I'll be honest from the get-go: I did not enjoy The Dark Knight Rises as much as a lot of other people. I don't think it was terrible; I don't think it was bad. I'm not clamouring to get 2.5 wasted hours of my life back. I'm not here to senselessly bash the movie either.
However, the more I reflect on what I saw and the decisions that Chris Nolan made, the more I felt the urge to drop to my knees, shake my fists in the air, and scream to the heavens: "Why, Chris? Why?!"
I think it goes without saying that there are spoilers to follow!
Bane
My first swathe of peeves centre around the main villain, Bane. I'm going to skirt around the voice issue: the fact that Tom Hardy managed to convey so much with only his eyes visible earned them a free pass on that front, as far as I'm concerned. My gripe centres more around the portrayal of the character himself.
I'm not a
massive reader of the comic books, but I do know this: Bane is a pretty smart guy. He worked out Batman's secret identity all on his own, and caused a lot more problems for Bruce Wayne than a bit of back pain. As far as my understanding of the character goes, I found his portrayal in
Justice League: Doom to be pretty much spot on: he crushed Bruce's spirit just as much as he crushed his body.
When we first met Bane, his ridiculously over-planned kidnapping put a grin on my face - this was what I was hoping for! Finally, we not only had a villain who could out-muscle the Bat, we also had one who could potentially outsmart him. Bane seeming to be a mercenary, and then turning the tables to reveal that he'd been manipulating Daggett all along - I was all set to tip my hat to Nolan at that point.
Then we got to the scene in the sewer: the breaking of the Bat. The muffled dialogue didn't help, but instead of the mental, spiritual, and physical victory that I was hoping for, it felt like Bane was just trash-talking while he smacked Bruce down like a thug. That whole scene felt flat to me - it felt too light on the brains, and too heavy on the brawn. Even finding out that Bane knew Batman's secret identity seemed like a blunt instrument: it was a backhand to the face, rather than the eloquent knife in the gut that it should have been. That's not a complaint about the acting: the scene just didn't work as intended for me. We never saw Bane's fearsome intellect unravelling the mystery.
Of course, in hindsight we know why. Bane didn't work it out for himself: Talia al Ghul told him who Batman was. And that's when things really start to go downhill for Bane. He goes from being the mastermind of the conquest of Gotham to being Talia's proxy. Everything suddenly seems like her plan, not his: he was just carrying it out, paving the way for her revenge. There was a tender moment when the truth came out, and Bane with sad eyes was mildly touching: but every impression I'd formed about him went pop at that point, and I was glad to see him take a rocket to the chest.
Miranda Tate
Speaking of Talia, she's the driving force behind my next bundle of odd plot choices. To be blunt, I felt like she added very little to the story. For a character who - if the big reveal is to be believed - is a central part of the narrative, a lot of her scenes seemed bolted on. Her romance with Bruce came out of nowhere: quite a few of the people I've chatted with didn't even remember the sex scene occurring, so it was clearly an important and memorable plot point.
To me, the journey from the two of them having never met before to Bruce's "I'll never forget you" line towards the end seemed less a fluid progression, and more of a record-breaking triple jump. It left the betrayal feeling like it didn't have the weight it deserved - why was Batman so upset about being betrayed by a broad he only seemed to have slept with once?
Stabbing Batman was an odd narrative move, too. Presumably it was a physical manifestation of the emotional knife in the gut that Bruce was supposed to be feeling at the time: but really, all it served to do was weaken Batman so that he couldn't use his uber new determination powers to kick Bane's ass. If Bane had won, it would have been a hollow victory because he and Talia had cheated: score one more for the diminished Bane tally.
Aside from the fan service, I'm struggling to see why Talia was there at all. Sure, it's poetic that the trilogy came full circle: Ra's al Ghul was there at the beginning; his daughter was there at the end. But we didn't really see Talia being Talia. There was no real ass-kicking; no showing off her ninja skills; just an angry woman driving a truck. Anyone could have been in that truck: it didn't need to be Talia.
I guess that sums up my sentiments pretty well, actually: it didn't need to be Talia. Maybe if the deception had been revealed to the audience earlier - something to build suspense, and so we
knew that Batman was walking into a trap. That could actually have made for a gutting (no pun intended) scene. But without that, Miranda Tate was a perfectly fine character all on her own, without the unnecessary name-drop.
Batman
This is the last wave, honest. And it all boils down to this: for a movie about Batman, we didn't really see all that much Batman.
In fact, for a
trilogy about Batman, we didn't see all that much. Between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, something like a year or eighteen months is supposed to have elapsed. We're then told that at the end of TDK, when Batman rides off into the sunset, that's pretty much the end of his career: the last confirmed sighting for eight years.
There are all kinds of problems with that. First of all, Bruce built a shiny new Batcave that he never actually got around to using: and that's a shame.
Beyond that though, it meant that bitter war veteran Bruce didn't sit right with me. He seemed to be channelling a mix of
The Dark Knight Returns and
Batman Beyond, with his greying hair, creaky joints, and super kung fu kick action leg brace. However, for a man who spent four times as long in retirement as he did in action, that kind of portrayal seems a bit excessive. Granted, I'd be pretty worn out of two years of fighting crooks, mobsters, and crazy clowns: but the ending of The Dark Knight seemed like it was leading into something, as if Batman was going to have adventures with all of the exciting villains that you know and love. Having him retire almost right away took the wind out of the sails of that ending: and I don't like that it diminishes the awesomeness of The Dark Knight, even if it's only slightly.
An added problem with the timeline is that the Joker - the first in a "new class of criminal" - is the only supervillain that Batman ever fights. Both Bane and Scarecrow were lumped in with the League of Shadows; the timeline doesn't really leave much room for anyone else. Bearing in mind the subtle Victor Zsasz appearance that we had in Batman Begins, I am genuinely surprised that Nolan didn't at least throw in a few Easter Egg characters during the Occupy Gotham stage of the story, or didn't fudge the timeline so that he could squeeze a few trophies into the background of the Batcave. Nolan didn't need to feature other villains, but it's kind of sad to thing that almost all of Batman's rogues gallery either doesn't exist in the Nolanverse, or will never get the opportunity to face off against the
real Batman.
Conclusion Endy Bit
That's most of it, anyway. There are a few other things that niggled me a little - the jury is still out on Selina Kyle for me, and her sucking Batman's face at the end seemed to come completely out of nowhere - but for the most part, I thought it was a fairly okay movie. A good movie. An enjoyable movie.
I can live with the Robin thing. I can live with Bane's voice. Please though, Chris, tell me you've got a buttload of unused footage, and are going to pull a Peter Jackson on us with a super-extended version that explains everything.