The Dark Knight Rises review.

The Dark Knight Rises is the much anticipated conclusion to Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. I enjoyed the first two considerably, and I enjoyed this one too. Like its predecessors, The Dark Knight Rises is a thoughtful take on the superhero genre. My thoughts on this film are varied and complicated, so I may need more space than usual.

The movie started out interesting enough, with an introduction to our main antagonist, Bane. The critics aren't kidding-he sounds exactly like Sean Connery as Darth Vader. The film crew put a microphone in his mask, giving his voice more of an echo to it. As the movie progresses, Bane's voice becomes considerably more threatening. Anyways, after this intro bit, the film continues to introduce the setting with discussions of Harvey Dent. Now, I would prefer to avoid spoilers if possible, so I won't be following plot points quite as closely from here on out. From the point that we are reunited with Bruce Wayne to about halfway through, the film starts to move very slowly. I think part of why this bothered me so much is that I approached this part of the movie wrong. The first half discusses the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Batman. It discusses Wayne's psychology, and possible desires to be slain in his crime fighting activities. The introductions of Selena Kyle and Bane happen earlier than necessary, but they set up the recurring themes of the movie and the looming threat, respectively. In particular, Bane's motives aren't clear for a considerable amount of the time after he is introduced, and I probably missed that this was supposed to make him more mysterious and therefore more threatening.

The second half of the film is where it picks up. Bane's threat becomes center stage, and Batman goes through more interesting character development. This part of the movie is truly intense, and if the entire film had been like this, I might have liked it more. Not to say I don't like it, but I'm not sure I would want to return to it individually. This part has the most intense action. It has the most interesting character motivations, especially on Bane's part. It is the biggest part of why I like this movie, and continues this way until the end.

Now, the following part contains spoilers. If you don't want to have the end of the movie spoiled, skip this paragraph. The ending reveals that Bane isn't the one pulling the strings, and reveals that a supporting character is the center of much of the story. This comes completely out of left field, and, at least for me, brought me out of the movie. That's right, the one behind all of these event was this one supporting character who didn't even have any obvious connections to the Brotherhood of Shadows. They did that. They also find a way to shoehorn Robin into it by having it as the name of a central supporting character.

In conclusion, The Dark Knight Rises is a great film. It's not perfect, but when it is good, it is extremely good. I'm not going to let some boring scenes and the messy ending ruin the film for me.