John Boot says the Dark Knight Rises lives up well to expectations
2 Comments Published by Avi Green on Friday, July 20, 2012 at 3:28 AM.
John Boot of Pajamas Media reviewed the Dark Knight Rises, and says it's just what a conservative can find quite pleasing:
Update: here's Christian Toto's review too.
The new film is a pleasure, sprawling in its storytelling, satisfyingly brawny, and occasionally moving, particularly in a terrific final act. In addition to all of that, the movie is so unabashed about its conservative message that you practically expect it to end with a dedication to Ronald Reagan. See if you can think of the last movie you saw that shows hundreds of big-city police officers lining up against a rowdy mob — and the police are the good guys. The movie is a counter-revolutionary document with as much damnation for populist revolt as Dr. Zhivago. [...]Well that's amazing! This certainly isn't what leftists were hoping for and tells that the film makes for a very good conclusion to Nolan's trilogy. We can only wonder now if the Obama campaign managers are embarrassed. It's the kind of thing that makes me wonder if any leftists will turn against comics like Batman and other DC products, and according to Big Hollywood, it could be that they are; the OWS movement is certainly distressed. In a way, that's fine enough with me because if it weren't for a lot of the liberals already destroying mainstream comics back at the publishing houses, the medium would still be a much better place today. The movie's already made quite a bit of money even before the opening, and looks to make it pretty big.
When Bane goes to work destroying Gotham City, he first heads for the stock exchange to cause a mini-financial crisis (which, somewhat strangely, morphs into a big action scene that is more enjoyable if you don’t think about it too much). As Selina Kyle warns, in a line that could have been written by Occupy Wall Street, “There’s a storm coming….you and your friends better batten down the hatches.” On cue, her associate Bane launches a full-on proletarian revolution in which the meek are given the support of his thug army as they strike down the rich, the police officers having been caged up. This Michael Moore fantasy, though, is treated with no sentimentality at all. Garbage immediately piles up in the streets and justice is dispensed a la Robespierre, with bourgeois dissenters being sentenced to death without trial. Only Batman, an aristocratic capitalist hero, can restore the balance.
Update: here's Christian Toto's review too.
I really don't agree. It was a big disappointment to me, the least of the trilogy and the least by far of Nolan's career. Bloated, lots of moments when characters do stupid things because the plot calls for them, and so on.
The worst Nolan film is still better than 99% of what Hollywood puts out these days, but it wasn't up to the level of what I expected or hoped for. All the weaknesses of the previous two films with few/none of the strengths.
(Oh, and apparently, if your city gets overrun and isolated by a supervillain and his criminal cohorts for months on end, the garbage workers still run. Who'd have thought?)
Doesn't change the fact that this Batman trilogy is boring as hell and a bit of a chore to sit through. Not to mention the fact that live-action films/shows and comic book characters don't mix very well, at least in my opinion.