There remains nothing left to be said about Heath Ledger's performance in The Dark Knight. His extraordinary portrayal of Batman's most iconic enemy catapulted The Joker into the most esteemed circles of cinematic villainy. His nakedly evil charisma and pragmatism drives the film, which, even in hindsight, remains one of the best Hollywood blockbusters of all-time, the most exciting of its kind since Aliens. Batman Begins, my personal favourite of the trilogy, was unexpectedly political and relevant, almost, if you excuse the slang, 'artsy'. It's highly entertaining, and the most narratively coherent of the three, but it stands as a bold metaphor of the dangers of Capitalism and currency's chokehold on human existence. It's also very moving, exploiting the obvious humanity which makes Batman so much more relatable and appealling than most other Super Heroes. It's one of my favourite films of the Noughties, along with Nolan's second film, Memento. Nolan had a difficult task on his hands to match the quality of these movies with his third, and last, Batman film. Expectations were that he should exceed them; a near-impossible task, especially given the 'Third Part Curse', which seemingly plagues every trilogy save for Toy Story, and maybe Bourne. He fails.
The Dark Knight Rises is extremely disappointing, both as a filmic finale and as a film in its own right.
Nolan uses cheap plotting tricks and twists, and it quickly becomes clear that he ran out of ideas following the first two. The storyline is predictable; if you have even the most limited knowledge of the Batman universe, you should be able to realise what's around the corner. Each twist feels forced, surprising considering Nolan's previous successes with them; the warehouse explosion scene in The Dark Knight, the final reveal in The Prestige, and, basically, the entirety of Memento. The film trundles along confusedly, unsure of what it actually is. The transition between slower moments of (sadly cliched and now overly familiar) profundity concerning self-sacrifice, vigilante-ism and grief, and (the still compelling) action sequences is awkward and jolty, with obviously important scenes being ended abruptly, and edited for the sake of ramming-speed pacing.
The dialogue, although having never been Nolan's strongest suit, is particularly dreadful, hideously contrived and warped to move the story along as quickly as possible. There is no real flow, wit or intrigue in the script, just painful one-liners and boring monologues. The new characters are one-dimensional; Bane, with so much potential, is nothing more than a stereotypical anarchist-communist, who believes chaos is good for the common man, that the rich should be pay for being rich while others are poor, and so on and so forth. Blake, the beat-cop, is too perfect, too shiny. He is the modern, and actual, personification of the Harvey Dent White Knight of Gotham myth, except Nolan chooses this flawless hero trait as the character's sole backstory, rather than manipulating and twisting it like he did in the previous film in the creation of Two Face to symbolise man's natural corruption. Catwoman, although eh... aesthetically pleasing, is completely redundant and pointless in the plot's progression. Marion Cotillard's character cannot be adequately explained without mentioning spoilers, so I'll just say this; it's rubbish.
The film has its highlights; Caine, Bale and Oldman are as excellent as ever, and Tom Hardy, despite the cumbersome dialogue, is fantastic as Bane; his unique posh-Gypsy English accent and sad distant eyes inspires fascination, while his brooding hulk of a figure provokes fear and menace. As mentioned previously, the action scenes are still exciting, although not as clever as before.
The Dark Knight Rises is by no means a terrible movie, it's certainly above average when compared with your generic contemporary action film. It just feels as if it's trying too hard; too hard to be epic, too hard to be funny, too hard to be poetic, too hard to be emotional. It all too often descends into using monotonous, by-the-book narrative pressing, corny sentiments of patriotism/heroism or heavy-handed thematic exposition. In the end it's a confused, muddled mess, with some great set pieces, and some fantastic shots of Anne Hathaway's body parts in a tight, latex costume. At least we'll always have them. The film remains a complete cop-out, pandering to the box-office's unquenchable thirst for all things bigger but not necessarily better. Maybe Nolan made it as he did to appease Warner Brothers. Maybe it's the Batman film the public needed, not the Batman film the public deserved.
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