the dark knight rises
Jul. 20th, 2012 03:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kaydeefalls
THIS MOVIE. I LIKE IT. ANOTHER!
Um, okay, so yeah I saw the midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises. And will be very sleepy running two shows tomorrow morning, but whatever. TOTALLY WORTH IT. I am so glad I saw this movie unspoiled -- and let's face it, if I hadn't seen it tonight, I would have spoiled myself by reading everyone else's reviews, because Batman is not a superhero that is particularly near and dear to my heart, and neither previous film in the trilogy were at all twisty (excellent, yes -- plot twisty, no), so it wouldn't have occurred to me to beware of spoilers. SO GLAD I SAW IT UNSPOILED. I mean, it's not, like, Memento twisty, and sure, if I knew the comics better, I probably would've caught on way earlier, but still.
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the ending of this movie -- and of this version of Batman as a trilogy -- was basically perfection. Like, I am so giddily happy about the ending that I'm probably going to forget all of the other flaws in the film. BUT BLAKE WAS ROBIN ALL ALONG, AND HE IS THE DARK KNIGHT RISING, AND THE LAST SCENE WITH HIM IN THE CAVE MADE ME SO FUCKING HAPPY THAT I HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO KEYSMASHING AND CAPSLOCK ADSKAHFLKAKNCAKA. I was so totally thrown off the track by all the interviews in which Nolan swore up and down he would never write Robin into these movies, and then he twisted the fuck around it by giving us a harder-edged, ADULT Robin who still has that hero worship and idealism but tempered by pragmatism and being a cop and years of disillusionment and oh my god I love him so much (and the fact that he's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt DOES NOT HURT AT ALL, obvs).
Why, why is this the last film? I want to see JGL take up Batman's mantle SO BADLY. SO BADLY. Fuckses.
Also all of the casting was perfect, because this is a Chris Nolan film. I totally didn't see Miranda Tate's reveal coming (again, because I've never read the comics and didn't know that Ra's Al Ghul was supposed to have a daughter, not a son, so I completely fell for the bit about Bane being his kid). AND IT WAS AWESOME. I love Marion Cotillard as a villain. LOVE HER. I loved Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle as well. Implied!lesbian!Catwoman! Seriously, her "friend" was so obviously her girlfriend, it was awesome. Oh my gosh, why did they have to ruin that by pairing her up with Bruce at the very end, ugh. (I don't have any problems with Selina turning out to be bisexual rather than gay; I DO have problems with Bruce Wayne. Girl, you could do so much better. Whatever, maybe it's just a partners-in-crime riding off into the sunset together thing.) Um, and obviously Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman continue to be perfection in every film they make, that pretty much goes without saying.
Tom Hardy, oh, I am so sorry they chose Bane as the villain of this one. I think he did as good a job with the character as possible with a huge horrible mouth-mask muffling both his face and voice. His physicality was great! But Hardy is SUCH a wonderfully expressive actor, and that costume completely got in his way. Those like two seconds of flashback in which we got to actually see his full face contained more of an emotional sucker-punch than just about anything else in the movie. Also, his motivations as a villain were really scattered and poorly defined for 99% of the film -- until you find out that it was all for his girl. Which, still, kind of a weirdly drawn out social experiment for something that they only ever intended to end with complete annihilation, but whatever.
CAMEOS! Okay, Cillian Murphy wins hands-down for most awesome cameo. The Scarecrow as the judge! The entire movie theater completely lost it laughing at that. Bringing Liam Neeson back was a nice touch, tying the themes of Batman Begins back into it. (The whole plot had fantastic payoff in the end, though I really do think it meandered horribly for a while in the middle there.) I personally lost my shit right at the very beginning when Aiden Gillen turned up as a CIA agent (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, or Stuart Alan Jones from Queer As Folk). And then Torchwood's own Burn Gorman played a sleazebag for a good chunk of the movie, which filled me with glee. OWEN! <3
I had some issues with Bane's whole plot -- yes, I get that this is Occupy Wall Street taken to its anarchic extreme, but it made me really uncomfortable (were you TRYING to say that the rich have the right to rule over everyone else instead? Probably not, but that was a major vibe I got for a while there). Also, look, this incarnation of Gotham has always been Chicago, and I fucking loved that about it, but then like 75% of this movie was obviously New York instead, and then they'd cut back and forth between the two cities, and as someone who has lived in both for extended periods of time, that confused the fuck out of me. JUST PICK ONE OKAY. And it really should have stuck with Chicago, because it gave such a beautifully iconic look to the previous two films, while this one wound up looking like EVERY OTHER SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER instead. Ugh. Speaking of every other superhero movie, I realize it was a total coincidence, but Bruce's final sacrifice was basically identical to Tony Stark's at the end of Avengers, and that was kind of unfortunate. There is a nuclear bomb about to go off, and only I can fly it away to safety and kill myself in the process! Yup, been there, done that, Tony's version was way more poignant because he actually thought he was going to die while Bruce always knew he had a secret cop-out.
My biggest problem with Batman movies is that I really dislike Bruce Wayne as a character (and I'm not terribly fond of Christian Bale as an actor, while we're at it), but fortunately this movie spent most of its time focusing on Blake and Catwoman instead, so that was awesome. Secretly I wished JGL and Hardy could have had a scene together, but that's my residual Inception shipper speaking. (I got all excited when Gordon and Bane interacted, thank you Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.) And I totally called the ending with Bruce and Alfred in the cafe, BTW -- as soon as Alfred told him that story, you knew that was how the movie was going to end.
But JGL as Robin was still the greatest thing ever.
