Dark Knight Rises: Mostly the same thoughts as El Cideon. Good, not quite great. It's also the most serious of the movies by far.... although maybe serious isn't the right word. "Solemn" perhaps. The first two movies did good work to make you take the work seriously as not as a "comic book movie," but the first two movies are also, well, fun. Not all the time, but enough. (Yes, Dr. Crane & the Joker's manic charisma count.) Dark Knight Rises has a little of it in Catwoman, but that's basically it, since everyone else except maybe Fox is srs bizness all the time. It does the serious *well*, no doubt, and Bane wouldn't have worked as a wisecracker, but I wish they could have resculpted things to add a bit more lightness or dark humor somewhere.
Comments / nitpicks:
* I get that new high tech gizmos are expected in comic books, but the bit with the fusion reactor was awkward and silly because it was "too" realistic yet everyone acted like it was a comic book threat. Uh, Bruce? Fission reactors already exist and they function the exact same way. They make clean power BUT can also be used to make a weapon. Thus both sides look silly - Bruce, there's no harm in turning it on, the world already has to deal with that problem. Miranda, there's no need to fund it at great expense, you can probably just build several fission reactors instead (with or without Wayne) then reprocess it Iran style if you have fanatical followers who don't leak (which all comic book villains do to make their plots sort of work).
* Couldn't they have figured out a better excuse for the Bane-raids-the-stock-exchange bit? He did it to mess with Bruce's eTrade account or something and it somehow involved fingerprints and trades were somehow still being conducted despite massive terrorist attack. Seems like these plot points could have been separated - raid the stock exchange for some other reason to get a bit showy spectacle, then hack Bruce's finances later. I'm not quite sure I approve of the functional setting change either. Comic book cities are malleable, but in Batman Begins, Gotham was clearly Pittsburgh or something - a once great city, now fallen. Dark Knight Rises, it was blatantly New York, which I'm not sure fits a Batman setting so well anymore.
* The Paris Commune was a little wacky. Okay, I can buy that Bane's men have the Wayne Enterprises Applied Science showcase and lots of machine guns, which very much helps encourage people to do whatever you ask them to. However, releasing all the criminal prisoners? Threatening the city with a nuclear bomb? Killing the person who can disarm the bomb publicly? Nobody else is going to be on your side. This is going to get you & your men killed fast unless they do something like hole up in a fortress and never leave. Also doesn't the fact that some people do kind of contradict The Dark Knight, where the ships refused to blow each other up?
* Also, the Bane takeover was so apocalyptic that it really feels like more Jack Bauer should have been called in and not been a 2 minute section where the special ops guys are immediately tailed & found. If Bane is relying on the army itself to enforce the cordon, it's going to be pretty darn leaky. Ninjas swimming in before the ice came if nothing else. Batman Begins had an apocalyptic evil plot but one that the authorities found out about only as it was happening, so Batman had an excuse for his role. The Dark Knight, well, while the Joker might have committed 9/11 multiple times in short succession, I can see it being seen as an ultimately local gangsters problem by the feds & the army. In Rises, it just seems like there's so much time that passes with no Batman that you can't begin to imagine the implications along with SOME kind of plan cooked up by the world.
* Probably a studio request for watchability, but wish the Pit scenes could have been a bit darker.
* Not an uncommon problem in comic books or any recurring media where it's tough to kill people, but letting Bruce escape at the end also devalues Tate's betrayal. I get that both Bane & Tate are big on drawing out the suffering over time and the illusion of hope blah blah blah, but when you're sticking Bruce with a knife? Can we trust that she knows enough to make it a mortal wound, or at least a mortal-wound-if-not-treated? Then you can have Batman making the choice between trying to stop the bomb or getting emergency care, if functioning hospitals still exist in Baneville. Or just plain having him die on the spot from Talia, and let Catwoman / Gordon / Fox save the day in the end if you want to REALLY drive the comic book fans up a wall. (Okay the studios would never let that happen.)
* Bruce wants to get with Selina after all in the ending? I can sort of buy a "need any allies I can get + misplaced trust" argument for keeping with her during the movie, but, um. She kind of got the shit kicked out of you followed by you being locked in hell for 3 months while Gotham burned down. That's a pretty epic betrayal. I'd say that Selina can date Bruce, but only if she escapes from a wretched pit in Algeria first.
I'm not totally complaining about where the movie ended up. Echoing El Cid on the villain's plot being the same but more drawn out kind of disappointing. To the extent that the League of Shadows has a coherent ideology, it seemed something like "Make Gotham stand as Sodom, an evil example of societal decay" or something. And you know, even if it was enforced by drugs, having a third of the city rip themselves apart isn't a bad start in Begins. How "make an example of Gotham" turns into "Give power to the people, then blow them up with a nuke" I'm not really sure. I just wish they'd come up with a different villainous plot. Batman in the pit was clearly the vision Nolan had in his head, and the plot is an excuse to get him there. And I liked the pit scenes & plot! Just... have something else that Bane is up to and able to do unstoppably for 4 months while Bruce Wayne has to do pushups and go on his journey to rediscover the fear of death and the joy of life.
super: Maybe knowing the comics changes things but the big plot twist with Tate seemed pretty out of the blue to me. I guess Bane just lied about being born in the darkness in his first fight with Batman if he was thrown down there like a vanilla prisoner. There really isn't any reason to think Tate is Ducard's daughter - everything points to it being Bane at that point. Assuming that a French accent means she's related seems a bit of a stretch.
Djinn / Elf: Well, I thought Neeson had solid presence at least. They just inexplicably botched Batman's final fights with shaky cam & fast cuts, and the League of Shadows villainous plot is silly, which drags Neeson down a bit. (Dr. Crane and the Joker are crazy, perhaps, but not silly.) Having rewatched Batman Begins yesterday, something that still mildly annoys me is that the movies seem to run with the idea that Ducard was Ra's al Ghul the whole time. But Neeson goes on in the training speeches about how a man can be killed and brought down, but an idea is unstoppable, you must become a legend, etc. Thus it seems entirely obvious to me that fitting with that would Ra's al Ghul merely being a *title* - and thus someone who is unstoppable. Ducard merely took over as the next Ra's al ghul then. Sadly it seems the movies don't quite agree with me despite it fitting. Oh well. (Why is this in spoiler tags? Because I said "movies" and the fact that it comes up again in Rises is a bit of a spoiler.
