Review: The Dark Knight Rises

Batman has always been my favorite superhero.  As a matter of fact, I have been a Batman fan so long, I am not sure where my original love for the character started.  I remember watching the Super Friends television shows of the 1970s as a child, but I had a Batman outfit that my grandmother had made for my uncle and then passed down to me (and later iterations that my mother made) as a preschooler.  I vividly remember how exciting it was to dress in the costume and pretend that I was someone else - a hero.  A Batman utility belt I received for Christmas when I was probably four was a prized possession, and it led to one incident where my grandmother got pretty mad at me for knocking over a store display with it once when I went shopping with her - in full costume no doubt.

Later on, when I was in high school 1989's Batman movie brought about a rediscovery of the character for me, as well as the realization that Batman wasn't just for (or maybe even primarily for) kids.  I became a regular reader of the Batman comics titles from that year until marriage, career and fatherhood brought a change in priorities.

Anyway, all of that is to say that Batman, unlike the Avengers, Spider-Man, or Superman, is very personal to me in a way that is hard to describe.  When I saw the horrendous Green Lantern movie or the over-loaded Spider-Man 3, I only lamented the two hours I wasted on watching them, but it didn't really bother me too much.  The Batman movies of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher, however, bothered me because in various ways they strayed from the characters, stories and history.  Batman had a young Joker as the killer of Bruce Wayne's parents and had Batman basically kill the Joker at the end.  Batman Returns had a Penguin who was a foul, deformed sewer dweller and a schizophrenic Catwoman.  Two-Face in Batman Forever was a complete nutjob and Robin was a full-grown man.  And Batman and Robin?  Nipple-suits is just the tip of the iceberg (see what I did there?).  All of the movies strayed from the Batman mythos in one way or another, which is to be expected when you have a character that is (now) over 70 years old and has seen many different versions.  However, none of them fit my vision of what Batman should be, and worse, they were cartoony in a way that downplays the best thing about Batman as a hero - his plausibility.  Batman is super-smart, super-rich, and super-skilled, but he doesn't come from Asgard or Krypton.  He isn't bitten by a radioactive spider or given an alien ring.  He is only a man - driven by anger, vengeance, a sense of justice and a determination to keep criminals from overrunning his city.

What I love about Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy is that where he strays from the comic book Batman, he strays toward realism and plausibility.  His Ra's al Ghul isn't immortal.  His scarecrow doesn't have straw sticking out of his sleeves and a rope belt.  His Joker is a believable and truly scary psychopath.  And Nolan, with his brother Johnathan and David S. Goyer, has based each of his movies on actual comic book stories, which, oddly enough, is pretty rare for comic book superheroes.

The Dark Knight Rises is inspired and partially based on three comic book story arcs.  The most obvious parallel is the Knightfall series (1993), which features the first appearance of Bane - a mysterious muscle-bound genius who wants to destroy Batman and take over Gotham.  No Man's Land (1999), in which Gotham is separated from the mainland and is overrun by gangs and The Dark Knight Returns (1986) which depicts an older, battered Batman returning to Gotham after a ten-year absence, also serve as references.

In the movie, eight years has passed since the events of The Dark Knight, and Batman has been basically unseen since he took the fall for Harvey Dent's murder. Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale) is a recluse and a physical and emotional cripple.  His body has been ravaged by his former nighttime exploits. His company is in disarray and foundering from poor financial decisions.  With Rachel dead and his alter-ego in hiding, he passes the days aimlessly.  Gotham, however, seems to be riding high.  Organized crime is non-existent, as the "Dent Act" has allowed the police and the justice system to put away most hardened criminals in Blackgate Prison.  Bruce's faithful butler Alfred (the superb Michael Caine) attempts to rouse Bruce from his lethargy, but it takes a robbery of his personal safe in Wayne Manor by a mysterious woman to get his juices flowing again.  Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), posing as a maid during a charity event at the Wayne estate, cracks the safe and steals his mother's pearls - the ones that figured into the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne years before.  However, what intrigues Bruce is that Kyle seems to have actually been after his fingerprints, which she lifted from the safe.  Bruce's investigation opens his eyes to the state of his company and the realization that something bigger is going on in Gotham.  Then an attack on Gotham's stock exchange by the mercenary/criminal Bane (Thomas Hardy) brings Batman out of retirement.  Unfortunately, Bane's plans for Gotham have been a long time in development, and, while Batman has little information about Bane, the opposite is far from true.  Bane's plan is to destroy Batman/Bruce first, and then force him to watch Gotham be destroyed as well.  Can Batman stop him before all is lost?

Things I really liked about the movie:

• Jeopardy - In Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, while the stories were great, I was never in much doubt that the important characters, like Bruce, Alfred, Lucius, or Gordon, were going to live.  Knowing the comics, I was pretty sure that they were going to be part of the story.  However, because Nolan and Bale have both made it clear that this is the last movie in their Batman arc and represent the end of the story, all bets are pretty much off on who will make it to the end.  Lots of internet speculation (and some late-night talk show controversy) has centered around whether or not Batman/Bruce would live or die at the end of the movie.  All this made the jeopardy of this movie feel more real.  Not knowing who will live or die means that the danger feels much more real than in the previous films.
• The wonderful toys - The new Bat - the aerial vehicle - steals every scene it's in, and the Batpod is cool even when Selina is driving it.  The gadget that I thought was funniest was a little throwaway gag that could easily be missed.  When Bruce, after his long absence, appears at a charity event, the paparazzi gather around and start flashing pictures.  Bruce quickly and discreetly presses a button on a device in his hand, and all the cameras stop working.  Now all the celebrities are going to want one of those.
• Selina Kyle - Although the name Catwoman is never spoken in the movie, this version is much closer to the comics than the Michelle Pfeiffer version or the Halle Berry debacle.  I did not expect to like Anne Hathaway in this role, but she gave a much more nuanced performance than I have seen from her before, and she was believable in the fight scenes as well.
• Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake - With Gordon as police commissioner and out of the action for much of the movie, Blake serves as more or less the new Gordon - a good cop who is trying to do right by the people of Gotham as well as his own moral compass.
• Parallels to current events - When Batman fights Bane for the first time in the movie, Bane taunts Batman by telling him that he has grown weak from too many victories.  That immediately struck me as applicable to the United States in the post-Cold War era.  The lack of an obvious enemy led to a false belief that we were at the "end of history," and that prosperity and peace were a permanent condition.  This complacency left us unprepared for the terror attacks and financial hardships that came later.  The parallel has also been drawn between Bane's populist message to the people of Gotham and the Occupy Wall Street movement, although the script and shooting predated the actual protest events.  Nevertheless, Bane attacks the greed and corruption of those in power with the envy and covetousness of those who are not, at least while it suits his purposes.
• The Ending - I am not going to spoil it for those of you who haven't seen it yet, but I will say that I am satisfied with the arc of the story.  I liked the fact that the movie referenced the previous two heavily (it might be a good idea to watch them again if you haven't seen them recently) and that it set the stage for a way to continue the thread of the films without forcing another reboot (Amazing Spider-Man, anyone?).  While the ending didn't make me want to jump up and cheer like the end of The Dark Knight, and I would be happy to watch three more Nolan/Bale Batman movies, I am happy with the story.  What more can you ask?