Not even Nolan can keep batman going 3 movies strong...

Rating: 1/10 (25 November 2012)

*caution: SPOILERS ARE IN THIS REVIEW!!!*
One thing I want to make apparent bright and early, I personally DO like the style that Nolan brought to the Batman universe. It was a nice change of pace from the "beyond fantasy via cgi" that movie companies have been spitting at us for the past few decades in hopes to capture the "sense" of a comic book.
That said; this series owes a vast majority of its fame to Mr. Heath Ledger. Anyone who argues against THAT clearly didn't pay attention (you'd be surprised how many people didn't even KNOW about Batman Begins until AFTER TDK came out). That said, even TDK had it's flaw at the time... Two-Face only existing for a tiny minuscule portion of the film before dying entirely. That flaw is no longer a flaw after watching the finale to the trilogy, as they do bring more light onto Harvey. That said, lets get to the movie we're speaking of today: The Dark Knight Rises.
One thing I want to make extremely clear here: this movie could've completely fore-gone even being a batman movie and just acted as if he was going to make a cameo and still been the EXACT same script. Batman himself appears in it less than a rookie police officer! We're talking, at BEST, 35-45 minutes; out of 2 hours and 44 minutes. Beyond that, one of the trademarks to batman has always been the technology behind him. Even in Nolan's universe, we see how he evolves his own designs for the fight he's up against. In TDKR? It's cut down to 2 vehicles and roughly 2 gadgets.
Ignoring that fact, the fight scenes in this movie are laughable at best and out-right cringe-worthy at worst. The first scene where our hero and villain meet the fight is so fake it is actually hysterical. At one point bane is punching batman in the head and it literally looks like he's hitting a foam dummy. The savagery Bane is known for is almost completely censored in this film. There's a specific kill made by bane that they just play a muffled scream with it happening off camera; the sound DEFINITELY doesn't match what was implied to have happened. Considering Batman NEVER tries to take on Bane as he would have any other villain (and who knows why?), you would have expected that they SERIOUSLY would've put work into the fight scenes for this one. Nope. It's about as well choreographed as Bum Fights! These are suppose to be two men trained in combat by the league of shadows themselves! One of which was chosen as the successor to LEAD the league of shadows! Why do they fight like two guys who spilled each others drinks at a bar at 1 in the morning?
Even if we manage to ignore THIS fact, we then move further into the pits of unforgivable with a rather sizable list of plot-holes. A solid example is when Bane finds Bruce's secret weapons division like he magically knew where it was in his first try, but it was stated earlier that the entire department had remained off the books--it is NEVER stated how bane magically knew its location (and no, his accomplice had no way of knowing either as only TWO people knew its location). Combine this with how Bruce managed to return from a third world country back to Gotham, get his bat-suit, sneak back in undetected, and do all of this in the time window allotted by the plot. It's never even TOUCHED upon! Finally, the cops, when they escape from underground, they're magically clean and shaved after being trapped for MONTHS! That's just not physically possible.
Finally, the anticlimactic ending to Bane... Seriously, a character who caused so much havoc; did so much to the city of Gotham, and he's defeated in a blink of an eye?
Side note, the "twist" at the end was spoiled by the movie prior to it. When JGL threw the little gas grenade it was picked up by the auto- piloted Bat to blast the whole.
I'm going to be honest, I came into this movie with high hopes. What I left with was sheer disappointment. For everything Nolan began to get right with this movie he managed to do something more critical wrong. As soon as I heard Bane was cast as the main villain I knew there was no way Nolan was going to make this work... I'm sorry to say my instinct was correct. Sadly, the ending to Nolan's Batman trilogy just lost touch with everything that made it Batman in the first place.