I wanted to write again, and I couldn't think of a better way to get back into the game than with the new Batman movie. Now, I know that the Colorado shooting may taint the subject, but I don't want to get into that, if you want to talk about it in person, I do have strong opinions on the subject. However, for this review, I will criticize the movie the way I saw it, untainted by the horrible events in Colorado, because I saw TDKR at 7:30 on the night before it officially opened, as part of a BU alumni program. (My dad went there.)
Where to start? I liked the movie a lot, and there are a lot of things they did right, but they also did a few things incredibly wrong, and those are the things I'm going to articulate better.
First of all, TDKR did a very good job at building anxiety, it isn't until about a half hour into the movie that Bruce Wayne dons the cowl and does some serious violence. During the interlude before, we are introduced to an organized-crime free Gotham, but for some reason, everyone thinks "there's a storm coming." When I heard that, the first thing I thought was, "how could you tell?" Phrases like "there's a storm coming" piss me off, because they're a cop-out method of introducing anticipation. Commissioner Gordon and Selina Kyle seem sure that the $#!^ is going to hit the fan, but looking back, I can't see how they could be so sure, given that there hadn't been a violent crime in Gotham in 8 years.
Next, a guy named Bane shows up and starts raising an army in the Gotham Sewers. Bane himself is really cool, and about as faithful as cinema can be to the original character, he's strong, evil, and a brilliant strategist. To top it all off, he has a mysterious background.
Then five minutes after you see him for the first time, Alfred casually mentions that Bane used to be a member of the League of Shadows. (The organization that Ra's Al Gul headed in Batman Begins.) This upset me, they took an opportunity to make a giant plot twist, and made it about as important as Alfred telling Bruce that Bane's favorite color is Beige.
Then Bane takes over the city and what not, I don't want to go into details, because it's actually pretty awesome. The Cops, (Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman) lead a resistance against the freed criminals while desperately awaiting Batman's return.
That's as far as I want to go with the plot, a lot more happens, but it's too exciting to ruin while reading some guy's blog.
Of the new characters that were introduced, I liked both of them, Anne Hathaway is always good, and her character was layered and interesting, the only problem with Catwoman was that she only did one thing to advance the plot, and then she's just kinda hanging around, showing off her butt, until the end when she does a few more things. However, Hathaway did a fabulous job with the part. Overall, very good.
Officer John Blake is played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who I like to call, "the franchise expander," and I'm not going to explain that, because it would spoil the movie, just go see it, I hear it's good.
Blake overall does more to advance the plot than Catwoman, and succeeds in being very interesting, this combined with the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt could desecrate the Wonder Woman movie franchise's grave and I'd still love him, gives the character Mickey's seal of approval.
Now for the fundamental problems, before I dive into the sea of foaming-mouth-loathing-from-the-bad-side-of-the-river-styx-even-for-Hades, I would like to assure people that I recommend TDKR, and it did more things right than it did wrong. In fact, the only things keeping it from being the best movie of the summer, are below.
First, the twist was terrible, I don't want to get into details, (because it's the friggin' twist) but it made Bane seem infinitely less cool.
Then, they killed Bane, oh don't give me that, you could have predicted that the bad guy would die at the end of a gritty super-hero movie, but don't read the next two paragraphs if you don't want some spoilers that couldn't be avoided.
It's not that Bane dies that I hate, it's how they killed him, he died in a bafflingly anti-climactic way, he just gets shot, and they even try to make it comedic, which only made it worse. Later in the movie, I found myself thinking, "hey, what happened to Bane?.... oh yeah," which is a terrible thought to have during a movie. Also take in mind that this is after the plot twist made Bane the president of Wussconsin, the wussiest place to ever have a total wuss as a president.
Bane should have died by getting his mask ripped off or getting kicked into a vat of boiling something.
Anyway, if it weren't for those two major flaws, I would have actually rated TDKR above the Avengers, but it made those mistakes. Also, while i'm on the subject, hey interwebz! The Avengers and TDKR are both good, so shut up, because you, and the guy you met in a Reddit chat-room are both right.
Also, we know why most people wanted to see the movie anyway,

Just sayin'
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