The Rise of the Dark Knight

Right well this is not so much a blag, as this post was taken from this blog, but it was posted earlier in the year, so I thought I would re-post it with some updated stuff in it.  So the post is on The Dark Knight Rises, which is Christopher Nolan's final film in his trilogy on the caped crusader, at the time I originally posted it, it was out in the cinema (it looks particularly awesome in the IMAX!) and now at the time of writing this, its now out on Blu-ray, so let's give it a look.

(And as a quick warning: A FEW PLOT SPOILERS LIE AHEAD IN THE NEXT TWO PARAGRAPHS! WELL IN FACT MOST OF THE PLOT!! SO AVOID READING IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT)

So the film begins 8 years after the events of The Dark Knight, and in the opening scene, we see a masked terrorist named Bane (Tom Hardy) who is being held in the custody of the FBI while being transported on a plane.  The plane however is intercepted by Bane's men who then kill the agents and Bane captures a Russian nuclear physicist (also onboard the plane), who he takes with him.  Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne, after Batman has been outcast as a wanted criminal (as he took the rap for the death of Harvey Dent), now lives a reclusive life in his manor, and has left the outside world behind him.  Bane however soon infiltrates Gotham city, and manages to lure Comissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) into the sewers, who is following up a lead to an abduction, in the sewers Gordon narrowly escapes, but is shot, and sent to hospital.  One of Gordon's men, John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levit) approaches Wayne at his manor, and he admits he knows of his identity as Batman, and pleads that he make his return to Gotham to help the brewing troubles.  Wayne soon after starts to set things in motion to make his return as the dark knight, and along the way he get's a little help from the saucy Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a cat burglar, who is an associate of Bane's, who ultimaltey betrays Batman to him.  Bane soon captures Batman and beats him (breaking his back in the process!) and then sends him off to a prison, where no man is said to have escaped from (only one child managed to escape the prison, which is rumoured to have been Bane himself).  Bane himself turns out to be a member of the League of Shadows, which Wayne himself was trained as, but Bane was banished from the group years ago.  In the meantime with Batman out of the way, Bane has full reign to destroy Gotham, with the city's police force trapped underground, and by releasing its criminals from the prisons, and sitting in judgment on the rich, wealthy and the affluent in the city, who are all sentenced to death or exile (which turns out to be the same thing!).

In the meantime Wayne while in the prison, receives help from a prisoner (Tom Conti) to fix his back.  After this Wayne trains and builds up his fitness again, and tries his best to escape from the prison, by climbing the inner prison wall (with a rope tied round his waist) he tries to jump to reach a ledge but misses and falls, which he tries again and fails.  With the TV footage show in the prison of Gotham being torn apart by Bane's war of terror, Wayne grows more determined to escape, and the former jail doctor, tells Wayne the child who escaped did so by not using a rope, but by climbing out.  Wayne tries the climb again, this time without the rope, he escapes successfully and makes his way back to Gotham.  Once back in Gotham, Wayne meets up with Selina again and tells her he needs her help to get to Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) who can help him deactivate the city's reactor core, which has now been turned into a bomb, which Bane intends to detonate and destroy the city.  Wayne soon dons his cape and makes his entrance as Batman, he saves Gordon from death by exile (walking out on the frozen surface of the river) and Blake, and he frees the police from underground, and tells them to make an assault on Bane's men.  And as the police force storm an assault on Bane's men, Batman confronts Bane on the streets of Gotham in their final encounter.  

I have to say I really enjoyed the Dark Knight Rises, with Christopher Nolan, once again at the helm (this is to be his last film in the series) you know it was not going to be a letdown.  The film picks up the events well from the end of The Dark Knight, by moving forward 8 years, and it makes a nice shift in tone to see Bruce Wayne, as no longer being a show off billionaire in the public eye, but instead becoming a recluse, who feels now that at this point Gotham no longer needs Batman, due to the massive cut down in crime (at the start of the film that is) due to the Dent act (imposed by the late Harvey Dent).  The overall tone of the film is also keeping in check with Nolan's previous outings, which is pretty serious most of the time, but he does allow for a few moments of humour here and there.  

In terms of the performances things are also pretty good here, and there is a fine cast on display, starting with Christian Bale, who I have to say always has done a better job as Bruce Wayne, than he has as Batman, mainly due to the fact as Batman, I don't really like the way he overuses the husky voice to conceal Wayne's identity.  It might be the right thing to do in order to conceal his identity, but it just sounds silly, and I'm surprised he doesn't keep coughing up while he does it!  Regardless of that though I always liked Bale's take on Bruce Wayne, in the previous two films he played him as a suave superifical billionaire playboy on the surface, and in this film he's become an emotionally wounded man, who choses to live in hiding, but deep down he still really cares about Gotham, and has a strong moral character, who does all he can to fight the evil in his city.  Bale also always plays Wayne with a dry sense of humour and he is always very understated in his delivery, which is one of Bale's main strengths as an actor. 

Ann Hathaway is also a very welcome addition to the cast as Catwoman/Selina Kyle, and she plays her perfectly with the right combination of sexiness and toughness, and she conveys her character's moral ambiguities really well, as Catwoman has always been a morally gray character.  But as the film progresses we see that Batman starts to get under Catwoman's skin, in order to make her see that there is more to her than just a thief looking after herself, and she provides a welcome change in tone to Batman's rather dreary one note delivery.  They also share an amusing moment up on the rooftops where for once someone pulls the vanshing act on Batman, as he turns away and looks back to see that Catwoman has gone, and he says "so that's what that feels like!".  Hathaway provides a few amusing moments in the film, one of them being when she is arrested and is taken to prison, and she is escorted through the cells, and one of the prisoners ogles her, and she says "do you want to hold hands" and she grabs the prisoner's hands and twists them as she does a somersault!  Although I have to say my favourite scene of her in the film is when she is on the bat bike, and she leans forward and blasts the bike's guns to blow a whole in a wall, and you get a fine view of her very nice bottom in that sexy leather suit! (perv! but its great on Blu-ray with a remote! ultra-perv!).  

