I’m a huge Batman fan, so I have a obvious bias towards these movies. I love Christopher Nolan’s work and I’ve loved the first two Nolan Batman movies. I like the vision he and his team created and ran with.

I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight just before going to The Dark Knight Rises. So glad I did, it refreshed me on each story and the overall arc of the trilogy. A lot comes back into play in Rises and being immediately familiar helped me enjoy the movie even more.

This is a really epic movie, the scope is huge, and coming from TDK, that’s saying something. While the Joker was anarchy, Bane is a more militant and physical threat. Pulling off a huge overthrow of Gotham, Bane takes complete control of the city while leaving its already “disgraced” hero broken and shattered. The villains win for most of this movie, giving a real sense of a phoenix rising mentality to the end of this Baman tale.

It’s a dark and complex world that Bruce Wayne has found himself in. He relies a lot on friends in this one, especially Jim Gordon and most notably Selina Kyle (Catwoman). I’ve never been a fan of Anne Hathaway, but she completely won me over in her take on Selina. Hathway takes a refreshing spin on Michelle Pfeiffers ‘ Catwoman. She’s sexy and sneaky, but she doesn’t have the feral nature that Pfeiffer goes with. She works really well in scenes with Bruce Wayne and Batman. Tom Hardy also impressed me as Bane, a real unique and daring bit of work (which really describes Rises as a whole to me). Heath Ledger as Joker is the Everest of character acting and while Bane really isn’t as strong of a character, his presence and actions are unique and leave a lasting impression. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as police officer Blake is another wonderful addition, he’s one of the best actors working today.

The movie just looks amazing, there are so many amazing shots and set ups, it’s just too much to describe. The vision and scope is immense and matched perfectly by Hans Zimmer’s powerful score. Christopher Nolan does as much in camera as he can and uses CG to augment the special effects only when necessary. Stunt guys all over the place, very little obvious CG elements, the integration of the real and the fantasy is tightly knit together.

Christopher Nolan likes to keep brewing his story from start to finish and that often makes things more messy than it needs to be. At two hours and forty minutes, Rises is a wicker basket of a story. The set up of a cleaned up city that is still rotten, Bruce Wayne’s tortured soul from the events of the last film, Bane’s underground moves to take over, all the chess pieces of old and new characters being moved around. There’s a lot of foreshadowing and if you know the Batman stories, the big reveal isn’t a reveal. When everything is working, I’m completely sucked in to the world. In the first chase scene with Batman, he’s on the Bat Pod when he goes into a tunnel and hits an EMP device to disable the lights and vehicles around him. You see his shadow flitting around the cop cars and then his glorious reveal as he starts taking down the bad guys actually gave me a head rush. A super hero come to life right in front of me. A few minutes later the introduction of Batman’s new ride The Bat from the alley way? Forget it, just so cool it made me smile like a 6 year old. But when the movie missteps, it feels that much more odd, like a jolt to a train car. Sometimes it’s little things like dialog that could have been improved. Then there are the odd bits of comic book logic and/or strange editing (the opening action sequence would leave wreckage for about 20 miles, wouldn’t look like an accident, sudden skips of time that can be hard to keep track of, how did Bruce get from the prison to Gotham and find who he needed right out the gate at just the right time). The choice to make Gotham not look like Gotham from each movie is really odd though. TDK was Chicago and Rises is mostly NYC and Philly, the aesthetic that Begins started was dropped for reasons I can’t think of. Thankfully it’s nothing that ruined the experience for me. Most of the problems I have I think could be fixed with some different editing choices.

As the credits rolled I felt really satisfied. The Batman book that Nolan brought to us in seven years was complete using his own words and images. The end is a mixture of emotions with some awesome visuals (I just can’t keep saying that enough) that filled me with hope. Even in great darkness, good will always be there to fight evil. Now someone give Nolan the directors chair for the next James Bond movie.