Mathmasons Blog: The Dark Knight Rises Review

The Dark Knight Rises is directed by Christopher Nolan, it stars Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Marion Cotillard, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon Levitt, Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman and Matthew Modine.

It runs at 2 hours and 44 minutes, a ridiculous running length for a movie nowadays which only someone like Chris Nolan and a few others could pull off.

(Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Peter Jackson)

It has a huge budget of 250 million dollars, more than the Avengers and any other movie that’s going to be released and has been released so far this year.

I personally enjoyed the film, it had a heavy dose of action expected from the last in the trilogy, the villain was definitely not a let down.

But not without some problems, firstly the sound mixing, in the IMAX theater (which the film looked stunning in) where I was struggling to even hear what the characters were saying, this was usually because of the booming Hans Zimmer music playing constantly throughout the film.

The various plot holes, where the hell did Bane drop Bruce off, looked like the middle east or something and how did he get to Gotham so fast, and why was he dressed like he was out on a Friday afternoon when he greeted a fully equipped Cat woman, mind you this is whilst the whole damn city is under siege by the United States Military and a superhuman Terrorist Leader is ruling it.

The point of Matthew Modine, what the hell was this character for?

How Bruce got from a bearded recluse with a walking stick to a clean-shaven superhero.

The running time, Jesus, the first scene after the prologue where Gordon is talking at Wayne Manor and blah blah blah all that is completely pointless.

Some characters not developed very well, Marion Cotillard for instance, and the after sex scene with her and Bruce seemed cliched and a little bit forced.

This seems like a direct sequel to Batman Begins, this whole movie jumps back to the plot of Batman Begins and all that (league of shadows, Ra's Al Ghul) shot in a similar way as well, jumping away from the different cinematography in the Dark Knight. The audience wants something new! We're done with Ra's, the Batman world has tons of Great villains they could've introduced, the ventriloquist, Killer Croc, moth man.

These are just the things I don't like about the film and felt Chris should've changed, no doubt he’s one of the best directors working now and pulling something off of this scale was definitely a challenge, but look, Peter Jackson did it, but then again, the Lord of the Rings was filmed as one movie whilst Nolan went on to do Inception before jumping back into the Batman world.

The Good Things

The good thing is the Villain, Bane played by Tom Hardy, this guys just a ton of fun to watch albeit not as good as Heath Ledgers Joker!

Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, great casting choice, she's great in the role.

Joseph Gordon Levitt, fantastic actor, plays it well; his character is really fleshed out.

The prologue, although not as good as the Dark Knights is still holy fucking shit cool.

The longer usage of the IMAX camera, the most visually stunning form of cinema as far as I'm concerned, 3D is great but enough with the 3D CONVERTED films.

Bad use of 3D

Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (converted)

Clash of the Titans (converted)

Good use of 3D

Hugo (filmed in 3D)

Avatar (filmed in 3D)

The Adventures of Tintin (filmed in 3D)

Another good use of IMAX was in Brad Bird's MI4 Ghost Protocol.

IMAX is a not much appreciated format and not much known format, whilst everyone knows 3D.

Amazing action scenes, very realistic, I mean, things felt REAL, and made me wonder how the hell they did that, I won't compare to any other films.

The score, this is expected of Hans Zimmer, who always delivers the best.

It pays off, the movie everyone’s been waiting for has given everything they wanted, things feel BIG and EPIC.