Mr. Nolan, Trust Your Audience! My Thoughts on The Dark Knight Rises (SPOILERS AHEAD)

I’ve always been a fan of the Batman, the intrigue, the over-the-top villains, the detective tale in costumed glory.  In fact, I think the comic book medium is (or at least can be) one of the most effective storytelling techniques out there.  That said, I probably should have been more excited these last seven years about Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight saga.  The truth is, I enjoyed all of these films, but neither of the first two really felt like Batman movies to me, so I haven’t really treated them as such.  They’re good, mind you and I rushed excitedly to see each of them.  The experience of seeing the first two and picking them apart critically was a joy.  It was more than a comic book movie; it was an artistic experience.  Batman Begins was the first time that I could remember a comic book story being treated with the same depth and care as one would treat a Tolstoy novel.  Even though neither BB nor TDK were my favorite incarnations of Batman, the respect that was given to telling a more realistic Batman story was refreshing to this fangirl.

Last night’s viewing of The Dark Knight Rises was a bit of a departure from that.  It was entertaining, but not as good of a film as the other two.  It lacked the finesse of the first and the passion of the second.  It just wasn’t as good of a movie, but it was still good.  It’s unfair to compare it to Marvel’s most recent endeavors, so I’ll keep that to a minimum except for in the few places where it applies.  Here’s the deal, good, bad and otherwise:

IT’S NOT A BATMAN MOVIE, IT’S AN EVERYONE BUT BATMAN MOVIE (AND THAT’S NOT A BAD THING)

Most of the movie doesn’t focus on Batman.  In fact, it might be almost an hour into the film before you see the titular hero.  The World’s Greatest Detective is the one doing the least detecting in this one.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt takes on that role and carries the movie, in my opinion.  Hathaway’s Catwoman gets to subtly show her protective, maternal side (without it getting too heavy handed) in her relationship with a street girl who I am guessing was supposed to be Holly Robinson.  Jim Gordon takes a bit of a backseat, but still provides a critical point of view.

In the first two movies, you see Batman creating a world from his point of view.  In Rises, you see the point of view from the world he’s created.  It was smart, if not well executed.

ANNE HATHAWAY IS MARVELOUS.  IT’S TOO BAD SHE HAS NO SEXUAL CHEMISTRY WITH CHRISTIAN BALE

I heard such tales about Hathaway and Bale on set that I expected there to be a palpable heat between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne.  There wasn’t.  They bantered at each other with the approximate sexual tension of a fifteen year married couple who were staying together for the sake of the children.  There was a strong sense of “like” between them, just not the sense that they could find themselves unable to decide whether they should hit each other or kiss.

This is not to say that Hathaway’s Catwoman isn’t good.  Her performance is one of the most compelling in the franchise, possibly as good as Ledger’s Joker, though her current state of being alive and her gender will easily prevent her for being recognized as such.  She performs the role with expert vulnerability and is absolute sex on screen.  However, I fear she’ll have to commit to some major partying with Michelle Tanner before she will be given the props she deserves for this role.

GOTHAM DOESN’T LOOK LIKE ONE CITY.

In the previous movies in the franchise, Nolan has used the looks of several cities to create a blended and unique Gotham.  He does the same in Rises, but this film isn’t as smooth in its visual transitions.  I often found myself saying, “Now we’re in Pittsburgh.  New York.  Pittsburgh.  Soundstage.”  It wasn’t the seamless Gotham of the previous films and the cinematography visually suffers for it.

MARION COTTILARD IS TERRIBLE.  SHE SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN CAST.

I say this as someone who recognizes Ms. Cottilard as a brilliant actress.  She’s not that in this movie.  Her character of Miranda Tate is so unbelievably boring that it becomes impossible to believe that Bruce Wayne would ever sleep with her.  She appears first at a party at Wayne Manor and is so utterly forgettable that when she showed up again a few scenes later, I thought “Crap. This is going to be Talia, isn’t it?”  Then I thought that maybe it was a brilliant sleight of hand by Nolan.  Keep her boring until she’s revealed as Talia.  That would have been amazing.

But it wasn’t amazing.  She wasn’t interesting as Talia any more than she was as a bland socialite stepping stone.  Her lines were delivered so poorly that I was trying to remember if I’d ever seen her in an interview in English.  I began to wonder if she actually knew the language or was simply given a phonetic script with loose descriptions of meaning.

