#48 - The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Yes. I know this film has been out for a while right now. I was waiting for a friend to come over from a vacation so we (my group of friends) could all watch it without him missing it. And it was a tortuous wait, I mean, I bumped into Batman pictures on Facebook, 9gag and the like all the time, and quickly skipped them afraid of being spoiled. But it paid off. Kind of. Fuck those guys from my former high school that we bumped into and (almost) spoiled the film for all of us.

I don't think I need to make this clear, but make sure you've seen Batman Begins and The Dark Knight before seeing this. That being said, does this third part hold up as a worthy sequel? Does it close Christopher Nolan's trilogy properly? Abso-freaking-lutely. The film starts eight years after The Dark Knight, where order has returned to Gotham and Batman has retired for a long time, with Bruce Wayne secluded in his manor. After Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman (Anne Hathaway) steals some jewels from Wayne, which helps the mysterious Bane (Tom Hardy) to set in motion a plan that will destroy Gotham City for good, Batman is forced to return to action.

And the rest of the events are coreographed spectacularly. Like the two previous entries in Nolan's  trilogy, there's plenty of slow, dramatic scenes to go along the usual action scenes, both of which kick ass by the way. The slow paced scenes have great dialogue and characters, and the action is perfectly coreographed and put together. There's the perfect balance between them. While most of the scenes may not be as memorable as the first two entries, Catwoman's second heist scene and Bruce escaping the prison were really good, and the back breaking scene was pretty well adapted from the comics.

       

lol, Bane even says "...Break you!" right after that.

Well, if you've seen the previous films you know the supporting cast is awesome, and everyone reprises their roles, including Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Comissioner Gordon, and Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. Their roles are a little downplayed in this film though, but that's alright, since you have Tom Hardy and Anne Hathaway to fill the blanks. I really like Bane in this film (I mean, you can't really get it worse than Schumacher's Bane from Batman and Robin). Tom Hardy's performance is great, even with the restrictive mask he can convey emotion through his eyes and voice. His motive is not as clear as previous villians Ra's Al Ghul or the Joker, but it's still a great bad guy. And though at first I was worried about Catwoman (she still doesn't really remind me of the original character a lot) but she was pretty cool and nailed the morally ambiguous part perfectly.

     

 I like Michelle Pfeiffer's Catwoman better, but Hathaway was really good.

I know my verdict may come a little late (well, very late) but what the hell, I liked this film a lot. It closes Nolan's Batman trilogy perfectly, adds plenty of new, interesting characters and surprised the fuck out of me, even when social networks and every asshole I know tried spoiling the film for me.