The Dark Knight Rises and Falls - Archived Article

Originally published October, 2012

I recently watched the Dark Knight Rises for the first time since I saw it in theaters a few weeks after its initial release. Upon revisiting it, I realized why I hadn’t watched it more than once in a theater or had the unnerving hunger for watching it again as I waited for it to come out on blu-ray, like I did for The Dark Knight. Much like Prometheus, my initial viewing of it gave me the impression that the movie was indeed rather flawed with some significant plot holes and poorly written dialogue but I still enjoyed it overall, however, after watching again in the comfort of my own home, my personal appeal for the movie has gone down a little further, and yet, I still do not dislike the movie or think it’s actually “bad”. After considering it for a bit I considered I how downright hated both of the third X-Men and Spider-man movies of the last decade and wondered what it was of those two movies that did things differently than Batman in order to earn my disrespect when all of the third installments share some similar features, especially when the second installments never climbed as high on my list of personal favorites as The Dark Knight. With my expectations lifted so high from the second Nolan Batman movie, why then did the third not fall as far?

First, let’s review the first couple movies as quickly as possible and what the overall trilogy was trying to accomplish. Nolan’s Batman movies were all meant to be within a realm of reality. You certainly had to suspend your disbelief, because, well it’s about a billionaire who calls himself batman and fights crime. But the gadgets never got too outlandish or unrealistic like they had in the cartoons, comics, or previous Batman movies. Interesting then, that the first villain of Nolan’s trilogy was Ra’s Al Ghul, the misguided zealot who is supposedly immortal through his consumption of the lazerus juice. Nolan makes a brief reference to this ability through “deception” but in a way that is so loose, it might as well not be part of his character. This, in its own way, helped establish the realism that the movie was striving for.

Counteracting realism was a fair amount of the dialogue in the movie. Everyone had something deep and philosophical to say and must have just come from their late night poetry class just before interacting with Bruce Wayne to tell him some deep meaning in life because, although the words spoken were very smooth and easy to follow, everyone just seemed to have too good of a reaction or comeback to appear natural. That would be the primary flaw of the dialogue in all these Batman movies. No one talks like normal human beings. This is acceptable to a point, but if you were to have just one person say all these lines, you would think that being deep and philosophical was a character trait, instead we are in the “realistic” world of Gotham City where everyone knows just what to say. Nonetheless, it’s a comic book movie, and movies tend to have this feature, we don’t want to view scenes where characters are stumbling over their words or can’t find what they are trying to say, unless it helps the plot in some way.

Regardless of the fact that everyone seemed to have some shared telepathy to help be clever with one another, the dialogue was still pretty well written in the realm of that world and fun to listen to. The quips were clever, the lessons seemed interesting, and the characters helped propel those messages. This is why the second movie worked so much better with its dialogue. There are lots of themes and philosophies running around with characters that are all extremes of these to propel their own beliefs. The Joker was so crazy and interesting to watch that you didn’t care how nuts his beliefs were; half the time he was contradicting himself in different scenes and compulsively lying.

Then you had the symbols of law and order with Harvey Dent and Commsioner Gordon. Both of whom were willing to do what was necessary to fight their own version of crime with their own version of justice. Obviously Dent’s is led astray by the end, but his personality is never compromised by this and actually stays pretty consistent in nature even though he’s murdering people, due to the foreshadowing provided in the movie. These two gentlemen are meant to illustrate the faults of a judicial system when dealing with agents of chaos, while the bland blob of idealism, Rachel, was supposed to sit there be perfect and then promptly die for character motivations. She was probably the weakest link in this section of themes, since she never really did much nor felt essential in any way other than being the catalyst for Dent’s madness. She at least wasn’t as preachy as she was in Batman Begins.

Then there’s where Batman fits into everything and he actually ends up being interesting because of it. Batman has never seemed that interesting in terms of the hero, to me at least. It was always about the villains and how he handled the situation. As terrific as Michael Keeton was at playing the roles of Bruce Wayne and Batman, it still never made the character any more interesting to me, and I certainly didn’t expect the same level of quality from Christian Bale. Bale does a decent job, but it isn’t his performance that makes the character interesting. The story of The Dark Knight makes Batman the middleman who needs to fit into the equation, but can’t because he is somewhat contradictory. He fights for justice, yet he does so outside the boundaries of what the law considers justice and is therefore a vigilante, doing what he feels is correct, which can eventually be determined as relative; in the scene where he’s racing to save Harvey Dent and Rachel he chose to go after Rachel only to find that the Joker knew he was human after all, thus showing that his sense of the greater good is still secondary to his personal views of what is important. Girlfriend > White Knight.

