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Very solid movie from beginning to end a fitting end to Nolan's trilogy..

Movie was right gid. Enjoyed it a lot.

Just got home from seeing this masterpiece. All I can say is Christian Bale is the definitive, Batman/Bruce Wayne. I really hope he breaks the mold and wins an Oscar for this. Anne was great, and Tom was awesome as hell. One more thing, to those that have seen, or will see this film, keep those in Aurora in your thoughts and prayers.

nanananananananananana BATMAAAAAAAN

An Oscar for that? Really?

It was better the second time around... very solid indeed. There are a few nitpicks I have but that goes for every Batman film.

Watched it last night. UNBELIEVABLE. Even better than I was expecting. Looking forward to seeing it again on Tuesday.

Josiah wrote:

Liam Neeson is, 'The Bat Puncher'.

I saw it on opening night with my girlfriend. We both loved it. It was bad ass. The whole film, I was on edge. I had the thought "what is gonna happen next?" Nolan wrote it perfectly. Keeps you guessing the entire time. The ending was excellent as well. I truly hope that they will give a lot of thought to making a 4th one with Bale & Company.

By far, this trilogy was better than the ones during the 90s with Keaton, Clooney, etc. I can't watch any of those movies and keep a straight face. Many of them were too goofy.

Ranking the villains in Nolan's trilogy:
1. Joker - Heath is the damn man in this. He was perfect in the role after I initially thought he'd suck
2. Bane - Hardy is good but not as good as Heath. He plays Bane perfectly
3. Scarecrow - Um, I saw this movie after seeing The Dark Knight...it gave backstory but nothing impressive

I believe in the comics and what not Bane is like half mexican or something and has an accent. I like british bane a ton more. some of the nonsense he says is chilling and almost hannibal lector esque. hardy played him probably as well as he couldve been played. maybe the character in general was not the best choice, but they worked with what they had as best as possible

I don't mean to be -that guy- but I really wasn't impressed.

Overall, it was a decent movie but it was also kind of a mess. It seems like they tried to do too much at once and the movie suffered as a result.

The central error I see is a lack of pacing. There is no downtime in this story. It is built to be 100% tension, 100% of the time. From the cinematography to the music, everything seems to be designed to ramp the tension up to its breaking point but this density of expectation never relents. There is rarely a moment to sit back and let the gravity of the situation reveal itself. Instead, things simply happen one after another. Every event seems important but none more important than the others so there is little to no build up. The near constant tension almost becomes boring as the movie progresses which causes the ending to be underwhelming. The acting was largely good and the story was nice but the pacing simply ruined any kind of gravity the movie could have had.

I think my experience might improve if I watch the previous two again and view this third movie as sort of a climax to a trilogy long story. I don’t know but it didn’t work too well as a stand alone movie. I’m disappointed.

^ I agree with you there. In particular I felt that the film score wasn't used very effectively at all. It seemed for the second half of the movie, there was constant music in the background so the build up ended up being really weak. The pacing in general is definitely the biggest problem.

Does anyone else think...

*Spoiler*

That the ending would've been better if it had just ended with Alfred's nod, rather than explicitly showing you that Bruce had survived?

Nick wrote:I think my experience might improve if I watch the previous two again and view this third movie as sort of a climax to a trilogy long story. I don’t know but it didn’t work too well as a stand alone movie. I’m disappointed.

That's the point. It's not supposed to be a stand alone movie. I definitely suggest watching the first two again.

Also, why does Bruce have a cane in this film? My friend said he thinks he remembers Batman getting shot in the leg at the end of the last one, but I don't recall that happening.

ALTERSTEVE wrote:

Nick wrote:I think my experience might improve if I watch the previous two again and view this third movie as sort of a climax to a trilogy long story. I don’t know but it didn’t work too well as a stand alone movie. I’m disappointed.

That's the point. It's not supposed to be a stand alone movie. I definitely suggest watching the first two again.

I'm not a big fan of that then. I don't have the patience to sit through something like 5 hours of movie just to appreciate the next 2 and a half.

