy on pop culture before (some blamed the Columbine shootings on the video game Doom and rocker Marilyn Manson), but this was different: this time, the shooter actually identified himself as “the Joker,” the famous Batman villain, and had rigged his residence with explosives, almost as if he was really trying to play the role of supervillain.  Knowing all this, is it possible to view The Dark Knight Rises untainted by this event?

Like Heath Ledger’s death before the release of The Dark Knight, this tragedy will sadly always be connected with the movie.  But also like The Dark Knight, it is possible to view the film on its own merit, unaffected by events of the outside world.

So, a week late, here is the big, epic review I had planned to write.  And yes, there are spoilers throughout, so don’t read any more if you haven’t seen the film.

 

When I first saw Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins in 2005, I was surprised to see such a strong dramatic film based on a comic book character.  My expectations were higher for 2008’s The Dark Knight, but Nolan blew them away again, as the film was a dark, masterful piece of work, every bit as great as the best film noir or crime dramas ever made.  So my expectations for The Dark Knight Rises had escalated to as high a level of excitement as I ever felt for a movie.  And I wasn’t alone: If you’re reading this, I’m guessing you already know that this has been the most hyped film of the new decade. 

To his credit, Nolan does his level best to fulfill those expectations, throwing everything and a nuclear warhead (literally) into his final chapter.  There are more characters, more and new vehicles, bigger action sequences, a cast of thousands, and a running time close to three hours.

It certainly is bigger, darker, and grimmer, but does it live up to the hype?  Well, not quite.  For all its epic size and scope, it falls short of the standard for superhero pictures set by The Dark Knight.  But it is still a very good film.  Even if it doesn’t live up to the level of expectation it had (and really, anything less than the greatest movie ever would fail to do so), it still reaches great heights as a work of cinema.

As this is the finale, the story skips ahead to eight years after The Dark Knight.  Batman (Christian Bale) has not been seen in that span, and his alter ego Bruce Wayne is now a broken-down recluse who walks with a cane.  In his absence, Gotham City has gone from a crime-ridden hellhole to a model city.  Wayne is forced to don the cowl again, however, when the masked mercenary Bane (Tom Hardy) appears in Gotham.

Bane’s plan is to break the Bat and take over the city.  He does just that, giving the Dark Knight the most brutal beating he’s ever gotten onscreen, and the film splits into two stories.  One has Wayne out of action (and out of costume) for much of the movie, as he is held captive in an ancient prison pit.  With Gotham facing destruction, he must regain his strength by climbing out of the pit.

Yes, the title The Dark Knight Rises is a literal statement of the direction of the film (The Dark Knight Climbs doesn’t quite have the same ring to it).  It’s a little lame, and also hard to swallow that he could suddenly be healed and able to take Bane after simply climbing out of a hole, especially after the beating he receives earlier in the movie.  Also, the big, epic fight between the two disappointingly never happens; their rematch later in the movie is just a small part of a much bigger finale.  Instead, Bane meets his end in rather anticlimactic fashion.

The more compelling story takes place in Gotham, where Bane cuts off the outside world by destroying all the bridges, holds the city hostage with a nuclear bomb, and frees all criminals from prison to prey on the police and the rich and powerful.  Here, the tone of the film turns to that of a brutal urban war movie (there is little blood, but the violence pushes the limit of the PG-13 rating).  It ‘s also here that, in Batman’s absence, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Gotham cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) become the real heroes of the picture (more on them later).  The only flaw is that the storyline seems a little rushed, as a considerable length of time (five months according to the dialogue) passes in only about an hour of screen time.

Indeed, that’s the picture’s main weakness, packing in enough plot points to stretch the film into a miniseries (not a surprise, as two comic arcs Nolan cited as inspiration, Knightfall and No Man’s Land, were huge inter-title crossovers that each lasted more than a year).  In addition to what I mentioned already, there’s Wayne’s financial troubles, the love triangle between Bale, Anne Hathaway, and Marion Cotillard, the tying of nearly every loose end from the first two movies, and the creation of more loose ends for potential sequels.

