The Dark Knight Rises

The final installment of Christopher Nolan’s Batman reboot is better than Part One and not as impressive as Part Two, but I actually thought it was the best of the trilogy. That's not saying much... calling Dark Knight Rises my favorite Christopher Nolan film is like calling Bounce my favorite fabric softener: I can appreciate it if its there, but I have no real use for it. What I liked in this movie was the cast, especially Anne Hathaway.  She's an odd actress, so good in some films and so bad in others. I also liked Tom Hardy’s villain, Bane, despite being unable to see his face or understand much of what he’s saying. Though he’s no Heath Ledger, he’s way more interesting than a digital character. And I think I finally accepted Christian Bale in the role of Batman, though I maintain that his voice is extremely silly. Maybe he worked more for me this time because Bale spends more time as Bruce Wayne than as Batman in this film, or because the Wayne character is damaged goods at this point in the series, and therefore more interesting.

But as in Nolan's other two Batman movies, the script is an unfocused mess, with too many characters and too much exposition jammed into the most ridiculous places. There are actual fight scenes in which characters spell out their relationships to each other—and for the audience's benefit—between punches, using long sentences that would seem artificial in a walk-and-talk scene and are downright laughable in a fistfight. I literally did laugh out loud more than once at the absurdity of some of the expository dialogue in this movie.

This is the first Hollywood film I’ve seen in an IMAX presentation. Nolan is a champion of celluloid film, which I applaud and am grateful for, and he shot some of this movie on actual IMAX stock rather than converting digital video. I’m all for the medium, but I have to say that I thought shooting only 40 percent of a movie in IMAX was one of the dumbest gimmicks I’ve ever seen. If a filmmaker wants to make a film in IMAX – great, but he’s gotta do the whole film that way. In this picture, the aspect ratio and quality of the film stock shift constantly, drawing attention away from the narrative and onto the format. It is as distracting as a movie shot partially in 3D, with text reading “Put on your glasses!” flashing onscreen any time a big action sequence or beautiful establishing shot is about to happen. 

I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of comic book movies or of Christopher Nolan. But I will keep seeing movies about Batman because I think he's the most interesting of the comic book superheroes, and I will keep seeing Nolan's movies because I respect his obvious love of cinema, even though I never like what he does with it.