Dark Knight Rises

I went into the Dark Knight Rises with huge expectations and was let down. Let me set where I`m coming from... I'm a big comic book fan and love Chris Nolan's work. I'm going on 38 and have been reading since I was maybe 5 or 6. It's been hard to avoid spoilers and as such I already knew more or less what would be going on in it and who everyone was.

The movie suffers from a few points (according to my amateur viewpoint):
- One is Bane, I liked him as a character in the comics but he just doesn't translate as well to the screen partly due to his iconic mask. Not being able to see a character's facial features reduces your ability to identify and relate to that character. Also the mask made it more difficult to understand him as it muffles the voice. I didn't have a problem with it but the person I saw the movie with did. Bane's motivations didn't exactly come through very well either, I knew who and what he was working on behalf of but it wasn't because of the movie that I did.
- Two was that there was too many characters and it felt to me like the movie was racing around trying to keep up with everyone. As a result it felt like scenes were cut short and the movie was cramped as a result. I think that some judicious editing for pacing would have benefited it so that it could breathe and not be as confused. It all makes sense if you stop to think about it ... but you're watching a superhero movie - you shouldn't have to stop to think about who's doing what to who and why to make sense of what's going on in a film like this.

Pluses were Anne Hathaway as Catwoman and Michael Caine as Alfred - I thought they both did well.


I'll be giving it another shot just to confirm how I feel about it but for the moment I can't help but feel disappointed that it wasn't tighter and cleaner. I feel that with time I will like it, but for the moment I can't say that I do.