Best in the series but too little too late

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2012)

A statement of what hype can do - Warner Bros. owns rotten tomatoes now, coincidence?-, the overblown praise this trilogy has received before each one of its films is even released proves Batman fans have become the Justin Bieber fans of movies.
Critics now even dare throw shade at Marvel (which revived the genre after Warner Brothers almost killed it with Batman & Robin) and bestow honors at this for things that past overlooked, under-appreciated and truly risky films tried first and genuinely executed without rubbing it in people's faces (Cough!! The World is not Enough!! Cough!!) unlike this manipulative film which sadly represents all that's wrong with modern Hollywood.
Fortunately this entry marks the final nail on the coffin for this bastard and soulless incarnation of Batman which has infected Hollywood inspiring charmless reboot after the other. I am tired of having to suffer through the artificial hype Juggernaut the studio has created (which there seems to be no escape from) and how it keeps taking advantage and blatantly tries to cash in from a tragedy like Heath Ledger's death.
The DKR mostly takes off where the Dark Knight left off although it does seem to have learned a few lessons from it for it takes a little more time to establish itself and isn't a never ending climax like the former. Perhaps Messiah Chris Nolan realized how awful his first two Batman movies were and tried to amend his mistakes but it's just too little too late.
The DKR's characters are unsympathetic and do not even come close to remotely resemble believable human beings for they lack strong motivation and interact with each other with little smoothness and only because the script mandates it. Not once there is spark or chemistry amongst cast members for the characters never raise from barely being plot driven two dimensional pawns.
This loose The World is not Enough remake features another cheap, unoriginal and lazy contemporary story that conveniently keeps advancing despite plot holes the size of Texas (tough not as many or laughable as TDK) and gigantic lapses in logic, wasn't this supposed to be a realistic take on Batman? All it's achieved is suck dry and sacrifice all fun, emotional weight and striking visuals (which has made the character and the past franchise unique and unmistakable, helped it stand out from the crowd) thus being reduce to a poor man's James Bond franchise with over elaborate stories with never ending and predictable twists and turns, uninspired locations, underwhelming production design, unimaginative costume design, action and fight scenes as exciting and challenging as those found in a Mighty Power Rangers episode and top it all off a horrific musical score by the usually wonderful Hans Zimmer.
I can picture Christopher Nolan and his writers never being satisfied with a script and pulling twists out of their asses while trying to cram as much as possible up until the very last minute. It must be hard for them to have a simple and concrete vision, stick with it and trust it for they set out to please everyone when they should be relying on his cast's strengths and talent.
Atmosphere and style should not be mistaken for lack of substance. There are seemingly campy films at the surface that have amazing depth while the Dark Knight Rises is a ridiculously serious movie that never acknowledges its own fantasy for it even seems ashamed of the character 's past as well as too concerned of what people will think.
This film doesn't offer much beyond the pretentious surface, with cringe inducing dialogue, wooden and uninspired performances (yet again) from the main cast although Christian Bale was slightly more bearable and comfortable this time around; Marion Cotillard was unconvincing and dull and Joseph Gordon Levitt solidifies his status as one of Hollywood's most overrated actors of the hipster generation.
On the bright side, Anne Hathaway wasn't a complete disaster as Catwoman , she's a professional and competent actress reliant on a director's or script's vision. Hathaway isn't intuitive or creative tough and therefore can't elevate or give her own twist or pull off a role by herself like the fascinating Michelle Pfeiffer; missing is also the duality of the character and the sexual tension with Batman. Tom Hardy did as good as anyone could have done with Bane who I consider to be the best villain of this weak franchise.
I can finally rest now that this franchise is over, I may come to terms with it some day considering this wasn't as terrible as the first two but it went down in flames for the last 30 minutes and had the worst out of character ending of any comic book movie ever. For now I can only hope to pretend it never existed.
I'll stick to and keep admiring the wonderful, tour de force and definitive performances of Michael Keaton as Batman and Michelle Pfeiffer as Catwoman and their wonderful chemistry. Chemistry and deep dynamic character interaction which Keaton also shared with Jack Nicholson, Kim Basinger, Danny DeVito and Michael Gough's Alfred and that was always lacking in Nolan's films, (which tried to dissociate from the previous "mediocre" franchise while still hypocritically and lazily borrowing from them, from costume design to entire sequences that were executed much better in the first franchise) the chemistry we do not see in films anymore and which Hollywood seems to have forgotten all about. I guess chemistry amongst cast members must also be considered style over substance in this age.