The Dark Knight Rises (Film Review)
Jul. 31st, 2012 08:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakAdvance feeling, separate from the horrible tragedy that happened at the film's premiere: well, my flist seems to be deeply divided about that one, some saying above cut they were very disappointed (except about Selina Kyle), some praising it to the skies as THE comicbook movie of the summer. My own feelings now, after having watched it, about cut: Selina Kyle is indeed the greatest thing about the film, and Anne Hathaway leaves any naysayers doubting she could be a fine Catwoman in the dust. She makes this a film worth watching, and so I don't regret I've done it. Everything else? Oh dear. OH DEAR.
As opposed to many others, I don't consider The Dark Knight the best of the franchise. I still never saw it more than once, whereas I do own the Batman Begins dvd. Not because I didn't enjoy watching great parts of it in the cinema, but because other parts annoyed me quite a lot, including one of the central plot elements, i.e. the conclusion that the people of Gotham have to be spared the truth about Harvey Dent, that they couldn't deal with that loss of inspiration and all the good things Harvey had started would be undone, that Batman nobly takes the blame for Harvey's victims and Harvey's own death. I thought that was patronising in the extreme and also directly against the earlier scene where the people of Gothan proved the Joker's nihilism wrong by not choosing to kill each other in order to save their own lives in the Prisoner's Dilemma gambit involving the two ships. Well, dear friends, I didn't know what patronising MEANS in the Nolanverse until this film. When Jim Gordon is guilt ridden about having lied about Harvey Dent for years, he's not upset about the lie as such but that he served the people the wrong hero to worship. Gordon generally doesn't fare well in this film; he's taken out of action for a considerable time so that new character John Blake can be established, and he's shown as opposed to virtually every other character with more than two lines in the film, he's proven to have never figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman until Batman tells him at the end. I think Nolan went for touching in the "Bruce Wayne?!?" scene since Batman/Bruce just told Gordon he was a hero to child!Bruce for being kind to him the night his parents died, but I felt incredibly offended on Jim Gordon's behalf.
Then there's the way Gothamites react, or don't, to having the usual Anglosaxon nightmare version of the Terreur period of the French Revolution for five months. There is no scene like the one with the two ships in this film. Instead, the masses huddle until they are saved, and the prisoners plunder and stage show trials, and the resistance consists of the very few cops who managed to elude getting trapped in the tunnes because naturally, no ordinary citizen of Gotham would be interested in joining. "Batman could be anyone; that was the point" Bruce tells Blake int this film, but no, Bruce, that was V. Sadly The Dark Knight Rises, like its predecessor (where the Batman imitators fare terribly) implies that to be Batman, you have to be an angry orphan with millionaire resources (or being left said millionaire resources), and for all of Alfred's angry speeches in the first part about how Bruce could contribute to helping Gotham outside of a cape, the second half proves Alfred wrong by showing only caped crusaders (and crusaders-to-be) are capable of dealing. Oh, and revolutions are all stage-managed by supervillains in league with the villainous type of millionaire instead of the crusading one. Also, villainous henchmen have no sense of self preservation and are totally okay with being around a nuclear bomb and getting blown up with same for the cause of the two main villians. (This btw is standard far for action movies (and several comic books), it's just that Nolan's trilogy got praised for innovation, and err, not so much.) I think I got spoiled by a recent work of fiction where the henchmen (and henchwomen) instead when it started to look as if their leader was going to get them all killed started to get the hell out of Dodge. Because, gasp, they were human beings with a self preservation instinct. And let's not talk about how most of the cops supposedly were trapped in the tunnels for five months (seriously, there was no way of escaping said tunnels supposedly running beneath all of Gotham?) and emerge from them with their uniforms barely mussed and their faces scrubbed for the final battle.
Mind you, that final battle does wonders for everyone getting in peak physical shape. Bruce starts the film in bad shape, due to not having been a vigilante for eight years and having locked himself in his house to mourn Rachel; he's hobbling on a walking stick. Bane beats him into a pulp mid movie. He recovers via the time honored action movie device of training montages in the mysterious East and a prison hole within five months and proceeds to beat Bane. I suppose it was all psychosomatic early on?
