The third and last Christian Bale Batman movie, loosely based on the Dark Knight series by Frank Miller.
Batman is in real trouble- someone had taken all his money and is terrorizing Gotham City!
I was mildly excited by this entry into the Batman series. Batman is one of the few ‘real’ superhero comics that I like, although I’m kind of picky; I only like the really dark and conflicted Batman stories, not all of them…Frank Miller’s take on the legend is great, though, so I’ve been enjoying these movies. The first two were really good.
So yeah. Kind of excited. The week after it opened, Spider Jerusalem and I took our movie cards and went to our wonderful local theater and sat back, ready for a good movie.
Unfortunately, this was not it.
What were they thinking? That we would be so distracted by the TOTAL HOTNESS of Anne Hathaway in the tight leather Catwoman suit that we wouldn’t notice the TOTAL LAMENESS of everything else?
Sure, Serious Honeys Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are still here, and they each get good stuff to do. Chriatian Bale is back as Batman, and is pretty good with what they give him.
But the big bad guy is Bane…who is JUST NOT SCARY in this movie. Not big, not bad, not threatening. He’s just a beefed up guy with a face mask…which, btw, is evidently needed for him to breathe, which is A) not part of his character in the comic books (although he often wears a mask) and B) offers an opportunity for Batman, in extremity, to damage it and thus escape him…and if that is so, why didn’t Batman do it way earlier and eradicate him as an adversary (without killing him, of course, but enough damage would have wored just fine too.)
And although the lack of facial expressions are typical of Bane, who doesn’t get the whole ‘feelings’ thing, having the mask block them is MUCH less scary than seeing this huge guy with a totally blank face causing mayhem. Bane as presented here is not scary, or even worthy to carry the whole ‘overwhelming bad guy’ part of the movie. The whole conspiracy was lame, and the final conclusion where you find out what was really going on was a big, HUH?
Also, large portions of the plot ACTUALLY DEPEND on people doing the stupidest possible thing. I’m not just talking about the ongoing monologuing rather than just shooting the enemy, which always annoys me. More like the scene where Commissioner Gordon sends EVERY COP IN THE CITY into the sewers and leaving the streets unprotected (and in Gotham City, no less, where being a violent crazy killer is barely enough to get you noticed, much less make you stand out from the crowd of psychopaths) because the plot WOULD NOT HAVE WORKED if there were police around to stop the bad guys.
MOVIE MATH: Bad writing + an overreliance on special effects x a surprise ending that doesn’t really work = a big plate full of MEH with extra MEH sauce on the side.
This one is a renter. Don’t buy it, and there really is no need to rush to the theater to see it either…you won’t miss anything by waiting til you can watch it at home, and do something else while you watch, like pet the cats or pay the bills or whatever you can find to keep your brain from screaming (all together now)
theotterlimits 