MEDIA
WHY
TH
S ES
Writer’s Disclaimer: Due to the nature of an ar
ticle like this, there will be some heavy spoilers
involved. If you haven’t seen it yet, consider this
your warning.
I’m just going to flat out say it; The Dark Knight Rises
was a massive disappointment for me. Now before
you go declaring a blood feud on my room, let me
explain something. Disappointment is not the same
thing as bad, because I thought it was a fantastic
movie. However, I’ve decided to forgo the option of a
regular review for The Dark Knight Rises in favor of
a more in depth look at why I was so disappointed in
what should have been one of the year’s best films.
Going into TDKR, I had high expectations and can
you blame me? When it was originally announced, it
had some great things going for it; an end to Nolan’s
trilogy, a realistic look at one of Batman’s greatest
villains, and a story that would combine elements
of both the Hush and Knightfall story arcs. Not only
that but it was following The Dark Knight, which is
considered to be one of the greatest superhero films
ever created.
As it turns out. Bane was one of the biggest disap
pointments for me, despite a few great scenes in
cluding the famous ‘‘I will break you!” portion and the
stadium was one of my favorite moments of the film.
For being one of Batman’s most intelligent villains,
many of his actions flat out confused me. During the
stadium sequence. Bane says “If there’s any indica
tion of outside involvement, I will pull the trigger and
detonate this bomb.” When Batman comes back,
from being exiled, to Gotham, his first action is to
ignite a giant bat signal on a bridge. What is Bane’s
response, aside from not pulling the trigger? “Oh, he
escaped...”
Even though he didn’t “die”. The Joker’s final se
quence in Dark Knight had some serious punch to it
I September 10, 20121 Page 6 |
WAS A DISAPPOINTMENT
By Lucas Smith
because, despite being physically defeated, he still
won in that he corrupted Harvey Dent beyond cure.
The impact of The Joker is still felt even until the very
end of Rises. Besides that, I just felt The Joker had
a much bigger screen presence. He wasn’t intimi
dating because of his physical stature, but because
of his chaotic attitude and Heath Ledger’s chilling
performance. While Bane certainly had a physical
presence, I was never scared of him. The Joker on
the other hand gave me chills practically every scene
e was in especially during that one news broadcast-
-you all know which one I’m talking about. “LOOK AT
MEM”
Beyond all of this, there were tiny little nitpicks that
bothered me. These include the leg brace that magi
cally fixed Bruce’s bad leg, and that much of the new
technology wasn’t really explained. While these may
seem minor, my favorite parts of Nolan’s Batman
films was how they explained the technology, ie. Bat
man’s cape was a special fabric that reacted to jolts
of electricity, or the Batmobile being a mining car.
The only explanation for “The Bat”, his plane, was
just Lucius decided to make it
I want to reiterate that I did not hate this film. I just
felt that it was a step backwards from The Dark
Knight than anything else while Dark Knight was a
drastic improvement over Batman Begins.