The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

“The Dark Knight Rises” is the third and clear final installment of Christopher Nolan’s definitive, genre-defining trilogy of Batman films. It is pure topsy-turvy genius Nolan, an epic urban-war film and rule-bending comic book movie that wraps around and fits like snug fingers into “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight” so exactly, it feels as if we have just witnessed the ultimate story arc of a super hero’s life, unlike ever before. No fat. No lose ends. Near perfect. The balance, themes, visuals, and characters expertly played. 

In the first film, a doomed father asks his son, “Why do we learn to fall down?” And the boy, now the Batman, is still answering that question, that we are even still pondering that question is worthy of story-writing accolades. Nolan and his co-writer brother Jonathan have again raised the bar, not just on the super hero film genre, but the entire idea of the summer movie tent pole. I’m looking at you, every Michael Bay film ever made, or even the stellar, popcorn fun (but, in hindsight, flat as a flapjack) “Avengers.” 

Case in point, name another summer flick that tips its hat and quotes from “A Tale of Two Cities.” This does, liberally. Average film fan: Clueless. Nolan: All the happier devil.

The amazing kicker of this finale: Nolan’s best hat-trick of the ultra-dark film franchise, a “Prestige,” if you will, is to introduce a new hero rising from tragedy, pain, and lost trust in leadership. Not evil mass death of the Joker, nor the vigilante violence that haunted Bruce Wayne as Batman. But honest, cautious goodness. Let the fan fiction begin. The final image, before Nolan’s trademark “black screen” sign off, is a literal “Dark Knight Rises.” I saw it coming, months back, sort of. But Nolan defies the script I wrote in my head.

If you have not seen this film, then stop, SPOLIERS abound. And, really, 10 days?

“Rises” opens eight years after the events that closed out “Dark Knight,” with Harvey “Two-Face” Dent (Aaron Eckhart) killed after a deadly rampage that also almost killed the son of Commissioner James Gordon (Gary Oldman). Batman (Christian Bale) remains hated and hunted, taking the millstone of Dent’s sins onto himself. Tones of Christ, anyone?

The Dark Knight’s thinking: Give Gotham (New York, naturally) the hero he thinks it “deserves,” whatever that means, the Boy Scout White Knight that Dent was before he crossed paths with the Joker. As for the Clown Prince, he receives no mention here, with Heath Ledger’s death already hanging over the franchise like a heavy fog. Nolan didn’t want to bring up more scar tissue, so to speak. In the end, it is a smart move.

Back to this drama: Gotham is enjoying an unprecedented drop in crime thanks to a hardcore, no appeal law for criminals handed down in the name of Dent, and the Batman remains vanished. Bruce Wayne also is in hiding, rumored to be crazy or disfigured, similar to Howard Hughes -– an in-joke as Nolan once tried to make a biopic of Hughes before Martin Scorsese beat him to the punch. (Anyone still want to see that movie? I do.)

This is just the start of “Dark Knight,” and we have much to go. A hulking, massive brute of a terrorist named Bane (Tom Hardy) is living in the underground of Gotham’s water system, planning an all-out war on the city, with a purpose that strikes close to Occupy Wall Street: Take down the rich establishment, share it all, and destroy the infrastructure. 

(Yes, the film cuts deep into the left, but know that the city’s corrupt law-and-order-at-all-costs tactics, and blatant lying about peace and stripping of Civil Rights mirrors the right-wing’s mantra, including the great lie that this nation was founded on some Christian value. Never generations of racism or the murder of countless Native Americans.) 

Yet, Bane has more in plan, fully indifferent to politics. It all goes back to the first film. Nolan has followed Peter Jackson with his  “LOTR”  Trilogy, and Lucas with his own trilogy. You know the name. It is all that rock solid. (Let me say it here, this film meets our impossible expectations of the trilogy's closing, not excel, but meets. That alone is worthy of endless praise.) Consider the opposite: “The Matrix” trilogy. 

I digress. Mr. Wayne, still heartbroken over the death of Rachel Dawes, injured more in mind than body, is flummoxed by a new woman. She is Selina Kyle (Ann Hathaway), a jewel thief who breaks into Wayne’s personal safe when the manor is full of guests. She discombobulates the man, leaving him first flat on his face, then as the film progress, unable to finish sentences and struck silent. (The film is immensely dark, but also quite funny.) Kyle intrigues Wayne, and is the catalyst to bring him, both of him, out into the light. Indeed, Wayne dons the Batman suit again, but only for short chunks of time. 

This trilogy always has been about Bruce Wayne –- the rich playboy -- as the disguise, after all. The rubber suit, by now, is irrelevant. A tool. The suit, though, must come out because after a stunning set of scenes -- the film is 2 hours 45 minutes, but flies by -- has Bain and his henchmen leading a hands-on assault on Wall Street, and later ups the ante with a full-on attack of the city, centered on a football stadium, but spanning outward to include bridges and various infrastructure. Batman, sure as hell, is needed again.

