Another bloated Batman movie? Must be Chris Nolan then...

Rating: 6/10 (6 December 2012)

Not that I didn't enjoy some of it, but it just goes on and on and on. I wouldn't mind but the extra minutes don't add anything to the movie.
See, there's this trend in comic book hero movies to make them darker, more moody, and to make the heroes more human, more believable. I have to say I generally applaud any attempt to inject realism into any movie.
However... With the basic premise of such movies being people with extraordinary powers/gifts/technology etc. it can sometimes be at the expense of making the movie too confused, as if it doesn't know what it wants to be.
This is true of Dark Knight Rises. We're supposed to feel empathy for Bruce Wayne when he falls on hard times, but he comes across as a sniveling whiner for the most part. Place this against the cardboard villain that is Bane and the disconnect between the two styles becomes problematic.
As well as this issue, and the aforementioned bloat, comes the complete stupidity of the script. Now, we can all watch a movie a dozen times and see things wrong with it on those subsequent viewings. But when you see those wrongs on the first viewing, it becomes obvious that the writing wasn't as tight as it could have been.
Bruce Wayne's back, for instance. Having had it broken by Bane, Bruce is thrown into a prison and left to rot. With such awesome medical advice as "You need to get up" thrown at him, Bruce's back magically heals to the point where he can throw himself around like Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed games. All in the space of a few months.
Later, with just a few seconds on the clock, he ejects from the Bat Jet just before a nuclear explosion... and survives! That's right! A muscle-bound oaf breaks his back but a nuclear inferno doesn't even singe his hair. What's more, he even manages to swim miles to shore afterwards.
Then there is that muscle-bound oaf...Bane. A man with a muzzle for a face. Something was supposed to have happened to him in childhood to force him to wear it, but it isn't really explained. So basically he goes through the whole movie looking like a poor Darth Vader impersonator who couldn't afford the whole costume. Add to that the fact that he mumbles most of his lines incoherently and it just makes him a figure of ridicule, not menace. I couldn't stop chuckling every time he was on screen. To think Arnie got ridiculed for his Mr. Freeze performance and now we have this touted as a believable villain? Tom Hardy isn't very good at bad guy roles. He was rubbish in Star Trek Nemesis, and he's rubbish here. Good actor, just not the roles he's suited to, though to be fair, it is hard acting around a muzzle, I guess.
Also, we're supposed to believe that the US Government would sit idly by whilst a oafish buffoon (Bane) holds an entire city to ransom for months? Come on, get a grip! It would never happen that way. The troops would go in regardless of the potential consequences.
It's all very silly and very badly thought out. If it was played for camp value, like the old Batman movies, or the series, then it would be fine. But it is supposed to be realistic, so the silliness just makes it farcical.
Batman Begins was a decent movie. The second one was bloated and tedious. This one is marginally better than no. 2, but not by much. There's too much else wrong with it for it to come close to the first one.
What needs to happen is for the studios to give the franchise to someone else, not the Nolans. They had their shot. Time to move on.
SUMMARY: Bloated and farcical. A villain as menacing as Trap Jaw from the He-Man cartoons. Foolishness and plot holes, unbelievable medical miracles and daring escapes from nuclear annihilation. For Nolan fans only. If you want a decent superhero movie with human interest and well-written characters, go watch the Avengers, or the first Iron Man movie, because you won't find any of those qualities here.