The Dark Knight Rises concludes Christopher Nolan's dark and triumphant Batman trilogy. For seven years, Nolan's reboot has reached acclaim and this final Batman flick has easily been one of the most anticipated movies of all time.
After eight years of no Batman, a terrorizing masked pro-wrestler has come to burn Gotham to ashes with a master plan to overthrow the higher classes. After his stock market stunt he leaves Wayne Enterprises wiped out financially. Bruce Wayne reaches out to Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard), a millionaire who can help Wayne. Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), a cat burglar also known as Catwoman, comes across Wayne after steeling his mother's pearls but is also after a "clean slate", that Wayne can give her. John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is a young cop who is nothing short of heroic. Nolan provides us with many new characters and manages to present them as fresh instead of overwhelming.
The Dark Knight set the bar very high for this movie and with the absence of the Joker, who Heath Ledger made one of his most memorable performances of, finding another villain who could top that brilliance was seen as almost impossible. Bane (Tom Hardy), a B-list villain was something of a genius idea. A villain who is as powerful as Batman and makes Batman's job nearly impossible. Although we didn't get the humor that we were left with by the Joker and still, Bane doesn't quite live up to the Joker's glory, Hardy did leave us with a great villain and Nolan succeeds at making this B-lister feel like an A-list villain. The mask does take away a bit of personality but Hardy does give an impressive performance only using his expressions with his eyes and body language. You will leave the theater with the epic and evil voice that Bane provides us with, done so well, stuck in your head. The presence of the other new characters like Catwoman and Miranda Tate also help make up for the missing Joker.
Nolan's final Batman film doesn't fall short of it's predecessors. The legend ends with one of the greatest superhero movies of all time. We are left with a truly triumphant finale. A
