After the announcement of Bane as the baddie in the new movie, I had low expectations for The Dark Knight Rises, and yet somehow I was still disappointed. I wanted to like the movie, I really did, or I wouldn't have dropped my hard earned money on a ticket, and spent nearly three hours of my Friday night watching this debacle.
The movie fails on nearly every conceivable level, starting with the perfunctory plot, and following with the characters behaving preposterously as they are tethered and drug along behind this turd of a story.
The most egregious error of the plot is the cornerstone of the entire script; Bruce Wayne's completely unconvincing romantic tryst with Talia. For what the characters lack in chemistry they make up for in stupidity. Bruce inexplicably turns the entire fate of his company, and the entire fate of gotham and his super magic clean energy producer weapon thingamacguffin into the hands of a girl he just met. Bruce starts off trusting no one, and then completely trusting some random girl the script had no interest in developing. Yep, completely gritty and realistic. If by gritty and realistic you mean cheesy and irrational.
Another out of character moment in service to the plot is seen when Alfred leaves Bruce because, well it made no sense. Make whatever excuse you want, but the real reason that Alfred leaves him is because the plot requires him to. This is the part of the cliche story where the character loses everything and everyone. He loses his wealth, his company, his toys, his health and his friends. It just reminded me of another number three movie, The Karate Kid 3. Daniel-San and Mr. Miyagi have a spat and break up because, well it's the third movie, what else are you going to do?
More gritty/realistic (cheesy/irrational) plot points. Bane allows himself to be kidnapped to make sure some dude we don't know didn't squeal. And then at the precise moment, the plane, well you know what happens. Why do I think this is so cheesy? Well take a legitimately gritty and realistic piece of pop entertainment, The Wire, and substitute the characters.
D'Angelo Barksdale gets kidnapped by Prop Joe, and in order to make sure that he didn't rat him out, Stringer Bell allows himself to get kidnapped. As soon as he finds out, his crew is there to kill everyone while he snaps his restraints and kills Prop Joe. Oh yeah, did I mention that the whole thing took place on an airplane? Pre-fucking-posterous.
Every piece of this dreck is as completely predictable as it is inconceivable. If you were surprised that Joseph Gordon Levitt was going to become Robin/Nightwing/ the Next Batman, well, all I can say is that I wish I was like you, easily amused. Alfred seeing Bruce and Selina in the Tuscan Cafe? The random chick Bruce gave the company to double crossing him and stabbing Batman in the back? The scoundrel Catwoman pulling a Han, flying in and saving the day at the last minute? Every inane plot point was telegraphed like a shotgun blast to the face.
The only thing telegraphed harder was the punching. I haven't seen such lackluster, mimed fight choreography this side of a Steven Segal movie. Sloppy swings, missed connections galore. There was little physical or emotional weight to the fighting. The action felt very stagy. Even the extras were paired off neatly in twos doing their little boxing tangos.
The dialog is so very weak. Thankfully, most of it is garbled beyond recognition by cartoony post sound production. That which isn't over modulated is the standard expositiony stuff that makes little sense. Somehow Alfred knows stuff that Bruce doesn't know including the history of Bane. And in another piece exposition-laden dialog scene, Robin figures out that Bruce Wane is Batman, something that Gordon was inexplicably oblivious to until Batman reminded him that he once gave him a coat.
Bleh.
Overall, Nolan overreaches trying to be grandiose and instead just falls flat. All I can hope for is that Nolan can learn the lesson of why he fell.
