Batman - The Dark Knight Rises Review (Holy Bat Spoilers Batman)

“Not Everything. Not yet.”

Here it is the third and final installment in Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman.  The highly anticipated Batman: The Dark Knight Rises is finally here and we all have to wonder is it worth the hype.  Well that’s what I was hoping for when I went to the first showing this morning.  With my son next to me we waited with baited breath for the movie to start and to see our hero on the screen.  Would we like it?  Would it be up to par with Batman Begins and The Dark Knight? Well we had our answer after 2 hours and 44 minutes of movie viewing.

'The Dark Knight Rises' - a mini-review (a couple of minor spoilers)

It's one last ride for Christian Bale as Batman.

You've seen all the trailers for "The Dark Knight Rises."

You've seen all the Internet chatter about unannounced (returning) villains and plot twists.

You laughed your ass off when Rush Limbaugh said the movie was an attack on Mitt Romney.

"The Dark Knight Rises" is an attack, all right - but one aimed directly at your senses. Bridges blow up. Buildings blow up. Gunfire fills the air. People scream. But the film doesn't rise to the same level as the first two parts of the trilogy starring Christian Bale. It strives mightily to top its predecessors, but ultimately falls short.

The returning characters - Bale as Batman, Michael Caine as Alfred, Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon - fill their roles to our expectations. The new characters? Not so much. Anne Hathaway is a Catwoman who appears to have lost all nine of her personalities. Tom Hardy's Bane is big, tough and annoyingly difficult to understand through his mask.

In the end, it's a movie full of sound and fury, but signifying little more than a clear bat-signal that director Christopher Nolan knows it is time to move on to other projects. It surpasses the too-soon reboot of "The Amazing Spider-Man," yet cannot match the crackling energy of "The Avengers."

Oh, the cast and crew try. And in many ways they succeed. It is not a bad movie - in fact, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the genre of masked vigilantes and crazed super-villains. The plot - increasingly preposterous as the film moves along - leaves questions big and small while eventually abandoning any pretense for even comic book logic (what happened to Bruce Wayne's limp? 3,000 police officers trapped underground for three months?) But it also takes some interesting twists.

As a superhero movie, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a mess - a glorious mess. As a finale, though, The Batman and his fans deserved better.

Rush Limbaugh: 'Dark Knight's' Bane an attack on Mitt Romney

Now that you mention it, there is a resemblance.

No commentary required:

“Have you heard, this new movie, the Batman movie — what is it, the 'Dark Knight Lights Up' or something? Whatever the name of it is. That’s right, 'Dark Knight Rises,' 'Lights Up,' same thing. Do you know the name of the villain in this movie? Bane. The villain in 'The Dark Knight Rises' is named Bane. B-A-N-E. What is the name of the venture capital firm that Romney ran, and around which there’s now this make-believe controversy? Bain.

"The movie has been in the works for a long time, the release date’s been known, summer 2012 for a long time. Do you think that it is accidental, that the name of the really vicious, fire-breathing, four-eyed, whatever-it-is villain in this movie is named Bane? … 

"Anyway, so this evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there’s now discussion out there as to whether or not this was purposeful, and whether or not it will influence voters. It’s going to have a lot of people. This movie, the audience is going to be huge, lot of people are going to see the movie. And it’s a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd. And they’re going to hear ‘Bane’ in the movie, and they are going to associate Bain. And the thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, not Bain Capital, but Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie — ‘Oh yeah, I know who that is.’ There are some people who think it will work. There are some people think it will work. Others think — ‘You’re really underestimating the American people who think that will work.’”

- Rush Limbaugh

Spoilers for "The Dark Knight Rises"

You won't read any spoilers here. But you may see a few if you play the video. You have been warned!

New Batman: Dark Knight Rises Trailer!!

Here is another trailer for Batman.  Can't wait for July to get here to see this movie but I think we know the whole story already with all the trailers and TV spots.