Which actually works with Bruce's characterisation here. Though not elsewhere. Look, I know that any incarnation of Bruce Wayne never gets over anything emotionally; that's a character premise. But he usually channels those feelings into rage and crusading (see also: central trauma of character), not into playing Howard Hughes, the later stages, for eight years and telling Aflred he's not allowed to live because Rachel didn't. I mean, is he a fourteen years old teenager or what? Scratch that, in many ways he is, I suppose. Still. Then Alfred interrupts Bruce's ongoing self punishment by telling him Rachel had moved on with Harvey and wrote so in a letter, whereupon Bruce accepts Alfred's earlier threatened resignation, i.e. fires him. Because clearly, his feelings for Rachel (whom, lest we forget, after their childhood friendship he knew only very briefly as an adult before and after taking off for seven years, and then she MOVED ON TO HARVEY BECAUSE RACHEL WASN'T A STEPHANIE MEYER HEROINE) are more important than the thirty years Alfred WAS his father. That's the second most insulting to characters and audience scene after the "Bruce Wayne?!?" from Gordon. I'm going back and thro as to whether the final "Bruce escaped a nuclear explosion and faked his death" revelation was the third most insulting, but mostly I regard it as a comforting hallucination of Alfred's because it fitted his earlier described dream scene so exactly. (Which means Bruce did die. I mean, even fore a comicbook movie where Crane presides over show trials on a pile of clothes and rubble as if he was drawn by Tim Sale, surviving a nuclear explosion is pushing it. Mind you, the idea that this incredibly hokey Batman The Hero statue was inflicted on Gotham while the man himself is gallivanting abroad is sort of amusing.)
(Michael Caine is superb throughout, though.)
Because I get at last to the parts I enjoyed, a neutral observation: I think Christian Bale is a good actor, always was since Empire of the Sun, and he's better here than in The Dark Knight where he didn't have much to do anyway. Also I really appreciate what he did for the victims of the Aurora attack. But it's a mystery to me how he has yet to have any chemistry with any of the leading ladies I've seen him paired with. This is especially glaring here where Bruce's one night stand with Miranda Tate isn't explainable by anything else.
Okay, onto the good stuff. Now because Christopher Nolan edited out any women of the Batman tale he could (so Jim Gordon hasn't got a niece/adopted daughter, he has a son, there's no Dr. Leslie, no Montoya and no second Mrs. Gordon and a great cop in her own right, Sarah, I actually went along with the idea that he had edited out Talia as Ras al Gul's daughter as well and made Bane Ras' son instead, so the big reveal worked on me as a twist. Mind you, I did expect Miranda Tate to be Bane's ally, because otherwise the character would have no point in the film. Just not for her to be Talia, or the child who climbed out of the hole instead of Bane, so, dear Chris Nolan: this I officially like and approve of. Also, Unexpected!Liam Neeson is always welcome, so thanks for that.
And did I mention SELINA THE FABULOUS? She truly was. Her back and thro with Bruce and the game playing and outwitting each other is what I've always loved about Catwoman (when done well), and whereas the rest of the film was about Batman The Martyr, when with her Bruce seemed to be in a different type of film, more like the original Thomas Crown Affair with reversed gender roles, and I loved it. It pushed my Amanda and Duncan from Highlander buttons, too. On her own she was just as splendid, with the way she used the congressman as her insurance in case Burn Gorman (nice to see him in an international film, btw, may it lead to even more roles) double crosses her which he did practically inducing me to whoops and cheers. Her roommate wasn't named but looked like Holly from the comics, so I'm assuming this is who she was; I just wish the film hadn't forgotten about her after Selina starts to get horrified by anarchic!Gotham, because during all her "stay and help Bruce or getting the hell away" dilemma there is no mention of her trying to save Holly, whom previously she was established to care about, by taking her along. :(
Anyway, Selina had basically the Han Solo role here (cynic with a heart of gold coming back at the last minute to prove hero's faith in him/her has been justified), which fitted the character very well. And she's the only part of the Nolan interpretation of the Batverse I wouldn't mind seeing again, so any rumours about a Catwoman movie are welcome.
