The Dark Knight Rises

If it were a comic book villain, Hollywood would be a snide little shite whose superpower was sucking the creativity out of innovative film-makers.

And so it is that, with The Dark Knight Rises (2012), bright spark wunderkind Christopher Nolan finally succumbs to the lowest common denominator demands of a Hollywood franchise. More characters! More explosions! More stuff! Less interest.

This bloated conclusion to his gritty Batman reboot is a misfiring attempt to tie up the trilogy’s loose ends by burying them in a morass of a plot, and hoping the audience will be too distracted by Christian Bale’s grating Barry White impersonation to notice.

Batman (Bale) is now a Howard Hughes-esque recluse, having retired from the crime-fighting game following the death of Harvey Dent and the misguided backlash from Gotham’s citizens. He cuts a pitiful figure as he mopes about Wayne Mansions eating Coco Pops in his pyjamas.

He’s awakened from his reverie by muscle-bound psychopath Bane (Tom Hardy) who, in traditional comic book fashion, has an inexplicable urge to blow up Gotham City – perhaps to compensate for his steroidally shrunken genitalia.

The pontificating beefcake steals one of Wayne Enterprises very own fusion reactors and holds the city to ransom. Of course, only one man can save them. Cue much chop-socky action, car chases and close ups of Anne Hathaway’s PVC-covered derriere.

This is a very long film – into which much plot, action, location-hopping and plot-twistery is squeezed – but precious little of it engages the audience, and there’s a rudimentary, by-the-numbers feel to much of it.

Similarly, the attempts to inject a meaningful credit-crunch zeitgeist into the carnage-strewn plot – with Bane’s socialist masses rising up to crush their bourgeois oppressors in a sub Occupy Gotham angle – feels largely like an clumsy attempt give the numerous fight scenes a worthy edge.

Finally, just as Gotham is about to be reduced to rubble, Batman hooks the nuclear bomb by cable to the underside of his one-of-a-kind Batcopter (a design inspired by crossing a V-22 Osprey and an AH 64 Apache) and rushes away from Gotham out to sea. As the timer ticks down, Batman gets further away until he is a mere speck on the horizon. Just then, the foreground is filled with a familiar mushroom cloud and it’s goodnight Vienna.

Artistic merit

There is no massive explosion, no aftershock, no carnage – just a puff of white smoke in the distance. The destruction of this helicopter and the hero within could have been the mother of all fireballs yet we are left with an almost zen-like explosion. The scene is completely at odds with the general ethos at Exploding Helicopter HQ, but in a perverse way you have to admire Nolan’s restraint and avoidance of cliché.

Exploding helicopter innovation

A helicopter killed by nuclear explosion. Seen it before, but perhaps not like this.

Do passengers survive?

That would be telling, wouldn’t it? But there are some clues towards the end that indicate there’s more cash left in the cow yet.

Positives

As you would expect from a mega-normous action blockbuster there are some adrenalin-pumping set pieces – such as the opening mid-air hijacking – which are delivered with Nolan’s customary directorial panache. The last five minutes of the film almost redeem Nolan’s reputation with the plotline twister par-excellence, but by this point you may have already slipped into a deep sleep.

Negatives

Despite a $300 million budget and a raft of top-notch actors, it renmains a severely underwhelming film. It’s way too long, pretty po-faced and contains some of the least plausible behaviour since Bean: The Movie.

For instance Bane, instead of stealing the bomb and detonating it immediately, decides it’d be more practical to just meaninglessly drive it round the city in the back of a transit van until the good guys have time to track it down before detonation. To further assist the good guys, there is a handy red LED countdown timer on the bomb conveniently informing the world how long it has until its impending combustion. Do they make these things at Argos?

Anne Hathaway is no Michelle Pfeiffer and really should stick to The Devil Wears Prada fluff leaving challenging roles to real actresses who are able to do more than just look good in a catsuit. Why Batman trusts her, despite being repeatedly double-crossed, can only be attributed to either deep-seated mental illness or an overwhelming urge to get into her pants.

Tom Hardy is a great actor but tragically wasted playing the one-dimensional Bane in a face-covering mask that forces him to act only with his eyes (I acknowledge Roger Moore did make a career out of similar restrictions). His voice is also overdubbed in post-production so really they could have just hired Ross Kemp and saved a few quid.

Favourite quote

Lucius Fox (on Batman’s one-of-a-kind helicopter): “Nothing like a little air superiority.”

