Godawful on a Grand Scale...

Rating: 1/10 (2 January 2013)

Hundreds of millions of dollars, and the best they can do is yet another bloated episode of a TV cop show??? The first hour or 90 minutes of this talking heads marathon plays out like a segment of LIFESTYLES OF THE RICH AND BORING. Maybe the Nolans haven't gotten the news, yet, but We ain't all that fond of watching the Rich wallow in their Riches over here. Where was the guy we came to see- the guy with the black leather body armor and the cape? Doing his impression of Howard Huge! Really? THAT'S what we came to see? (Not that that really matters: Batman gets outed yet again in this installment. Little wonder he doesn't bother to suit up...) Nolan's idea of an Occupy Movement says a lot, I think: the VILLAINS take over City Hall (or whatever it is in this monstrously slow-moving movie) and are set upon at film's end by Gotham's finest like peaceful protesters at a sit-in. The guy who plays Bane seems to be channeling Sean Connery, and Catwoman transmorgriphies, finally, into Batwoman. At least the worst-designed Batmobile in the 70-plus year history of the character has been laid to rest (not to mention the aerodynamically unsound piece of flying wreckage that's supposed to be the Batplane). (I've always thought that SPAWN was by far the worst-designed comic book character in comic book history- a mish-mash of ideas lifted from Spider-man and Doctor Strange-and a character whose name was ripped off from a Jack Kirby NEW GODS story- but the Batmobile in this trilogy made me step back and reevaluate things. Batman's wheels in these films look like slabs of scrap metal haphazardly fused or magnetized together. Hopefully, we've seen the last of them.) For future reference: filmmakers, if we pay money to see a super-hero movie, it's because we want to see the super-hero- NOT his UNsuper-heroic alter ego. Is THAT so hard to grasp?