Lets backtrack. The Dark Knight Rises isn't a bad movie, not at all. It's gorgeously shot, epic in scale, cast of hundreds, beautifully scored... it isn't bad. But for the many expecting it to be the film of the year, it will be a disappointment.
The story continues eight years after Batman's fated battle with Two-Face, the result of which left him a shattered figure, hated by the public, and fallen into seclusion. He hobbles about with a walking stick on his awfully injured leg that he can barely stand on, and generally acts like your standard neckbeard shut in, until the intrusion of Catwoman stealing his stuff prompts him to leave his home to track her down. Now Catwoman is handled well at first, I will say that. Hathaway wasn't a popular choice with many fans, but she's better than Halle Berry. The comparison is barely a grade above an insult of course. Hathaway tackles the character (At least for the first act) with a charm we haven't seen in the character before, acting the part of the screaming victim or the inquisitive but dull maid right up until the very second her target realizes they've been had, when suddenly she transforms into the confidant, sexy Selina Kyle we would expect... It's nice, it's fun, but it soon goes away. All too soon does the character degrade into the obvious love interest, and pulls a huge personality 180 in the third act to fall for our hero for no real reason. Catwoman is the shining example of the strong, self-confidant, self-sufficient female character, probably the only true example in all of DC comics in fact, to quote the observation of Miss Claw. Taking her and using her as little more than a character hook for Batman, as well as taking away her power as a strong female by her falling for him apparently because of his heroism, takes these wonderful aspects of the character and tosses them in the shitter. She deserved better. I'm a man to whom character is most important, and the Batman movies have always seemed to fail in this respect. We sit through long tedious speeches, every damn character having something to say, which they will at length, but in the end all that matters is the villainous plot, and characters will drop so much out of their our personalities they'd be unrecognizable if it weren't for the silly outfit.
The flirtatious back and forth between Bruce and Catwoman is adorable as expected, before the meat of the story comes into play, the big bad of the story, Bane. Now Bane is presented very differently than his comic book counterpart here, by the pretty massive Tom Hardy. He's one of the most entertaining characters in the whole film, visually threatening, interestingly designed, but from the very beginning I could not get over one thing about him...What the hell were they trying to do with Bane's voice? He sounds like someone in a gas mask doing an impression of your granddad. It's awkward and makes you giggle and removes a huge amount of the threat from otherwise brilliantly evil dialogue. A decision I will truly never understand. Bane on the whole was good, but I never got the feeling we really saw the character. He's restrained, he's mellow, he's controlled. Only for one scene do we see the character really let loose in his terrible rage, only one scene is he really Bane, and it's all over incredibly soon. Also, I can't help but see the humour in the mighty Bane's only true weakness being getting punched in the face.
Bane rolls onto the scene in a big way at about the hour and a half mark, when all shit goes to hell in Gotham. Batman is back on the case in moments, which was a little disappointing to me. He's been hobbling around on a shattered limb for eight years. This would have been a tremendously interesting development for Batman, a hero with a major physical weakness he must find out how to overcome and hide from his enemies. Yet in one quick scene, he has a brace fixed up that allows him to walk as well as ever and KICK THROUGH BRICK WALLS. The crippled leg is never mentioned again, even after the brace is removed... After a one on one fist fight with our man Bane, which was a damn good punch up in my opinion, Batman is put out of commission in the way comic fans will be familiar with, being quite rudely bent over Bane's knee and sent to an unidentified middle eastern country to rot in a nightmare prison. This was when the plot started to take off, but also started to come apart at the seams. Gotham is isolated into a military state under Bane's control with a massive controlled coup against the police force, and months pass by in a few short scenes. What's happening with the average guy on the street during this time? We have no real idea, as every scene is divided between Bane's militia army and the shattered remnants of Gotham's police force. The single night that The Joker took control of Gotham in 'The Dark Knight Returns' was more tense and exciting than the months that pass under Bane's rule, as we really don't see any of it here. Furthermore, almost a solid hour passes without much Batman at all. He's lying a prison cell with a broken spine of course (And apparently that's nothing a little peptalk with a creepy old guy in a third world prison hell won't fix just fine!), but so much time passes without Batman that we could forget about him. More time is spent following the antics of Gotham's newest supercop, Blake, played well by Joseph Gordon Levitt. Now he's played well, no complaints there, the character is just so damn hard to like. He's unrealistically perfect. He's a genius, he cares about nothing more than protecting 'the kids' and saving Gotham one man at a time. He figures out Batman's identity in moments, that no one else ever seems to, and he's a brilliant detective and fearless crimefighter to boot. A good hero is built by his flaws! This perfect cop is just too damn brilliant and nice to possibly be real. As I said, Levitt played it convincingly, he just got given a shitty character.
I will stress that the film isn't without its standout performances however, dodgy characters aside, you'll get the brilliance you expect to get from both Gary Oldman and Michael Caine. They're both on form for the characters we've come to know, they're passionate, and Michael Caine in particular acts Cristian Bale off the screen. He's a joy to watch. I also enjoyed the (all too brief!) cameo of Cillain Murphy as Scarecrow. He's a favourite of mine, and his short sequence is a great call back to his madness.
It falls to the end of the story to wrap things up in a rush, and it does so. Sure it's exciting, there's car chases and bike chases and tank battles and Batman's new helicopter/hoverjet doofer shooting missiles everywhere, but it's all action and no heart. The villains are set on the sidelines in favor of dealing with the bomb, and our main adversaries, Bane and the surprise villain that secretly masterminds him, (don't get too excited comic fans, it's not a character you'll be thrilled to see) are dispatched so quickly and off-hand that you expect they'll be coming back for that last good fight the film should've built its climax on. Sure, it all looks gorgeous, it's shot beautifully and clearly and Bane's men fight police officers in the streets of Gotham by the hundreds, but never once did I sit back and think 'wow' at what was unfolding before me. I hope plenty of people saw 'Sherlock Holmes: Game of shadows' last year, as there is a scene in that film that truly stunned me in its incredible visual action. I was in awe of it. You know the one I'm talking about. This is the sort of action scene that makes a movie stand out, shock and stun us with its brilliance. The only scene here that really is a great memorable moment is the implosion of the football stadium, but we saw it in the trailer a long time ago. I wanted more from the biggest movie of the summer...
A big disappointment for me personally, was the aspect of Bane's 'illness'. He wears a respirator/facemask, that appears to be somewhat uncomfortable and alters his breathing. He holds his chest in a certain way as if he has trouble breathing, and we know that the thing getting damaged causes him immense pain. What is it? What is his mystery affliction? Your guess is as good as mine, because we never find out. There's a brief mumbled excuse about an 'illness' in the prison sequence, but it's not detailed or at all interesting. For me this was the most intriguing part of the character, not to mention his standout physical characteristic, and for it never to be addressed felt like a cheat.
The film ends with a mix of melancholy, and arguably bails out on itself a bit. Would it have been good to end the series with a define full stop? Probably not, he's Batman after all. It's a sound ending if it really is the end. Of course it's open enough to redo the whole damn thing if they choose too, but I honestly don't think we need another Batman movie after this one. The best part of a story should be its end, a grand finale to remember, not a mixed messaged grab bag of half unraveled storylines that may or may not have a future.
No comments:
Post a Comment