Rise! Rise! Rise! Fall.

Here it is. Another Batman review. Fast Forward, Calgary's alternative News and Entertainment Weekly Newspaper covered the story and said, "There's nothing left to say about The Dark Knight Rises". I really think that there is. 

"Should we be excited for the release of The Dark Knight Rises this weekend? Unless we’re all a bunch of total dickheads then yes, yes we should." or....

"I’m sure there are idiots on the Internet who hate on Nolan’s films, but I’m also sure they are ugly virgins who post on their Tumblrs about the latest flavour of Toaster Strudel. Just eat Pop Tarts, you pretentious jackasses."

So at the risk of sounding like a pretentious ugly virgin (low blow FFWD) , I'm going to admit something potentially socially stigmatic: I didn't enjoy The Dark Knight Rises. 

If you haven't seen the movie, I don't suggest you read this blog post because there are spoilers and I wouldn't want to influence you before you went and saw the movie for yourself. I am not going to say that people shouldn't watch this film. They should. They should see it and think about where it fits in the Trilogy and what it is as a piece of cinema. I'm not going to discuss the stunning visual quality of the movie, the music  or the production of this film. Yes, all those things are rave worthy. But they don't make a movie matter. What made Nolan's movies an elevation of the superhero genre was that they were both entertaining and very, very, intelligent. This time around, the plot construction and execution was half-baked and thoughtless. 

Let me identify myself as a fan of Nolan's previous two Batman movies. I was really excited for Dark Knight Rises. I had heard good things from people whose opinions I respect and admire, the trailer made me squeal and I arrived several hours before the theatre opened to secure a good spot to see it. I also walked in with lower expectations. I knew it wasn't going to be The Dark Knight (what could be?), just like how I know that every Pixar movie isn't going to be Wall-E. But Pixar's other movies are smart and innovative even if they aren't perfection. Well except for Cars 2. And really, Dark Knight Rises is the Cars 2 of Pixar's cannon.   When I was in the theatre I was observing my own reaction and questioning it, "Why aren't I feeling more giddy? Am I...bored?" I often found myself covering my eyes, palming my forehead, crossing my arms and steadily sinking deeper into my chair as the rest of the theatre stared on with doe-eyed enthrallement. 

Okay, okay, I didn't like it. Why? 

It doesn’t matter if you haven’t read the comics and you see this movie. Because either way, it doesn’t make any sense. There are too many plot holes. The characters are soulless and underdeveloped. I just didn’t care about any of them. I was bored by the pseudo-witty dialogue whose punchline falls flat even among a theatre of die-hard fans of the trilogy. 

Let's get specific for a moment. Here are your spoilers.

Bane is the new villain of the movie, masquerading as an anarchic liberator of Gotham ('liberating' the working class and poor of Gotham, thus raising an army) who robs the stock markets and blows up sections of the city in a frenzy and plans to blow the rest of it up at a later date with a timed atom bomb that he says he's given to a random citizen.  This random citizen can decide to blow up Gotham. The idea with this bomb was that these people live in fear because someone in he city has the trigger. It was similar to the boat scene in The Dark Knight—where the goodness of people is tested. But then it turns out that Miranda Tate has the button all along and this is a set-up and then I care quite a bit less because the morality is lost. During this time of fascism, you never see Bane run Gotham. If this was a story about Bane wanting to run Gotham city and change it, then okay. But it's not. He is just a crazy person who wrecks shit up with no character motivation backing him up. Don't let his schmoozy-British-impossible-to-understand-speech spoken through a mechanical voice box apparatus fool you into thinking he's a round character. And I hope you don't think he's cool just because he pulls on his suspenders like he’s in a rap video. 

Selina Kyle, Catwoman played by Anne Hathaway is cool and clever and provides some comic relief, but her appearances are also pretty brief and fleeting and it becomes pretty hard to believe that she and Bruce Wayne become a romance. But for what Hathaway was given in the script, she was great. 