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN DOESN’T TRUST HIS AUDIENCE.

As an actor, I’ve always been told that you have to trust your audience.  If you present a moment honestly, then you don’t have to explain it.  The audience is smart enough to figure out a lot of things. 

Christopher Nolan clearly doesn’t think that we are that smart.  In this film, he plays so many moments like a bad comedian who explains each joke to his audience.  An example:

Early in the film, Alfred (Michael Caine) says that he used to spend time in a Florentine café hoping that someday he would see Bruce there, perhaps with a family of his own, having left his life of darkness behind.  They wouldn’t speak, just nod in acknowledgement and that would be enough for Alfred to know that he had done right by his young master and that alone would clear his conscience of any failure to the Waynes.  They show Mr. Pennyworth in that same café at the end of the film, the focus is on his face which changes as he spots someone, smiles knowingly, and nods in acknowledgement. 

That was all we needed.  We know who Alfred saw.  Michael Caine’s a good enough actor for that.  We didn’t need to see a happy-go-lucky Bruce sitting with Selina Kyle at a table across the way to know that Alfred could finally be at peace or that our hero lived.  Nolan showed it to us anyway and completely diffused what could have been a beautiful moment.  The movie is filled with those.

IF YOU’VE EVER READ BATMAN, EXPECT FEW SURPRISES

Where the Marvel movies of the past few years are chock full of Easter eggs and surprises to make the diehard fans squeal, the Dark Knight Rises does very little to bow to the fanboys and girls.  In some ways, this is good.  It prevents the movie from devolving into the wink and nod camp that has plagued other Batman films.  In other ways, it ignores a lot of the details that make the Batman universe great.

There’s a brief nod to a panel from Kingdom Come that was a delight for me and a cameo by someone who made me happy, but other than that, the story is unbelievably predictable.  Dark Knight diehards will quickly realize that Miranda Tate is Talia.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt has to be some incarnation of the Batman’s oft ill-fated sidekick Robin.  The predictability is not necessarily bad (these characters are pretty well known, after all), but Nolan’s storytelling in Rises does nothing to make it feel new.  There’s little about this story that felt like it needed to be told, which is problematic.  It plodded on, with little drive or focus.  It was a long movie that felt long.

A FEW MORE THOUGHTS…

British people with Am-eh-RI-CKAN accents.  There’s a TV Tropes article about this and for good reason.  It’s all over this film.  Even Oldman’s first two lines sound more like a wizard from Hogwarts than a grizzled cop on the streets of an American city.

When Bane sets the Blackgate prisoners free (and presumably Arkham because Scarecrow got out), I was hoping to see more nods to characters from the Batman universe.  When they were showing the chaos, I would have loved a silhouette of what could be the Joker walking down an alley or maybe a tall, skinny man spray painting a question mark on the side of a building.  Something to indicate the world thrown into chaos by having these psychopaths loose.

The casual nature in which Bruce Wayne mentors John Blake about being Batman made if feel like becoming a superhero was as easy as getting your degree in Batmanning from the University of Phoenix Online.

If you can, go see a showing of this movie that is subtitled for the hearing impaired.  Bane’s mask and accent make him sound nearly unintelligible.  Seriously, they should have just called this character Darth Connery.

I wanted to see a teenaged Barbara Gordon.  It’s been eight years since Dent died.  I wanted to see the beginnings of what would become Batgirl.  Even if she’s just visiting her dad when Bane cuts off Gotham from the world and we only see her for half a second, I would’ve liked it.

Matthew Modine’s story was superfluous.  It was in no way important to have a half-baked storyline about some guy who wanted Gordon’s job.  Speaking of superfluous, the contrived way they bankrupted Wayne was ridiculous. Shave ten minutes off the movie by not having one of those storylines there or replace it with a character someone gives a darn about.

If Bruce Wayne was so completely bankrupt that they turned off the power to his house, how did he afford the travel expenses from the Pit prison to Gotham?

Those are just my first impressions.  Despite the flaws in the film, I enjoyed the experience and would like to see it a second time.  Now that the Nolan saga is over, I look forward to seeing what new incarnations of the World’s Greatest Detective will come to light and will look back on these films as a fascinating experiment on what a hero movie can be.  It doesn’t have to be campy.  It can be every bit as deep as the deepest drama without sacrificing the things that make comic books great.  I can’t wait to see what’s next.