The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Director: Christopher Nolan

 There are two different ways someone could view this film. As a standalone film or as the third and final movie in a trilogy. As a standalone movie The Dark Knight Rises is mostly just a bloated wanna-be epic with a seriously confused stance on authority. But when the two preceding films are taken into consideration, then it becomes an immensely satisfying end to an epic trilogy on heroism. How the movie ends and what happens to Batman and Bruce Wayne is absolutely perfect. If you were to end the Batman saga the last five minutes of this movie are pretty much exactly how it should happen. But the plot and the events that it took to get to that ending and to make those thematic points were not executed as well as they could have been. The plot is filled with holes, weak assumptions, and cliches. None of the revolution and nuclear winter stuff really was that impressive. Even Bane as the villain felt mostly like a plot device than a real menace and antagonist to Batman (the exception being the initial harrowing underground encounter between the two).

But I still believe that ultimately this is a satisfying ending to a great trilogy. This is because the film emphasizes the ideals that created Batman in the first place. Hope, heroism, and inspiration. All of that muddled and bloated plot was all for one reason and that was to raise the stakes against Batman so high that he would never be able to come back from it the same way. The film highlights the fact that Batman is above all a symbol that is meant to inspire hope. Bruce Wayne never thought he could change his city by individually taking out every single criminal for the rest of his life, and even if he could do that, he would die someday because after all even Batman is mortal. Back in Batman Begins Ra's al Ghul was the one who taught him that he has to be more than a man, that he has to become an ideal, and that idea is taken full circle in this film. The politics of this trilogy are confusing, and if you spend any time trying to figure out what this film believes about authority, government, if it's fascist or anarchist, you'll get a lot of conflicting messages. But that's okay, because I feel like Christopher Nolan is mostly apathetic to all of that. Instead, The Dark Knight trilogy is a story about the power of the individual. It's about how one individual can rise up and inspire others to do the same and create real social change. Even if it does so with some lackluster execution, this final movie does cement those themes.

Grade: B+