Miranda Tate/Talia Al'Ghul is woefully underdeveloped considering that she is the actual villain of the movie. Apart from her painfully stoic and unlikely sex with Bruce Wayne, the reveal of her identity falls something very short of spectacular. This movie takes great leaps with its characters that haven't been earned. They don't make sense and their emotions are disingenuous. The Miranda Tate/Talia conundrum provides a shock factor almost equivalent to Joseph Gordon Levitt's Blake turning out to be Robin. While the Talia Al'Ghul plot is relevant to the story, Robin being squeezed into the movie is not. But it's shocking (I would also like to insert 'spirit fingers' here). For the average movie-goer I imagine it created a spark of recognition. They think "Robin! Yes I know that name! He's part of Batman. Nolan just slipped him in! How genius! How BAD ASS."  The Dark Knight Rises relies on shock factor of this reveal as many others in the movie to keep the audience 'happy' (while infuriating others. Really just me and Cathryn) and trick them into thinking that they're oh so clever. Relying on something so trivial and sensational are a part of action movie conventions that I thought Nolan was above.  

Batman is sent to a prison in another country on the other ed of the world where the inmates speak their own made-up language and are--despite the grime that may discolour their complexions--all white and British. Nolan, we understand that you like hiring British Actors. You've got Caine and Hardy already, but for the sake of your fictional middle-eastern hell-hole, you would think that you'd branch out a little. He was brought there by Bane (who was born and grew up here) to be tortured by the inmates. Yet, they help him find his way out of the gaping hole at the top of the prison and as they in their gibberish yell "Rise!" and Batman climbs his way out, I thought that this surely must be one of the cheesiest, overwrought scenes I have seen in not just any Nolan film, but it any movie.  

Batman is able to travel from this place back to Gotham City to save the day despite having no superpowers like let's say flight (which you smart reader, already knew), no money, none of his handy gadgets and I assume no accessibility to this place. But whatever right, it's a comic book movie. 

But here is the kicker: back to the bomb. Batman decides to take the atom bomb in his flying machine over the ocean and away from Gotham, sacrificing himself but saving the lives of millions. After the explosion and the brief funeral for Bruce, we see  him and Selina Kyle in Florence sitting in the same café as Alfred and the credits come up. The theatre clapped. I buried my head between my knees and muttered “WHY?” over and over again under my breath. He’s supposed to die people! Part of Batman’s appeal is that he is a regular guy (apart from being a Billionaire who can pay someone to make his gadgets). In the comics, dying was humanizing, it was recognition, it was an act of sacrifice, it was a grownup movie for our Hugh Heffnerian protagonist. It really was something to get weepy about and call heroic. And yet that doesn’t happen here. He sits having a drink, raising a toast Alfred. Happily Ever After. 

The logics of how he survived that was he supposedly ejected himself just in time and let it run on autopilot. The camera stays on the vehicle. It keeps panning to Wayne in the vehicle. And then it blows up still on the screen. If he ejected, we would have seen it. Did we see the vehicle crash into the ocean and potentially cause a earthquake or tidal wave? No. Christopher Nolan, if it’s not a actually an ATOMIC BOMB, don’t call it one. Because even if he ejected, he would have died. If he flew into the air via parachute or landed into the ocean he would have died. It's an atomic bomb.

So there I was with my head between my knees, enraged and disappointed and Fraser leans over and says "You can't be mad! It's still Batman!" And people, this isn't an excuse. You must be smarter than that. Because you stamp "Batman" on something it doesn't make it immune to criticism or even dislike. "It's badass! It's Batman!" Come on. I'm not going to get caught up in the action scenes and not pay attention to plot or structure or (this is probably no big deal) character. My panties aren't so wet that I'm oblivious to what makes a good story when sensation is excluded. 

And I think that people are praising this film because it's what’s expected. It’s Nolan. He delivered with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Did he fucking ever. And maybe it’s easier to praise something mindlessly without processing what a massive disappointement the movie is.

Again FFWD...

"Whatever issues you have with The Dark Knight, you’d be crazy not to respect its ambition. It cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce and never pandered to the lowest common denominator. Nolan created new expectations for what a big summer blockbuster could be. And we loved the hell out of it. So you don’t need Reel Talk to tell you why The Dark Knight Rises is significant. You’re probably just as sick of hearing about it as I am, you just want to sit down in your seat with some Maltesers and an enormous iced tea and enjoy the final installment of one of the greatest achievements in pop cinema of our time."

Yeah. I was really hoping I could. And now using an equally large iced tea and the previous two films, I will wash the stain The Dark Knight Rises has left in my brain.