The Dark Knight Dies

Rating: 3/10 (16 March 2013)

In the months leading up to the release of "The Dark Knight Rises", Nolan was quoted as saying that his goal was to "end the story". I'm guessing because he was tired of it and didn't want to be pestered about it anymore. I maintained all along that the story didn't NEED to be ended, that it could continue indefinitely in the same fashion that James Bond did; it wasn't necessary for each movie to connect to the last, and it would have been easy enough to make each movie its own unit. Because of Nolan's plans to put this personal pee on the franchise, my expectations weren't high, and I refused to see this movie in the theaters.
Time passed, and I ended up watching it on DVD at a friend's house. Rating film adaptations of comics is always a value judgment depending on what you consider important. My criteria and ratings are as follows:
Is the movie campy, seemingly designed to sell toys? Grade: A. Like its two prequels, it's an adult-oriented film given a serious treatment. The Star Wars franchise could learn much from this, but probably won't. Movie studios (excepting New Line Cinema) are about selling action figures today, not creating enduring artwork that will generate money for decades to come.
Is it a Batman movie? Grade: D. I saw very little of the Batman costume in this and a whole lot of Blake. Instead, it's a long and rather depressing story of Bruce Wayne in decline. Had they done away with the costumes and changed the character names, no one would have known this was a Batman story and it could have just been marketed as the latest Lethal Weapon sequel. Many of us were hoping to see the Batmobile or the Batcave at some point, and we never got it. You're left with the impression they might appear in the story after the movie ends, but in someone else's hands. Instead, what we got was a "Bat Harrier" that doesn't even look like it could fly, a seeming attempt to cash in on Avengers Mania; one major edge that "The Dark Knight" had on the Marvel movies is that it works its characters into the frame of reality instead of forcing reality to fit the characters with hasty and unconvincing CGI.
Did it follow some semblance of the comic storyline? Grade: F. Selina Kyle's treatment was spot on, true to her story roots. But so much of the other character story lines were altered to fit Nolan's vision of killing everything off in one movie (ala X-Men 3) that it was hard to sit through to the end. "Batman and Robin" was what happens when a studio exercises too much control over the director to sell toys and t-shirts; "The Dark Knight Rises" is what happens when they exercise none at all to retain a director. Surely what the Warner Brothers execs learned from "The Dark Knight" is the formula for a successful superhero movie... you'd think. "The Dark Knight Rises" crosses the line between adaptation and re-imagining, and I can't recall any re-imagining that was an improvement on the original. What the fans want is NOT a total reinvention of the story, just a legitimate take on it without campiness, stupidity, and special effects overkill.
Casting; Grade: B. This is Anne Hathaway's finest hour, and she REALLY looks good in the suit. This is the best reason I can think of to see the movie. Talia Al Ghul? Good. But Tom Hardy? His speech sounds like a perfect cross between Sean Connery and Elmer Fudd. The rest of the cast is a holdover from the first two movies, so there wasn't much to screw up.
In the end, Nolan did what he set out to do: terminate the series as fast as possible. But I won't be watching "Man of Steel", and I'm glad I didn't shell out $20 for popcorn on this one.