Eight years have passed since Batman took the fall for Harvey Dent’s actions in an attempt to restore the people’s faith and give them hope. In that time, the memory of Dent has successfully cleaned the streets of Gotham and turned it from the grimy slum look of Batman Begins to a city that has all the colour and joy of a newborn baby (the first of many “risings”). However, the truth behind the events of the night of Dent’s death weighs heavy on both Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) with the former losing faith in himself and the other placed in self-inforced exile within Wayne Manor. An attack on things close to both (Gotham for Gordon/Batman and Wayne Enterprises/his reputation for Wayne) by the formidable Bane (Tom Hardy) leads them to be brought out of their shell to defend it. Each has their own sidekick in their endeavours. Gordon and Batman gain rookie cop, John Blake Joseph Gordon Levitt), while Wayne gains a member of the Wayne Enterprises board Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard). Each of these draws their respective “hero” out of their shells in order to stop the chaos that besets Gotham.
Throughout the film, there is an element of finality everywhere. Wayne’s fragile state both mentally and physically, helped by the assistance of a walking stick, is prominent throughout; a man born into wealth but unsure what to do with it, a man with an entire mansion to himself who relies on the company of his butler and surrounding himself with, what Tyler Durden referred to as “single serving friends”. Despite the clean streets of Gotham, Gordon realises that just one tug on his web of lies surrounding the legacy of Dent could bring the house of cards tumbling down with severe force. Everything is coming to an end but how can it when everything looks so rosy?
That job is given to the mercenary Bane. His mission, to begin with, is very much aimed solely at destroying the reputation of Bruce Wayne so that a rival corporation, unhappy with their lowly position within Wayne Enterprises, can climb the ladder an absorb the bankrupt company. But this Bane isn’t quite the dumb thug of Batman & Robin. This Bane is one with as much intelligence as ability to crush skulls. A member of the League of Shadows, the organisation Wayne joined to overcome his fear and embrace Batman, he is hell bent on succeeding where Ra’s Al-Ghul failed. His nihilistic journey to create a self-defined “utopia” is portrayed, by Bane, as liberating the people, this time from the oppression of the police rather than from lack of intervention as in Batman Begins, yet Bane is a manipulator and his mission is not for the benefit of the people but for the benefit of himself.
Tom Hardy is fantastic as Bane, not only portraying the intellect and torture that Batman & Robin never showed because it was too busy making Arnold Schwarzenneger tell shitty ice based jokes, but as a physical presence. This is a guy that manages to surpass Batman physically to the point where it seems like Batman has no chance of defeating this beast of a man. Punches break walls, his attacks are both devastatingly powerful yet deceptively quick. As such, the fight between Batman and Bane are ones of “edge of your seat” tension. Bane is out to beat Batman both physically and mentally. He wants to break him. And that’s scary. While The Scarecrow had fear itself and The Joker had psychosis as his ally, Bane needs nothing more than himself to really put fear into people’s hearts. Oh and a big ass nuclear bomb.
Anne Hathaway also provides a moral ambiguous role, albeit it one that looks a lot better in skin tight lycra, as Selina Kyle, known to many as Catwoman although the name is never uttered once in the film. Here she retains her Robin Hood-esque cat burglary but with a more physically dangerous presence than that of Michelle Pfeiffer’s. She understands Bruce’s need to begin again but also holds desire for self-preservation by any means necessary, providing a warped mirror view of Batman as many of the best characters in the series have (Dent with his legal process of justice, Bane and Ra’s with their desire to clean the streets etc). She also looks amazing in skin tight lycra, have I said that?
Like the previous two films, The Dark Knight Rises also packs in plenty of set pieces. The football stadium explosion to the isolation of Gotham City to the eventual battle between Bane’s army and the police (the latter provided real spectacle simply due to the scale and chaos that it brings. While the focus is on Batman and Bane, there is fighting everywhere else too) are all stand out pieces showing the true scale of Bane’s plans to create a tabula rasa on which he can build the League of Shadows’ idea of a utopia. And yet, the real moments in The Dark Knight Rises are the smaller emotional moments. Alfred confronting Bruce Wayne in hopes that he can persuade him to just stay out of sight (with a truly emotional monologue from Michael Caine cementing him as a truly fantastic British actor), Blake confronting Gordon about the lies surrounding Dent (another scene stealer from JGL), the first appearance of Selina Kyle or even just the realisation of a hero’s identity all have much more of a punch and do more to drive the plot than the big explosion, which in the grander scheme of things are just little incidences (not to detract from those explosions though).
It’s the this balance between intimacy and chaos which really makes The Dark Knight Rises stand out. Where Nolan could easily slip into the same line as the campy destruction of New York in The Avengers or the overall ridiculousness of The Amazing Spider-Man’s villain, the series has done well to keep itself grounded in reality. Each character has a chance to slip into the cartoonish nature that Tim Burton or the Animated Series opted for, instead going for characters that wouldn’t feel out of place in real life, just with added theatrics to it. This is what makes Nolan’s series so great.
Thematically, the series has always been strong and The Dark Knight Rises is the perfect conclusion to that. Batman Begins was all about fear and how overcoming that fear would make you strong with the Scarecrow/Ra’s al-Ghul literally utilising it to control Gotham. The Dark Knight was all about hope and how having hope can make you stronger with the introduction of “Gotham’s White Knight” Harvey Dent and The Joker’s downfall being due to his naive assumption that the people of Gotham no longer have hope. The Dark Knight Rises does something interesting and completely 180s these ideas. Here, a lack of fear makes one weak and it is the existence of fear which gives many people a driving motivation. Here also, an over reliance on hope makes for a weaker and more placid people. A balance needs to be struck between fear and hope to find a perfect middle ground in which to create the perfect hero of which even Batman is not until he realises this.
I think it’s fair to say that Nolan’s Batman trilogy is one of the best collection of superhero films ever created. What bad moments they have in them feel nitpicky. They’re not faultless but the faults are nowhere near as gaping and destructive as in, say, Spider-Man 3 but everything surrounding those faults is fresh and interesting and has done a hell of a job to revive a hero whose reputation had all but been thrown to the ground and stomped on by the heel of Batman & Robin. The Dark Knight Rises manages to provide a satisfying conclusion (although the end, again, contains some nitpicky things) to potentially one of the best trilogies put to screen and can sit alongside The Godfather et al.
Also, Anne Hathaway. In lycra. Yep.
