After The Dark Knight being labelled by as the greatest film of the 21st century, this was always going to be tough in even come close to it. This was getting the same amount of ridiculous hype as Prometheus did earlier in the year. But unlike Ridley Scott, Nolan delivered.
Is it not as good as The Dark Knight, no. But Nolan has still managed to give us a fantastic send off to the greatest trilogy since The Lord Of The Rings in my opinion.
Everything is coming to a conclusion and the way everything was rounded off was like you expect with any Nolan film. It is ideas driven, the characters are well-rounded, the story development continues to be terrific and the action scenes are probably the best constructed out of the entire trilogy.
The story in the second half particularly reminded me the events in Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows: Part 2 weirdly. I hope others can make that comparison.
It was not just the movie that was near impossible to better, the performance of Heath Ledger as The Joker was always going to be a tough task to emulate.
In Rises, we have rising star Tom Hardy who is portraying the formidable Bane. A great casting choice as Hardy is more about the physical part of his performance. However, his voice is hard to pick up throughout the film. You definitely have to tune your ear at first. Thankfully, I got the majority of what his character was saying. But I think some will struggle and feel annoyed when trying to enjoy the film.
Like with The Dark Knight, there are two villains involved. The second is probably the most famous antagonist outside of The Joker, and that is Catwoman. Played by Anne Hathaway, this was a brave choice I felt as it was something outside of her usual territory. But it seemed a Nolan film works for her. She portrayed both Catwoman and Selina Kyle quite well. Her puzzling allegiance was great to attempt work out. But no-one can touch Michelle Pfeiffer, as I feel she is still Catwoman. She was much more terrifying and believable.
We also saw a couple of actors from Inception get introduced. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Blake, the heroic hot-headed cop was a supportive protagonist that we can all root for. It was great to see Marion Cotillard get cast as I am a big fan of hers and her characters ends up getting heavily involved towards the end which was fun to watch.
As for the usual line-up. Bale gives another great performance as the Batman and Bruce Wayne, Michael Caine probably saved his best for last as Alfred and Gary Oldman continues to shine in under-stated role of Commissioner Gordon. It was also nice to see some cameos from some characters that featured heavily in Batman Begins.
The cinematography by Wally Pfister continues to show why he is most sought after cinematographer. Hans Zimmer's score might be seen as a slight re-hash, but it is great to hear it again.
I had to be picky, some of sub-plot strands felt a bit forced and rushed to make sure every open plot hole gets shut. That does happen mainly in final scene. But it still intrigued me, and like I said, it's nit-picking.
Overall, I thought it was a terrific film and the trilogy is probably the best vision of Batman that anyone could have asked. I still love the Burton versions. But I think the awe inspiring scenes of clashing these characters in real life situations made Nolan's so watchable and deserve a higher praise. Whereas Burton had a look of the comic books to it.
I won't mention the awful versions made by Joel Schumacher as they don't deserve recognition. But I will say that Nolan keeps showing that he is a terrific director and I can't wait for his involvement in Man Of Steel. The action sequences were top notch as usual, the visual effects were a joy to watch and they should be in the running for some Oscar nominations in terms of Sound or Visual Effects.
Also, the plot was great as I was really happy to see they went back to elements from Batman Begins to make that first of the three seem more important. The Dark Knight is still my favourite of the trilogy. But Rises was not far off.
Rating: 9/10
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