IMDB 250 8.5 - The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Of course everyone's already seen this movie so this is all a bit pointless. Everyone agrees it's a good movie so I'll be focusing more on the negative to make it more interesting.

Bi-Villainy

I've always felt that the "Dark Knight" tradition of having two villains per movie is a bad thing. In the first one, the Scarecrow added nothing to the movie - they should have focused completely on Ja Rule.

The second one is much worse. You've got Keith Ledger as the Joker. Every second devoted to Harvey Dent is a waste of everyone's time. He's half good, he's half bad, he's all I don't care. Of course, Ledger's performance is so great, even the scenes focusing on Batman suffer by comparison.

In the Dark Knight Rises, the extra villain is Anne Hathaway's Catwoman. Even though this is the most acceptable instance of the three, at almost 3 hours long, it could have easily been omitted.

Bane

I don't know anything about comic books but it seems to me that in the great pantheon of Batman villains, Bane is quite far down the list. Ok, maybe the Riddler doesn't fit the tone. And, hey, maybe the Penguin is on vacation. But how many rungs down the baddy ladder do you have to go down before you reach Bane.

That aside, does it work in the movie? Kinda. I mean, Bane is a good villain in theory but the voice is ridiculous. Every time he opens his exhaust vent it's like a Batman villain parody. I was trying to nail down what his voice reminds me of and the closest I could come is it's something like Dr. Evil meets Yoda. But then when he's making his sweeping pronouncements to the citizens of Gotham I kept having flashbacks of Theodore Roosevelt. You can't expect me to root against Teddy!

Speaking of speeches. There's one scene where Bane addresses a stadium of people over the PA system. I can't imagine they strived for accuracy in this scene. If you truly combined Bane's own distortion with that of a public address system in a stadium, it would sound like he was taking your McDonald's drive-thru order (McBane?). It wouldn't work. He'd have control of a nuclear bomb but no one to tell it to. In all the years I've watched the Peanuts specials, I never assumed Charlie Brown's mom was threatening nuclear holocaust.

Conclusion

Obviously, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a good movie. Its special effects are phenomenal, great acting, great direction, great writing. Michael Caine gives a particularly strong performance as Alfred. From an IMDB 250 perspective it seems pretty overrated, but it is well worth seeing.

7/10.
Total Top "250" Movies Seen: 366.