No, it turns out that The Dark Knight Rises is not a porno featuring Anne Hathaway in a fetish costume. Dammit. But it is the latest, and probably last, installment in a series of Batman movies that sucked way less than the ones we got back in the nineties. Oh, and to anyone who thinks Jack Nicholson was a better Joker than Heath Ledger, please stop talking to me. My faith in humanity has been challenged enough without that crap on my mind. Seriously, don’t make me destroy you.
So was the The Dark Knight Rises any good? What’s up with that Bane guy? Did Jim Carrey appear as the Riddler and ruin the whole film with a closeup of his batch? And most importantly, did Anne Hathaway get nude? (Spoiler alert: Disappointed!!!!)
Not unlike The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises was a tad long, but a good flick. To understand The Dark Knight Rises, we must go back to a time that the (fake) gods forgot: the year 2005.
Batman Begins
Where the hell is Sho Kosugi??
In Batman Begins, we learn that Bruce Wayne blames himself for the death of his parents. So he grew up into an angry, bitter rich kid who became a ninja and returned to Gotham City to fight crime. Makes sense.
No? Let me explain it better.
After being arrested and chucked into prison for hanging out with evil criminals, Bruce Wayne was inducted into The League of Shadows, where Qui-Gon Jin from the Star Wars prequels taught him how to use fear and darkness to beat the shit out of people. But it turns out that Qui-Gon was still kind of a dick, and he was planning to destroy Gotham City all along. Wayne wasn’t into that, so he left the League after a big fight scene and the realization that ninjas do, in fact, assassinate people, because that’s just what ninjas do.
Bruce Wayne then returned to Gotham city and spent a ton of money on the Batsuit, the Tumbler, and all his other gadgets, when he probably should have given it to charity if he really wanted to help out. It’s been estimated that being Bruce Wayne costs like seven-hundred-million dollars. That’s a lot of low-income housing complexes not being built and poor kids not getting a higher education so they can not escape the slums of Gotham, folks. Think about it. You’ll realize that’s kind of effed up if you do.
At the end of Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne defeats Qui-Gon Jin on a train and leaves the Jedi Master for dead. I know, Batman has a rule about not killing people, right? It’s his one real flaw as a person. But technically, Batman didn’t kill the guy. He just let him get smashed to bits when the train hit the ground at 900 mph. Moral dilemma solved.
The Dark Knight Rises
Spoilers to follow, kids. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This is Batman’s “I just crapped myself” look.
Now we find out that years of fighting in the streets of Gotham have left Bruce Wayne’s body kind of a mess. He has no cartilage in his knees and hips, his kidneys are all bruised up, and he walks with a cane just like the cartoon version of Bruce Wayne from Batman Beyond. It seems like Wayne gave up on life when his girlfriend, Rachel Dawes, died in a horrifying explosion thanks to Batman’s old pal, the Joker. The loss of his one true love ruined Wayne on some level, despite the fact that Rachel looked more like Maggie Gyllenhal than Katie Holmes by that point. So he becomes more like me – I mean, more of a weirdo and a recluse – than a superhero. No one has seen Bruce Wayne in years except Alfred, who is his butler and surrogate dad.
Seline Kyle (Catwoman) finds her way into Wayne Manor by pretending to be a maid. Who cares why? It’s Anne Hathaway in a maid outfit. Sadly, it isn’t an erotic maid outfit. For this, Snape deducts ten points from The Dark Knight Rises’ House!1
So Bruce Wayne catches Catwoman messing around with his mother’s pearls or something, but she kicks his old-man cane out from under him and back flips out a window before he can stop her because she’s frigging awesome.
Meanwhile, Bane, the super villain with a cartoon voice, enters Gotham with a band of evil dudes. Despite his silly voice (it will make you laugh the first time you hear it) it turns out that Bane, too, is awesome. Not in a “I’m a hot chick who can do the splits in a leather outfit” kind of way, but awesome all the same. He has a plan to destroy Gotham, just like Qui-Gon Jin (who everyone called Ra’s al Ghul for some reason) meant to do back in 2005.
