Dark Knight Rises

SPOILER WARNING!!! This Post spoils movie Dark Knight Rises.

Dark Knight Rises is the last movie in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy. I happens few years after Dark Knight. Bruce Wayne is no longer Batman. After Harvey Dent died, Gotham City passed Harvey Dent act, which have ended organized crime in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne just stopped being Batman and started to live in solitude.

That is about to change because League of Shadows has returned. It should be same League of Shadows as in Batman Begins. It has changed too much to be same. In Batman Begins they were secret order trying to get rid of crime. They didn't care about collateral damage. To get rid of cancer they were ready to kill some heathy tissue.

I don't understand motives behind this League of Shadows. They talk about giving power to the people, but they align themselves with criminals against police. The social experiment they had didn't make any sense because plan was to destroy Gotham City in the end. If plan was to show that anarchistic society can work, why forcing people to stay and having criminals as police. They just turn Gotham City into North Korea run by criminals then try to destroy it. Writers just wanted to show changing current class society ends up malfunctioning society that need others to keep it alive.

One theme of movie is social inequality. Problem is that lower class is presented as criminals. Bane and League of Shadows are strawman of people who want social justice. Sometimes Bane talks about justice and sometimes about poisoning and destroying Gotham City. Like lower class only want to destroy upper class. Like fairer share of resources is not possible. Catwoman is lower class but manages make her life better when she starts to play help upper class and play with their rules.

I guess it is too much to ask that blockbuster action could give fair treatment to such political subject as social injustice and fairer share of incomes. This movie just tell what upper class fears will happen if lower class was in power. If you see your political opponent as force of destruction you can't reach compromises beneficial to both parties. You end up fights that hurt both parties. Lower class may not want destruction, but fairer system for everyone instead of system where some are more equal that others.

Other annoying thing in movie is that police doesn't seem to have any brains. They send every police to tunnels and get trapped there. When they got out of there they use tactics to from before first world war. Walking in formation on streets and rushing against armored vehicles and machine guns. I want to forget final massive fist fight. It is icing on the cake.

The movie is not all bad. I like Bane. Only problems I have with him is mentioned above. Catwoman is tired of criminal life and wants something else. This kind of Catwoman suits the movie. Love story between Batman and Catwoman is far from what it was in Batman Returns. Script has problems, but it manages to have enough twists and keep thing hidden while giving enough hints.

It is bit strange that this doesn't feel too long even when this is longer than Dark Knight. It helps that this is more even movie. How ever this is worst of Dark Knight trilogy. First two are close to each others but this is further behind. It is not a bad movie. It just have too much laziness in script and cuts corners from time to time. This could have been classic if class society issues were given more equal treatment and police wasn't made to look so stupid.

This was it for holy bat-month. Next week it will be something different.