“Peace has cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you.”

Martin Scorsese supposedly coined the expression: “one for them, one for you”, meaning you do the movies the studio wants you to do in order to do the movies you want to do. The Dark Knight Rises is, famously, one of the most open and avowed “one for them” movies in recent Hollywood history.

Nolan didn’t want to do it (especially after Heath Ledger’s tragic death) and never bothered to hide the fact that this was the hoop he had to jump through to get Warners to pony up for Inception.

But you know what? It’s a myth that great art only comes from passion projects. Plenty of good and even great films have come from people who just showed up to work that day. And look, if the price we had to pay for every Inception was a Dark Knight Rises, I’d take that deal.

But there are problems with this movie. And (bizarrely, given this is the exact same writing team that gave us the fucking GOAT of a script that was The Dark Knight) pretty much all those problems begin and end on the page.

The movie begins where every good Batman movie should, in rural Uzbekistan where an unnamed CIA operative (Aiden Gillen) is waiting by a plane for some Uzbekistanians.

They arrive and deliver the man Mr CIA has been looking for, a Russian scientist named Doctor Pavel. But, because Mr CIA is such a good customer, they’ve tossed in three terrorists already pre-black bagged. They tell him that these three have intel on the location of the Masked Man, Bane. After the plane takes off, Mr CIA tries to terrify his new prisoners into talking by performing fake executions, making it seem that he’s shooting them one by one and throwing the out of the plane. And then one of the terrorists (quite reasonably) asks why he would bother to shoot them when the ground is nature’s bullet. And Mr. CIA pulls off the mask and reveals that it’s actually Bane. Mr CIA asks Bane if getting captured was all part of his master plan, and Bane replies: “Of course!”

“I mean, since Dark Knight it’s literally the only plan villains are allowed have!”

Okay, so Bane. Bane, Bane, Bane.

I’m not going to sit here and lie through my whiskers and pretend that Bane is one of the all time great Batman villains. I wouldn’t do you like that, fam. In the comics he’s such a product of the nineties that his design has aged in a way that older classic characters like the Joker and the Riddler never have and never will. Then there’s the problem that he was created for a very specific story and that once that story was over, he was never going to have that same relevance again. You can come up with any Bane story you like, but it’s always going to be lurking in the shadow of…

That said, I think it’s unfair to just dismiss Bane as a one-trick pony. There’s a reason why he’s stuck around as a respectable mid-tier villain when other “Batman’s Newest, Greatest Threats!”s have fallen into complete obscurity (thinking of you The Wrath. For the first time this decade). In any comic or game where a good portion of the Rogue’s gallery is lining up to ride Batman hard and put him away wet, Bane will usually have elbowed his way onto the card. Why? Well, because he’s got the strength and bulk of Killer Croc, the intelligence of Ra’s Al Ghul and the criminal connections and resources of The Penguin. It doesn’t necessarily make him the most distinct and unique villain but it gives him a versatility that’s honestly pretty rare amongst the Bat-foes, who tend to be specialists who challenge Batman in one area alone; be it physically, intellectually or psychologically. Bane’s a good all-rounder, and all-rounders tend to do well in comics.

As for this movie’s interpretation of Bane? Ehhhhh…

Look, I’ve mentioned before that Tom Hardy is one of my favourite actors. And there are certainly aspects of this Bane that I like. He’s menacing. He’s certainly memorable. The voice, like Bale’s Batman voice, is stupid but it’s also fun to imitate with a coffee mug over your mouth so I don’t mind it as much. But this Bane is also weirdly…placeless. It’s part of a trend of the Nolan Batman movies deracinating their non-white villains. The Arab/Asian Ra’s Al Ghul was played by Liam Neeson and now the Hispanic Bane is played by Tom Hardy. And before you say it, yes, I am fully aware this is a game that Christopher Nolan was never, ever, ever going to win and someone was going to be chewing his nads whatever way he went. But not even talking the politics of it. I just mean…I don’t know who the fuck this Bane guy is, where he came from and what circumstances shaped his worldview and outlook.

You may say that a villain who’s Hispanic and was born and raised in a prison in a fictional Latin American banana republic is problematic but at least it’s something to hang your hat on, y’know?

Okay, anyway. You know what he gotta talk about now.

