The Perfect Ending

Rating: 10/10 (27 July 2012)

This film has had a ridiculous amount of hype, which I believe it's more than lived up to.
I sympathised for Tom Hardy to begin with, having to play the villain that followed Ledger's role as the Joker. But wow did he do an amazing job as Bane. In the first scene I was a little sceptical about his voice, but as the film developed it became more and more 'awesome' to use a technical term. He really made it clear that Bane was both physically and intellectually superior to the Batman. Anne Hathaway was superb as Catwoman. She managed to play the role with the intelligence and sexiness that has never been effectively captured in previous portrayals of the character. Bale's acting as both Bruce Wayne and the Batman was brilliant as per usual as was the acting of Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman and Michael Caine. Miranda Tate was probably the least developed character in the movie, but considering the reveal towards the end of the film it's completely understandable as to why this is so. For me, the stand-out role was from Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Right throughout the film he has a pivotal role and plays a huge part in both getting the Batman into action again and uncovering Bane's plans as well as going on to be a great help to Batman himself. This I feel is good and clearly done intentionally by Christopher Nolan due to the reveal at the end of the film (plus it gives me hope of a Nightwing film/trilogy).
The score too, was flipping fantastic. It really helped to make the film what it was. Hans Zimmer has once again created a true masterpiece in musical terms. In fact this is one of the very few film soundtracks that I have ever purchased, tracks like 'Gotham's Reckoning' and 'Rise' just have so much atmosphere about them.
The plot was great too. This is the one film this year that I have gone into the film genuinely not knowing what was going to happen. Nolan does a brilliant job keeping both plot and plot twists unknown to the general public on the run-up to the release of a film and The Dark Knight Rises had quite a few bits and bobs thrown our way that I did not expect. Though after watching the film multiple times it becomes clearer earlier and earlier that said twist was coming. My favourite thing about the plot was how effectively it brought both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight into it, the way that this film merged the two into it truly does make it the perfect ending to the trilogy.
I have noticed a couple of possible blunders, such as the continuity error with Miranda Tate. She appears before the court with Gordon and the other police and is taken to Bane. The next scene sees her with Lucius Fox as Wayne returns. Not minutes later she is back with Bane. Another thing I noticed with this film was to do with the timing. The chase between the cops, Batman and Bane after the stock exchange incident I can let slide as we can imagine the chase takes a long time (it's light when the chase starts, dusky midway through, then when Batman is almost apprehended it's pitch black) though later in the film a couple of things irked me. The final battle is about to happen, Batman says to Catwoman they have 45 minutes to save the city, and it's pitch black in the sky. Moments later the sky is nice and bright and the bomb is still displaying about 15 minutes until detonation. My final irk was that between Talia Al Ghul leaving Bane with Batman and Batman reaching his vehicle AND catching up to Talia and the bomb, the bomb only displays a 40 second difference. Yet between those events she walks outside, gets in a Tumbler, catches up the truck carrying the bomb and jumps from the Tumbler to the truck. Batman is punched to the ground by Bane, almost shot with a shotgun before Bane is blown to smithereens by Catwoman. Batman then finds his vehicle and has to fly to catch-up with Talia and the truck, all whilst nursing a knife wound. It just seems a little too much for 40 seconds. Still, these are the only things that irked me throughout the entire 2 hours and 44 minutes of epic screen time. Not bad at all when you consider the amount of blunders apparent in the Avengers.
Overall this really is the perfect finish to the trilogy. It certainly exceeded my expectations (which were already bloody high). The Dark Knight was my favourite film of all time, and Batman Begins was easily in my top 10. But after seeing the Dark Knight Rises for the 1st time, it was obvious it had nicked the top spot for me. This film is a true masterpiece (you don't get into the top 10 highest rated films of all time on IMDb within 6 days of release for nothing!) and Christopher Nolan has proved once again that he is one of the greatest film-makers of today, I'm very glad to know he's been helping with Man of Steel. I've now seen this film 3 times already and still struggled to put into words just how highly I rate this film. Bravo Mr. Nolan, my hat's off to you.