The Dark Knight Rises.
Short, non-spoilery reaction: The Dark Knight is still the best Batman film ever.
It was probably the fact that I went in with such high expectations that made this a bit of a disappointment. It lacked the grandeur of the previous two films. It felt like it had too much plot, and not enough time spent filling out the background. I never got a sense of occupied Gotham (which, let's face it, everybody’s probably already calling No Man's Land), and there seemed to be no attempt to acknowledge the massive long-term ramifications of it all. I mean, the city's been wrecked, the rich people are mostly dead, along with half the police, the infrastructure has been thoroughly buggered... even the early relief efforts are going to have to go in by sea, with armed guards to deal with the half-starved and heavily armed criminal gangs which probably control the docks.
But I digress. There were other things that didn’t work for me -- the reinvention of the League of Shadows as suicidal fanatics, the too-cutesy Robin reference, and the entire character of Foley (Matthew Modine).
Set against that, I thought Catwoman was great. Anne Hathaway even managed to make combat stilettos work. I really hope her being with Bruce at the end was just her trying to persuade him that a great way to deal with being poor and homeless would be to become her partner in crime, rather than settling down and retiring, but mostly she just really worked for me. Especially the way she outwitted the criminals at the start.
Marion Cotillard nearly had me persuaded that she wasn't Talia, right up until she was. Incidentally, like most comic-book geeks, I saw that one coming months ago, but while I assumed that the prisoners were lying to cover up the fact that she was the kid who climbed (I mean, come on. We'd established that Bane didn’t see daylight until he was an adult, and had the mask before he escaped) I completely failed to guess that her protector was Bane. Even after I noticed that his fighting style was a lot like Bane's. And while I didn't buy her being willing to die to destroy Gotham, I did like her plot up until then.
The plot... oh, the plot. The Bane/Talia plan was like three supervillain plans in one (first we break the Batman and take over the city, then we torture the people for months, then we kill them all), which is probably why it felt so crowded. The whole part with sending Bruce back to prison didn't really work for me, not least because there was nothing to indicate what was so bad about that particular prison. Bruce the crazy cripple was intriguing, so I was a little disappointed that he vanished so quickly.
There were many things I loved about The Dark Knight Rises -- I thought Bale, in particular, was better than the previous two films -- but I just wish they had been in a slightly better film.
It was probably the fact that I went in with such high expectations that made this a bit of a disappointment. It lacked the grandeur of the previous two films. It felt like it had too much plot, and not enough time spent filling out the background. I never got a sense of occupied Gotham (which, let's face it, everybody’s probably already calling No Man's Land), and there seemed to be no attempt to acknowledge the massive long-term ramifications of it all. I mean, the city's been wrecked, the rich people are mostly dead, along with half the police, the infrastructure has been thoroughly buggered... even the early relief efforts are going to have to go in by sea, with armed guards to deal with the half-starved and heavily armed criminal gangs which probably control the docks.
But I digress. There were other things that didn’t work for me -- the reinvention of the League of Shadows as suicidal fanatics, the too-cutesy Robin reference, and the entire character of Foley (Matthew Modine).
Set against that, I thought Catwoman was great. Anne Hathaway even managed to make combat stilettos work. I really hope her being with Bruce at the end was just her trying to persuade him that a great way to deal with being poor and homeless would be to become her partner in crime, rather than settling down and retiring, but mostly she just really worked for me. Especially the way she outwitted the criminals at the start.
Marion Cotillard nearly had me persuaded that she wasn't Talia, right up until she was. Incidentally, like most comic-book geeks, I saw that one coming months ago, but while I assumed that the prisoners were lying to cover up the fact that she was the kid who climbed (I mean, come on. We'd established that Bane didn’t see daylight until he was an adult, and had the mask before he escaped) I completely failed to guess that her protector was Bane. Even after I noticed that his fighting style was a lot like Bane's. And while I didn't buy her being willing to die to destroy Gotham, I did like her plot up until then.
The plot... oh, the plot. The Bane/Talia plan was like three supervillain plans in one (first we break the Batman and take over the city, then we torture the people for months, then we kill them all), which is probably why it felt so crowded. The whole part with sending Bruce back to prison didn't really work for me, not least because there was nothing to indicate what was so bad about that particular prison. Bruce the crazy cripple was intriguing, so I was a little disappointed that he vanished so quickly.
There were many things I loved about The Dark Knight Rises -- I thought Bale, in particular, was better than the previous two films -- but I just wish they had been in a slightly better film.