The previous film in the Nolan Batman trilogy was called The Dark Knight. Just like it’s title this movie has 25% new additional content and 75% the same old guff. That about sums it up. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t regret having watched the film. But, like a James Bond, the franchise is now a predictable checklist of things people want to see in a Batman movie padded out with action that could be from any film. “What checklist?” – Ok, here goes…
- Bruce Wayne lost his parents at a young age, don’t you know?!
- Bruce presses a button and the Bat Suit appears
- Alfred saying”I don’t want you to bury you too, Master Wayne!”
- Check out these bland gadgets (Bond certainly does this better)
- Lots of bats flying whilst someone stands still among them, usually Bruce.
- We all wear a mask that hides our true identity and blah blah blah
Plot wise, Nolan appears to delve deeper into the shallow narrative he created in his previous two films. I hadn’t realised there were so many loose ends from the previous film. Or that I was meant to care about any of them. But there you go. Much of it seemed to be recap, so we would get the connections and realise how clever it all was. And it took over 2½ hours to tell it. Alas, it wasn’t a clever story though you don’t realise how laborious the telling of it is until you leave the film and realise how little impact it’s had on you.
Christian Bale’s gruff Batman voice always made me laugh, but it is matched by the dubbed voice of Bane which is so bassy and sinister I actually had difficulty understanding what he was saying. And lip-reading certainly wasn’t an option. Anne Hathaway lacked feline persona – she may as well have been Ferret-woman! Joseph Gordon-Levitt was very watchable and helped refresh the more worn out, tiring and heavy characters of Gordon, Fox and Alfred.
I’m not sure what else to say. This review is likely to be short and sweet as for the first time in a while, I left feeling quite numb and uninspired. I had enjoyed the film but would not watch it again. I’d go further as to predict that it will probably do badly on DVD sales. It’s not a failure, but it’s not a classic either and what has been made out as an epic effort from Nolan will, I’m afraid, fade quite quickly into the annals of cinema archives, a bit like the Arc of the Covenant in a never ending warehouse.
[rating=2]