I loved the film. I can easily say this film makes the series become a full circle, I think this is the best trilogy in the superhero movie category.
I saw the film. I didn't really like it that much. It seemed a little wordy and boring in some parts. I think this film was aimed at the twenty-something crowd and not really for me. I liked the action though.
I got told that I would appreciate this movie more if I went to see it a second time and fortunately some I know agreed to buy me a ticket; it wasn't getting my money twice. If anything I came out of the cinema more annoyed with it. It's a good movie but it isn't great and that's because for some reason they decided to totally undermine what makes Batman the character he is....if you've not seen just skip everything below Batman is a fucking whiny pussy Batman is driven by two things. His parents murder changed him and at that point he effectively stopped being Bruce Wayne. Yeah he doesn't become Batman until he's had his training but the persona and what drives him starts then. In this film he's stopped being Batman for 8 years, partially down to the punishment he's taken out fighting crime but also because he's moping around his house because Rachel died. Think about it. This is a man who dedicates his life to being a vigilante in response to his parents murder and all of a sudden he's prepared to forgo all of that because some woman he knows happens to have died too? If anything, (if you're staying true to character), it would have only served to make him more determined to be Batman. He wants other people to have normal lives, free from crime and pain that he's suffered. Having him wimp around his house for 8 years just makes no sense unless you want to enforce the "rises" part of the title which frankly could have been done better. Also, he just jumps straight back into being Batman. I hurt myself training at the gym in April and haven't done any serious work since then..at least until last week where I found that my ability to lift/do what I previously could do had taken a hammering. He's out for 8 years, crippled and yet somehow can be Batman again pretty much at the drop of a hat? FFS Bane is pointless You could have had any Batman villain do what Bane does in this movie, so why Bane? Well, if you're taking the other Frank Miller inspired Bane as your character template it's because Bane is a self-made man like Batman. He is as ferociously driven by his ideals as Batman is but they are at complete polar opposites. I was excited by Bane as a villain when they announced it because I knew they weren't going to do the whole Venom/Steroid thing and that was what was interesting. For some reason though Nolan decides to make Bane sound like Dr.Evil talking into a toilet roll tube. I couldn't take him seriously even when he was at his most frightening. The other problem is that Bane isn't actually driven by his ideologies after all when the "twist" is revealed; turns out he's also a big pussy doing things for a woman. Batman Quits Going back to the first point, Batman isn't Bruce Wayne's alter ego; Bruce Wayne is the disguise Batman uses in the real world. They touch on this slightly when Joseph Gordon Levitt reveals how he knows Bruce Wayne is Batman. Batman can't just quit being Batman unless he's either too old to fight crime any more or he's been seriously injured so the idea that he would just stop being Batman is fucking stupid. Even more ridiculous is the idea that he would hand over the reigns to Levitts character because supposedly "anyone can be Batman". Erm...no that doesn't work. Who is going to train him? Bearing in mind how elaborately Nolan sets up the training with the League of Shadows in Batman Begins it seems daft to think that they would just "pass the torch" to someone who had no idea how to be Batman. If you're going to take this route they should have had him train him up (or send him off to be trained) but to just finish with him in the Batcave is so annoying it's unbelievable. I think even Nolan knows this to be a stupid way to end the film but (and this is what boils my piss over this) it's painfully apparent that the only reason they took this route to close out was because both Nolan and Bale wanted to make sure that they let everyone know they WEREN'T going to carry on with this franchise...they made such noises about this being their last one on the run up to release and it's the only reason I can think of that they would undermine the character in they way they have done. Your best bet if you wanted to "end it" would be consider all three movies the road to becoming Batman and let the audience imagine how the world of Batman might pan out; to me it just feels like Nolan and Bale were giving us the big "fuck you" What the fuck has happened to the villain? So you have Bane as the bad guy for the majority of the movie - (personally I could see the twist coming a mile off) - and you have him beat the crap out of Batman and stick him in the pit prison (a clever Lazarus Pit reference?) where he is given the opportunity to "Rise"; to rediscover how to be Batman? to rediscover his ideals? Whatever, he gets out and you think (if you follow normal movie convention) that you're going to get an EPIC fight at the end with Batman ultimately the victor. That would have been satisfying to see, Batman triumphant and THEN they pull the twist. Instead, they have a small scuffle with other people fighting around them and Bane has a tube on his mask knocked out. That's the fight over because Nolan then unveils the twist. I got no sense of satisfaction from it. I saw no "rising" to the challenge. It was like getting a blow job off a great looking girl who then gets up and leaves just as you're about to get to the good bit. So you have Batman now seemingly disabled by the tiniest knife you've seen, Bane has his mask fixed and Catwoman arrives to kill Bane with the cannons on the Batpod. Fucking LAME! If you're going to get an audience invested in the villain at least give us a satisfying conclusion - honestly, I could shit better ways to finish this movie off. Blatant Deception on the part of the director So lame was the twist that Nolan makes a point of deliberately misleading the audience. Unlike say the nice twist in The Prestige which most people didn't see coming, Nolan actually makes a point of misdirecting the audience by having the actors feed lines that make no sense. For example, they have Wayne wrongly come to the conclusion (in his Ras Al Ghul dream) that Bane is his son...except in Begins Ra's actually tells him "I had a wife and daughter once"...they actually REMOVED the bit about the daughter from the "flashback" to fool people. Nolan also has Bane repeat the lie about being the child born in the prison...why would he do that? It's not really deceiving Batman as such since the motive is irrelevant; it's only in there to make the twist shocking. To me, that's fucking lazy... Anyway, as you can tell, I'm not best pleased about the end of this Trilogy. It could have been epic and instead it's an "almost was" kind of deal. Should have been awesome but for some reason Nolan fucked it up..maybe he's just starting to get a bit of the George Lucas syndrome and believe his own hype? Oh and also, even if they didn't have such horrible faults this movie would have suffered from one other problem; it's not The Avengers. The perfect example of what a comic book movie can be if the director and writers aren't afraid to embrace the source material and stay true to it.
Sounds pretty lame. I'm definitely not going to risk getting shot by some psycho to see this in a theater then.
I thought it was great. But you would have to pay me my hourly pay to get me to sit through it again. Three hours is just too long.