“Save yourself. You don’t owe these people anymore. You’ve given them everything.”
I think the question that was on everyone’s lips when The Dark Knight released in 2008 was that of wonder, in how director Christopher Nolan was ever going to close off his Batman trilogy in a satisfying way, considering that he had just reinvented the wheel with the middle act. I think that’s a question that lingered in the minds of many who worked on The Dark Knight Rises, especially considering that the original plans for the third entry now had to be considerably reworked to account for the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, who was set to reprise his role as The Joker. Nolan didn’t want to do The Joker without Ledger, and so the story needed to be approached from a radically different angle. So, when 2012 rolled around and The Dark Knight Rises was unleashed upon the public (just two months after Avengers Assemble took the superhero movie genre in another unexpected direction), the reaction to it was generally very positive but there were a large number of people that were left somewhat disappointed by the caped crusader’s grand finale. Now, a decade later with the dust well and truly settled, I take a look back at The Dark Knight Rises to have my say on the matter.
Eight years after the death of Harvey Dent, the Dent Act has allowed Gotham City to finally achieve some level of peace. With all the major criminals and crime syndicates behind bars and Batman’s name dragged through the mud, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) lie has succeeded in granting Gotham the bright future they always dreamed of.
But something is rising out of the darkness; an army of the underprivileged and unwanted led by a former student of Ra’s al Ghul, Bane (Tom Hardy), mount an offensive on Gotham with the aim of turning the citizens against each other and finally achieve the League of Shadow’s goal of destroying Gotham once and for all.
His body broken and his wealth gone, Bruce must don the cape and cowl of Batman one last time and become Gotham’s new symbol of hope.
I think the question that was on everyone’s lips when The Dark Knight released in 2008 was that of wonder, in how director Christopher Nolan was ever going to close off his Batman trilogy in a satisfying way, considering that he had just reinvented the wheel with the middle act. I think that’s a question that lingered in the minds of many who worked on The Dark Knight Rises, especially considering that the original plans for the third entry now had to be considerably reworked to account for the tragic passing of Heath Ledger, who was set to reprise his role as The Joker. Nolan didn’t want to do The Joker without Ledger, and so the story needed to be approached from a radically different angle. So, when 2012 rolled around and The Dark Knight Rises was unleashed upon the public (just two months after Avengers Assemble took the superhero movie genre in another unexpected direction), the reaction to it was generally very positive but there were a large number of people that were left somewhat disappointed by the caped crusader’s grand finale. Now, a decade later with the dust well and truly settled, I take a look back at The Dark Knight Rises to have my say on the matter.
Eight years after the death of Harvey Dent, the Dent Act has allowed Gotham City to finally achieve some level of peace. With all the major criminals and crime syndicates behind bars and Batman’s name dragged through the mud, Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) lie has succeeded in granting Gotham the bright future they always dreamed of.
But something is rising out of the darkness; an army of the underprivileged and unwanted led by a former student of Ra’s al Ghul, Bane (Tom Hardy), mount an offensive on Gotham with the aim of turning the citizens against each other and finally achieve the League of Shadow’s goal of destroying Gotham once and for all.
His body broken and his wealth gone, Bruce must don the cape and cowl of Batman one last time and become Gotham’s new symbol of hope.
The Dark Knight Rises isn’t so much a sequel to The Dark Knight but instead uses The Dark Knight’s finale as a way to set the stage for a true narrative sequel to Batman Begins, something The Dark Knight leaned away from in order to maintain the gritty realism of its own narrative. That being said, it draws on the realism from The Dark Knight to keep it grounded rather than returning to the more overt comic book stylings of Batman Begins.
The Dark Knight Rises is more cliché in its approach to a superhero film than The Dark Knight was, but that doesn’t stop it from being fantastic. It’s also not ‘dumbed down’ because it’s less subversive than The Dark Knight was, because this is still a Christopher Nolan film after all. The result is a unique blend between an art house character drama about a past his prime retired superhero, and a blockbuster action movie that’s going for the grandest action sequences it possibly can. On paper that shouldn’t work, but in practice The Dark Knight Rises is pretty much exactly what you could want from a final hoorah to Nolan’s Batman.
