The second best movie I've ever seen

Rating: 10/10 (23 July 2012)

I went to see Dark Knight Rises yesterday and while i thought it would be good, I had no idea it would effectively blow away the second movie in the series and become the new best superhero movie ever and arguably the best movie ever (Only can consider Shawshank to be better). It is very difficult to find any flaw with this movie. The directing and acting were top notch. While Tom Hardy's Bane didn't have the charisma of Ledger's Joker, he more than made up for that in menace and intelligence. Hathaway was a surprisingly effective Catwoman, and all the regulars lived up to their expectations. The development of "Robin" became somewhat obvious early in the movie when we discovered how large his role was.
To me, this movie had undertones of Superman II (Reeves version) from a hopelessness sense, as well as Rocky 3, from the sense that the hero was facing an evil from a different uprising and had to "find himself" to conquer. The movie was over 2.5 hours long and seemed too short. The pacing was perfect and the characters were properly developed and written in. This was a truly emotional story as batman has to learn how to beat his main foe in a psychological battle while battling his own personal demons. The movie made you feel completely hopeless and builds up perfectly to an amazing climax and finish. Throughout the movie, you wonder if it can get any worse for Batman and Gotham, and it always manages to continue adding some adversity regardless how dire you think the situation is. And just when you think Batman wins, he is given another obstacle to overcome.
Bane easily should become one of the most menacing bad guys in cinema history. While his demise is somewhat anti-climactic and maybe the only flaw of the movie to some, it is in turn a realistic demise and satisfying because we know Batman doesn't kill anyway. Batman becomes one of the most sympathetic heros in cinema as his "rise" took the entire movie and cost him everything. The series is tied together at the end and i think it provides a more than satisfying conclusion to one of, if not the best, trilogies in movie history.