Time to delve into another thing that the majority does not agree with me about. Going into the dislike for Christopher Nolan’s third film in his Dark Knight trilogy. You know there’s going to be spoilers, it’s obvious.

Most people can agree, Christopher Nolan is a great director. Some people can also agree that the Dark Knight trilogy was a success and is the probably the best adaptation of Batman to date. But only very few people agree that The Dark Knight Rises was a great film. Most of what I see written online, or spoken to me via friends, family and even strangers, completely tears the film apart or at least tries to explain why it ruined the trilogy. The reasons vary a lot from person to person, but I will go through a few of the ones that are most prominent and try to explain why I don’t think it’s a valid argument or why it’s not as impactful as they think.

Before I address the points people have made, I think it’s very important to talk about the fact it was the next film in the trilogy after The Dark Knight. With its huge success and critical acclaim, including Heath Ledger’s incredible performance as the Joker, people naturally want the next film to be up to the same quality with all the bells and whistles that they liked. Although this is obviously quite ludicrous, people do this a lot. Some of the moodiness around this film can be attributed to a selection of people raising the bar too high and expecting perfection, or near to it. For the rest of this, I will be taking the film as a sole piece of art.

The first point I would like to address is Bruce Wayne’s fall and rise, twice. So Bruce starts off the film a recluse because of his failure to save Rachel in The Dark Knight. But after Selina Kyle, Catwoman, steals some information for Bruce’s rival, Batman gets the urge to come back and eventually does after a mercenary called Bane attacks the Stock Exchange. Later on in the film, Batman gets captured by Bane after he ‘breaks the Batman’ and places him in a pit prison. After learning of one person escaping and seeing Gotham’s destruction on a television that Bane left on for him, Batman tries and manages to escape and go to Gotham to save his city. People feel these two fall and rises are too much and repetitive, but I feel they add a lot more than people realise. The first fall and rise are for purely selfish reasons and driven by physical, material actions. Batman starts off with a physical limp because of the selfish reason that he wasn’t able to save the woman he loved, even though it eventually led to the capture of the Joker. And when he rises from this fall it’s because someone (Selina Kyle) came into his space and robbed him rather than something external. And he comes back with equipment to help his limp and to try and get strong enough to beat Bane. But all this proves futile as although Bane is extremely physically strong, the film is about mental strength and faith. The second fall and rise is where Batman realises this side of strength and overcomes his obsession with ‘beating’ the enemy and saving the people who need him instead. His fall this time starts with an emotional betrayal by Selina Kyle and being thrown into a prison where everyone, strong and weak, never succeed to escape. He spends all his time hearing of one person who escaped, but as he is still stuck in his mindset of the physical, he assumes this is Bane. Batman’s rise comes about when he realises that he doesn’t need to beat Bane but save Gotham. He loses the rope that everyone uses incase they fall while trying to escape and has faith that he will succeed because there are many people depending on him to do so. This is probably the most powerful message in the film and possibly the whole trilogy.

Another issue people have with The Dark Knight Rises is the character of Selina Kyle. True, there are some deviations from the comic book version of the character, but when it comes to adaptations the piece of art needs to be looked at by itself and see whether it stands on its own as a great piece of art. If this interpretation of Catwoman went majorly out the way to the point where the two characters are clearly distinct from each other then I would understand. I would also say that Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of Catwoman is the most underappreciated part of the whole film. In a world of superheroes, she’s the most relatable. With a past of crime, all she’s looking for is a fresh start, staying in the crime world to find this mythical ‘clean slate’ that she’s heard of. Some consider this part ludicrous and her extremely gullible, but I think it adds to the relatable part of the character. Like most of us, she wants to escape her dull, dangerous life and escape to somewhere utopian. The character strikes a perfect balance between a naive, vulnerable and emotional human with a strong, flexible and dominant anti-hero.

Talia al Ghul was a twist most people didn’t expect and one that a few didn’t like at all. They first claim that it makes Bane, the main antagonist for the majority of the film, completely redundant. In fact, I think this enhances the earlier theme I talked about. Instead of the mastermind of the villain’s plots being the brute strength focused Bane, it’s the cold and calculating Talia. It pushes forward the emotional side of the film, ignoring that brute strength focus of typical modern superhero films. Marion Cotillard’s performance is great as always and another part of the character that isn’t that liked. She always provides a great mystique to the characters she portrays and I think it works brilliantly for Talia. Then there’s the death scene. Overall, the scene works well and the structure of it is perfectly fine. The only problem I have with it is the shot chosen of Talia when she finally kicks it. It’s weird, but a few different people have said that there were other good shots that simply weren’t chosen. This is peculiar considering Nolan’s films always have great shot selection and framing, not to mention a consistently great cinematographer with Wally Pfister, a guy that’s worked with Nolan on a number of his films.

The final issue I will talk about is what some have described as the Return of the King Syndrome, stating that the film feels like it’s taking forever to end as it ties up all the loose ends. Similar to when I eventually end up talking about RotK, I think this point of an ending that’s too long is overblown. Most definitely, endings can be painfully prolonged by slow-paced scenes, sloppy dialogue and bad editing, but with these films this isn’t the case. In The Dark Knight Rises, we do have multiple ending scenes but they are crucial to both completing Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy’s storylines and character developments. There’s the Wayne mansion turning into an orphanage and Blake inheriting the Batcave, setting up what the future of Nolan’s universe would involve as well as Batman’s death and Bruce’s revival, nodding again to the theme of fall and rise in this film. No longer needing to be Batman, Bruce kills off his Batman (as Blake will rise as his own Batman) and rises as Bruce where he will live out his life with Selina quietly. The quick extra of Alfred seeing Bruce and Selina at the cafe was great, giving closure to both Alfred and the audience.

So there’s my case. By no means is it the best film of the entire trilogy, but it deserves more credit than it is given. I will probably come back later and talk about the individual films in a bit more depth, but for now that’s it.

Deshi basara!

-Boad