REVIEW TEXT Name
: Nadia Kurnia Hapsari
Class
: XII Science 2/22
THE DARK KNIGHT RISES
O I T A T N E I R O O I T A U L A V E
E V I T A T E R P R E T N I
The series of Batman has always been the number one for me. I absolutely love its comic and the two previous films, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. Especially because the handsome Christian Bale played as Bruce Wayne a.k.a Batman. The Dark Knight Rises is the most entertaining of Christopher Nolan’s Batfilms, and it is certainly the best. Is it not bad at all? I’m
not quite sure. The whole movie feels like a series of contradictions. It has a long duration yet rushed, deeply serious yet utterly silly, politically minded yet ultimately flat. But, those reasons make this movie wildly entertaining. The film picks up eight years after the death of Harvey Dent at the end of The Dark Knight. Batman was never again seen after that night, and Bruce Wayne has become a hermit as well. In the wake of Dent’s death Gotham City apparently cleaned up its act instantly, and organized crime is a thing of the past. Gordon is now commissioner, but he’s seen as a relic, a war hero in a time of peace. Trouble arises when a mercenary named Bane ˗˗played by Tom Hardy, big guy, bald, relying on a respirator mask to keep him
alive˗˗has come to Gotham, and he’s building an army beneath the streets in the gutter. Meanwhile, someone has hired a cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) to steal Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints. Perhaps there’s a connection of some sort between these events. Fascinated by Selina’s skill, Bruce slowly walks out of his retirement. His body has been worn down by his adventures (he walks with a cane), but he forces himself into shape to investigate the cat burglar and Bane. The first hour of the film is light and easy to digest. There are actual comedic scenes, and it’s engaging to see Bruce Wayne pull himself together from his utterly out-of-character majority-of-adecade slump. And as Bane’s weird and complicated plan comes into focus it seems as if Nolan has finally embraced the comic book origins of the character. Or at least attempted to fold them into a genre idiom he understands.
T N U O C E R E V I T A T E R P R E T N I
The movie then goes on from its lightness into a dark themed movie when Wayne finally comes out of his shell and shows Gotham his new rides. Throughout the film Bane speaks out to the people of Gotham. The Dark Knight Rises includes absolutely not one single average citizen. The closest it gets are a bunch of orphans who hang around cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). There’s one line of dialogue that indicates some homeless have been joining Bane’s army, but the film casts them simply as criminals. Perhaps this is Nolan’s intention, to say that the underclass is naturally criminal and that the middle class are a bunch of helpless orphans. The film does have great performances going for it. Bale’s Bruce Wayne is nicely essayed, and since Wayne is in the film as much, if not more than Batman, that’s a relief. He still has that stupid voice as Batman, but at this point you figure they feel committed to it. Anne Hathaway is probably the , bringing life to her every scene. Catwoman is in no way as good as the Joker, but she has the same electrifying impact on this film that Heath Ledger did in the last one. Tom Hardy is criminally wasted in the film. Bane is a dud; driven by the exact same motivation as R’as al Ghul, he feels like a repeat, except with a genius plan. Hardy works hard to act behind that idiotic mask, but it’s no use. There’s a moment towards the end, in one of the film’s too many flashbacks, where we see Hardy’s full face and we’re reminded of what a powerful figure he is on screen when allowed to be completely seen.
E V I T A T E R P R E T N I
Y R A M M U S
As the movie wrapped up with five final minutes that play out exactly like Superhero Hype forum fanfic, I wasn’t hating it. I hadn’t been squirming in my seat. I thought a lot of it was dumb, I laughed at things that probably weren’t meant to be laughed at, and I experienced a few moments of deflation when I realized the movie had nothing to actually say. But I had also been caught up in it, even when it didn’t quite work or make much sense. I liked that Nolan went a little broader, even if that broadness occasionally clashed with his efforts to be ‘realistic.’
I just don’t care either way. After being profoundly disappointed by the way Batman Begins turned out, and after really enjoying most of The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises is really a blow for me. Not only by the actors playing it but also by its unthinkable plot, and in the end it’s a big shrug because every legend has an end.
