Movie of the Year!

Rating: 10/10 (21 July 2012)

The Dark Knight Rises is absolutely amazing and, in my opinion, the movie of the year. Yes, that means I thought it was even better than The Avengers which, in and of itself was also incredible. Batman Begins is still my favorite superhero movie of all-time but this film matches The Dark Knight if not surpassing it by a hair. I'm big on plot and character development so that's the only potential negative I can give the first Dark Knight. It felt more like an action based movie and got away a bit from the development of the Bruce Wayne character. Well this movie returns to furthering the development of the protagonist to a very in depth level. It of course also had the amazing plot development, action sequences, and dark realism of the first two that made this trilogy as a whole the best set of films in superhero history.
I'm not going to lie, I had some concerns about this movie going in. The first concern was the selection of Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway as Bane and Selena Kyle/Catwoman, respectively. Well, just like Heath Ledger, these surprising selections turned out to be perfect for how the characters were portrayed. As villains go, Heath Ledger's Joker is still the best villain in cinema history as far as I'm concerned but Tom Hardy's Bane comes incredibly close. The only negative I would say here is that there were a few scattered moments where his dialogue was fairly difficult to understand. I think they could've cleaned that up a bit more. Now Catwoman, WOW! I thought Anne Hathaway did an absolutely amazing job here. I honestly think she was by far the best catwoman yet and I don't think she could've done a better job. Kudos to Christopher Nolan once more for seeing what so many other people couldn't.
As I said before, the action sequences were stunning as usual. There's nothing new there. One thing I will say that I loved, as with the first two, is how realistic they manage to keep a lot of the fighting and action scenes. Along with the overall darker tone, the realism has really made this series more enjoyable than ever. The ultimate judge for this movie, though, is how well the plot unravels before your eyes. The first two movies each had pretty intriguing twists and turns that were somewhat unexpected but they don't touch this one in that regard. The discoveries of Talia al Ghul's and Robin's characters, Bane's origin and purpose, Catwoman's development (in addition to Batman's as mentioned prior), and all of the tie-ins that round out the trilogy were incredible. Plus, the way the ending unfolds in truly remarkable and writing it here just wouldn't do it justice. I will say this though; I can't wait for the next one, if and when they make it ;)