It would be easy to expect that Warner Bros. executives weren’t too thrilled at the prospect of a Batman film that hardly even has Batman in it, but it works exceedingly well. It takes quite a long time for Bruce to become Batman once again, and even then it’s not the Batman we know and love. In fact, that Batman doesn’t even make it back until the climax, so you’re going around two hours before you see Batman truly kick some criminal butt. It’s a slower paced, more sombre film in general, but that doesn’t mean it can’t thrill when the opportunity arises.
The opening illustrates this perfectly with a plane hijack, and much like Nolan blowing up a building for The Dark Knight, this plane hijack is done without CGI in a way that even makes Tom Cruise’s stunts look tame. Plus, there’s the climax of the film that features an all-out brawl between hundreds of people in the streets of Gotham. Spectacle is not in short supply, but what makes it land so effectively is that Rises earns this spectacle through its great script, fantastic performances, and unwavering commitment to the audience’s intelligence.
The Dark Knight Rises is more cliché in its approach to a superhero film than The Dark Knight was, but that doesn’t stop it from being fantastic. It’s also not ‘dumbed down’ because it’s less subversive than The Dark Knight was, because this is still a Christopher Nolan film after all. The result is a unique blend between an art house character drama about a past his prime retired superhero, and a blockbuster action movie that’s going for the grandest action sequences it possibly can. On paper that shouldn’t work, but in practice The Dark Knight Rises is pretty much exactly what you could want from a final hoorah to Nolan’s Batman.
It would be easy to expect that Warner Bros. executives weren’t too thrilled at the prospect of a Batman film that hardly even has Batman in it, but it works exceedingly well. It takes quite a long time for Bruce to become Batman once again, and even then it’s not the Batman we know and love. In fact, that Batman doesn’t even make it back until the climax, so you’re going around two hours before you see Batman truly kick some criminal butt. It’s a slower paced, more sombre film in general, but that doesn’t mean it can’t thrill when the opportunity arises.
The opening illustrates this perfectly with a plane hijack, and much like Nolan blowing up a building for The Dark Knight, this plane hijack is done without CGI in a way that even makes Tom Cruise’s stunts look tame. Plus, there’s the climax of the film that features an all-out brawl between hundreds of people in the streets of Gotham. Spectacle is not in short supply, but what makes it land so effectively is that Rises earns this spectacle through its great script, fantastic performances, and unwavering commitment to the audience’s intelligence.
Speaking of performances, Bale delivers a series best run as Bruce/Batman in Rises. It’s clear just how much of a toll time has taken on him in the space between films and Bale really puts that on display with his fragile, yet powerful performance. Oldman’s performance in The Dark Knight was criminally overlooked, and he brings that same energy to the character in Rises. Unfortunately, though it’s not quite as strong because he isn’t involved in the same capacity as he was before. Instead, it’s Hardy that takes the crown for best performance in the film. I haven’t had a huge amount of exposure to Bane in the Batman comic books, but from what I have seen, this iteration is not particularly comic book accurate. That being said, this version of Bane feels grounded in reality and still brings across many of the qualities that make him such a memorable villain. Hardy is commanding in the role too, his presence felt all the time, and when he is there, he’s chillingly imposing.
Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon Levitt join the cast as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and no name GCPD officer respectively (it’s revealed that Levitt's character is Robin in the final moments of the film, though it’s not Robin as we know him and he’s never Batman’s sidekick so it’s a pretty big reach to call him Robin). Hathaway is among the film’s most captivating performers though, and hers is my personal favourite big screen iteration of the character. She is the films comic relief character which feels weird to say because she’s not exactly funny, but the way she delivers her lines allows for some levity to be gained in a film that’s otherwise extremely straight faced.
