I Watch FIlms: The Dark Knight Rises

 

The Dark Knight Rises

Eight years after The Dark Knight Batman has vanished, Gotham City has had it’s crime cleaned up with the Dent Act (named after deceased District Attorney Harvey Dent) and Bruce Wayne is a recluse. Wayne Enterprises is in trouble, apparently having lost money on a green energy project. Investor John Daggett comes up with a rather convoluted plan to get control of the company. At a gala affair at Wayne Manor Selina Kyle, the Catwoman, robs Bruce Wayne’s safe, and escapes with a congressman in tow. Daggett tries to double cross her, but she manages to get away, while the henchmen who tried to kill her escaped into the sewers.

Police Commissioner Jim Gordon leads a team into the sewers where they are ambushed by Bane, notorious international mercenary, and excommunicated member of the League Of Shadows (see Batman Begins). Gordon escapes and is found by John Blake, a police officer. Blake has figured out Batman’s secret identity (Bruce Wayne) and goes to convince him that something very wrong is going on down in the sewers. Bruce seeks out medical help, gets fit, investigates what’s going on with his company, gets new equipment. So when Bane attacks the stock exchange, he pursues him as he makes his escape.

It's wheels within wheels and plots within plots. Daggett hired Selina Kyle to get Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints; he hired Bane to attack the stock exchange and frame Bruce Wayne making terrible investments so that he can get control of Wayne enterprises. He fails, because Bruce reveals the nuclear reactor that his green energy project built, which can be made a bomb, to Miranda Tate, another, more ethical green energy investor. Bane however has been using Daggett and Daggett’s construction company to undermine the city; with the nuclear reactor revealed he steals it, traps the police in the sewers, takes over the city, breaks Batman’s back and imprisons him.

The finale to this Batman trilogy, it’s great virtue is that it gives us an ending, telling us how Batman might end. It’s flaws are that it’s long, complicated and confused to get there, even more so than the previous two films.

It’s always been the man behind the man in these films, yet the final one has no clear motive. Ras Al Ghul wants Gotham to (appear to) tear itself apart so that the world will stop being degenerate and live in peace order and harmony. The Joker wanted to show Gotham that the peace, order and harmony are a lie, a bad joke, it’s the violence and degeneracy that are true. Bane takes over Gotham, releases it’s criminals and lets loose the underclass on the rich and powerful. But he wants to do more, he intends to destroy it. Why? Revenge maybe? But taking over Gotham and tearing it apart, and making Bruce Wayne watch it from an unescapable prison* seems enough. Bane completes the job, then he and his men hang out for months, waiting for… something. And if they wait too long, this unstable situation will get them all killed. Sacrifice yourself, well sure, we see that in the first sequence, but sacrifice yourself for a reason.

A friend of mine when we came out the cinema from seeing this in 2012 thought that this might be better than The Dark Knight. I don’t think so, it’s muddled, it’s out of sync with the previous ones. In Batman Begins and The Dark Knight corruption in the police reached from top to bottom. Here the worst policeman is ambitious for Jim Gordon’s job, and considers not joining a desperate fight**, eventually coming good (sacrificing himself - for a reason!) When the police were in control of the city it was a churning pot of poverty, desperation and crime. Without them this boils over into incoherent violence with a French-revolutionary veneer. The film’s effort to give us something to think about doesn’t result in an argument that holds water.

Many cool stunts, Bane has some great one liners and as I said, we get a perfectly good ending to a Batman.

Watch This: Stylish finale to a superhero trilogy
Don’t Watch This: Guy who used to dress as Dracula to fight crime dresses as Dracula to fight crime until he doesn’t

* Heh

** He does, in fact, march down Grand in his dress blues, against instructions, making him insubordinate.