What Happened?

Rating: 4/10 (10 December 2012)

I consider myself a huge fan of comic book movies. They're basically character studies with huge budgets and great special effects. I have to admit I'm not the hugest fan of Nolan's trilogy. For a movie that's supposed to be so serious and realistic the movies stop to have really dumb unrealistic moments for the sake of being "epic". Not to mention whenever Nolan writes dialogue for the mystique or mythos of Batman it's ALWAYS corny. He writes such great dialogue for his villains but anytime he tries to write for Batman or people talking about the idea of Batman it gets super cheesy *SPOILERS*****. The result we have here is basically Nolan sleepwalking through the movie with poor dialogue, plot inconsistencies, character motivations that aren't clear, poor fight choreography, and probably the worst ending I've ever seen in a superhero movie or a Nolan film in general.
To get the good out of the way.... Ummm I honestly have nothing good to say about this movie. All the pieces are here to make a great movie. I can see why people love this movie, because it's basically a copy of The Dark Knight. Everything good gets undercut by the end of the movie. Tom Hardy as Bane turns in a great menacing performance that is worthy being held up to next to the Joker. He almost saves the film just like Heath Ledger did with the first sequel except towards the end of the movie he is totally underused and undercut. But all of his scenes where good or at least set up well. There's also two cameos that where great and really pumped me up for the rest of the movie that I won't spoil. I could say the movies greatest strength and crutch is that it ties so well into the first movie, but that also slows the movie down and makes it trip over it's own feet several times. The Score is solid if a little repetitive and the movie looks great at points.
Now to the bad. This movie is so slow. I'm not going to say boring because that's subjective, but even people who loved the movie can attest to the fact that this movie's pacing is a big problem. What's more is the story pacing which takes it's time inching along until the final act which just breezes by important details leaving anyone besides the core fan base cold and unsatisfied. The editing is horrific and I don't know if I can blame the editor or Nolan's top heavy script which just like the last movie brings in the overly complicated story. The problem with such a convoluted narrative is that in order to get people to know what's going on the audience gets their hand held through scenes as actors have to constantly repeat what we're supposed to take away from the scene, which makes the movie predictable. I knew the ending to every single scene either from knowing the way it mirrored a scene earlier in the trilogy or just the way it's telegraphed. The acting isn't very good either aside from Bane who ironically gets more expressiveness out of his face when it's mostly covered up. All these actors are normally great but they're literally given only one expression. All the characters are one note throughout the whole movie there is no real character progression. The ending is stupid in so many ways i won't get into and this is just an unpleasant experience for anyone who isn't already loving the movie walking in.
Now to hit some personal points I think Nolan is a good director who gets a lot of credit for using a very specific bag of tricks and makes crowd pleaser's that function as thought provoking movies. Much like Tarantino once you see the formula a lot of the magic is gone. Nolan is no David Fincher or Sam Mendes. He doesn't have the teeth to end a movie in a dark way everything always works out in the end and it's frustrating. *****SPOILERS***** The last act is probably more boring because there's no sense of tension. I knew from the beginning no main characters where going to die because Nolan is so soft. If I had to give the last harry potter movies credit they killed off a lot of the main cast so there was a genuine sense of not knowing whose going to make it. Another problem is that this is the most indulgent movie I've seen this year. There is no reason this movie needed to be so long. It pretends to be some great thoughtful movie, but it's not. There are so many themes in this movie that are too obvious or don't come into play into the movies ending. Not to mention the themes in this movie heavily contradict the ones in the previous movies. This is a really dumb movie pretending to be a smart thoughtful one. There are so many moments that are exaggerated to a ridiculous level to be "epic" that made me roll my eyes, this is on a Spiderman 3 level of trilogy ending.
I'm giving this 4 stars because the average movie audience isn't going to care about story structure and not look as deep into it as some cinephiles may. It's a very polarizing movie, but it's really insulting at times and the more I think about it the more I dislike it. I'm really worried that superman might be 3 hours long now.