The Dark Knight Rises [Spoilers]

[matthewdev]

5/10 for me. The thing that pissed me off the most was when it was mentioned all the cops in gotham are in the tunnels, then proceeded to spout numbers of around 3000. I'm sorry, Gotham is based on NYC, and NYC has approx 54000 employed police.

I was more annoyed by the stupidity of sending every available cop into the tunnels. Who would do that?

Generally I really liked it though, rated it higher than the second though not as good as the first.

[sifter132]

Finally saw this yesterday, and I was quite disappointed with it actually. It took us half an hour to drive home and I was still ranting about it by the time we got back Normally I'm not that guy...Was quite enjoying it up until about halfway...

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Then Bane and Batman met in the sewers. Yes I'm talking about Batman being thrown into Bane's prison. I understand why it was in there, and it eventually told some backstory, but that whole section was really bland for me and took way too long. It was really predictable that he'd make it out, make that stupid jump etc. Bane couldn't drag me through that section either, in fact after a promising start, he turned into just another overly verbose Bond-like villain talking about nuclear weapons and big bombs. By the time we found out more about Bane's backstory, it was too late - I had given up on him by that point.

Pacing threw me off too: Bane blowing up lots of stuff around the city and having the score constantly loud in the background it felt like it SHOULD have been the last act of the film...except it took another 1-1.5 hours to get to that final confrontation.

Sidenote...Jim Gordon got sidelined AGAIN in the middle - just like the weakest section of the Dark Knight. Gave Blake more screen time I guess, but it was an interesting coincidence. Then it seemed like they realised Gordon needed more screentime and he was running around the city like crazy in the last half hour vaulting into trucks and surviving fatal car crashes...

It was a good movie, I feel that overall that Dark Knight was a significantly better movie because it was just extremely well written and the stories were more tightly intertwined, a bunch of the side stories in DKR I didn't feel had much weight and didn't really go anywhere sometimes. There were also a bunch of cliche storytelling moments. It also made some of the mistakes of getting too big and ridiculous, the scenarios present just weren't really grounded or believable like they were in the previous films plus there were a bunch of *jackie chan face* moments lol. Catwoman was well done however and Bane (except for his last moments) was quite well done too (even if Joker was far more memorable) even if he was hard to hear for much of the movie. I'd go on with what I liked and didn't like but no one wants to listen to me lol so i'll just say it's a good movie and worth seeing but not nearly as good as Dark Knight imo.

Yep I think I agree with all your points - but it all annoyed me a bit more than you - I'd give it 6 out of 10. All the ingredients were there, pretty good acting and effects etc. (although Bane's voice...). Bottom line was I just didn't like the way the story was told.

[Ralph Wiggum]

Jumping on board the late train having only seen this movie tonight; usually I don't take this long to see such epic movies but me and my movie pal have both been sick the past couple of weeks.

As expected from a Christopher Nolan movie, the acting and script are top notch. No wanky "help meeee Batmannn" characters. Like some people I found Bane to be hard to understand sometimes (and the dialogue was actually re-done as the first version was even more unintelligible) but Tom Hardy adds a great physical/psychological presence to the character. I am somewhat disappointed that such a epic and central character was unceremoniously killed off with a cannon blast to the chest by Catwoman of all people. Anne Hathaway also did a great job with Catwoman; looking back thank Christ there was no lame 'cat' jokes (ala Batman Returns or the TV series) and in fact I don't think there was no reference to her as "Catwoman", just the "Cat Burglar". Joseph Gordon-Levitt as one of the main new characters probably didn't have much of a chance to shine like Bane or Catwoman, but man, oh man, my jaw dropped when in the end his name was revealed as "Robin John Blake", because my first name is Robin as well and it was a sneaky reference.

The overall plot was a little overloaded with separate elements, but I found the same thing with The Dark Knight. Batman Begins to me seems like the simplest and smoothest flowing movie of the trilogy. TDKR also tied back a LOT to the first movie which seemed a little jarring. I wonder if the movie would've worked better if it touched on the Dark Knight (i.e. Batman's fugitive status and Harvey Dent) but mostly stood on it's own plot device.

I could nitpick the movie to death, but overall it was enjoyable, epic and worth my money. 8.5/10.