And the chant became audible, slowly.
Deh-Shay, Deh-Shay, Bah Sah Rah. Bah Sah Rah.
And with it Christopher Nolan gives a conclusion to his Batman series with the final chapter: The Dark Knight Rises. But needless to say that a lot of my expectations remained unfulfilled, and I guess this is an usual problem with every exceptional, visionary film Director. When they give people something extraordinary, people start expecting the same from them every time. So the next time they deliver anything short of that, it feels a let down. And compared to The Dark Knight (2008), which in a way made us see the movies based on comic books in a different way, nothing would have met my expectations. But I am here to write about The Dark Knight Rises and not The Dark Knight.
Eight years after The Dark Knight, Batman/Bruce Wayne has retreated into the shadows, taking the fall for Harvey Dent's death and over the death of Rachel Dawes, whom both the men had loved. Everything is quite in Gotham City, and at Wayne Manor. And then we are introduced to a swaggering, overmuscled brute with a scar running down his back like a zipper and a headgear that makes his face, like his character, all the more elusive.
But Nolan has introduced so many characters who are all meant to have a specific significant role of their own in The Dark Knight Rises, that we end up feeling overloaded and a lack of vibrancy. Nolan didn't keep any space aside for any character development and at times they feel so cold and distant that there seems to be no reason to believe they are real and need to be saved since they have their soul at stake. And at close to 3 hours, I must dare say that it might have even felt boring, if not for the extravagant drama that goes on in the screen.
Like in the opening scene where Bane kidnaps a scientist by hijacking his plane high up in the air, scenes like these is what makes this movie dazzle in its own way. But then, we have many movies like these before which were good, but none of them were exceptional like The Dark Knight, neither is The Dark Knight Rises.
And then we have a humongous void that has been created by now-legendary Heath Ledger who played the Joker in The Dark Knight. Bane didn't even came close to Ledger's portrayal of true anarchy, Joker was truly frightening whereas Bane is just another supervillian who is nothing much but a brute force. And then you realize how brilliant Ledger's performance was in making The Dark Knight a success.
Overall, I would say The Dark Knight Rises is a brilliant movie. But if you are going to the theaters expecting a movie that is true successor to The Dark Knight, a movie that would mesmerize you as much as seeing Joker on the screen did, you would be surely disappointed. Because the question that remained till the end was:
Why so serious Bane, why so serious?