The plot holes of a Three Stooges skit and the ending of Scooby Doo.

Rating: 2/10 (21 July 2012)

Face it, the only reason anyone is seeing this movie is because the last one was so good. This one is a huge disappointment in comparison. Bane was not the Bane from the comics, which was fine as he was reimagined to fit with the world of this trilogy, except that there was nothing particularly interesting about him. He has no duality, no depth, and no intensity. The plot was paper thin with holes big enough to drive a bat mobile through. Most actions of the bad guys, with some exceptions at the very beginning and very end, made no sense whatsoever except to give time for the good guys to come back and save Gotham from their vague idea of a plan. I kept waiting for Mr Incredible to pop up and make a joke about catching Bane monologing again. The middle act was a pointless return to the first movie where Bruce Wayne picks up yet a couple of more mentors to help him find his way yet again while the bad guys just sit around and wait for him to come back to ruin their plan which they could have finished at any moment after the first act. Catwoman was a bit out of place but was the only character portrayed with any depth and they beat you over the head with it in the repetitive dialog rather than let you observe the character evolve. OK, the new cop was alright as well, but his character growth was a bit forced. Scarecrow has yet another bit part like the second movie for cameo effect. The tech was alright as they give a nice intro to "The Bat" (-copter) but the exact timer on the unstable reactor was rather dumb. The very end was sappy cute, but predictable.
Did I forget to mention Batman, fight scenes, and special effects? Well, there wasn't much of any of that, much worth mentioning anyways. Batman makes very few limited appearances as the movie focuses on his alter ego, and the fight scenes were few and lame. The special effects were both good and bad. The good is that they were well done and blended in with the reality of the movie very well. Bad in that there was nothing particularly interesting done. Chase scenes were short and simple, Gotham had little of the outlandishness of the first movie, and the masked characters spent most of their screen time without a mask - except Bane whose character had almost nothing done with the drug dependency.
In all fairness, it is really hard to top The Dark Knight, but this doesn't even make a decent follow up. I'm starting to think that the greatness of the second film was all do to Heath Ledger's acting talent and nothing to do Nolan's directing. This movie also directly contradicts the second on in how badly it portrays the people of Gotham as completely selfish and the populous uprising was nothing but criminals, whereas the second movie had Batman's faith in the common man defeat the Joker's appeal to their selfishness, or how the second one had the criminals realizing when things went too far, but this movie made them mindless soldiers, or how the good cops in the second movie struggled with the corruption within the police force where some good cops went thuggish and even bad cops acted out of desperation rather than malice whereas in this movie all cops are so shinny good guys that even the most selfish moron on the force who puts his own career ahead of protecting the people gets hero treatment. The gritty lack of absolutes in any character that made the second movie so noirishly interesting dramatically was largely lost in this final one.