[BLOG]: Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

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Lonesamurai
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[BLOG]: Movie Review: The Dark Knight Rises

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Eight years on, a new terrorist leader, Bane, overwhelms Gotham's finest, and the Dark Knight resurfaces to protect a city that has branded him an enemy.

Yeah this is a toughy of a review... Now I had been looking forward to this, BUT in the advent of Phase one of the Avengers, my love for the Dark Knight Trilogy has wained and Rises didn't prove my waining interest to be false unfortunately

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Again, Spoilers ahead, so if you haven't watched it yet, don't read on, BUT pretty much everyone already knows this is the final Christopher Nolan/Christian Bale Batman film before the JLA reboot by Warner and THAT is where my interest and love of this trilogy takes the major hit in how much I SHOULD have loved it...

Now, from the outset, this is EIGHT YEARS after the last film! I know Batman took the fall to make Harvey Dent a martyr, but 8 years? Far too long in the canon for it to have carried on and later in the film, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character Blake, is asked by another boy at the orphanage if he thinks Batman will return, but after 8 years, the lad was obviously too young to remember Batman's scuffle with the Joker or Dent, let alone even being born when Bruce Wayne first became Batman anyway... So first nit pick down, more to come

Secondly, Bruce Wayne has MANY injuries from being Batman, BUT after his 8 years of hiding away in teh newly rebuilt Wayne Manor, why would someone that driven let himself become a cripple, even if he was hiding from the world?

Now the redeeming feature of this film is, IMHO, Anne Hathaway as Catwoman (cos no one remembers Halle berry's Catwoman film, that never happened remember) and could, on her own merit grab a follow up film all of her own

Now I was a HUGE fan of Batman: Knightfall, and even more so the Audioplay version that the BBC did not long after the release in comic form and I especially liked the breaking of the Batmans back by Bane giving a great nod to the first fight between Bane and Batman in the film, so we know Knightfall had a great influence in the film and this especially helped build the character of Bane, played brilliantly by Tom Hardy, but I have to still agree with criticisms from the first trailers, the mask did NOT help the character, at times still being difficult to understand and others sounding disconnected from the narative, another downer on a great performance unfortunately

Now, the highlight performances, as usual in teh Dark Knight trilogy came fromt eh supporting cast of Gary Oldman as Commisionar Gordon, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and of course the highlight of all three films, Michael Caine as Alfred, the heart AND soul of the Batman character

The one character that didn't quite work was Marion Cotillard as Miranda/Talia Al Ghul, BUT it gave us a brief cameo by Liam Neeson taunting Bruce Wayne as Ra's Al Ghul during his prison stay and rehabilitation before he climbed out of the prison

So yeah, as a stand alone film, it failed to deliver the quality of those that came before and even as an ending to the trilogy it didn't quite stand up, BUT watched all together, would work better, so definetly refresh your memory by watching the others first

So, my score? difficult, i want to give it 5 out of 10 as I felt dissapointed, BUT it was still a better film over all than Promtheus and it only failed for me because I am so invested int eh character and the history of the character and holding that against it isn't fair (plus it didn't push 3D, it was a straight 2D film, so plus points for that too)

8 out of 10

~Lonesamurai
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