Everything Wrong With The Dark Knight Rises

I've decided to make what I'm sure will be the first of many posts on this much-anticipated movie a kind of list of reactions. Which are in no particular order. Make of it what you will:

SPOILERS AHEAD

 

1. Pacing.
2. Tone.
3. Maniacal supervillanry.
4. Doomsday devices.
5. Uncompelling action sequences.
6. A much, much too brief "re-training" period for Bruce. (Screen-time, I mean. 3 months in a few minutes? Cue sit-up montage.)
7. A much, much too brief parallel "under seige" period for Gotham.
8. Lucius Fox and Commissioner Gordon are side-lined.
9. "Get the President on the line," etc.
10. The old "fly away from the city, detonating the bomb and sacrificing yourself" trope (or should I say cliché) already used once this year by Avengers.
11. A half-assed romance with Miranda Tate that means nothing and goes nowhere.
12. "The Bat." That's a big one.
13. Political commentary.
14. Camp.
15. Cat-woman's goggle, ear, things.
16. Yet again, Bane is really just a tool.
17. Batman having gone into retirement period. Batman doesn't retire for 8 years, no matter how good it is. Come on.
18. No redemption for Gordon.
19. The trivialization of Alfred's mourning.
20. Alfred pretty much just showing up a couple of times to have rushed conversations that culminate in him saying something profound and insightful and then walking away dramatically.
21. The Bat Cave? Meh.
22. Everything, I mean everything about the ending.

Right after The Dark Knight came out I said that Christopher Nolan is gonna do another one, and it's going to be too huge, have nine million villains, in other words, fall into all the same "traps" the third installments in superhero series are famously plagued with. But for Nolan these wouldn't be traps. He would manage to unite it all into one cohesive story which hit at the heart of Batman and morality and all that stuff we love Nolan for.

The verdict? Nope. He couldn't do it. Pretty good effort I have to say. Not fundamentally flawed, I don't think, just poorly executed. Most of all I think it's pretty clear that Nolan didn't really wanna make this movie.