Perfect 10

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2014)

The Dark Knight Rises is an action thriller and is the third and final Batman film made by Christopher Nolan. This is also the last time we will all see Christian Bale as Batman. Upon watching the final chapter of the Christopher Nolan Batman saga I feel like this movie and the way the story is told and the depth of character development for the villains in the Dark Knight makes this film unlike anything else in its genre. While most comic book inspired movies are aimed towards a greater audience, the Dark Knight Rises is not afraid to take you into a deeper and dirty superhero world that you will not get from anything in the marvel universe or the Avengers movies. The Dark Knight Rises tells of the return of Batman eight years after he took the blame for Gotham mayor Harvey Dent. These actions made him an outlaw and a wanted man in Gotham but helped to pass more stringent laws to help keep crooks off the streets and make Gotham a safer place. An older and deteriorated Batman is motivated out of retirement by the arrival of a new villain in town that has a well thought out plan to bring Gotham to its reckoning. Bane is the new villain who plans to destroy Gotham and carryout the destiny for his mentor, Ra's al Ghul, who Batman killed in the first movie in this trilogy. Bane is a super testosterone filled character that is excommunicated from Ra's al Ghul league of shadows for being too radical. The story surrounds Batman's struggle to overcome his old age and deteriorated body and challenge Bane for the lasting safety of Gotham. The editing seemed very appropriate for this movie as it showcases the speed of the characters in the numerous fighting scenes and in the chase scenes. The sound use was very effective in the movie. It helps to paint the picture of a dark city being protected by ominous and dark characters and helps to separate the villains from the heroes. All the main protagonists seem to have their own original score as seen when Catwoman enters a scene a piano plays a playful ballad and when Bane enters a scene an ominous chant begins to play in the background which might sound familiar as it is the chant of the other prisoners in Bane's prison. Like all of the Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight films, the cinematography is dark to elicit the films dark presence and to relay a feeling of fear as this movie often muddies the waters of what may be considered right or wrong and who are the bad guys and the good guys as they all seem to be doing bad things, the only difference is what purpose is behind the actions the characters take and are they out to accomplish an overall good. This also seems to be the overall tone and meaning of the movie. Taking into account the social and political atmosphere of the time, one gets a great reflection of the social context as during the filming, the Occupy movement was very strong here in the United States. Many scenes illustrate this example, for instance when Bruce Wayne loses his family fortune and is broke, he has somewhat of a golden parachute as he gets to keep the family Mansion. These golden parachutes resemble the packages some CEO's on Wall Street were receiving at the time following the financial recession the country was coming out of at the time. I found this film to be very enjoyable and would highly recommend it and would give it a 9 out of 10. When word of this final chapter of the Dark Knight Series came out, I thought that there would be a huge challenge for the directors to make a movie comparable to the predecessor film in the series the Dark Knight which illustrated the amazing acting skills of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker. This final episode easily rivals the performances in the second chapter of this film as the screen writers and directors go to a great extent to show the depths of the villains in these films which in my opinion makes the Dark Knight Batman series one of the best film trilogies of all time. The paying public would also agree as this is probably the top selling trilogy in this genre in movie history.