An Honest Review from a Movie Buff

Rating: 6/10 (21 July 2012)

To me Batman Begins was a good movie, and an under-appreciated movie at that. To me The Dark Knight was a good movie, but overrated at that. So, despite knowing the series was already over-hyped riding off The Dark Knights acclaim; I really did expect The Dark Knight Rises to be a good movie, overrated or not. Which is why I was utterly surprised by it's mediocrity even in the hooks of the film which I thought of all things Nolan would outdo himself with. It actually seemed to rely on the same corny not-so-witty lines, cheesy-heroics, and poorly-placed romance subplot that most modern action come-and-go films rely on. The twists were nothing special. The underlying plot feels forced to the end of tying the trilogy together. The number of significant scenes is actually pretty low for a 2h 40m movie, and as opposed to the other films in the series, I felt this could have easily been 2 hours or less. Bane lacks the early mysteriousness and any sort of allusiveness that you'd expect from a Batman villain, instead Nolan favored the brute force villain portrayal. Batman see's him early on and it's beyond me why he didn't just blow him away with the Batwing especially since he, for some reason, decides the no-killing thing is over when he drops a few henchmen with those bat-shaped blades. Banes background has some vague intrigue to it but it's so skimp and becomes somewhat corny with the twist. Overall, I think Nolan sought too hard to appease the masses knowing the popularity generated by the previous film in the trilogy and pushed out a film that while not terrible isn't very memorable at all.