Two New Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Posters

The media blitz has begun as tons of stuff is being release.  Can't wait for July to see the movie. 

Batman The Dark Knight Rises Movie Poster Round Up

Last week saw a slew of posters released for The Dark Knight Rises and in case you haven't seen them they are collected here for you to see. 

Source Inside Media Track

Is Talia al Guhl In Batman: The Dark Knight Rises. Apparently So Says Actress

According to 12 year old actress Joey King she says she is playing a young version of her.  As she states.

I play young Talia al Ghul. I can't give too much away because I promised Mr. Nolan I wouldn't say anything. There are too many secrets about the character and the movie.

So it seems that  Marion Cotillard could be playing the adult version of Talia al Ghul for those who don't know is the daughter of Ra's al Ghul and the mother of Batman's son Damian who is now the current Robin in the comics books.

Bane said what?

Maybe if he took that thing off his mouth ...

First, a confession. As any friend will tell you, I am hard of hearing, especially on my right side. As a result, I sometimes watch DVDs at home with the closed captioning turned on. That's part of the reason that the latest news about "The Dark Knight Rises" caught my ear (sorry).

I found the voice of the villain Bane, portrayed by Tom Hardy, difficult to understand in the early clips of the movie. At first, I thought it might just be me. Then I read other people saying the same thing.

Multiple Internet sources - Adam Chitwood of collider.com posted the "exclusive" - are reporting that negative feedback about the sound caused Warner Bros. to distribute a remix of the film's prologue that is being shown in IMAX theaters:

“A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue. He said it’s now a combo soundtrack with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but the cool thing about this is that they’ve cleaned up the dialogue. They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable. He asked some people after they left the movie if they could understand Bane and they all said they had no issue understanding him, and were excited for the movie.”

Collider also published a copy of a letter being sent to IMAX theaters about the fix.

Seems simple enough. After all, who in their right mind would not want to clean up the dialogue so that viewers can understand what one of the main characters is saying?

Director Christopher Nolan, for one, is not crazy about the idea. He reportedly was opposed to reworking Bane's voice, although not against adjusting other sound in the mix.

Then, shortly after the Collider story appeared, the site was contacted by the studio:

Warner Bros as contacted me and said that our story is absolutely not true.

Maybe I will just wait for the DVD and watch the closed captioning. Well, I would if I had any willpower.

Anne Hathaway On Her Catwoman Character

Anne Hathaway has been making the interview rounds lately and has given fans an insite into her interpretation on the Catwoman character.

"Gotham City is full of grace. You look at Heath [Ledger]'s performance as the Joker, there was a lot of madness there but there was also a grace and he had a code there. There's a lot of belief and codes of behavior in Gotham and my character has one, too. A lot of the way she moves and interacts with people is informed by her worldview. Chris [Nolan] has given us all such complex, defined, sophisticated worldviews that it's just a matter of doing your homework and getting underneath the character's skin."

 This quote is about how Anne Hathaway uses Hedy Lamarr as inspiration for her interpretation of Catwoman.

"I know this sounds odd, but her breathing is extraordinary. She takes these long, deep, languid breaths and exhales slowly. There's a shot of her in [the 1933 film] ‘Ecstasy' exhaling a cigarette, and I took probably five breaths during her one exhale. So I started working on my breathing a lot."

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises Trailer !!!!!!

Here is the new trailer for Batman The Dark Knight Rises.  I can not wait to see this movie in 2012.  It Looks Amazing.



To watch more, visit tag

Bane may have villain company in 'Dark Knight' - possible spoiler

Ho, ho, ho!

Bane? Check.

Catwoman? Check.

A mystery villain? Maybe.

We thought we knew the lineup for "Batman: The Dark Knight Rises." Then we poked around on the Internet a little more.

Are we going to spoil it for you? No. Well, yes, if you click "read more."

New Batman The Dark Knight Rises Poster

Need I say more!!!