Now a bunch of other shit happens, including Seline Kyle stealing Wayne’s car and some French chick taking over Wayne Enterprises to stop it from going bankrupt. There’s a neutron bomb, oh, and Wayne loses all his billions, too. But nobody cares. What matters is that Catwoman tricks Batman with her hotness (never trust the hot chick, dammit!) and sets him up for a confrontation with Bane. Mr. Bane has the same training as Batman, but still has plenty of knee cartilage, and proceeds to beat Batman into chocolate pudding. Finally, he breaks Batman’s back just for laughs. Bane then sends Batman to the very prison where Bane himself was born and raised.
It seems like this prison must be in a foreign country or something, unless you can believe that a twelve story pit full of prisoners can exist in a desert in the middle of Gotham City without someone tripping over it. So it’s hard for me to understand how Bruce Wayne can fly back to Gotham City without a penny to his name after his escape. But he does. Those push ups he was doing on his cell floor were really something, huh? They healed his back and everything! Maybe the god of bats was pleased and performed a miracle on Batman’s behalf? Maybe I just need to do more push ups.
Anybody else miss their dad?
So Batman returns and, because he really means it this time, he beats Bane in mano y mano combat. Then he discovers that the French chick he gave his company to is actually the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul (Another hottie betrayed him! Damn you hotties and your hotness!) and literally stabs him in the back. Then she triggers the neutron bomb remotely … but it doesn’t go off. Because Batman and Commissioner Gordon came up with a way to stop it from being triggered! Nyah! Only it’ll go off in less than an hour on its own anyway, so … well, nice try, Batman.
Finally, Batman uses his latest toy, a flying wing machine thing, to carry the neutron bomb a safe distance from Gotham City. The bomb goes off, killing Batman. Until we discover later that Wayne fixed the auto-pilot on the flying wing thing so he didn’t have to pilot it out himself. That’s right kids: he faked his own death! You know, like Elvis. Or Jesus. Apparently, Bruce Wayne thought of all of this during the twenty seconds it took him to haul the bomb away2. Damn, he really is a genius. Either that, or Bane was really working with him to cover up Wayne’s well-planned fake-death. Probably not, though.
We know he faked his death because his butler, Alfred, finds Bruce Wayne at some cafe after the funeral. It’s a special moment for Alfred. It’s his ward, Bruce Wayne, finally moving on with his life. With Seline Kyle.
The ultimate cosplay girl.
Wait. What? How the hell did that happen? They barely knew each other before this. And how can a broke ex-rich boy with no knee cartilage end up banging a gymnast with Anne Hathaway’s eyes? Hell, my Fleshlight won’t even talk to me anymore and this guy is hooking up with Catwoman??? I call: life is officially bullshit.
We also see that one of the cops from the movie, John Blake, inherits Batman’s cave-full of gadgets. And his real name isn’t even John. It’s Robin. GASP! I know. Of course, he doesn’t get any training from ninjas or guidance from Bruce Wayne. He just stumbles into the Batcave and finds the keys to the Tumbler on the desk. Good luck, huh?
Try not to hit the self destruct button when you take the car out for a spin, Blake. Well, read the damn instructions first! Who knows how many innocent people you could get killed?
And thus, the movie ends. Scene.
Too bad they aren’t going to do a movie about Blake following in Wayne’s footsteps. Jim Carrey could have played the Riddler and … no, fuck that. Let it end here and now.
Catwoman’s ass. You’re welcome.
Still, we’re told the producers had planned a scene in The Dark Knight Rises where we see the Joker escape his prison cell. That would have been cool! Maybe Blake would have been outmatched by the Joker in the next movie, forcing Wayne to come out of retirement long enough to mentor the new kid like a real dad. Alas, it seems this is not to be.
Note that rumors are already swirling that the franchise will be rebooted in 2015. I think this is far more likely to happen than a Justice League movie. Or a Romney/Ryan Presidency. They already redid Spiderman like a week after Sam Raimi’s film, so why not? Maybe Peter Parker could be President! At least he’s pro science.
Hmm…
So check out The Dark Knight Rises if you still can. If not, I’m sure it’ll be on Pay Per View or something for like ten years.
Update: Other cool links about Batman.
The first two include flaws that I forgot!
11 Things That Didn’t Work in ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ | Film School Rejects
The Dark Knight Rises: 10 Flaws With The Film | We Got This Covered