Nolan also doubles down on the IMAX format for Rises, the format he pioneered for Hollywood films with The Dark Knight. By the time Rises released, IMAX was being used for many major blockbusters; but Nolan uses it perfectly in Rises to really lend scale and gravitas to certain moments of the film. His refusal to have the film be available in 3D was also a bold move when at the time where studios were mandating every major production to be either shot in or converted to 3D formats to rake in more money at the box office. It’s a celebration of 2D cinema in a time where that was deemed old hat and off-trend, but as a result has aged much better than almost all of its contemporaries.
Hans Zimmer also returns with another incredible score, and whilst overall I don’t feel it quite matches his work on The Dark Knight, there’s some really incredible moments where it shines so much brighter than The Dark Knight’s score ever did.
The Dark Knight Rises is not a disappointment as some may have you believe. It is an entirely different beast from The Dark Knight and the two are generally incomparable despite belonging to the same series of films. Whilst I do think that The Dark Knight is the better film on the whole, Rises manages to combine the best elements of Dark Knight and Batman Begins into something grander in scale than either of them ever were and stick the landing to give fans that happy feeling when the credits start to roll.
Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a true anomaly, and I don’t feel we will see anything akin to it in a very long time. It came at a time of incredible change within the superhero genre (in large part something it contributed to) and it is an almost unheard of practice to see a major studio like Warner Bros. give a property as big as Batman to an auteur director with almost no restrictions. It had never really happened before, and it hasn’t happened since either. The Dark Knight Trilogy stands tall in the action genre of what can be possible when you allow such a beloved property to be handled by someone who wants to do something different with it, whilst also understanding why the source material is so beloved. This is why the series is often considered one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, and I wholeheartedly agree with it.
Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon Levitt join the cast as Selina Kyle/Catwoman and no name GCPD officer respectively (it’s revealed that Levitt's character is Robin in the final moments of the film, though it’s not Robin as we know him and he’s never Batman’s sidekick so it’s a pretty big reach to call him Robin). Hathaway is among the film’s most captivating performers though, and hers is my personal favourite big screen iteration of the character. She is the films comic relief character which feels weird to say because she’s not exactly funny, but the way she delivers her lines allows for some levity to be gained in a film that’s otherwise extremely straight faced.
Nolan also doubles down on the IMAX format for Rises, the format he pioneered for Hollywood films with The Dark Knight. By the time Rises released, IMAX was being used for many major blockbusters; but Nolan uses it perfectly in Rises to really lend scale and gravitas to certain moments of the film. His refusal to have the film be available in 3D was also a bold move when at the time where studios were mandating every major production to be either shot in or converted to 3D formats to rake in more money at the box office. It’s a celebration of 2D cinema in a time where that was deemed old hat and off-trend, but as a result has aged much better than almost all of its contemporaries.
Hans Zimmer also returns with another incredible score, and whilst overall I don’t feel it quite matches his work on The Dark Knight, there’s some really incredible moments where it shines so much brighter than The Dark Knight’s score ever did.
The Dark Knight Rises is not a disappointment as some may have you believe. It is an entirely different beast from The Dark Knight and the two are generally incomparable despite belonging to the same series of films. Whilst I do think that The Dark Knight is the better film on the whole, Rises manages to combine the best elements of Dark Knight and Batman Begins into something grander in scale than either of them ever were and stick the landing to give fans that happy feeling when the credits start to roll.
Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is a true anomaly, and I don’t feel we will see anything akin to it in a very long time. It came at a time of incredible change within the superhero genre (in large part something it contributed to) and it is an almost unheard of practice to see a major studio like Warner Bros. give a property as big as Batman to an auteur director with almost no restrictions. It had never really happened before, and it hasn’t happened since either. The Dark Knight Trilogy stands tall in the action genre of what can be possible when you allow such a beloved property to be handled by someone who wants to do something different with it, whilst also understanding why the source material is so beloved. This is why the series is often considered one of the greatest film trilogies of all time, and I wholeheartedly agree with it.