I am breaking my silence (on the internet) and will now share my thoughts on The Dark Knight Rises. I went to the midnight premiere but I wanted to wait a few days to think things over before I made my opinion heard/read. Basically, I thought The Dark Knight Rises was disappointing, predictable, and anticlimactic. The film was by no means bad, but it certainly was not great, and it is easily the worst of the trilogy. There will be plot details ahead but I will try to indicate when the spoilers begin. The first section will be spoiler free.
The Good
First, the good. The special effects and set pieces overall were great. When the Dark Knight himself first dons his cape and cowl and takes down Bane's thugs I felt excited and I celebrated within myself at the the Caped Crusader's return. Also, the music was pretty solid as well. Not as good as The Dark Knight but still really powerful in its own right. In fact, I am listening to it now. Christopher Nolan is a fantastic director when it comes to big blockbusters and spectacle in movies and The Dark Knight Rises continues this tradition. Unfortunately, one of the problems with the movie is that it tries to be too big and too grand. With this, the film lost focus and was unable to develop certain elements to their fullest.
The Not So Good (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS)
The opening set piece with the airplane is pretty marvelous to watch. But was I the only one who had a but of deja vu? This was the first instance of predictability in the movie. No one should have been surprised that Bane was one of the guys with a hood over his head. It was just like The Dark Knight when The Joker was one of the thugs wearing a clown mask. The big difference being that I was more excited when the Joker was revealed.
After that the story picks up and it is shown to be taking place 10 years after The Dark Knight. There is some sort of fundraiser, celebration, party, thing at Wayne Manor and there is an instance where some authority figure tells some other figure that Commissioner Gordon is going to be fired soon. This comment is never made mention of or returned to again for the rest of the movie. Ok...
The next plot point that made essentially no sense at all when the new character Officer Blake (Joseph Gorden Levitt) comes to Bruce Wayne's crib to talk to him. Blake sits down and says he knows that Bruce Wayne is actually Batman (or as characters in the movie like to call him, THE Batman). Blake gives a lengthy exposition explaining to Wayne and the audience how he knows his secret. The explanation makes absolutely no sense. Since Bruce Wayne looked like he was faking a smile and hiding something Blake then deduces that he must be Batman. All right... I was not the only member of the audience that thought he was an adult version of the kid in Batman Begins that Batman gives his night scope thing to. But it turns out that he is just some random guy who saw Bruce Wayne once when he was a kid.
While watching the movie I was able to look past the dumb Blake exposition with hopes that the movie would make up for it. This is when Bane starts tearing Gotham apart. This section is probably the best one of the movie, with the best moment being this, of course. Once Batman is broken, though, things start to get annoying.
Bruce Wayne is told earlier on in the movie that his body is essentially useless now and that his knees don't even have cartilage in them. He is able to get around this by using high tech knee braces. Cool gadgets. But Bane is still able to beat him easily and then throws Wayne into a hole-prison. Batman is able to gain back all of his strength and become even stronger than before in a matter of days just by doing a bunch of pushups, situps, and pullups. -_- Come on, really? Oh, and he had to climb out of the hole. Which he does, you guessed it, on his third try. Third times the charm even for The Dark Knight himself.
Then, later on, Bruce Wayne appears on the now isolated island of Gotham City, also known as Manhattan, to confront Selina Kyle and ask for her help. How the heck did he get there? If I'm not mistaken, there was less than 24 hours left on the nuke-bomb-machine so Wayne must have somehow managed to get there in under 10 hours. So, that part was 100% impossible unless he ran into Scotty in the middle of the dessert.
The worst part of the movie, for me, was the "twist" near the end. This is the part where Miranda Tat turns on Batman revealing that she is Ra's al Ghoul's daughter and the true protagonist. Now, her character is actually from the comics and in retrospect her role in the movie makes sense and is appropriate for that character. The problem, though, is that this twist came so close to the end of the movie that the main villain changed for about 15 minutes. Bane was built up so much as this incredible and all-powerful figure just to discover that he is only a henchman and that his whole back story belongs to someone else.
Then you have Bane's death. Could not have possibly been more anticlimactic.
This leads to another major instance of predictability. Whoever was surprised to see Catwoman come back and help batman is a fool. So much attention was drawn to her not coming back and resisting the urge to help Batman it became irritating. During Batman's fight with Bane I was constantly WAITING for her to show up. If less attention had been drawn to her refusing to come back and help Batman we still would have known that she was going to come back. But instead of waiting for her we would instead be HOPING for her to come back.