As opposed to many others, I don't consider The Dark Knight the best of the franchise. I still never saw it more than once, whereas I do own the Batman Begins dvd. Not because I didn't enjoy watching great parts of it in the cinema, but because other parts annoyed me quite a lot, including one of the central plot elements, i.e. the conclusion that the people of Gotham have to be spared the truth about Harvey Dent, that they couldn't deal with that loss of inspiration and all the good things Harvey had started would be undone, that Batman nobly takes the blame for Harvey's victims and Harvey's own death. I thought that was patronising in the extreme and also directly against the earlier scene where the people of Gothan proved the Joker's nihilism wrong by not choosing to kill each other in order to save their own lives in the Prisoner's Dilemma gambit involving the two ships. Well, dear friends, I didn't know what patronising MEANS in the Nolanverse until this film. When Jim Gordon is guilt ridden about having lied about Harvey Dent for years, he's not upset about the lie as such but that he served the people the wrong hero to worship. Gordon generally doesn't fare well in this film; he's taken out of action for a considerable time so that new character John Blake can be established, and he's shown as opposed to virtually every other character with more than two lines in the film, he's proven to have never figured out that Bruce Wayne is Batman until Batman tells him at the end. I think Nolan went for touching in the "Bruce Wayne?!?" scene since Batman/Bruce just told Gordon he was a hero to child!Bruce for being kind to him the night his parents died, but I felt incredibly offended on Jim Gordon's behalf.
Then there's the way Gothamites react, or don't, to having the usual Anglosaxon nightmare version of the Terreur period of the French Revolution for five months. There is no scene like the one with the two ships in this film. Instead, the masses huddle until they are saved, and the prisoners plunder and stage show trials, and the resistance consists of the very few cops who managed to elude getting trapped in the tunnes because naturally, no ordinary citizen of Gotham would be interested in joining. "Batman could be anyone; that was the point" Bruce tells Blake int this film, but no, Bruce, that was V. Sadly The Dark Knight Rises, like its predecessor (where the Batman imitators fare terribly) implies that to be Batman, you have to be an angry orphan with millionaire resources (or being left said millionaire resources), and for all of Alfred's angry speeches in the first part about how Bruce could contribute to helping Gotham outside of a cape, the second half proves Alfred wrong by showing only caped crusaders (and crusaders-to-be) are capable of dealing. Oh, and revolutions are all stage-managed by supervillains in league with the villainous type of millionaire instead of the crusading one. Also, villainous henchmen have no sense of self preservation and are totally okay with being around a nuclear bomb and getting blown up with same for the cause of the two main villians. (This btw is standard far for action movies (and several comic books), it's just that Nolan's trilogy got praised for innovation, and err, not so much.) I think I got spoiled by a recent work of fiction where the henchmen (and henchwomen) instead when it started to look as if their leader was going to get them all killed started to get the hell out of Dodge. Because, gasp, they were human beings with a self preservation instinct. And let's not talk about how most of the cops supposedly were trapped in the tunnels for five months (seriously, there was no way of escaping said tunnels supposedly running beneath all of Gotham?) and emerge from them with their uniforms barely mussed and their faces scrubbed for the final battle.
Mind you, that final battle does wonders for everyone getting in peak physical shape. Bruce starts the film in bad shape, due to not having been a vigilante for eight years and having locked himself in his house to mourn Rachel; he's hobbling on a walking stick. Bane beats him into a pulp mid movie. He recovers via the time honored action movie device of training montages in the mysterious East and a prison hole within five months and proceeds to beat Bane. I suppose it was all psychosomatic early on?
