A nice conclusion with twists and nods abound

Rating: 8/10 (23 July 2012)

In The Dark Knight, Joker stats that "Gothum deserves a better breed of criminal and I intend to give it to them". In, The Dark Knight Rises, Joker is no where to be seen. He is never mentioned, but his intentions are on full display in, The Dark Knight Rises. While the film is not a perfect movie, it delivers the BREED in BANE. Bane appears right away and 2 hours and 46 minutes or so later, it only seems long when you look down at your watch and realize its been 3 hours. Why, because BANE is a dastardly villain and surprisingly so.
Director Nolan again has errors, like a chase scene starting in the day and then minutes later it being dark, but focusing on issues like these just shows how good the other 2hr and 45minutes are. After basically painting himself into a corner with the ending of Two Face in Dark Knight and thus the inability to have Darvey Dent be the main villain (as originally written), and with Heath Ledger's unfortunately passing, it is a minor miracle that Nolan could create such a grand spectacle with scraps. For Rises, Bane, who here is much closer to his comic origin, is a giant, not just amongst men, but of terrorists. He does things with reason and purpose, whereas Joel Schumacher had him play a "6th crew member" ready to die and drugged up on the juice. His Bane was a silly stupid figure that served no purpose in the story. For Nolan, Bane is the Story. Sure, Catwoman, Scarecrow, Ra-Al-Gul, and Talia all have purpose in the story, and Gordon, Blake, Fox, and Alfred appear for the side of good, but Bane is the force of the show and Batman's equal and sometimes superior, which comic wise he was. While the Dark Night trilogy plays a little fast and loose with the timelines of these interactions, this movie follows the comics via Bane. Bane, lets the inmates go (aka Scarecrow), he incites criminals in Gothom (catwoman), he was going to marry Talia and served in a prison since birth and even delt with mercenaries and the league of shadows (Al-Gul). All of this is in an epic movie about a minor villain whom, aside from the voice, (which still takes a little getting used to) is a force. A force that is as timely in our time now as to when he was created to face, fight, and be redeemed by batman before ultimately getting his end.
Through this epic story, Nolan still manages to twist our idea of what is coming next with characters whom show us thoughts of what might come next, even in a fittingly concluded trilogy.