The Dark Knight Rises [Celluloid Hero]

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Director Christopher Nolan has never let me down. I've loved every single one of his movies, and his previous two installments in the Batman series took comic movies to a whole new level. The finale of his trilogy was feverishly anticipated, and an event I did not want to miss while it was in theatres.

I try to avoid spoilers in this blog, so I won't go into specific plot details. I am, however, a casual comic book reader, so when Bane was announced as the main villain, I already had an idea of the likely path the movie would take. Nolan doesn't like happy endings, and since it was already announced that this would be the last Batman movie he and Christian Bale would make, I felt like I knew where things would end up.

Despite all that, Nolan still managed to cram so many twists into this movie it kept my heart racing until the very end. The main characters of Batman/Bruce Wayne, Alfred, Fox and Gordon have been given incredible depth by both the script and the actors, and I was completely drawn into the actions of each as the story twisted deeper and deeper.

There were a few issues; rather than call them "plot holes", I would just think of them as "plot gaps", smaller than a hole but still the sort of thing that made me say "wait, how did that happen?" but then get right back into my suspension of disbelief without dwelling on it. I also had tried to avoid most of the trailers (I like to go in fresh), and was disappointed that a few scenes were spoiled for me. Specifically, the football stadium explosions might have made me yell out loud if I hadn't already seen the commercials.

Nolan set a nearly impossible-to-beat mark with the second movie in the series. However, I think if you were to take all three films and look at them as one grand opus, they all flow perfectly with each other. A typical movie has three acts, the climb, the climax, and the denouement. I feel like "Batman Begins" was the climb, "The Dark Knight" was the frenzied climax, and "The Dark Knight Rises" was a fitting resolution.

(normally I post a full trailer, but to go back to my earlier statement of being annoyed at spoilers within trailers, I'll just go with the original teaser)

On the [Celluloid Hero] scale, "The Dark Knight Rises" gets an 8 out of 10.

[Each week, Varacchi explores cinema from his own perspective. From indie to foreign to mainstream, he'll watch it all. Suggestions and recommendations are welcome, leave a comment below. CLICK HERE for the Celluloid Hero archives]