Response to Review: ‘Dark Knight Rises’ disappointingly clunky, bombastic By Tom Charity, Special to CNN
The author of the review, in the very first paragraph, makes it clear that he had high expectations from Nolan and the movie, and also that he was disappointed that it didn’t live up to his expectations by saying “I only wish I could say I enjoyed this big, sprawling beast of a movie.” It is understandable that a lot can be expected from a movie made by Nolan due to his excellent reputation, but you have to agree that there wasn’t much room for improvement after “The Dark Knight” was made.
The review states that this movie has been “overtly fixated on terrorism” and is written in a tone as to imply that there was too much deliberate destruction. But what else can one expect from a Super-hero movie? The whole purpose of a super-hero movie is that there is a bad guy who destroys everything for nothing or his own stupid reason and then there’s a good guy(Batman in this case) who would give up anything, including his life, to prevent further destruction and put an end to the terrorism. Agreed that the 9/11 subtext is explicit here, but how else would one portray a man living in a “cave” somewhere far away from Gotham City(Chiacgo)?
However, the author is absolutely right about how apt the beautiful Anne Hathaway was for the role of Selina Kyle, who is the movie’s best idea of fun. The movie is an all serious drama and little more humour and a few light-hearted scenes would do this movie a world of good. I also agree with him about how the movie misses the action of Batman/Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle for huge intervals and focusses more on the Destructinator, Bane, and his activities. At this point of time, the movie does get a little boring and the viewer tends to get restless. But all is gone, when the Knight rises! The tech specs like cinematography, graphics and sounds enhance the special effects of the battle making the fight and action scenes simply splendid, compensating for the stretched boring period of the movie.
I’d also have to agree with the author of the review when he says, “It’s dismaying how often Nolan falls back on crude parallel editing and flashbacks, how loosely he plays with space and time in a climax that rings more than a little hollow in its efforts to circle back to “Batman Begins.” because the reason for and cause of the appearance of Ras Al Ghul in this movie seems very absurd and vague.
However, contrasting to the author’s views, I believe that Nolan would have to bite off more than what he can chew to pull off a movie that would have to further raise the standards of the Dark Knight trilogy. The high bar set by “The Dark Knight” could only be raised by an overambitious approach and though Nolan didn’t make it all the way to the top, he did do a good job to not let expectations crash and maintain the standard of the “superior” trilogy. No, this isn’t Nolan’s worst and biggest movie, but certainly was his biggest movie due to all the hype after the previous Batman movie and expectations after his previous movie “Inception” and it did turn out to be a great one but certainly not as great as “The Dark Knight”.
Link to Review:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/19/showbiz/movies/The Review by Tom Charity
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