Regardless I’m not going to analyze the movie much further, as it’s been done to the nth degree all across the internet already. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t take much prying into the writing of this movie to find something meaningful and worth extrapolating. The writers spent the time to polish the story beyond simply having a plot and decided to work some bigger issues and themes into the background which is what makes a majority of the characters interesting, especially when they change for better or worse. There were slow dialogue filled moments where the themes were lathered on a bit thick, but it never felt entirely unnecessary for what the story was trying to say. It often still left the themes vague for the audience to interpret on their own, unlike how Prometheus hammers in its themes and opinions. In the end it was still going to be an action movie and before it crossed the line of pretentiousness, it ended (it was long enough as it is).

This is where I feel the third movie fails and is why much of how it fails can be traced back to how the story is written and told. If you were to break down the main themes of the 3 movies to simple phrases, I feel like Batman Begins would be “Fear” in general with a sprinkling of “Fear of becoming something more (aka an Adult)” as the movie deals with fear very literally and with Bruce Wayne’s decision to become Batman as a rite of passage into a different type of adulthood. The Dark Knight is simply “Law and Order versus Chaos and Insanity”. Rises would be “Misguided Justice of the Poor and Wealthy”, which feels like a much broader and tougher topic to handle than the other two. The first one is a little stretched, but can still be condensed to essentially “Fear” which is so basic and relatable, it’s hard not to find something to relate the story and characters to. The Dark Knight succeeds with its theme because its characters strongly represent this battle and the theme doesn’t deviate; it stays so consistent that it never feels like anything is superfluous. The third, however, focuses a lot on Justice, and it certainly spends plenty of time talking about rich people exploiting the poor, but it doesn’t feel like anything is resolved regarding this theme.

Part of the problem was that Dark Knight introduced these themes in a general sense and then let the characters represent what it meant. Rises introduces these themes in a general sense then lets the characters explain it more and more through exposition and then the movie ends without any actual commentary or representation as to why we should care. If Dark Knight Rises were an essay and its subject were “Injustice in our Society is exacerbated by the Exploitation of the Poor by the Rich”, and its concrete details were the characters, I’d be confused how the characters represented the essay’s argument, or, for that matter, what the thesis even is.

Bane spouts a whole bunch of propaganda regarding the theme of rich versus poor to convince the people of Gotham that he is doing something necessary, while kangaroo courts run the law of the city in its almost communist state. We as the audience know he’s doing these things to lie to the public and even at points has conversations with Batman that indicate he genuinely believes in how appalling the corruption of the city is and that it is due to the disparity between the rich and poor. Catwoman has her own moments where she says similar bits and sounds just as crazed and bitter as he. So what does Batman represent in this? I suppose he’d be the opposing force who would suggest that this disparity can be solved through a lawful and honest method; basically taking the middle stance once again. But that becomes confusing when eventually the theme of Bane’s plot dissolves due to it just being a personal vendetta more than anything else.

Got enough characters?

The March on Wall Street movement was a hot topic at the time of this movie’s release and much of the themes and symbolism of this movie represent a view on it. However, the fact that the villain’s plot changes into little more than a personal vendetta feels like a cop out. The filmmakers would rather not take a side on how big issues like that are resolved, and who can blame them considering this is a multi-billion dollar industry with a big ol blockbuster like Batman to rake in the dough. At least when the first movie discussed corporate corruption, it didn’t linger on the idea too long and the villain’s solution that society be stripped away felt a little too extreme to accept. It was as though you were trying to deal with your deepest fears all day, finally coming to a solution, oh by the way you’re locked out of your house guess you need to blow it up and rebuild it. Obviously, this is a problem that is unrelated to your main issues, but is still essential to solve, though blowing up the house seems like an extreme way to do so. In the third movie, the locked house and the plan to blow it up for the sake of starting fresh is the central theme to the movie till we learn that the main reason the house should be blown up is simply because I don’t like you.

Theming is perhaps what holds this trilogy together and prevents it from falling into the realm of crap that X-men and Spider-man did, among the other comic book movies. The Nolan Batman movies try to deal with bigger issues than simply being a hero. This helps make the viewers a little more involved with the story, giving more for the person to think about beyond simply action sequences. You could argue that Spiderman 3 tackles duality, friendship, etc., but where it fails is that it barely touches those themes and leaves them feeling vague and superficial; a bit of seasoning to the action set-pieces that was added a little too late to the cooking process. It’s clear that the themes of Dark Knight Rises are at the center of the plot, and even though the Batman movies may not bring conclusions or resolutions to the issues it poses, it still brings them up in a deep and intelligent way.

