Nobody Saw This Coming Except Everybody

Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Try to fool me a third time…well that just makes you look silly

What about a fourth time?  At some point, the running gag has to just start being funny.

Today, as promised is the official review of "The Dark Knight Rises," the latest film in the current Batman trilogy.  We're told it's the last, which is probably a good thing given the fact that Christopher Nolan has to be running out of twist endings by now.  

So George W. Bush once famously said, "Fool me once, shame on...shame on you. Fool me, can't get fooled again."  Such was certainly the case in this film.  Let me illustrate my point.  

**Spoilers for the first two movies "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight" follow.  There will be no important spoilers for "The Dark Knight Rises" in this review.**  

In "Batman Begins," we're dealing with the origins of Batman and his introduction to the League of Shadows, led by a mysterious man, Ra's al Ghul.  This introduction is done by some guy named Henri Ducard.  At some point, Ra's al Ghul is killed, and we go through the course of the film.  Batman is fighting the villain Scarecrow, and there's a big twist ending.  Not only is Scarecrow merely working for Ra's al Ghul, but Ducard himself is actually Ra's, and not dead at all.  It was pretty cool, and nobody saw that coming.  

We move on to "The Dark Knight," wherein Batman squares off with iconic nemesis, The Joker.  A man named Harvey Dent is cleaning up the streets acting as Gotham's District Attorney and doing a fantastic job with the help of Batman, and there's a big twist ending.  Dent gets half blown up and becomes new super villain Two Face and Batman has to deal with him now.  It was really cool, but everybody saw it coming, because everybody knows Two Face's real name was always Harvey Dent, and we'd already had one twist ending in the series.  Twisty, but not much of a shock.  

So, when is a twist ending not a twist ending?  When you're in the third film in a series of films about big twist endings.  You go into the theater looking for clues as to what the big twist ending is going to be.  You expect a twist.  So when it finally does happen, you find yourself relieved and self-congratulatory that you "saw it coming," rather than surprised by the development.  

Truth be told, I did not see this specific twist coming, but I went into the movie fully expecting a twist.  I was not disappointed.  I was also not disappointed in Anne Hathaway's performance as Catwoman, but that's not much of a surprise.  She would have had to go full Nic Cage Terror Alert for that to happen.  I was disappointed in Bane's voice (Bane is the bad guy, in case you were unaware) as he sounded like a young, muffled Sean Connery.  Bane was also a little too difficult to understand to really sell me on his evilness.  I was disappointed in the slow start to the film, too...as it took way too long to really get going, but once it did, things were solid.  I was also disappointed in Michael Caine, who had very little reason to be in this film, and it showed.  

Overall, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a very solid ending to the current Batman film series, but would rank as the third best of the trilogy, by a fair margin.  It's certainly not lacking for action, intensity, or special effects, but it never seemed to be as captivating or intelligent as the first two.  I would say this is a totally decent summer movie to see, but that's pretty pointless, because you're all probably going to see it anyway, regardless of what I had to say.  The Box Office thanks you for your patronage.  

This has been another edition of Jeremy Is In The Theatre.