The finale takes place on the streets and air of Gotham, and again has echoes of “Begins” and “Dark Knight” in certain punches, crashes, and other beats of action cinema. It’s a pulverizing film that had me thinking of 1970s Cold War paranoia films, “The Siege,” or a classic Tom Clancy novel, more than anything found in the libraries of D.C. Comics, and also of 9/11, and terrorism in our day and time. Nolan is going big here, not looking back.

Again, Nolan takes Batman out of the film for well more than half its running time. I’ll hold off on why. If you have seen it, you know why, if you have read the comic books, you know why. It’s a daring step that would make the folks behind “Avengers” or “Iron Man” quake: A superhero with an MIA superhero. Here, it perfectly fits in with what we were told in “Begins,” this is all Bruce, Batman can be anyone, the man behind the mask is irrelevant. The move also takes Batman down several pegs, a fallen boy in an old well.

Back to Gotham where a lone, hotheaded policeman (Joseph Gordon-Levitt of the Nolan-directed “Inception,” which also had Hardy in it) becomes not just the right-hand-man of a sidelined Gordon, but a stand-in for the Dark Knight. Nolan shifts his film to this man, John Blake, also an orphan, as if it were an Olympic relay race. He is the man, the Dark Knight, who Rises in the end, wary of violence, iron-strong structures and also anarchy, and we presume will take on the mask. That his story plays out much like a police thriller (as did “Dark Knight”) is another way Nolan defies expectations. Gordon-Levitt rocks the role.

As with “Prometheus,” the other surprisingly great, against-the-grain summer film, there are errors along the way, mostly the Wall Street attack and its immediate aftermath, which seems to go from day to dusk to darkest night in far too short a frame period, and a questionable gap in how long the Batman remains sidelined, is it the full three months, or five? I’m still uncertain at this point. All are forgiven, easily. One more crack follows.

What is certain: This film, is a huge, bloody marvel (I know, D.C.), but it does not have the drive of Ledger’s Joker sending electric shocks out into the audience. How could it ever have equaled? Ledger’s performance remains legendary, and could never be topped. The scarily muscular Hardy –- a great actor, catch him in “Bronson” -– is playing such a different sort of evil menace, that comparisons are unfair, and irrelevant. (Had Ledger lived, had the Joker returned, would the story be repetitive? Would Bane be here?) 

Bane wears a “Mad Max”-type gas mask that obscures most of his face, and the effect is purposefully off-putting, almost fully repugnant. So we must watch his eyes, blazing with anger and power, and study his body language, how when he lays his hand gently on a man’s shoulder and brings him –- powerful as he is –- down in a second, by sheer intimidation. 

Hardy's chosen voice will remain controversial forever, tones of Darth Vader, mixed with that of an early James Bond villain, many words inaudible. It’s all crazily over-the-top theatrical, but as Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Ghul taught Wayne in the first installment, that’s how you intimidate. Nolan is playing by the rules off screen that he lays out on screen. (Amazing how many people miss that. And, yes, Neeson appears here, but not how I expected. ) 

The film has a legion of detractors, those who hate how Nolan has mangled and morphed the Batman history and legend, to his own will, and his (undeniable) epic arc, but, again, as with “Inception,” people cannot stop talking about this movie. That’s power, for Nolan, as Ra’s al Ghul would indicate. (And that is art, too.)  

Let’s not forget just how good Bale is here, how permanently hurt and old he appears. As in the first film, Nolan and company are not afraid to show a hero making mistakes and truly getting in over his head. Case in point, despite his mantra to “fight harder,” look at the shock on Bale as Batman’s face, when he first fights Bane. It’s one for the books. Not a heroic rebel yell, but a look of sheer, absolute, “Oh, shit,” fear. Somehow fans hate that. Why? It is real.

Now, that penultimate scene, with Alfred in the Italian café, looking up, to see his life’s hope. I wish it were the very final image, not the Rising scene, and I wish Nolan didn’t show what Alfred sees, instead leaving us hanging and spinning like Cobb’s top. Cain staring out from the screen. Cut to black. Seeing those faces confirmed, it kills the drama before it. At the last moment, an over-reach that drives me mad. Debate onward...

I already have burned through too many words here, and I still have yet addressed the women of this trilogy, and the way Hathaway as “Catwoman” (the name is never mentioned, thank the film gods) turns not just Batman’s brain upside down. Nor have I touched on Wally Pfister’s endlessly fascinating cinematography, never better than the scenes where Batman fights Bain in the low, dark sewers. Hans Zimmer’s score thunders as if he were scoring a deadly serious take on “Clash of Titans,” or another story of gods at war. Every technical mark is just struck dead-on target, besting all before it. (O.K., wait, nothing beats Ledger’s  tractor trailer crash in downtown Chicago.)

“Rises” has that much going on. That many plates. Nolan barely drops a fork. I’m writing this and thinking of a third trip back to the Batcave. To discover more that I missed, re-watch the finale. That’s what movies are all about, are they not? If only that one tiny scene had been cut short, leaving us wide open, rising, in mystery, shock, wonder, and in applause. That's what I wanted. It is the sole reason -- OK< no, I still hate that time jump Wall Street attach to pieces, bad move all around -- this doesn't get a solid “A” score. A-