Interesting fact

Nolan said that each of the Batman films have a central theme underpinning the story. For Batman Begins it was ‘Fear’, The Dark Knight deals with ’Chaos’ and this film's overarching emotion is ‘Pain’. After three hours trying to make sense of this mush with a surly 11-year- old absent-mindedly kicking the back of my chair, I couldn't fault the director for not delivering his promise.

Review by: Neon Messiah

The Dark Knight

This is a difficult film to tackle. As the most revered superhero ever made, it occupies a sacred place in the affections of a lot of lonely, maladjusted young men who spend far too much time on the internet. 

As such, reviewers who are anything other than slavishly fawning towards the film can expect to be besieged by an angry social media mob baying for virtual blood. 

Let it not be said though that Exploding Helicopter ever cowered in the face of anonymous keyboard warriors. So, let's dive in and cover the basics.

The Dark Knight is the follow up to 2005's 'gritty' (surely one of the most popular movie buzzwords of the Noughties) reboot of Batman.

Picking up from Batman Begins, the caped crusader's campaign to curtail the criminal capers (we'll always have a soft spot for Sixties Batman) of Gotham's residents seem to have gone quite well.

The criminal elite of the city are feeling distinctly threatened, so make the dubious decision of recruiting the Joker (Heath Ledger in his last full role) to help get rid of Batman. It probably seemed a good idea at the time, but, as it turns out, hiring a mentally unstable psychopath comes with its own set of issues.

Gary Oldman plays Commissioner Gordon, a maverick cop who merrily ignores due process, (although perhaps not in the same way as his role in Leon) in his attempts to bring the criminals of the city to justice.

As the film develops, we follow the District Attorney, Harvey Dent as he works with both Batman and Commissioner Gordon to try to bring Gotham back to a reasonable level of street crime and anti-social behaviour. The film then follows the plots and plot-thwarting of the Joker and Batman respectively, until we get to the main finale, a rooftop showdown.

As it turns out, the finale is not the actual finale at all. Instead we're treated to another ending (a phenomenon best embodied by Jackson's 'The Return of the King', a film with more endings than a choose your own adventure book) which ties up the story with Two-Face and sets us up for the series finale.

The film can be thought of as Batman's attempts to plan for his succession. He recognises that he cannot always go on as the illegitimate (but righteous) force of justice in the City and also knows that his successor will need more authority than being simply anointed by the Batman.

The moral difficulties around unaccountable power are acknowledged (if not adequately dealt with) in a plot element around almost Murdochian-levels of phone tapping within the city by Batman. It's a hell of a lot more nuanced than say, 24, in its 'its not wrong if you do it for the right reasons' attitude but is by no means the last word on the subject.

None of this is to say its a bad film, there's so much in there, with some very beautiful shots and solid performances (although I don't think I'll ever engage with the Bale growl properly). Directed by Christopher Nolan, the film really benefits from a determination to do as many stunts and effects shots 'live' as possible.

This culminates in an excellent protracted car chase where the Joker is attacking a police convoy in the hopes of killing Harvey Dent. The whole sequence is superb and includes both a personal movie highlight for me, the flipping of a lorry, and the all important helicopter explosion.

With his control over the route to be taken by the convoy, the Joker manages to plan for the possibility of his plans being thwarted by an apparently unarmed helicopter. As the chase continues, the helicopter drops lower and lower to follow the action. Meanwhile, disposable henchmen string cables across the street between two high rises. The inevitable occurs and the helicopter plunges to earth a tangled mess, before the all-important explosion.



Artistic merit

The actual destruction of the helicopter is nicely teased out. The cables go out in plenty of time for the audience to anticipate the helicopter's impending doom.

Exploding helicopter innovation

Flying into what are essentially tripwires is a credit to the devious mind of the writers.

Number of exploding helicopters

One

Positives

Nearly all the film in truth. This is excellent story telling with a great cast and a great eye to atmosphere and tone.

Negatives

There is a strange disconnect between the two story strands of the Joker and Two Face. So much energy goes into ending the Joker's story that it feels a bit of a challenge to try to crank up the intensity again to get a similarly powerful resolution to the Two Face story.

Favourite quote

"Do you want to see a magic trick?"

Interesting fact

Several scenes were filmed on IMAX film stock meaning those sections of the film are shown at a much higher resolution. If you're looking for them, these scenes/shots are easy to pick out.  And were captivating in an IMAX screen.