The story didn't work

Rating: 7/10 (25 July 2012)

It is true that some of the plot holes people have pointed out in the film are perhaps a little nitpicky, but when they add up it shows you that despite the budget and the 2 years in the making it is a rushed film. For the cost of $250 million we need to be demanding better films from Hollywood, films which are not just "wham bam thank you special effects department" but better films in terms of pacing, plot and character.
And it is not just the script that is the problem - for me the story made little sense, especially the big 'reveal' at the end. ****SPOILERS***** So Bane/Talia organise a kind of revolution (more like a coup) to give the people "hope" before eventually just killing them. Huh? I don't think there was much "hope" in Gotham for those 5 months. And surely the point of people losing hope and dying in a nuclear blast is that they know they will die, the looming fear of death is what destroys hope. Tate was just going to blow them all up (10 minutes before it was due to blow up anyway) without really any kind of meaningful pay off. One minute you living in a city run by mercenaries the next you are atomic dust.
It would have been more accurate for her to go on TV and say "Gotham citizens you will all die in 10 minutes" then see everyone try and save themselves running across the ice, killing small children to save their own skins etc etc - now THAT would have nicely undone the point made at the end of TDK when the prisoners and the civilians don't blow each other up on the ferries. Batman's final point to the Joker was precisely that people are inherently good, but in TDKR the 'people' barely feature. Even Bane's 'uprising' is basically mercenaries and criminals. A more provocative story would have seen the people of Gotham actually join Bane, kill the rich, take over the business district and try and run the city as some kind of anticorporatist paradise.
But in fact Bane's revolution is just a confused plot device and an excuse for blowing stuff up in spectacular fashion. The whole thing is fake since it is just part of a plan by the ex League of Shadows and Talia (who is a super rich capitalist) to kill everyone. Also why did Talia wait until the very end of the film to reveal herself? Just in case Batman came back and she could trick him? (also how come Batman got stabbed but then was fine again? also how come... sorry I will stop myself there but the plot holes are about 1 every minute - where the hell did that TV come from in Wayne's prison cell?? Hooked up to cable was it?)
The whole fear/hope/despair thing was actually at the heart of Bane/Talia's plan but it just did not work. What kind of hope did people have and how would they know despair? The occupation of Gotham was actually despair in reality (hardly any food, martial law, kangaroo courts run by a mad man, cut off from the outside world, etc). If Bane had said "I want the people to Gotham to suffer before I finally kill them" that would have made more sense.
But wasn't the whole 5 month occupation just badly handled? Hardly any building of tension or insight into what was going on in Gotham at that time - it seemed like a plot device so that we could see Batman's back get broken (or damaged) then he had time to recover before apparently becoming stronger than Bane.
And after seeing Amazing Spiderman with the same kind of plot (mad villain going to blow up/infect the city) it just felt very unoriginal.
One of the producers said that the movie was an amalgam of The Dark Knight Returns, No Mans Land and Knightfall. My advice? Pick one of them and make a movie out of it, not collapse all three into one and create a mess.
I rate it 7.5/10. I hope when all the excitement has died down we can see TDKR for what it is, an overplotted film with an under developed story. I fully expect to get criticised by fans of the film - just to say I am not saying it was a bad film, I will probably see it again at some point in my life, but I definitely don't think it is any kind of classic or worth the 9+ rating it currently has.