GIVE. NOLAN. BOND.

Nolan’s actually said that this is the single scene he’s most proud of filming and I almost feel it’s too good? It sets a peak of jaw-dropping cinematic spectacle that the movie is just never able to top at less than ten minutes in and it’s also the best scene in a Batman movie and Batman is six and a half thousand miles away shuffling around his mansion and suffering from rheumatism.

So, Bane’s men storm the plane, perform a MID-AIR BLOOD TRANSFUSION and why not and peace out with Doctor Pavel in toe, crashing the plane with no survivors.

Okay, so, we’re back in Gotham and we’ve done an animé time skip of eight years since the end of the last film. Organized crime has been more or less eradicated in Gotham thanks to the Dent Act, a draconian piece of legislation that expanded police powers in the wake of the “heroic” Harvey Dent’s murder by the “villainous” Batman on the last night that the caped crusader was seen by anyone in the city.

So, right off the bat (ha! I didn’t even! That just happened!) I don’t like this. The movie’s trying to do a Dark Knight Returns, the classic eighties Batman story where an aged and somewhat enfeebled Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement to take on the new and vastly more dangerous criminals who are menacing Gotham.

Here’s the problem. Here is Bruce Wayne in the Dark Knight Returns:

And here he is in Dark Knight Rises:

Yeah, sure, have him walk with a cane, that totally cancels out the fact that he looks barely old enough to shave.

And this brings me to my second problem. Batman Ends begins…

Sorry, Batman Begins ends with Batman having begun and the Joker starting his crime spree. The Dark Knight ends with that spree having been stopped. And…that’s it. We’re told Batman basically put away Falcone, stopped Crane, stopped Joker and killed Harvey Dent. If you’re extremely generous you could argue Bruce Wayne’s entire crime-fighting career lasted maybe a year. Which is why it’s hard to get invested in him putting the cape back on because…he was barely Batman to begin with! Being Batman wasn’t his life’s crusade it was just this weird hobby he got really into for a few months and then quit.

Batman was Bocce Ball.

Anyway, after the death of Rachel, Bruce has retreated into Howard Hughes-esque isolation. Wayne Manor is being used to host a gala in honour of Harvey Dent where the mayor promises that those troublesome civil liberties are gone and ain’t coming back. Gordon then gives a speech and almost confesses to everything that happened eight years ago but loses his nerve and pockets his speech. Meanwhile, Alfred directs one of the maids (Anne Hathaway) to bring Bruce his dinner and to not touch that weird floating rose in the west wing.

Bruce then discovers this maid cracking his safe and stealing his mother’s necklace. So, true story. My wife went though a period of hating Anne Hathaway with every fibre of her being a few years back (I don’t know why, I think they both wore the same dress to a party or something, I dunno). And it took quite some convincing to get her to watch this movie for that very reason.

“No, trust me, she is REALLY good as Selina Kyle.”“Hissssssss…”“Trust me. She will win you over with a single word.”“Hissssssss…”
“…”

“Oh God dammit.”

Probably the most comics-accurate Selina Kyle yet put to screen. For starters, you feel sure that she is aware that she is not, in fact, a cat. That sounds like a small ask but it’s amazing how many Catwoman performers seem to take the name literally. And I have been a very big fan of some of those performances, don’t get me wrong, but that’s not really Selina. She holds the distinction of being possibly the only one of the rogues (depending on how the writer is handling Penguin) who is actually less crazy than Batman. Hathaway plays her as an icily intelligent, borderline sociopathic-level manipulator, capable of using her own sexuality as a tool with the skill and finesse of a Swiss Clockmaker. And underneath it all, deep, deep, down, where the Balrogs dwell, a conscience that will never let the truly innocent come to harm. The only important element that doesn’t really make the transition unscathed is any sign of attraction to Batman. At all. And you know what, it’s fine, that’s not Nolan’s wheelhouse. No one’s ever going to wonder what Christopher Nolan would do with Pride and Prejudice.

“Mr D’Arcy.”
“Miss Bennett. I have news of Wickham and your sister. Have you heard of Grolny?”
“It’s a small town in Russia. Believed destroyed during the Crimean War.”
“It is still very much intact. In a manner of speaking. And they have eloped there.”
“Why?”
“Not why. WHEN.”
*BAAAAAAAAAM.*

I mean…I’d watch it.

