Snippitts of Illusions

The Dark Knight Rises... Thoughts

[Note: Surprisingly I didn't spoil as much as I thought I would. Still, I do spoil a lot, so if you haven't seen the movie and don't want to be spoiled, don't read this.]

As usual I'm late to the ball game when it comes to movies. I journeyed to Logan this week to see some folks and decompress and while there I had the chance to catch The Dark Knight Rises - just in time actually as it was out of the theaters only two days after I saw it. What follows is a review. A review full of spoilers so if you haven't seen it then I wouldn't read this because I am going to spoil the shit out of this movie.

I could start with a synopsis. In fact I tried twice, the first time was going to blow this blog into a novella easily, the second attempt a respectable short story. This plot is huge. There's a lot going on in this movie, and if you're not familiar with the full franchise already you're simply going to be out of the loop. We are introduced to the villain very early in this film, much like we were The Dark Knight. Bane is the big bad here, and what a big bad he is. Tom Hardy is huge. His size is reminiscent of the film Bronson, but his performance is much more calculating here. With a voice that sounds like a cross between Satan and Howdy Doody, Bane doesn't just intimidate the audience with his size, but his very presence. Humanity is a commodity to this character, and a very cheap one at that. We are also introduced to Selena Kyle, who robs a crippled, shut in Bruce Wayne early in the film. As well as a young cop named Blake, who has deduced that Bruce Wayne is really the Batman, and suspects the story about Batman killing Harvey Dent is a lie.

The movie takes place 8 years after The Dark Knight, the lie about Harvey Dent helped enact a law that has put most of the criminals in Gotham into prison. This is where Commissioner Jim Gordon, Bruce Wayne and Alfred Pennyworth comes in. Gordon feels a tremendous amount of guilt and wants to reveal the truth about Batman rescuing his son from a deranged Harvey. Bruce is still feeling the pain from Rachel Dawes death only wants to waste away in his mansion as he's not needed as Batman any more. Alfred still feels the guilt about lying to Bruce by burning a note from Rachel that revealed her love for Harvey Dent just before she died.

Bruce does come to life. After Gordon is shot while exploring the sewers looking for suspects involved in a shooting, he reveals a huge network underground where Bane and his mercenaries set up shop. Bane is ostensibly working for Bruce Wayne's competitor Dagget who has Bane use some stolen fingerprints and strong arm tactics to take control of the Gotham City Stock Exchange and bankrupt Bruce through some bad trades. In attempt to save his company he gives up control to a business partner Miranda Tate, who has invested heavily in his fusion project. All of this is enough to get the Batman active again, but it doesn't last. In a scene that fan-boys have been crying out for for 20 years Bane and Batman fight and it ends, as you would predict, with Bane breaking Batman's back. Then he plops him into a prison that is little more than a hole in the ground and taunts him with what he's about to do to Batman's beloved city, revealing that he is all that remains of the League of Shadows.

Bane takes control of the city. He lures the police force into the tunnels then buries all of the exits. He also destroy's all but one bridge out of town and informs the city that he will nuke it if anybody interferes. He's taken the the fusion core and had the physicist from the beginning of the film arm it as a nuclear device, then to be sure he kills the  physicist. He then "turns" the city back over to the populace, by letting all the convicts out of prison it becomes a police state ruled over by the former cons and Bane's mercenaries.

It's here where the theme of the film comes to the front like a huge mallet. Bruce, battered and broken, slowly heals then begins to attempt to make the climb out of the pit. The city devolves into further madness. Bruce tries again and again to escape the pit ect.

Now you can guess how it ends. I won't give away the entire ending, but Gotham is saved, and Nolan does manage to end it in such a way that Bruce Wayne is no longer Batman. How he completes both of these tasks shouldn't be too hard to guess, with a little foresight anyway.

The movie's good in all ways that a movie should be: it's fast paced, the acting and dialogue works really well for the most part, it has incredibly compelling characters (particularly Bane), and the cinematography and style is what you've come to expect in a Christopher Nolan Batman movie. It's not perfect though.

While it may seem nit picky, and even disingenuous to compare it to The Dark Knight, which in and of itself wasn't perfect (but near enough) but still an outstanding achievement of a movie. It's actually because of the previous film that the flaws in this movie are all that more apparent.

First off the plot. This is a big plot. There's so much going on that it's almost too much, even for the nearly three hour run time of the film. Some things are hand waved, like Blake having deduced that Bruce Wayne was the Batman, or even how Bane and his mercenaries manage to entrench themselves into the city in the capacity they do. This could easily have been stretched out into 3 1/2 hours, or even 4, which means it actually could have been two separate films. The plot is epic, but it's really too much for the movie we've been given.

That being said, there are several characters who are barely in the film. Pennyworth disappears for about 2/3rds the film, Jim Gordon is shot fairly quickly into the movie and only makes the occasional appearance for about the same amount of time as Pennyworth. And while Joseph Gordon-Levitt is fantastic, his character Blake really could have used some fleshing out. Not that there isn't character development, it's just somethings are hand-waved and it seems a bit of a let down with the character. The same goes for Lucius Fox, Miranda Tate, and Selena Kyle. Yes they get screen time, but their arcs seem shallow because there's just too much going on.

Now, as for implied propaganda. I can see it, but I don't. Not really. This isn't about class warfare, nor is it implying that we are better off under the rule of the wealthy, far from it in fact. Certainly those things are touched upon, but likening Bane to a socialist or a agent of reform who fails because he uses terrorist tactics ignores what Bane's actual goals are. He's not interested in turning the city over to the masses, or social upheaval, he's only interested in it's destruction. The only reason he doesn't merely nuke the city immediately after getting control of the reactor is because he wants to taunt Bruce Wayne. He's only goal is to finish what was started in the first film and that is the utter destruction of Gotham, because that's what Ra's al Ghul wanted.

The movie has other themes though, those that are more important in my opinion: obligation, honesty, perseverance. And truthfully the answers aren't all cut and dry. At what point does one's obligation to society supersede one's obligation to one's self? If a lie has to be told in order for society to be better, is it the right thing to do? These are questions the film asks, and quite honestly I'm not sure it answers in any conclusive way.

This movie isn't perfect, and in fact it, it is about the same in quality as Batman Begins, which isn't a bad thing at all. It bookends the series nicely with that movie and it definitely brings closure to the franchise. That being said, this is the first of the franchise that I hope for a director's cut right when it's released on DVD.

Labels: Batman, Christopher Nolan, Movie Reviews

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 2:00 AM