Third entries in other superhero franchises like X-Men: The Last Stand and Spider-Man 3 made the same mistake, squeezing too much into one film.  The Dark Knight Rises is likewise top-heavy, but unlike those movies, it never falls and breaks under its own weight.  Some plot points may be fleeting, but the film is never boring in its 165 minutes, as there is always something happening (one thing about Christopher Nolan: his movies never seem to have a slow scene).

Tom Hardy has an imposing physical presence as Bane, although his much talked-about vocal problems still linger (first Batman’s grating growl and now this; seriously, why does this series have problems with voices?).  Between a bad accent and being garbled by the mask, he's hard to understand at times, undercutting his menace a bit (I was reminded, of all things, of Kenneth Mars in Young Frankenstein, and imagined Bane’s henchmen saying “What?” in unison after some of his monologues).  His fists usually do the talking, however, and he makes for an effective foe, if not on the same level of Heath Ledger’s Joker (though following such a performance is a tall order).

Even better is Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle (better known as Catwoman, though she is never referred to as such onscreen).  She—in the words of another Catwoman—purrrrrrr-fectly captures the character’s cunning, sex appeal, and moral ambiguity, not truly evil but not quite good.  The only downside is that she seems a bit like just a cog in a much bigger machine (so do other characters at times).  It’s too bad this is the series’ final chapter, because the character deserves another movie, one where she is not overshadowed by a villain like Bane (though the open-ended epilogue and talk of a spin-off film suggest we haven’t seen the last of her).

Christian Bale does well enough, despite being mired in the less interesting plot (and it’s hard to buy that he’s decrepit when he looks barely older or worse for wear than in The Dark Knight).  Series regulars like Michael Caine as Wayne’s loyal butler Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox are strong as ever, as are newcomers like Marion Cotillard as Bruce Wayne’s colleague and lover (and eventual betrayer) and Matthew Modine as Gordon’s opportunistic second-in-command who nevertheless shows courage and character in the end (another notable element of Nolan’s work: even in minor roles, he casts good actors).  

As stated, however, the two greatest people in the movie are Gary Oldman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  With the exception of Heath Ledger, Oldman, one of the most underrated great actors, has been the best performer in the series.  As Jim Gordon, he took what was a minor role in all other adaptations and made him into a fully-rounded character, a voice of courage and moral authority and the Bat’s greatest ally.  I’ll even contend that his role over the three films warrants an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  As for Gordon-Levitt, he arguably upstages Batman as the more compelling leading man (and judging by the film’s ending, I’d say Nolan agrees that he plays the hero well).  Already a proven actor in smaller films, this could be the picture that puts him on Hollywood’s A-list, much like what Batman Begins did for Bale.

Because of the story flaws (and the letdown of no big Batman-Bane fight), The Dark Knight Rises might be the weakest of the trilogy, but it’s so well made and endlessly, relentlessly thrilling that it closes the series on a more-than-satisfying note.  With this picture, Nolan caps off what has easily been the greatest superhero franchise ever filmed.  Moreover, what he’s meant for movies based on comics cannot be understated.  What he did was so simple, yet so revolutionary: he took the material seriously.

If it weren’t for Nolan’s Batman, movies like Iron Man and The Avengers might have still been made, but would they have been made so well, with real actors instead of just current big stars?  I don’t know.  Would Spider-Man have gotten a much better reboot so soon after a series that was already very successful?  Maybe not.  Would something as deep and thoughtful as Alan Moore’s Watchmen have gotten such a faithful adaptation?  I doubt it.

When Batman Begins came out, it didn’t even cross my mind that it would be anything but your typical fun, flashy summer superhero flick (remember, the awful Halle Berry Catwoman was released just a year before).  Seven years later, I—and I’ll venture to say most audiences, too—expect quality films, not just from Batman, but all comic book adaptations.  And for the most part, studios have strived to deliver on those expectations.  That, more than any one film, is Nolan’s greatest legacy.

Worth seeing in IMAX? Definitely!