Feels like it should have been the first movie after Batman Begins

Rating: 7/10 (23 July 2012)

Let's get two things out of the way. There's nothing in The Dark Knight Rises that's even close to as memorable and compelling as Heath Ledger's Joker. This film also has nothing like the moral and thematic depth of The Dark Knight. This is much more like a direct sequel to Batman Begins, with the middle film of the trilogy existing on some separate and elevated plane.
With that acknowledgmentis this movie any good? Yes, it's damn good. The Dark Knight Rises is probably the best plotted of all Nolan's Bat-flicks and makes tremendous use of its outstanding cast. True, it's a little long but Unlike The Dark Knight, where it felt like Nolan told an complete story about the Joker and then crammed a complete second movie about Two-Face into an additional half-hour tacked onto the end, this film feels and flows as a single narrative. That Nolan was able to seamlessly combine Batman, Catwoman, Bane and a new major supporting character with a continuation of the Ra's Al Guhl storyline from the first film, the "Batman breaks his back" plot from the comics and, of all things, the No Man's Land crossover that nobody except fanboys remember from the 1990s, should make Sam Raimi and company hang their heads in shame even lower for Spider-Man III.
8 years after the death of Harvey Dent (Aaron Eckhart) and the disappearance of Batman, Gotham has become a city almost without organized crime because of a new law passed in the wake of Dent's demise that allowed more criminals to be locked up. Without his cape and cowl, Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has become a near recluse in Wayne Manor. Only a beautiful jewel thief named Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) is able to rouse Wayne from his apathy by stealing something from him. Not a string of pearls, though. She steals his fingerprints. At the same time, a masked mercenary named Bane (Tom Hardy) has entered Gotham's literal underworld with an agenda that starts with the personal ruin of Bruce Wayne and then extends farther than anyone imagines.
Again, the plain truth is that this movie is a noticeable step down from The Dark Knight. That film was built on some profound questions about the nature of Man and the societies he creates. The Dark Knight Rises is about a larger-than-life supervillain and the desperate challenge he poses to our trusty heroes. Nolan does weave some commentary about the "Occupy" movement vs. "the 1%" into the tale, echoing the French Revolution if Robespierre had been a masked muscleman. And while Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are superb additions to the extremely gifted cast, they all pale next to Ledger's Clown Prince of Crime. This motion picture also fails to pick up the narrative baton from The Dark Knight and build upon what it said about Batman and the essence of super-heroism. Without either Ledger or Aaron Eckhart to draw on, it's almost as if Nolan shied away from an attempt for fear of tainting the tale already told.
With some very good action sequences, a big new toy for Batman to play with and a good amount of humor, this movie is a fun time. Nolan even manages to stage and shoot a fight scene or two that look like more than random blurs on screen. I was honestly dubious going in as to the quality of this thing. It more than pleasantly surprised me.
I'm not sure there's ever been another trilogy were the third film was better than the first, yet the 2nd was better than the other two put together. That's what Nolan has done. If you liked Batman Begins, you'll love The Dark Knight Rises. If you loved The Dark Knight, you'll still like this threequel. When the worst you can say about a film is that it's not as good as perhaps the best ever made in its genre, you know you're talking about something special.