Um, okay, so yeah I saw the midnight showing of Dark Knight Rises. And will be very sleepy running two shows tomorrow morning, but whatever. TOTALLY WORTH IT. I am so glad I saw this movie unspoiled -- and let's face it, if I hadn't seen it tonight, I would have spoiled myself by reading everyone else's reviews, because Batman is not a superhero that is particularly near and dear to my heart, and neither previous film in the trilogy were at all twisty (excellent, yes -- plot twisty, no), so it wouldn't have occurred to me to beware of spoilers. SO GLAD I SAW IT UNSPOILED. I mean, it's not, like, Memento twisty, and sure, if I knew the comics better, I probably would've caught on way earlier, but still.
Let me get this out of the way right off the bat: the ending of this movie -- and of this version of Batman as a trilogy -- was basically perfection. Like, I am so giddily happy about the ending that I'm probably going to forget all of the other flaws in the film. BUT BLAKE WAS ROBIN ALL ALONG, AND HE IS THE DARK KNIGHT RISING, AND THE LAST SCENE WITH HIM IN THE CAVE MADE ME SO FUCKING HAPPY THAT I HAVE BEEN REDUCED TO KEYSMASHING AND CAPSLOCK ADSKAHFLKAKNCAKA. I was so totally thrown off the track by all the interviews in which Nolan swore up and down he would never write Robin into these movies, and then he twisted the fuck around it by giving us a harder-edged, ADULT Robin who still has that hero worship and idealism but tempered by pragmatism and being a cop and years of disillusionment and oh my god I love him so much (and the fact that he's played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt DOES NOT HURT AT ALL, obvs).
Why, why is this the last film? I want to see JGL take up Batman's mantle SO BADLY. SO BADLY. Fuckses.
Also all of the casting was perfect, because this is a Chris Nolan film. I totally didn't see Miranda Tate's reveal coming (again, because I've never read the comics and didn't know that Ra's Al Ghul was supposed to have a daughter, not a son, so I completely fell for the bit about Bane being his kid). AND IT WAS AWESOME. I love Marion Cotillard as a villain. LOVE HER. I loved Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle as well. Implied!lesbian!Catwoman! Seriously, her "friend" was so obviously her girlfriend, it was awesome. Oh my gosh, why did they have to ruin that by pairing her up with Bruce at the very end, ugh. (I don't have any problems with Selina turning out to be bisexual rather than gay; I DO have problems with Bruce Wayne. Girl, you could do so much better. Whatever, maybe it's just a partners-in-crime riding off into the sunset together thing.) Um, and obviously Gary Oldman and Morgan Freeman continue to be perfection in every film they make, that pretty much goes without saying.
Tom Hardy, oh, I am so sorry they chose Bane as the villain of this one. I think he did as good a job with the character as possible with a huge horrible mouth-mask muffling both his face and voice. His physicality was great! But Hardy is SUCH a wonderfully expressive actor, and that costume completely got in his way. Those like two seconds of flashback in which we got to actually see his full face contained more of an emotional sucker-punch than just about anything else in the movie. Also, his motivations as a villain were really scattered and poorly defined for 99% of the film -- until you find out that it was all for his girl. Which, still, kind of a weirdly drawn out social experiment for something that they only ever intended to end with complete annihilation, but whatever.
CAMEOS! Okay, Cillian Murphy wins hands-down for most awesome cameo. The Scarecrow as the judge! The entire movie theater completely lost it laughing at that. Bringing Liam Neeson back was a nice touch, tying the themes of Batman Begins back into it. (The whole plot had fantastic payoff in the end, though I really do think it meandered horribly for a while in the middle there.) I personally lost my shit right at the very beginning when Aiden Gillen turned up as a CIA agent (Littlefinger from Game of Thrones, or Stuart Alan Jones from Queer As Folk). And then Torchwood's own Burn Gorman played a sleazebag for a good chunk of the movie, which filled me with glee. OWEN! <3
I had some issues with Bane's whole plot -- yes, I get that this is Occupy Wall Street taken to its anarchic extreme, but it made me really uncomfortable (were you TRYING to say that the rich have the right to rule over everyone else instead? Probably not, but that was a major vibe I got for a while there). Also, look, this incarnation of Gotham has always been Chicago, and I fucking loved that about it, but then like 75% of this movie was obviously New York instead, and then they'd cut back and forth between the two cities, and as someone who has lived in both for extended periods of time, that confused the fuck out of me. JUST PICK ONE OKAY. And it really should have stuck with Chicago, because it gave such a beautifully iconic look to the previous two films, while this one wound up looking like EVERY OTHER SUPERHERO MOVIE EVER instead. Ugh. Speaking of every other superhero movie, I realize it was a total coincidence, but Bruce's final sacrifice was basically identical to Tony Stark's at the end of Avengers, and that was kind of unfortunate. There is a nuclear bomb about to go off, and only I can fly it away to safety and kill myself in the process! Yup, been there, done that, Tony's version was way more poignant because he actually thought he was going to die while Bruce always knew he had a secret cop-out.
My biggest problem with Batman movies is that I really dislike Bruce Wayne as a character (and I'm not terribly fond of Christian Bale as an actor, while we're at it), but fortunately this movie spent most of its time focusing on Blake and Catwoman instead, so that was awesome. Secretly I wished JGL and Hardy could have had a scene together, but that's my residual Inception shipper speaking. (I got all excited when Gordon and Bane interacted, thank you Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.) And I totally called the ending with Bruce and Alfred in the cafe, BTW -- as soon as Alfred told him that story, you knew that was how the movie was going to end.
But JGL as Robin was still the greatest thing ever.
