The Dark Knight Falls - Alot

The Dark Knight Rises? Really? How about, "The Dark Knight Falls"? Again... and again... and again... and in case you're wondering how many times you can break your back in a film and still live the answer is four.

 I'm going to be honest from the beginning.  I'm a huge Marvel fan.  I simply like their comics and movies better as a hole.  This doesn't mean that I don't like Batman, but I'm not biased towards him as a character and I think he's just another of your average superheroes.  (A lot of you DC and Batfans probably just fainted.)  However, when Christopher Nolan came out with the new Batman franchise, I was excited to see a whole new look to Batman and really enjoyed Batman Begins.  The casting, directing, and story were fantastic.  When The Dark Knight came out, I saw it in theaters, but wasn't as satisfied with the storytelling as in the first movie.  They tried to do too much in one film.

Now that The Dark Knight Rises is out and I've had a chance to see it in theaters, I am thoroughly disappointed with the outcome. There was a lot in the movie that just didn't make it worth the hype.   The numerous falls that just didn't make sense.  After all, Batman isn't immortal, he's just gotten training.  A diehard Batfan explained to me later that his training with Ra's al Ghul allowed him to heal quickly, thus explaining his back-breaking recovery - literally.  But this was not explained well in the movie and for those of us who don't regularly read the comics, it was hard to swallow.  As for character development, well, I would have liked to see more in most of the characters (with the exception of Joseph Gordon-Levitt's and Michael Cain's characters).  To be introduced to so many new faces, there was almost too much of a story for the length of the film.  Finally, Bane, in his Vader-esque dialogue seemed almost useless.  If you took him out, I still think that you could turn it into a better film.  Let me put it this way.  It's rare that I ever check my watch during an epic movie.  I did so at least twice during this film.  I could go on about the negatives, but I won't.  There were a few redeeming factors: it was indeed an epic film that was based on a comic book, it was the last of this Batman franchise, it had fantastic special effects, but overall I was sorely disappointed.