Selina makes short work of Bruce, leaps out the window and hitches a lift with one of the guests at the gala, a congressman. Alfred finds Bruce examining the safe and he tells him that whoever Selina was, she wasn’t simply a safe-cracker. She was dusting Bruce’s safe for his fingerprints. They have one those patented “Master Bruce, when shall you sire the next generation with your sacred seed” talks and Alfred reveals that when Bruce was off doing origin-story shit he had hoped that he would never come back. He’d hoped that Bruce had gotten over his parents’ death, met a nice girl, changed his name and allowed himself to be declared legally dead so that all his assets would then be inherited by, y’know, whatever loyal employee was in the will that’s not important. He tells Bruce how he’d dreamed that one day he might go to his favourite café in Florence and see Bruce there with a wife and kids. He doesn’t mention which café, but I’m guessing Florence doesn’t have that many.

On the roof of the GCPD Gordon meets a new recruit, Officer John Blake (Joseph Gordon Levitt) who tells him that a congressman went missing from Wayne’s Gala and that his wife has asked them to bring him home. He also subtly probes Gordon’s memories of the night the Batman killed Dent, hinting that he doesn’t believe the official story.

Selina shows up at a bar with the drunken congressman (a sober one might be too conspicuous) and trades Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints to a sinister underground fellow who tries to double-cross her. Of course, Selina anticipated this and uses the congressman’s phone to bring the GCPD down on the bar like the wrath of God. While Selina expertly plays the terrified bystander, the cops storm the bar and Gordon chases some of the hoods into the sewer but gets taken prisoner. The other cops, mistaking a grenade blast for a gas explosion, refuse to go down after him. What an ungrateful bunch of dicks.

Down in the sewers, Gordon is horrified to see that Bane is building an army beneath the city. He escapes, barely, with his life, and is washed up in a sewer outflow pipe where he’s rescued by Blake and taken to hospital. Despite the GCPD in this continuity having fought…y’know…a literal crocodile man, Gordon’s claims of terrorists in the sewers are dismissed as too far-fetched and no one believes him except Blake.

Blake visits Wayne manor to tell Bruce what happened to Gordon and also to casually reveal that he knows he’s Batman. See, Bruce used to fund the orphanage that Blake was raised in until the Wayne foundation stopped footing the bills. And this may be the single dumbest thing in this whole film. Blake says that he knew Bruce was Batman when he met him as a kid because he could tell Bruce was secretly angry over losing his parents despite his playboy asshole persona. Which, honestly, getting from “this guy is harbouring lingering trauma over witnessing the brutal murder of his parents as a child” to “this man engages in nocturnal urban mountaineering while dressed as a flying mammal” is a deductive leap that even Adam West’s Batman might have struggled to make.

Also, again, this compressed timeline just doesn’t feel right. We’re supposed to buy that Blake met Bruce when he was already Batman and Blake was a little kid but, Levitt and Bale are like seven years apart in age. It doesn’t work.

Anyway, this visit from Blake snaps Bruce back into action. He visits Gordon in hospital in disguise who begs Batman to return to stop Bane. Bruce also visits Lucius Fox to find out why Wayne Enterprises stopped funding orphanages and finds that WI now has serious “Blockbuster in 2016” vibes. Fox explains that the company is in serious trouble ever since Bruce plowed a shit ton of money into building a clean energy reactor that would end global warming and then proceeded to sit on it.

Well no, actually. He buried the project because Doctor Pavel (the guy Bane kidnapped in the opener) published a paper on how such a reactor could be weaponised into a weapon that could blow up (gasp!) an ENTIRE CITY.

I take it back. THIS is the dumbest thing in the movie.

Bruce Wayne has a way to give humanity limitless clean energy but he decided that it was too dangerous when it turned out that it could destroy a city. You know. Something that we’ve had the technology to do since 1945.

There’s actually a really good movie about it, Nolan, you should check it out.

That’s like deciding the cure for cancer is too dangerous because too much could be used to poison someone with it. There are already far cheaper and more effective ways to poison people. If a terrorist wants to blow up a city, getting a little uranium is probably going to be easier than a one of a kind miracle reactor.

