Batman overtakes the birth of my children on my "Magic Moments" list.

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2012)

Nothing will ever come close to the birth of my first child. Well...that's what I thought anyway...and then Christopher Nolan got his hands on the Batman franchise...
A brilliant ending to the trilogy. It's so refreshing and so worth the final result when a director chooses to use live action rather than CGI for all (well most) of the action scenes. The pacing was a lot better than The Dark Knight which I felt sometimes didn't really build well throughout and was unbalanced between action / character scenes. Though this time the bulk of the action is left towards the end with a great build up of character though the film which really leaves you actually caring about the characters at the end (unlike most CGI fest superhero films where you couldn't really care). Even though the plot resembles the first film a lot (which I suppose it connected to the "full-circle" talk of the whole series) the new characters kept the film interesting. The only downside for me was Bane. Don't get me wrong, Tom did a great job and he was a great character. He just wasn't really as much as a terrifying character than The Joker and we only really had his eyes and voice to go on as far as emotion went (the latter was a slight disappointment as I spent half the time trying to work out what he was saying). BUT...don't worry there is a great twist to make up for this ;-) Once again Gotham looks great as does the cinematography as a whole. Like the characters the place feels real and somewhere we should really care about and not just another city to destroy in another CGI fest bonanza at the end. I'm not 100% sure if it was the projector at the cinema (which I think it may have been) but my only gripe was some of the scenes seemed a little too dark to the point that I couldn't work out what was happening.
Overall a fantastic ending to a great trilogy. I appreciate films like Avengers for what they are, but for me, this approach to using live action and real characters just makes me care about the overall product a lot more.