Then don't think of watching the first two as "just" a way to enjoy the final movie. Think of the whole thing instead as a story that's told throughout three movies, much like "The Lord of the Rings" films. Watching all three of them is incredible. Christopher Nolan has brought so much to the already beloved Batman character with his trilogy that you can't miss out on the experience he and the rest of the cast and crew have created.

I love Lord of the Rings but each of those movies stand on their own as individual experiences that can also be linked together as a whole trilogy. You need to see all of them to understand the scope of the entire story but you could watch each of them by themselves and not be bored like I was with The Dark Knight Rises. I really enjoyed the first two of Nolan's Batman series but this one doesn't match up for me.

Ranking the villains in Nolan's trilogy:
1. Joker - Heath is the damn man in this. He was perfect in the role after I initially thought he'd suck
2. Bane - Hardy is good but not as good as Heath. He plays Bane perfectly
3. Scarecrow - Um, I saw this movie after seeing The Dark Knight...it gave backstory but nothing impressive

Lol'd. Think you need to give the best film of the trilogy another viewing. Honestly I struggle to see how people could fully appreciate this film if they aren't even familiar with Batman Begins, since it draws much more heavily from that than it does The Dark Knight.

(/pent up annoyance at Heath Ledger bandwagon people who haven't even seen Batman Begins)

I don't mean to be -that guy- but I really wasn't impressed.

Overall, it was a decent movie but it was also kind of a mess. It seems like they tried to do too much at once and the movie suffered as a result.

Don't worry, I agree - and even if I didn't, it's good to see some critical posts (hell, it happens to the extreme everywhere else on this forum so why should General Discussion threads be exempt).

The Dark Knight too suffers a little bit from being a structural mess and doing a little too much, imo. It's one of the things that I think puts it just a little bit behind Batman Begins for me - they're both 10/10 films though, and when I say The Dark Knight has that issue it's more a nitpick than a giant flaw. For The Dark Knight Rises though, it's a much bigger problem.

Although I suppose it's a bit harsh to say that I agree with not being impressed by the film. It was still very good, it had plenty of great stuff in it - it's just the weakest of this great trilogy, and unlike the other two it is a real mixed bag. I generally don't like to state too concrete an opinion of a film just after I've seen it - it takes time to see how you really remember it, and sometimes repeat viewings (although I have seen this one twice) to know how it really stands. But generally if I come out of a film feeling like it's a mixed bag, knowing there's several things I'm not a big fan of and struggling to quantify how good it is, that's a pretty sure sign that it's not likely to topple any classics in terms of my favourite films.

A (fairly) spoiler free list of issues... Bane's stupid voice (it was unique, and not always terrible, but it's not a good thing where you have to make a bit of an effort to take the villain's voice seriously), it is very slow to get into it and the first hour or so feels long and boring, a placeholder, uninteresting action sequence during that first hour (stock market), an unmemorable, unnoticeable and unimportant minor villain in the first part (people start talking about Dagget as though the name means something before he's properly introduced I felt, and he was very boring when he was in it properly), a few more plotholes and parts that strained suspension of disbelief than the previous films, the general implausibility / lameness of Catwoman (not nearly as big or as significant a problem as I thought it would be, but still, I just don't think Catwoman is as cool as any of the other "super"-entities in the films), a plot twist at the end I didn't like followed by an unsatisfying and anticlimactic fate for a character who had been built up far too much for that to be their end.

Now I'm not saying any of those were necessarily movie ruining flaws, and there was a lot of things about it that were great to counteract those issues I had with it. Maybe in time those flaws won't bother me as much, or maybe one of them will loom large enough that I'll end up thinking negatively of the film as a whole, but either way the very fact it has so many things I could pick out as flaws or that I have mixed / negative feelings about means there's very little chance I'll ever consider it better than the other two films before it.

I just went too see it a few hours ago and it was incredible. I don't really have complaints about much of anything. It didn't feel like I was sitting through an almost three hour film, either. It just flew by. To me it's just as enjoyable as the second film.