Dark Knight Rises

Christopher Nolan has suddenly become the Steven Spielberg of our generation. No, that is not an over statement or even sarcastic in nature. When you truly think about it Chris Nolan has achieved a very prestigious status that is people actually have certain expectations about his films. This is very rare these days when people including me have carried real high levels of expectations from a director more than the franchise maybe. Everyone was blown away by the tremendous success and brilliance of INCEPTION and maybe the majority of people were expecting more if not the same from him in his next Batman venture. Hmm, so lets's dig in and analyse the film and see if batman prevails or not.

As most of the people have already seen this movie and know hat it basically is about let me get straight to what I felt about it. Like many others I too was really excited for another Batman movie, who wouldn't  be after the cinematic master piece of The Dark Knight. I was more than ready to be enthralled by a new type of villain this time around. While the Joker is my favorite villain of any superhero franchise, I was waiting to see the brute force types in Bane. He is smart and has the brain to pull off something terrifyingly big to demolish Gotham but in the end he obviously does not have the character of unpredictable and  psychotic traits of Joker. So tough act to follow.

The movie does start off with a spectacular way to show off it's villain. That sequence is brilliantly shot and is creative in all fields. Never have I seen the introduction of the villain in a plane tearing up at the heights of the skies. Brilliant again sir. This is trademark Nolan style where the first sequence never has exposition or story flow to it, it's master introduction technique if pulled off well(except Inception where there was a key point in the script which was the introduction scene). The mood is set well where the terrifying presence of Bane is established well.

My main concern with film is quickly visible in the first half of the film, Nolan wants to tell so much but obviously he can't in one film, but he has definitely shot the film accordingly, so to make it shorter it has been heavily edited. Nolan films, if I have noticed correctly do not have that many jump cuts as this films exhibits. This is obviously done to shorten the film length which I personally hate. This really breaks up the flow of the story and distorts the fine art of story telling that this man obviously possesses. So the editing is so fast it got me really thrown off track.

The curse of the cat woman continues and this film does not do justice to this character like many before have tried to an failed again and again. Anne does look very good in the cat suit but I just cant get the image of Halle Berry out of my head. I felt this character was unnecessary and added more as a gimmick rather than furthering the story. In a story which already has so much going in it this character was a waste as it is very forgettable and should have been replaced with the main story line.

The second half does provide for some fine moments especially the fight between Bane and Batman. It has it's moments but they are far too apart. The story comes into it's own in the second half and some of the major plots are unraveled here. There are so many things going on but the reason of it all, the glue to make it all stick is not portrayed correctly. It somehow does not come together to wow us like in the previous edition. Major concern again being that the script has so much in it but so little time to tell all this that the execution in the end looks haphazard. The film is not bad it is relatively good but it misses it's mark as the end of a great series. It deserved a grand finale a tale that could have been remembered but rather ends up being just about right even forgettable by Nolan standards. My biggest problem was the way Bane gets killed, he is what the film is all about and the way he dies in the end is really pathetic. The writers definitely messed up there. But in the end people did like it and that is what matters. I personally prefer the previous editions in the franchise over this film. Hopefully Chris maintains what he is good at and we can have something better than this in his next venture...........