The problem with bringing up these heavy issues and focusing on them so much is finding the balance of what is necessary to the plot and what should be cut. There are some moments in Batman Begins where the philosophical sections seemed pretentious or heavy-handed; it was trying to build out of the vague concept of Fear, after all. With the poorly shot action sequences, it was carried by strong acting and well-written dialogue. The Dark Knight found a proper balance where it skirts the lines of pretention with its non-action scenes. People are still philosophizing and saying heavy things, but it still feels necessary to the plot. Here, the editing is near perfect as no scene feels like it could just be cut from the movie altogether. The acting and dialogue is so polished, that you wouldn’t want to either. In Rises, there are several scenes that feel drawn out or could just be cut completely. There are plenty of moments where the dialogue should have been cut or rewritten as well.

The action is great, the acting is good, but due to the lengthy scenes or dialogue that drags, the movie just left me exhausted. It simply tries to do too much at the same time and needed some more proofing and editing before hitting theaters. *Spoilers* by the time Bane breaks Batman’s back and drops him in the prison, it feels like the climax has just happened, but alas, there is still the other half of the movie to go. I feel that the main thing that causes the movie to drag (in more ways than one) is the dialogue. It just feels rushed. Of course, originally this movie was still supposed to be about the endless struggle between the Joker and Batman, but Heath Ledger’s passing put a wrench in that story to the point that the writers almost seemed afraid to mention the character out of respect for the actor. They were so concerned with trying to avoid the Dark Knight that they ended up going back to the plot of the first movie, but with rushed dialogue.

If I were to make a recommendation for a recut version of the movie it would simply: Have Batman talk less. Not just because the raspy Bale voice is a punchline to every Batman joke on the internet at this point. It’s simply that everything he says sounds stupid and childish, like the witty comebacks of this tired hero were written via the perspective of a fan as opposed to the view of a hero. In previous films, when Batman talked (voice issues excluded) his comebacks seemed appropriate and witty, even threatening. When he told Ra’s Al Ghul “I won’t kill you, but I don’t have to save you” it felt appropriate and with a reluctant loathing. In Dark Knight he shoots the Joker with his arm blades to respond to his scars story with “I know how you got these!” In Rises, Bane states how he broke Batman several times and each response feels like it fell out of the dialogue of Revenge of the Sith. “I broke you” is responded with “I came back to beat you”… Okay… Thanks, Batman.

Shh, don't talk, just fight

Imagine Bane spouting all his nonsense about destroying the city and breaking Batman with all his physical might only to be met with a stone-cold silent Batman who simply knows he has to break Bane to stop him. It would not only make him more intimidating, but less “human”, which is the whole reason why he wears a mask to begin with. Not to mention the fact that it would fit with the theme of how the world is becoming polarized with the rich versus poor, as well as justice versus injustice and how Bruce Wayne/Batman just doesn’t fit into any of it. The less he says, the fewer opportunities for him to show that he truly can’t pick a side or seem like a fool for trying to. Plus, with the fact that this is supposed to be almost a decade after The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne is supposed to be getting older and thus should no longer be tickling himself by trying to give witty comebacks or announcing his presence behind guys when they demand where they are. He seems like he should have outgrown it by now, because I certainly have. I'm not making this assertion based on the comics either, just on the way he's portrayed in the movies. When he does it in the first movie, he’s intended to be young and empowered by his new persona. In 2 he lets the Joker get the best of his emotions and so it makes sense for him to try to get some sort of satisfaction out of saying something smart-assed and shutting the Joker up. But here, he should just be tired, as I certainly was by the end of the movie. Just be too tired to give a shit about being a smart ass and finish the job you have to do by beating Tom Hardy into a pulp for sounding ridiculous 90% of the time he is talking through the mask. Then again, this is my interpretation of Batman, maybe everyone else expects him to be have the comebacks of George Clooney’s version?

These are the reasons I feel that Rises failed to match the pedigree set forth by its predecessors: Dialogue, pacing, direction, and theming. I’m willing to let ridiculous voices slide, as I’ve been doing it from the start, and the action doesn’t even have to be that good to entertain me; Batman Begins had some crappy fight sequences, but I still feel like it was a stronger film. The acting is still fine and I really want to like Tom Hardy’s Bane despite his best efforts to make him unintimidating with his awkward voice. There are even moments where I felt he could be truly frightening.

In the end, however, the movie just spreads itself too thin with too many characters and not enough substance to each issue. If the plot had been edited down and not so forcibly tied back to the first film it would have been better. And even though I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, his role was just barely more useful than Sean Bean’s in Silent Hill. It just needed more editing, and that’s probably why it’s not a complete catastrophe. I think the Lord of the Rings movies, especially the last one, could use better editing, but it doesn’t make them terrible movies because the movies still get their points across at the cost of more time being spent, while the X-Men and Spider-man movies suffer from much larger issues.