Why So Serious Nolan?

Rating: 4/10 (25 July 2012)

I don't get the praise director Nolan gets; does he mix eye candy and brain food that well? No. Does he direct action scenes supremely? Surely not. Does he inject vital finesses of irony and charm? No. Does he pace and edit his films well? No. Does he get the best out of his actors? No. Most importantly, does he tell a good story? Not by a mile. Does he treat his audience with intellectual respect? Not a chance. The story of the entire Batman trilogy started out good enough, got mixed up and messy during the second installment, and as it goes in "The Dark Knight Rises" you're lucky if you understand half the things going on: Characters shift motivations in the blink of an eye, there's loads of shallow and unnecessary ideas, the need to use flashbacks in every other scene both over-explains and confuses, every single scene has something "incredibly" important to say as the plot chameleons through different stages and what happened to the word "COMIC" in comic books film? It's all gone. Nolan paints it black and takes us down to the depths of darkness, here we're given muscleman Bane to incarnate this evil and violence - forgive me, but his character snaps peoples' necks in an indifferent way, he talks too much and too articulate, and he's having a tough time outmaneuvering everyone's favorite villain from "The Dark Knight", The Joker (Heath Ledger). And the way Bane's utter importance disappears in the final third of the movie, as Marion Cotillard's (wow, that's a miscast!) character enters as the true villain, is laughable. Everything we've experienced throughout the 165 minutes with Bane as the numero uno bad-guy goes out the window as Cotillard's Miranda Tate, a member of the Wayne Enterprises and a flirting flick that blinks at Bruce Wayne, shows her true colors with a knife and strained explanations. She might be the worst character Nolan's added to the Batman universe. She enters in the final film with so much history, so much pizazz and trickery, and as a viewer I never felt her presence as neither a business executive, a romance interest for Wayne, or as a new, relevant member of the big Gotham family. Now she makes for one half of the film's female ground - the other is Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle, also she a miscast. Her character is irritating and too important. She never really fails, she never really gets in any real trouble, she never involves herself especially in anything or anyone, she SUDDENLY becomes flirty with Wayne/Batman and co-operates with him, she has some feigned, badly worded jokes, and she's completely stupid looking in that catsuit. Now, in being too important I mean she takes way too much screen time, she's all too important for Batman to defeat the villains at the end, and she's very self-important though does anyone really mind her presence at all? Talking of too much importance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake. This guy knows everything that's going on and he never makes a mistake, and he has some of the worst scenes in the film - when he explains to Wayne that "he saw it in his eyes", you really don't forgive Nolan and the screenwriters for getting away with murder as bad writing goes. The importance of this character is so overdone, so out of proportions that he almost outshines Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) himself during the finale. Why is it Blake that stands on the bridge at the end watching the explosion and not Gordon? That would have had a significance, an emotional impact - but Blake standing there, no way. Or maybe it was a way to push Blake into becoming Batman's successor, a way of understanding the heritage of the hero - during the end we're revealed that Blake's original name is Robin. I really don't want to see Gordon-Levitt playing Robin in a fourth Gotham film, jumping around in Gotham without Batman.
The music by Hans Zimmer is unrelenting and monotone. The cinematography is fine, all dark, drained and grainy. The acting performances by Christian Bale enhances the movie's quality, he is a great actor and he has some very good scenes, including some dialog with Alfred (also a very good Michael Caine), the scenes in the "Hell on Earth" prison, the scenes in which he's crippled and depressed. Sadly his Bruce Wayne character takes a bad turn where he during the despairing emotions concerning Rachel's death and love for Harvey Dent suddenly takes a swing at Miranda. Sure, he's a lonesome wolf, but that doesn't help as he utterly shows no interest for anything or anyone earlier in the film (when Alfred states during the party that there was a pretty woman, he says he doesn't care. Or when Alfred jokes around that he's returning home alone without female company, we know what Wayne's been up to talking law and order with Selina inside the party). Morgan Freeman's character is downplayed some, luckily we get several good bits with Gary Oldman as Jim Gordon, one of the major assets of the entire Batman trilogy.
Much of the atmosphere and spark that was created in "Batman Begins", and that blossomed and spellbound in "The Dark Knight", fades away in "The Dark Knight Rises", and we're left with half the heart, and that half is not very good. Though it still is fairly entertaining and there are several things to mildly enjoy, it doesn't hold a candle against great superhero films as "X2" and "Spider-Man 2". With all this said, the film's biggest failure is it's running time, stretching towards three hours, it becomes an ordeal to sit through towards the end.