A film of monolithic proportions; the last note in an aria that swells and grows dramatically but doesn't quite touch the heavens

Rating: 8/10 (1 August 2012)

"Empires have risen and fallen." "See?! Why rise!"
(Spoiler Alert: This article contains spoilers on The Dark Knight Rises. Please ignore this line after six months because, even if you haven't seen it by then, you might as well keep reading to get the general idea).
Thankfully enough, not everybody shares the same view as a certain tubby, 37-year-old, orange cat who spouted that brilliant, titular quote, least of all Christopher Nolan.
Right, first off, this movie just wasn't The Dark Knight. But then not every single movie churned out from Sir Nolan's hands can be right? The movie begins in a superciliously sombre tone, eight years after the maniacal Joker had been captured and cast inside the depths of some unknown mental facility, eight years after Harvey Dent supposedly set the line between right and wrong (only for it to all just be a lie), eight years after Bruce Wayne lost the only woman he thinks he could ever have loved (a slap upside the head and a cup of coffee should have cured him, but I guess his butler Alfred just isn't up to that). Really, these three clauses outline what the movie really is about; a flickering, conflicting, light-and-shadow story about anarchy, losing the rules and control and finding love again.
Bruce Wayne clings to his frail sanity by turning into a hopeless recluse shuddering for almost a decade in the recesses of his hollow manor while the Batman has 'mysteriously' disappeared from the scene (and nobody actually made the connection? Really?). At first, he really does come across as rather disagreeable, inconsiderate of absolutely everyone's feelings, believing that, in times of peace, he is no longer necessary. Even when he finally emerges from his shell, it's more an act of self-regeneration than to truly fend off the bad guys. But then he dons his mask and cape again, goes toe-to-toe with the game boss himself, earning a snapped vertebrae (THAT scene hurt to watch, and not in the meltdown- crying way) and a one-way ticket to hell (located in Jodhpur, Rajasthan? What?). From there on out, everything he does, his struggle to escape his claustrophobic prison, re-connecting his spine, is about selflessness, trying to pay back to a city that doesn't deserve him any more. He ends up paying his life for it (hmm not sure about that actually), leaving me quite satisfied with Bruce Wayne, but not so much with Batman.
I'm putting it out there and saying that Bane is awesome. True, he had the misfortune to follow the demoniacally stellar Joker (Heath Ledger), but he was a subtly terrifying balance of mental prowess and physical brutality, accentuating every carefully phrased sentence with an act of violence, nurtured skilfully to life by Tom Hardy (that actor had me from Inception!). Forged from darkness, he is the second perfect foil to Batman himself. While the Joker challenged Batman's personal moralities, Bane complements him due to the differences in their upbringing, of how Wayne was raised up to a pedestal while Bane had to claw his way to reach the top, wearing his mask as a trophy and a reminder of his painful past. In the end, Batman had to find a way to match Bane step for step and jump off the edge  without a rope to bind him.
However Batman does still need sidekicks, depressing recluse or not, and finds two in this movie in the forms of Joseph Gordon-Lewitt's Robin John Blake (*nudge, nudge*) and Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle. While Blake's optimism and vigorous energy towards good was quite alluring, even likable once you got past the clichéd feel of it all, it was absolutely nothing compared to Kyle, a character who proved, and I quote here, that her 'morality is as flexible as her body'. Much less terrifying, although as equally imposing as Bane, she's played absolutely pitch-perfect by Anne Hathaway, complete with a latex bodysuits, cat-like 'ears' and a seductively purring growl for a voice, constantly shifting from light to dark, alluring to vulnerable. In the end, although she fought herself quite a bit to get there, she proved that the spark in her that Wayne kept banking on could become a flame.
However, what really sold the movie to me wasn't just the cast, but the sheer degree of chaos and civil rebellion displayed in a series of gruesome images, including hanging bodies from a building, exploding a football field right after the 'Star-Spangled Banner', the makeshift 'council' of the people (presided by a lunatic) and the exile practices of making people walk across paper-thin ice, subsequently drowning in freezing water as it shattered. The Dark Knight Rises truly flipped over the modern world, abolishing any sense of rules among the people. Kyle herself said it best; "There's a storm coming Mr Wayne." She whispered eerily into his ear at a masquerade ball "You and your friends better batten down the hatchets, because when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us".
The outcome of these elements and cast, tied together with some pretty amazing action scenes (I thought the bat-plane was an anti-gravity meteor, but I suppose that's just me) and an almost tribal soundtrack booming through the horrors shown on screen, was Christopher Nolan's most ruthless Batman film to date. Dragging slightly in the beginning, it climaxed with a multitude of flying shrapnel, emotions and atom bombs, a surprise villain (innocent, ecological billionaire my foot) and even a cliffhanger, despite this film being the last in the iconic trilogy (*nudge, nudge* again!), and after finally witnessing the end, I can truly say that no-one can mess around with this stonework of a cinematic trio for quite some time!