Whatever. Fox tells Bruce that they might be able to save the company with the help of an investor named Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) who’s been very interested in taking a look at the reactor. Bruce says he’ll think about it and, for old times sake, Fox takes him on a tour of R and D shows him some of the new shizz.

Later that evening, Bane launches an attack on the Gotham Stock Exchange and then he and his goons flee on motorbike with hostages with Batman in hot pursuit on the batpod.

Unfortunately, Batman is still public enemy number one which means that the cops are more interested in chasing him and they let Bane get away. They corner Batman who escapes in his newest gift from Lucius, an actual fucking flying car simply called “The Bat”.

Meanwhile, Selina is robbing a guy called Daggett, who is a boardmember of Wayne Enterprises who’s trying to take it over. Selina was working for Daggett in exchange for something called the Clean Slate, a computer programme that could completely erase someone’s criminal record, a bit like if you took all the money you made from crime, changed your name and just stopped doing crime. She gets caught by Daggett who’s been entertaining Bane and his thugs and has to flee to the roof where she’s rescued by Batman. She gives him some exposition as payment for saving her life and vanishes while Batman’s back is turned, leaving him to wheeze “so that’s what that feels like”.

“Like I’m nothing. Like I’m cheap, slutty trash.”

Back in the Batcave, Alfred balls Bruce out for risking his life by becoming Batman again. Alright, we’ve danced around this enough. I’ve said that the reason why Rises doesn’t hold a candle to Dark Knight is all down to the writing (comparing it with Batman Begins is a little trickier. I think Begins is more solid overall with Rises having higher highs and lower lows).

So let’s do a little writing analysis. Helpfully, in both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises there’s a batcave scene where Alfred imparts some important information on the new villain that Batman now faces. Here’s the monologue from The Dark Knight:

A long time ago, I was in Burma. My friends and I were working for the local government. They were trying to buy the loyalty of tribal leaders by bribing them with precious stones. But their caravans were being raided in a forest north of Rangoon by a bandit. So, we went looking for the stones. But in six months, we never met anybody who traded with him. One day, I saw a child playing with a ruby the size of a tangerine. The bandit had been throwing them away.

Now, why is this so good? First line. Why Burma? Because Burma is famously ruled by a military junta almost unparalleled in its brutality and a place that no sane Westerner would go to without a very strong incentive. And the script trusts your intelligence enough to assume that you know that. If Alfred was visiting Burma, it was no simple holiday. Next line. Such beautiful vagueness. My friends and I. Working. Doing what? It was in Burma. You can guess. These two lines tell us so much about Alfred. He knows amorality. He knows chaos. He knows violence. And anything he has to say on these subjects should be treated as expert testimony. He knows men like the Joker, and Bruce had better listen. Then of course there’s the image of the child playing with the ruby. Indelible. You wouldn’t think of “tangerine” but it’s perfect. You can practically see the child, can’t you?

The writing here is subtle. It’s revealing of character. It’s layered with meaning. It’s vivid when it needs to be but it’s not flowery or overly ostentatious. It feels like something a real human being would say, while being better than anything anyone would just say in real life. It’s damn good dialogue.

Now, here is the equivalent dialogue in Rises.

What are you fighting for now? Not your life. Take a good look. At his speed, his ferocity, His training. I see the power of belief. Of the fanatic. I see the League of Shadows resurgent.

Like…it works?

It gets the job done? But it’s the difference between a sniper perfectly executing a headshot on an enemy general and just carpet-bombing the the building he’s in. There’s no finesse, there’s no style, there’s no subtext. It’s just verbal sledgehammering. And I think that really just sums up the difference between the two scripts.

I don’t want to overstate it either. There’s good lines here and there, and there are lines that might as well be good because you have Michael Caine or Gary Oldman or Anne Hathaway or whoever saying them. And, oh yeah, I will say something I absolutely love about this film’s script. It’s a story that didn’t have to be a Batman film. What I mean is, the basic plot is that a terrorist takes an American city hostage with a nuclear bomb and a hero has to stop him. And you could do that story with pretty much any movie action hero. James Bond. John McClane. John Wick. Jason Bourne. John Rambo. Maybe even someone whose name doesn’t begin with J. My point is, it’s a plot that takes advantage of Batman’s plasticity and versatility as a main character. You can do so many different types of story with Batman and yet the movies so often just default to “new villain arises in Gotham and Batman punches him”. It’s big, it’s bold, it’s different and I do really like that.