Which actually works with Bruce's characterisation here. Though not elsewhere. Look, I know that any incarnation of Bruce Wayne never gets over anything emotionally; that's a character premise. But he usually channels those feelings into rage and crusading (see also: central trauma of character), not into playing Howard Hughes, the later stages, for eight years and telling Aflred he's not allowed to live because Rachel didn't. I mean, is he a fourteen years old teenager or what? Scratch that, in many ways he is, I suppose. Still. Then Alfred interrupts Bruce's ongoing self punishment by telling him Rachel had moved on with Harvey and wrote so in a letter, whereupon Bruce accepts Alfred's earlier threatened resignation, i.e. fires him. Because clearly, his feelings for Rachel (whom, lest we forget, after their childhood friendship he knew only very briefly as an adult before and after taking off for seven years, and then she MOVED ON TO HARVEY BECAUSE RACHEL WASN'T A STEPHANIE MEYER HEROINE) are more important than the thirty years Alfred WAS his father. That's the second most insulting to characters and audience scene after the "Bruce Wayne?!?" from Gordon. I'm going back and thro as to whether the final "Bruce escaped a nuclear explosion and faked his death" revelation was the third most insulting, but mostly I regard it as a comforting hallucination of Alfred's because it fitted his earlier described dream scene so exactly. (Which means Bruce did die. I mean, even fore a comicbook movie where Crane presides over show trials on a pile of clothes and rubble as if he was drawn by Tim Sale, surviving a nuclear explosion is pushing it. Mind you, the idea that this incredibly hokey Batman The Hero statue was inflicted on Gotham while the man himself is gallivanting abroad is sort of amusing.)
(Michael Caine is superb throughout, though.)
Because I get at last to the parts I enjoyed, a neutral observation: I think Christian Bale is a good actor, always was since Empire of the Sun, and he's better here than in The Dark Knight where he didn't have much to do anyway. Also I really appreciate what he did for the victims of the Aurora attack. But it's a mystery to me how he has yet to have any chemistry with any of the leading ladies I've seen him paired with. This is especially glaring here where Bruce's one night stand with Miranda Tate isn't explainable by anything else.
Okay, onto the good stuff. Now because Christopher Nolan edited out any women of the Batman tale he could (so Jim Gordon hasn't got a niece/adopted daughter, he has a son, there's no Dr. Leslie, no Montoya and no second Mrs. Gordon and a great cop in her own right, Sarah, I actually went along with the idea that he had edited out Talia as Ras al Gul's daughter as well and made Bane Ras' son instead, so the big reveal worked on me as a twist. Mind you, I did expect Miranda Tate to be Bane's ally, because otherwise the character would have no point in the film. Just not for her to be Talia, or the child who climbed out of the hole instead of Bane, so, dear Chris Nolan: this I officially like and approve of. Also, Unexpected!Liam Neeson is always welcome, so thanks for that.
And did I mention SELINA THE FABULOUS? She truly was. Her back and thro with Bruce and the game playing and outwitting each other is what I've always loved about Catwoman (when done well), and whereas the rest of the film was about Batman The Martyr, when with her Bruce seemed to be in a different type of film, more like the original Thomas Crown Affair with reversed gender roles, and I loved it. It pushed my Amanda and Duncan from Highlander buttons, too. On her own she was just as splendid, with the way she used the congressman as her insurance in case Burn Gorman (nice to see him in an international film, btw, may it lead to even more roles) double crosses her which he did practically inducing me to whoops and cheers. Her roommate wasn't named but looked like Holly from the comics, so I'm assuming this is who she was; I just wish the film hadn't forgotten about her after Selina starts to get horrified by anarchic!Gotham, because during all her "stay and help Bruce or getting the hell away" dilemma there is no mention of her trying to save Holly, whom previously she was established to care about, by taking her along. :(
Anyway, Selina had basically the Han Solo role here (cynic with a heart of gold coming back at the last minute to prove hero's faith in him/her has been justified), which fitted the character very well. And she's the only part of the Nolan interpretation of the Batverse I wouldn't mind seeing again, so any rumours about a Catwoman movie are welcome.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 08:17 pm (UTC)*shakes head*
Date: 2012-07-31 02:03 pm (UTC)Re: *shakes head*
Date: 2012-08-01 06:22 am (UTC)The animated Bat is the best, imo.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 03:49 pm (UTC)I guess, in this case, it's the mix of how trite the film is with how seriously it takes itself.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 06:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-31 07:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 06:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-08-01 11:00 am (UTC)