The Dark Knight Rises

From IMDB

I'm watching Batman Begins with Lori right now.  Tuesday night we went to see  The Dark Knight Rises and she said, as we were leaving, "Okay, now I'm hooked.  I need to see the other movies."

We went to DKR without any fear or trepidation in the wake of the shootings in Aurora at the premiere.  I went because I like superhero movies in general and I've been a fan of Batman since I found reprints of the old 40s comic strips when I was a kid and discovered a darker, more morally ambiguous Batman than the Adam West TV series I grew up with.

Lori went because Hines Ward was in it.  That was her whole reason.

Whatever her motivation, I'm glad she went.

Dark Knight Rises is getting some flak for being plodding or too expositionally heavy or not making enough sense.  Too pretentious.  Too confused.  It's this series' version of The Matrix Revolutions, The Godfather Part III or Caddyshack 2. Nolan's other Batman movies were stylish, deep, exciting and shocking. This one is just content to sort of hang out on the porch and watch the cars pass by.  Shortcomings and all, THE DARK KNIGHT RISES remains a fascinating film, albeit one that suffers from an excess of ambition and deficiency in unifying its objectives with clarity.  Or just read the critics' reviews at Rotten Tomatoes

Mostly, it's just not The Dark Knight.

Yes, the film is a little slow at times, yes it's really expositionally heavy (how many flashbacks does one movie really need?) but I found it to be a satisfying ending to the Nolan trilogy.  Yes, you can drive trucks through some of the plot holes and logic leaps - but it's comic book superhero logic and plotting.  What, exactly, do you expect?

I find the world Nolan has created to be just dark and "real" enough for me to buy into it - but still retains the comic book "oh, yeah, this isn't OUR reality" stuff - without crossing the Tim Burton JoelSchumacher Quadilogy of Batman near-parody movies from '89-'97.  Though I liked those, for what they were at the time, the Nolan trilogy is more "realistic" and gritty, a world where a man in a nearly bullet proof bat suit really can fight crime - and criminals wear scare-crow masks and look like a joker or wear a weird breathing apparatus - and it's perfectly believable.

All that said - the comment earlier about the moral ambiguity of the Batman mythology is something that has always interested me.  He's "good" - but always a qualified good.  His motivations are on the fringes - revenge and retribution - his methods can be "ends justifies the means" and we, the audience, enjoy watching someone mete out justice with no "due process" because, deep down, many of us would like to see that happen ourselves.

The League of Shadows' desire to "balance society" seems a little thin to carry the trilogy - but is certainly contemporary with the Occupy movement from a few months ago.  Still, the moral ambiguity continues in the meta story of the bad guys.  They do bad things...for good reasons?  Or ARE they good reasons?

Overall, I found The Dark Knight Rises to be a worthy conclusion to the Nolan Batman mythos.