Tom Hardy does an excellent job as the main baddie, Bane, the big muscly terrorist, and former member of the league of shadows, who wears a specially designed oxygen mask, that keeps pumping gas into his body to relieve the pain he feels, as a result of his time in the unescapable prison.  My one criticism though of his performance is the way his voice is treated via the oxygen mask, as some of the time you can't really make out what he's saying, as it sounds literally like he has put his hand over his mouth while he talks!  But once you watch the Blu-ray disc you can put on the subtitles to make out what the hell he's saying! ;-)  Hardy himself built up his body and added an extra 30 pounds of weight on for the part and it certainly does show, as he makes for an effective and intimidating figure, who is a far cry from the mindless Bane we saw in Batman and Robin.  And with his height and size, Bane makes a very dangerous foe with his intelligence and physical strength.
 
And the first of the last two I'll mention is the lovely Marion Cotillard who is excellent as Miranda Tate, a wealthy investor who becomes romantically involved with Wayne and later reveals a dark secret.  Marion was previously cast in Inception (Nolan's previous film), and she continues to do well here.  And finally Jospeh Gordon-Levit as John Blake, the young cop who plays his part in trying to save Gotham from Bane, is good and at the end of the film we find out a thing or two about him.   

On the regular supporting cast things are as fine as ever, with Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox, the man who is behind Wayne's Batman tech gear, and as ever he provides a witty performance like he did in the previous films.  Freeman provides one or two moments of humour, one of which is where Bruce meets up with Fox for the first time in years and he says at the end of their meeting "normally at this point you ask me for an unusual request", and Bruce replies "not this time", and Fox says "well let me show you some stuff anyway!".  Gary Oldman is once again excellent too as Comissioner Gordon, who over the space of the three films has come a long way from being one of the few good cops in Gotham, to rising to be the comissioner who plays a vital part in fighting the city's crime.  And finally Michael Caine does another good turn as Alfred, Wayne's trusted butler, who by this time has grown more and more concerned for his master's fate, which allows Caine to emote a bit more than in the previous films.  Of the new cast members perhaps maybe only Matthew Modine is the weak link in the chain as the depity Comissioner Foley, but his performance is by no means bad, its just next to the rest of the cast he isn't quite as strong as the others are in their respective roles.    

The film however isn't without its flaws though, for starters the film is a just a bit too long, as it clocks in at 2 hours and 44 minutes, which is just a bit excessive in length, and you feel it could have benefited from a little bit of trimming, however the film never really drags that much, despite the length.  I also wasn't particularly impressed with the new Batman outfit, as it looks like a far leaner muscular skeletonal designed suit, and the cape isn't very impressive either as it doesn't cover the Bat's shoulders, and I personally thought the previous outfits in the last two films were way better, but the mask is still cool.  And another criticism I can think of is about Bane, as it really isn't explained well at all why he wears the mask, the film hints at during his times in prison he developed a skin disease of some kind, and the doctors operated to save him by creating the mask, although you also see him being assaulted by many prisoners, so maybe he sustained serious head injuries as well.  Who knows???  In the comics books of course, the origins of Bane's mask are a bit different, as in prison he is forced to be a test subject for the Batman villain, Hugo Strange, who pumps him full of venomous gas, which Bane later becomes addicted to, hence wearing the mask, and also attributes to his muscular form.  Another criticism I have is the relatively short screen time of Batman himself, as you'd be lucky if you end up with more than 20-30 minutes of actual bat screen time, which is disappointing when you think about it, especially as he is the central character!  And as Batman there are only really three sequences he appears in, and that's about it, but if you are somewhat adverse to Bale's take on the raspy Batman then maybe that's not such a bad thing! ;-) 

But on the bright side, the film is definitely keeping in tone with the rest of Nolan's movies, and never makes a rash departure from that and nor should it really, as it would be a letdown if Nolan decided to make it into a camp pastiche like Joel Schumacher did (and there's no chance of that with a filmmaker of Nolan's calibre!).  Also a quick word about Hans Zimmer's score, which for me is easily the best of the scores for Nolan's films, as his score is superb throughout, as its suitably dark and menacing, and has many terrific passsages, particularly the cues used in the fight scenes with Bane and when he escapes from the plane at the beginning.

So that its for my critique on the Dark Knight Rises, which I think overall is a very entertaining, engrossing, solid, albeit lengthy conclusion to Christopher Nolan's contribution to the Batman franchise, and he deserves a great deal of credit in bringing the caped crusader back to the big screen in such a credible fashion.  And while it is now out of the cinemas as far as I know, but if it ever re-appears in the big screen then I strongly recommend going to see it in the IMAX cinemas, as I went and saw it the earlier this year in July and it looks spectacular on the big big screen.  The film unlike The Dark Knight, has far more IMAX sequences, in fact its safe to say that maybe at least 50% of the film was shot in the IMAX format (actually its 70 minutes worth).  The only thing is if you are not use to seeing the films in the IMAX cinema (which I wasn't, as it was my first) then it may take a few minutes to adjust to the sheer enormity of the screen, but its very impressive all the same and well worth it.  Its also worth watching on Blu-ray as well of course, and the IMAX scenes look superb in HD, the only thing I'm lacking in watching it is a big massive TV, but hey ho, no matter. :-)

Soooooo after that rather exhaustive post I shall leave it there.