Anyway, Alfred tells Bruce that he’s leaving because he can’t watch Bruce kill himself fighting Bane and…sorry, this feels really forced to me. This Alfred has always been one of the more pro-Batman interpretations of the character. From that very first scene on the plane when Bruce tells him his plan to become a symbol he’s just nodding along all “a bat, sir? Of course, quite right. Might I take the liberty of suggesting pointy ears?” And now, suddenly, he’s all “it’s me or the cape, Bruce”?

Why? Why now? I’d understand it if Bruce had gone out for the first time in eight years and got beaten to a pulp but…he did kinda great? Okay, he didn’t catch Bane but he was fighting fit, he didn’t miss a step and he rescued Catwoman. That was a Kylie Minogue level comeback.

Alfred pulls the old “Rachel wasn’t actually going to leave Harvey and be with you even if you stopped being Batman and I burned her letter” card and Bruce is all “ohhhhhhhhh gooooood for you and how was it?” and tells Alfred to get the fuck out of his house.

Lucius stops by to inform Bruce that he is boned. Bane used the attack on the stock exchange to fake transfers of assets in Bruce’s name bankrupting the company which is now about to fall into Daggett’s hands. So Bruce decides to trust Miranda Tate and shows her the chamber where he’s sitting on the last best hope for a sustainable human future and makes her the new CEO of Wayne Enterprises. Later, she sleeps with him which, given what we will later learn, makes absolutely no sense.

Later, Bruce suits up and meets with Catwoman who agrees to take him to Bane’s lair. But, it’s a trap. Bane beats Batman and breaks his back and sends him off to the Prison of Half-Baked Symbolism in Nondescriptistan.

“You will witness my incredibly complicated and intricate revenge that I am also obviously at least partially improvising on the fly for reasons that change depending on the scene and which will ultimately turn out not even to be my idea at all. Then, you will have my permission to die.”

The other prisoners tell Bruce the story of a child who escaped the prison through the massive hole in the ceiling that the wardens left there because hope makes a prison worse, or something. Bruce slowly learns how to walk again despite a chunk of his spine literally poking out of his back. And, honestly, a big part of the problem with doing such a “grounded” and “realistic” take on Batman is that when you then try to do more comic booky stuff like flying cars and miraculous spine healing it just becomes a lot harder to suspend disbelief.

Anyway, back in Gotham Bane lures most of the GCPD into the sewers to look for him and then traps them down there. He then blows up the bridges and the football stadium and announces to the world that he has the fusion reactor and that there is an anonymous triggerman somewhere in the city who will destroy the city if the outside world intervenes. He then reveals the truth about Harvey Dent and throws open the prisons, releasing every hoodlum who was jailed who are, understandably, a trifle miffed.

In Nondescriptistan, Bruce is told that he can’t escape because he doesn’t fear death so he has to learn to fear death so that he can learn to not fear death. Or something. I dunno. Look, the point is the only way to escape the prison is to try and leap out without a rope. He does that through the power of Hans Zimmer and escapes to return to Gotham.

Sneaking into Gotham Batman hooks up with the resistance movement lead by Gordon and Blake. Catwoman, who’s started to realise that populist uprisings aren’t always as chill and fun as Reddit would have you believe, also switches sides. They work to free the trapped police officers who are still alive because Bane has been feeding them and sending them down medical supplies because…I have no fucking idea.

I have no idea why he’s doing any of this. He’s planning on blowing the city up. That is his ultimate goal. There is literally no reason for him to keep the cops alive other than so that we can have a climactic battle scene at the end. Anyway, the cops battle Bane’s goons and Batman beats Bane in a brutal “who’s got the stupidest voice?” contest.

It was the sport’s crowning moment.

But, Batman is stabbed in the guts by Miranda who it turns out was Talia, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul and the real mastermind behind this all. And yes, all her years of attempting to get close to the fusion reactor were to use it as a bomb. Instead of. You know. A bomb.

Alright, let’s cut to the finish. Talia is driving the the truck with the reactor on it through the city while the timer ticks down, pursued by Batman, Catwoman and Gordon. They stop the truck, killing Talia. But the reactor’s still about to go boom so Bruce straps it onto the Bat and flies it out into the bay, seemingly dying in a white hot explosion.

