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Film Review #8 (got a few more reviews to get to current time but thought I'd post this anyway as I've just seen it)
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The Dark Knight Rises is a solid ending to a great trilogy from Christopher Nolan. Whilst by no means bad, I just didn’t feel the film was a strong as its predecessors for a number of reasons, in this film Nolan has stretched out a story in to almost three hours, the first is largely focussed on getting us up to speed after an eight year jump, looking at the hurt of such characters as Bruce Wayne, the second is largely one of pain as we as the viewers feel through Bane’s success and Wayne’s exile, the final part of the film is its strongest and brings a fitting end to one of the best trilogies there has been.
Starting with the films’ positives I feel that we saw a much better performance from Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne as the film focussed much more on the emotional side of the character than it had in The Dark Knight. If you watch Batman Begins and miss out the second part of the trilogy then the two seem more of a pair in my opinion in terms of the development of Batman himself.
The film also saw a very strong supporting cast as Michael Caine gave another great performance as Wayne’s butler Alfred with many emotional scenes shared with the actor. We also saw Anne Hathaway silence her critics with a good performance as Catwoman, I was initially concerned with how this character would work in conjunction with the main plot and thankfully I feel Nolan got this character spot on like he has with many others. The star of the show for me though was Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a very strong performance as the young police officer Blake, his character becomes increasingly involved as the film progresses.
Following the Oscar winning performance by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight people were always going to pay close attention to the villain in this film. Tom Hardy plays the brutal Bane, a character whose figure is similar to that portrayed by Hardy in Bronson. Bane is what you’d expect from a scary looking masked villain, his character is cold-hearted and pure evil. Although the character’s past is explained his emotional side seems to be left largely unexplored, he brings little character or personality, his motives are also somewhat odd – he targets the upper classes of society with attacks on a football game as well as the stock market but then he also claims that his goal is to complete the work of Ra’s Al Ghul from Batman Begins which seems strange considering that his plan was to destroy a city he saw was beyond saving yet Gotham City has seen 8 years of peace.
Elaborating on some of my original points, I think Nolan’s tried to too hard with his final piece, he’s tried to make it a well-paced emotional study of Batman, he’s tried to focus on his suffering and then on his rise using almost three hours of screen time to create a epic conclusion. The length of the film means it takes a while to get in to the action (although it is probably worth it) and that when we are watching scenes of suffering we feel the pain as viewers, although this is probably the idea. I won’t speak about the ending at all, that’s not fair for those who haven’t seen it.
RATING:
The Dark Knight Rises (2012)
The Dark Knight Rises is a solid ending to a great trilogy from Christopher Nolan. Whilst by no means bad, I just didn’t feel the film was a strong as its predecessors for a number of reasons, in this film Nolan has stretched out a story in to almost three hours, the first is largely focussed on getting us up to speed after an eight year jump, looking at the hurt of such characters as Bruce Wayne, the second is largely one of pain as we as the viewers feel through Bane’s success and Wayne’s exile, the final part of the film is its strongest and brings a fitting end to one of the best trilogies there has been.
Starting with the films’ positives I feel that we saw a much better performance from Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne as the film focussed much more on the emotional side of the character than it had in The Dark Knight. If you watch Batman Begins and miss out the second part of the trilogy then the two seem more of a pair in my opinion in terms of the development of Batman himself.
The film also saw a very strong supporting cast as Michael Caine gave another great performance as Wayne’s butler Alfred with many emotional scenes shared with the actor. We also saw Anne Hathaway silence her critics with a good performance as Catwoman, I was initially concerned with how this character would work in conjunction with the main plot and thankfully I feel Nolan got this character spot on like he has with many others. The star of the show for me though was Joseph Gordon-Levitt in a very strong performance as the young police officer Blake, his character becomes increasingly involved as the film progresses.
Following the Oscar winning performance by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight people were always going to pay close attention to the villain in this film. Tom Hardy plays the brutal Bane, a character whose figure is similar to that portrayed by Hardy in Bronson. Bane is what you’d expect from a scary looking masked villain, his character is cold-hearted and pure evil. Although the character’s past is explained his emotional side seems to be left largely unexplored, he brings little character or personality, his motives are also somewhat odd – he targets the upper classes of society with attacks on a football game as well as the stock market but then he also claims that his goal is to complete the work of Ra’s Al Ghul from Batman Begins which seems strange considering that his plan was to destroy a city he saw was beyond saving yet Gotham City has seen 8 years of peace.
Elaborating on some of my original points, I think Nolan’s tried to too hard with his final piece, he’s tried to make it a well-paced emotional study of Batman, he’s tried to focus on his suffering and then on his rise using almost three hours of screen time to create a epic conclusion. The length of the film means it takes a while to get in to the action (although it is probably worth it) and that when we are watching scenes of suffering we feel the pain as viewers, although this is probably the idea. I won’t speak about the ending at all, that’s not fair for those who haven’t seen it.
RATING: