I know I’m late, but the première was last night and I am ready to give you guys my thoughts on Nolan’s final Batman movie. The Dark Knight Rises takes place 8 years after the last film, Gotham has destroyed organized crime through the Dent Act.  Harvey Dent is called a true hero while Batman is still the most wanted man in the city despite nearly a decade since his last appearance and Bruce Wayne has not left his manor since the Joker killings.

What immediately made this film work is that the choices and actions of all the characters from the previous movies all effected what happens here, the death of Rachel and Harvey’s fall to madness leading Bruce to become a recluse and shattered man. Jim Gordon having to call the man who nearly murdered his son a hero just to keep the lie going and Banes rise as the leader of the League of Shadows after the death of Ras Al Ghul in Batman Begins.

Then there are the new characters like John Blake, a young idealistic cop mentored by Jim Gordon with strong beliefs that make him a great ally of Batman’s later on. Selina Kyle AKA Catwoman, a professional cat burglar looking to find a way to escape her past and start over as the authorities slowly close in on her. Miranda Tate, a business partner of Wayne Industries with a goal to give free and clean energy to the whole city.

All of the new characters fit in with the old ones and all of them serve a key purpose in the plot, none of them felt shoe horned in and they are all fully realized characters by the end. The story is quite the commentary on the current state of the economy, Bane using the ordinary people to rebel against the 1% was very interesting to me and it did indeed prove the Jokers point, that the good people of Gotham will eat each other when the chips are down, Bane uses trickery to literally make the city tear itself apart while using his new found army of former prisoners (many of which were incarnated by the hated Dent Act) to instate marshal law in Gotham.

However even if the film didn’t have this commentary, it is very emotional and I was at the edge of my seat. When Bane showed up I curled up in my seat because he was so terrifying, when Catwoman did witty remarks I laughed and when the tender moments between Bruce and Alfred were going on I was on the brink of crying. This film is very emotionally draining and I’m going to need some rest before I go see it again.

Bane is a terrifying force of nature, like the Joker, however he clearly has a plan but uses anarchy to further it, where as the Joker would have just watched it all burn, Bane is smarter than this and knows how to manipulate people with much more inventive methods than just scaring them (but he does do this well too).

Catwoman was…. just wow, every time she was on screen I didn’t blink, the way she moved, talked and her whole attitude was just perfect and she has some very funny lines in the film. But the moments that hit me the hardest were the first Batman vs Bane fight and the ending, obviously im not going to talk about the ending, all im saying is I never cry in any movie, but the ending here made me shed a few tears.

But back to Batman vs Bane, the fight is done so well because there is no music, the only thing you hear is Bane destroying Batman and him yelling in pain and desperation as he tries to defeat the masked mercenary and then when Bane broke the Bat I almost looked away in horror.

The performances are as great as ever, Christian Bale plays a very different Bruce Wayne than before, he is broken mentally and physically and you can feel his pain once Bane brings him to rock bottom. Michael Caine as Alfred didn’t have many scenes but he also did a different Alfred, a man who is sick and tired of watching his surrogate son waste away in his own self pity but can’t do anything to push him out of it.

Anne Hathaway as I said nailed Catwoman so well and when she went from a nervous mumbling maid to the sexy femme fatale we all know in love I just said to myself THAT IS CATWOMAN!

Bane was scary as hell when ever he was on screen, his very presence brought a whole new atmosphere to scene and his eye movements made him look truly insane some times, but the line that really disturbed me was when the boy sang on the stadium and Bane said: What a lovely voice! This instantly showed us that this is a human being who can see the beauty in life but still chooses to destroy it for his own goals, that really freaked me out and immediately made him a greater villain in my eyes.

Hans Zimmer really out did himself this time, the score wasn’t in it a lot but when it did come up it fit perfectly with what was going on and made so pumped to see what was going to happen next, the guy is just a genius and deserves an award for the score.

But despite this there are some flaws with the film. There are some plot holes like how did Bruce get back from India? He just kinda shows up there but then again Batman also does just disappear for no explained reason so this could go either way, but it did take me out of the film a little. And Banes story while it was done very well got wrapped up to abruptly but at least we got to see some badass fights with him and Batman.

All in all this is probably my favourite Nolan Batman movies, sure it does have some nit picky flaws but so did the last two films, I will say this, if you can lower your expectations and actually see the issues that the last two films had then you can enjoy this, if you go into this one thinking the last two were utterly perfect master pieces and start picking this one apart, then you will hate it without actually giving it a chance.

FINAL SCORE: A-

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