Gotham mourns the loss of its hero. Gordon unveils a new statue to Batman. Wayne Manor is sold off and Blake gets something in the will, access to the Batcave. When Bruce had a chance to make this change to his will in favour of some cop he’s met like three times we shall never know. In the course of this, we learn his real name. Robin.

And the movie ends with Alfred going to the only café in Florence and looking up to see Bruce, very much still alive.

“Hey! You got my text, right? About not being dead? And that I’m finally happy and at peace? I didn’t see two ticks, but I assumed you got it…”

***

It’s not a bad film. In fact, parts of it are downright great. But you can definitely see the flop sweat on the pilot’s brow as he brings this trilogy in to land. And, unfortunately, it’s about to get real bad from here on in.

The Dark Knight Detective

First movie where i would say Christian Bale is actually miscast in the role. If they really wanted to do Dark Knight Returns they should have cast an older actor. Like many of the characters this go around Batman just seems to morph into whatever he’s needed to be for any given scene. One minute he’s a decrepit invalid whose knees are held together with chewing gum and prayer, now he’s an unstoppable beast.

The Boy Wonder

Oh? Do we get a little crumb of Robin? A little cheeky morsel? A little nod and a wink? Oh ho! Hee hee!

FUCK YOU.

His Faithful Manservant

Probably the biggest misstep is the Bruce/Alfred relationship. I don’t buy Alfred leaving Bruce when he does, and I DEFINITELY don’t buy Bruce letting Alfred think he’s dead. Michael Caine does terrific work with noticeably poorer dialogue but that’s why you hire a pro.

The Queen of Criminals, the Princess of Plunder

Brilliant Cat-Woman. Great take. No notes.

The Daughter of the Demon

Same problem we get with a lot of Disney twist villains. The reveal that Miranda is Talia is so late in the game that we get precious little screen time to actually judge her as a villain. As a first screen outing of the Demon’s Daughter she’s not bad.

Instead, I will simply BREAK YOU!

I mean, definitely a better take than the last screen Bane, right? Memorable, menacing and honestly iconic. Doesn’t change the fact that in terms of character motivation and backstory this guy is a garbled mess.

“Perhaps, Detective, it is time that you and I finally settled this!”

We get a brief cameo from Liam Neeson as Ra’s Al Ghul which is fun.

Fear Incarnate, Fear Walking the streets of Gotham…

Uh, this just doesn’t feel right. I get why they have Scarecrow overseeing the trials, it’s a nice way to link back to Begins. But law and order has never been thematically relevant to Scacrecrow, not even obliquely. Murphy is also clearly playing the character as prissy Johnathan Crane and not the Scarecrow which seems like a step back for the character. I mean, I know who SHOULD be the judge…

But apparently reality doesn’t take my feelings into consideration.

The Comish

Gordon as a tough fearless resistance leader in Bane-occupied Gotham is great. Gordon willing to use Dent’s death to lock up potentially innocent people in his War on Crime? Not my Jimbo.

Our Plucky Sidekicks

I don’t know what it is but the supporting cast doesn’t have quite that same “WOW” factor as the Dark Knight. There are definitely stronger and weaker performances.

Batman NEVER kills, except: 

Talia and her driver die in a truck crash trying to avoid gunfire from Batman as he tries to stop them blowing up the whole city. Faults on both sides.

Where does he get those wonderful toys?: 

As a big part of the plot is Bruce losing his fortune, we don’t see a lot of new gadgets outside of an EMP gun and *checks notes* an ACTUAL FLYING CAR.

I don’t know what it is, the more goofy and sci-fi the Nolanverse gets the less I like it. Like, Keaton could have flown this and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.

It’s the car, right? Chicks dig the car:

Not counting the forties serials, there has never been a Batman movie without an official Batmobile. Several Tumblers do make an appearance though, under the command of Bane’s troops.

FINAL SCORE OUT OF TEN:

NEXT UPDATE: Hi! How are you? I have like half a novel to write in a month! So I’m taking April off to focus entirely on that and not eating or sleeping. Cool? Cool. Next review 09 May 2024.

NEXT TIME: Did you think you could escape me?