Review: The Dark Knight Rises
Gonna keep this one very, very spoiler-free, so instead of going into detail about what I did or didn't like about the story or elements, I'll just compare it in broad strokes to the two other summer comic-book movies I watched, The Avengers and The Amazing Spider-Man.
The Dark Knight Rises rounds out the summer comic-book movie blockbuster season, and, if reports are to be believed, the Christopher Nolan/ Christian Bale collaboration on the franchise. And it's a fine swan-song. Enjoyable, but not the pinnacle of comic-book movies that some people seem to be claiming. There are huge, tumbler-sized plot holes throughout, some missed opportunities, and it could stand to be trimmed by 30 to 45 minutes.
While Banes voice has vastly improved from when I saw the opening six minutes at the start of Mission Impossible 4 in IMAX, there are still some terribly mumbled scenes, and I missed several lines of dialogue. Worse, I even found it difficult to catch what Gordon was saying in one particular scene, and got two characters completely confused, which led to me not understanding a key plot towards the end of the movie. Full disclosure: No one else made the same mistake, so it my have just been me getting bored at that point in the film.
The Avengers still stands as the best the summer offered. It was the perfect blend of action, character moments and well paced, super-powered fights.
If I'm, being honest, TDKR is probably a better movie than The Amazing Spider-Man for most people, but as a big fan of the friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, my bias has to be taken into account when I say that I had a better time watching Spidey than Batman.
I deconstructed the movie with some friends after, and the general agreement was that it was better than I thought. Take from this what you want.
In summary, it's far from a bad movie (I'm looking at you, Prometheus), but it's nowhere near a great movie either. I feel it will do well in the box-office figures, but given time, people will sour to it as the problems it has sink in or become more obvious with repeated viewings.
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2 comments:
It's funny you say you had problems with actors mumbling. I missed about half the dialogue in the entire movie because I couldn't hear them properly. Bane was the worst, by far, but Batman, Gordon and Miranda were a bit hard to hear at some points too.
You didn't like Prometheus? Am I the only person who actually really enjoyed it?
Yup. The dialogue mixing in general was awful. I picked on Bane and Gordon because they stood out the worst for me, but they weren't alone.
I hated Prometheus within the first 20 minutes, and more and more as the movie went on. Not only did it destroy the creepiness of the Xenomorph at the end by revealing it as just some biological weapon, but it was filled with poor special effects (the old-man makeup was appalling), terrible characterization, and utterly inconceivable inconsistencies, such as, but not limited too: How did the squid monster grow to that size in a contained lab?!?! Where did all that mass come from? And how, HOW do you get lost in a complex that being mapped AS WE WATCH?
Actually, it's been long enough that I may just have to blog about Prometheus in a spoiler-filled tear-down.
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