Great music, camera angles, and interpretation of source material

Rating: 10/10 (20 July 2012)

"The Dark Knight Rises" was an enjoyable film, which is enough for me to at least give it 7. What pushed it to a 10 was the excellent use of music, specific camera angles, and the source material. I will break down each. Music can make or break a movie for me. If the music is good, I am happy. Hans Zimmer has always done a great job of bringing movies to life with his scores, and this is no exception. For those who have not seen this film, I am about to give a spoiler here. The theme music of this film reflects the title "Rises" and has you very excited and makes you feel the beat of the revolution that Bane and his army are creating. In the first half of the film this theme music excites but also frightens you. It makes you cringe in your seat and hold your breath, because you know that this awesome, ruthless, overwhelming, seemingly unbeatable force is coming. The music pounds and ripples along with Bane has he tears his way through Gotham and eventually beats Batman to a pulp and breaks the Bat's back. But then something very interesting happens with this music in the second half, or perhaps I should say the third act. That beating, pounding, powerful music suddenly switches and becomes not Bane's theme, but Batman's. As Batman repairs his broken body and finds the strength within himself to do what only one other has done, rising from the 'Pit", the theme music lifts you up and you realize that Bane and his bad guys are in so much trouble and they don't even know it. I won't say much about camera angles because I am not a film studies expert or anything. But I can say I enjoyed the way this film pulls you into big and small events, whether it is a grand view of Gotham city that makes you feel like you have been swept up in Bane's revolution or are flying through its skies along with Batman, or gives you the anxiety of Batman as he is trapped in a fight in the sewer with the hulking Bane. Lastly, I want to talk about the connection to the comic books. This is where I am sure some ultra-fans might be upset because, "Hey, they changed this and that," and, "That wasn't in the comics." To those fans I would ask what examples they have of any comic book, book, play, video game, cartoon series or action figure franchise that was ever made into a film that followed the original source material exactly. Here is another moment where if you have not seen the film I will be spoiling some surprises. It is made clear in the credits that this film was based on the characters of the DC Universe. It is not a perfect detail by detail recreation of the comics, but a film based on the characters. I think that it was an absolutely wonderful interpretation. Nolan did a great job of taking the characters, relationships and stories and making his own decisions about what to use and where to make his own connections. And he did tend to connect characters who as far as I know had no connection in the comic books, and combine stories and change characters as he saw fit. And it was amazing and new and fresh and even though we have seen seven Batman films before this one it was somehow still very engaging and did something none of the others did, it gave Batman a happy ending. Oh sure, Batman always wins. Batman beats the bad guy. The bad guy ends up dead or in jail or in the mental asylum. And Batman dusts himself off and runs off into the night to continue fighting bad guys. He wins, but it isn't necessarily a happy ending in the traditional sense. He has no satisfaction, no family, no love, no relaxing. It's just onward to the next grueling battle with the underworld. But "The Dark Knight Rises" finally did something the other movies could not do. It let Batman retire happily, not old and broken and scarred but young and able to still have a normal life. Not only that, he gets to go off to France with Catwoman and, I like to imagine, open up a pastry shop. To conclude, this was an incredibly fun movie to experience and I recommend seeing it. I will say that I saw it on a regular theater screen and I encourage folks to save the money because it was fantastic and did not need the 3D or the IMAX to make it good.