Disappointed and heart broken about the final Batman.

Rating: 5/10 (8 August 2012)

First off, I am a HUGE fan of the first 2 Batman films. I think #1 was stylish, intelligent, had great gadgets, fantastic performances and set the stage for a terrific new series. The second Batman was equally as explosive and of course the performance by Ledger was phenomenal. He had a chilling presence every time he entered the frame. That kind of chemistry is hard to create thru the magic of film. So let's get to it, shall we? This last chapter (it's only labeled "last" to further hype the series, as we all know "Robin" is just around the corner) was an overblown miss. It's almost as if everybody got tired and substituted genius film making for guns and explosions.
1)First of all, there were no new gadgets!! Hello?? This is Batman! Part of the initial fun of watching Batman is getting to see all the great new toys. All they did was whip out a flying space ship and said, "O.K., we've given the audience enough." It's like a James Bond movie, we need to see the new toys we'll never get to play with.
2)There was no humor at all. Nothing cute or charming to snicker or laugh at. The pacing of the film was beyond dark, it was boring. Toss in a little "Batman humor" to balance the explosions and gun fire with.
3) Which leads to the gun fire and explosions. The film had about 90 Min's of pure gun fire and bombs going off. Again, no pacing, just explosion after explosion with multitudes of guns, guns, guns, in almost every scene. It was mind numbing. The terror should be in the mind, not in the gun. It's almost as if the writers gave up and inserted a gun in every time they came to a blank spot. Cut about 30 Min's of guns out of the film so the movie wouldn't run about, what 4 hours?
4) The film editing was so over the top choppy and jumped around so quickly between time frames that I thought it was cut by a first year film maker. OK, we get it, they are trying to be stylish and creative, but there were so many continuity mistakes in the film it's hard to know if they were created by bad editing or just bad production.
5) Story. NO STORY. Beyond simplistic. Save the city by throwing the bomb in the ocean at the end? That gets a huge PAAAALLLEEEEZE. It reminded of the original series when Batman was on TV and they had to get rid of the "bomb" by dropping it in the ocean. Hilarious. Is that the only thing these top notch writers could come up with?? Really??
6)And this is my biggest complaint. Bane. What a huge Darth Vader RIP OFF. Come on, it's like somebody borrowed Darth Vader and forgot his helmet. I didn't buy his "wannabe mini Darth Vader voice" either. Totally overdubbed, and extra loud like some cheap post production house did it. My favorite part was when Batman was punching him in the face over and over and his little mouth piece just wouldn't budge. Oh, I forgot, it had a little leather strap holding it on his mug. OH, and when Bane did that back breaking knee crunch to Batman's back and his only problem later was a slipped disk? OK, now we are really stretching reality... which by the way, is what made the first 2 Batman's so great is because they were based on reality.
And the very last scene, was clever, but they screwed that up as well.
Here's how the ending should've gone: Show the restaurant, Show Alfred sitting at the table, he looks up, appears to be looking at something... and smiles. Cut to black.
That's how you end it. Now we all could've speculated what he was looking at and the mystery surrounding Batman if he was alive or not would've been created. But NO... they ruined it by SHOWING Batman sitting there with Cat Dish, sipping tea, and removed all the mystery out of the stigma that is Batman.
Who writes this crap?
What a let down. Creativity and story has indeed fallen from the series. I predict "Robin" will be more of the same, lots of explosions and acrobatics with no substance or story for the mind to enjoy. But hey, if you're 14, YOU'RE GONNA LOVE IT.