So the basic outline of the plot is Batman /Bruce Wayne (hope I didn't spoil anything) has been a hermit for around 8 years and then a new bad guy called Bane comes into town to disturb the peace in Gotham city that has lasted due to Batman's actions in the previous film. In a sense this movie is like a sequential sequel to the second film, but a spiritual sequel to Batman Begins. Bruce Wayne has to become Batman again.
I'll start off with what I liked about the movie. This movie touches on some interesting character aspects of Bruce Wayne. It's hinted that without Batman, Bruce Wayne has lost all his purpose and it explores more of the concept that Bruce Wayne needs Batman rather than Gotham needing him.
Bane was another part of the movie that I really liked. Lots of people have been saying they cant really understand his voice or his voice is weird. I kind of thought that the voice made him unique and actually pretty scary. Some of the lines he has are also pretty epic like "When Gotham is ashes... you have my permission to die". Also, since most of his face was covered by a mask (any fans of Tom Hardy's luscious lips will be disappointed by this movie) I think the acting was pretty effective considering all we had to go on were the eyes. There's a particular scene at the end which really shows the great acting done by Tom Hardy.
Speaking of the acting, it was really good from all of the actors. A special mention should go to Michael Caine who had to do the half crying voice for most of the movie (watch The Trip) without making it seem cheesy or overdone.
Now to the things I didn't like. There was a lot of political and social backdrop in this movie. Maybe this is just me but I really hate it when movies do that in a really obvious way (unless its a documentary or a movie that's aiming for that sort of thing). There are a lot of scenes which try to integrate Gotham into the real world, like having a stock exchange and showing the greed of corporate America or something like that. To me, for some reason it makes Gotham seem less real, like it made me realise Gotham is not a real city. In the previous two films, there was just this sense that Gotham was an actual place, something which this movie lacks. This might also have something to do with the fact that it was no longer filmed in Chicago, and instead in other cities like New York and Pittsburgh. Gotham just doesn't feel the same.
Also different from the other films is the quality of the script writing. There's a sharp increase in cheesy lines ("You've given Gotham everything" "Not everything..not yet) and really big plot holes (which I will not spoil for you). I think this has something to do with the fact that one of the previous writers, David S. Goyer, left to write the new Superman. I think that when Christopher Nolan writes his own stuff, it tends not to be as good (like in Inception). His ideas are good, but the execution of it isn't as great. And the plotholes were really really annoying. Most of the time when I was going "WTF" in the cinema it wasn't because something epic was happening, it was because I couldn't believe that such a huge plot hole was not obvious to Christopher Nolan.
Of course there were parts where I went "WTF" because something truly amazing was happening. I really liked the fist fight scenes between Bane and Batman because they were so raw. But the last half hour of The Dark Knight really seemed to be directed by Michael Bay. There was just a series of big explosions with jets flying around and then the Pentagon gets somehow involved. It reminded me of Transformers 3 without robots.
Lots of people have been saying that this is the perfect conclusion to The Dark Knight trilogy. It's not, otherwise it would have been called The Dark Knight Rises trilogy. Instead what we got was an OK ending to a very good trilogy. And that's better than a crappy one.
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