Then there is the ending. The ending went way too quick. Some people complain that The Return of the King took too long to end. I disagree. Look at movies like Harry Potter 7 Part 2 and The Dark Knight Rises that ended quickly and one releases how much is gained though a long ending. The Dark Knight Rises went so fast at the end and almost ended abruptly. With The Dark Knight Gordon goes on for a while explaining the situation. This gives the viewer a chance to let everything that has happened sink in just before the credits roll.
The whole scene with Blake at the end is also irritating. Not only does it not make any sense but it is an insult to fans of Batman. Apparently Blake's real name is Robin. Wait, what? Where do I even start? For those who don't know, Robin's real name is Dick Grayson in the comics (the first Robin that is). So it would have actually made sense if he had said "my legal name is Dick." Why wasn't it like that in the movie? Probably because that movie was catering to the fans of the movies. Fans that don't actually know anything about Batman and his character outside of Nolan's interpretation of the source material. There is nothing wrong with being just a fan of the movies, but if your knowledge of the characters stems only from the movies then you can't call yourself a fan of Batman. Sorry, you just can't. Any Batman fan would instantly understand the implications if Blake had said his name was Dick Grayson. Also, for some reason fans of the movies don't even like Robin. Why not? Are you only basing this on Batman and Robin? If so, you are wrong. Oh yea, and if his legal name is Robin then what will his super hero name be? Do you think I could get away with calling myself Harrison as a super hero?
Also, when we see Alfred crying at Wayne's grave I almost started laughing, simply because I had completely forgotten that Alfred had left in the first place. They never really did anything with that did they? The Alfred sitting outside at the restaurant was also a little cheesy and elementary level foreshadowing. The movie could have done without that, which leads me to...
BATMAN SHOULD HAVE DIED! So the ending where Batman pretends to sacrifice himself to save Gotham was unsatisfying for two reasons. First off, for some reason I did not care that he was sacrificing himself. I think this is because it was so obvious that he would have to do so. It was more expecting of him rather than a shockingly brave sacrifice. The second fault was that it is the exact same ending as The Iron Giant, but in The Iron Gian I actually cared.
This Looks Familiar....
The Iron Giant is not the only movie that The Dark Knight Rises resembles. If I were to describe in one sentence The Dark Knight Rises, it would be, "Rocky 3 set in the French Revolution." The basic structure of Batman in this movie is almost identical to Rocky 3. In Rocky 3, Rocky comes out of retirement, fights a new guy, looses, then re-trains for a rematch with the bad guy. Notice the resemblance? Oh, and does this look familiar? I also recommend looking at this.
What I Would Have Done
With these complaints I also have suggestions as to what I would have done differently if I were Nolan. First off, I would have reduced the number of characters. Nolan seemed to be wary toward adding a bunch of new characters but for some reason he still did. Four major characters were added and the only one anybody really cared about was Bane. If it were just he and Catwoman who were added that would have been fine. This would allow the film to focus on these characters and develop them more while also allotting more screen time to the characters from the previous films. I also would have reduced the scale a bit. Batman is not a character that needs to be placed in an "epic" story, that would be better suited for Superman. The movie, in a way, tried to be The Return of the King, in terms of grand, epic scale. But, The Return of the King this movie is not.
The biggest change I would make is the structure of the later middle of the film. Instead of inter-cutting between what is happening in Gotham and what Wayne is doing in prison I would have focused entirely on Wayne. The way it is in the film there is equal emphasis on Gordan's forces and Wayne's rebirth. The movie is titled "The Dark Knight Rises" not "Commissioner Gorden and Friends," I want to see a movie about Batman, not the Gotham police department. Since there was so little screen time for Wayne in prison there was not a feeling of growth for his character. I did not feel like he had to develop in any way in order to defeat Bane. There was no "seizing the sword moment" for him. All he needed to do apparently was learn to fear death and do some pushup for a few days and he was able to easily defeat Bane in a fight. I don't buy it.
The Dark Knight Rises is the worst in the trilogy but it is not really a bad movie. There have been annoying fans online already doing stupid things. Also, the rating on IMDb is absurd. Thankfully, The Dark Knight Rises does not ruin the trilogy like some think The Matrix sequels did. It is more similar to Return of the Jedi, but Jedi is still a better film in my opinion. I really want to see The Dark Knight Rises again, with lower expectations, because then I will hopefully enjoy it more.
No comments:
Post a Comment