The Dukes See a Movie: The Dark Knight Rises

I'm Batman

Batman!! Woo for Batman!! Yay for Christian Bale! Hooray for Christopher Nolan! Huzzah for life! As you can probably tell I have been super excited for this movie to come out. I loved the first two movies of the trilogy and I knew this one would find a place in my heart. As soon as the box office dust settled for the Dark Knight, speculation began as to who would be in the third installment and what characters they would play. I will have to admit I was heavily involved in such speculation myself. When it was announced that Tom Hardy was going to play Bane I will have to admit that I may have squealed like school girl. I am a Tom Hardy fan and have been since I saw him in Bronson. I knew he could bulk up to be the proper Bane and that he could also give him great depth of character. Both he and Christian Bale are very good at physically transforming for their roles.

I wish I had that dedication (and muscle tone).

The others that they announced just added to my excitement. I thought Anne Hathaway was a great choice to be the new catwoman and I love Joseph Gordon-Levitt. When it was announced that he would join the cast I had no idea what role he would play. A part of me thought that he might be Azrael. For those of you who don't know Azrael was a comic book character that fills in for Batman when he gets his back broken by Bane. You can see why this was a tantalizing thought in my head. Bane was already cast and Nolan likes to make his films dark so it seemed like a good fit. It turns out I was wrong, but hey even I can't get them all right (or most of them).

This movie actually caused quite the rift amongst the Dukes. Okay it was actually one Duke talking crazy and the rest of us trying to beat him down with words and logic. Ricky was sure that they were going to kill Batman in this movie. I knew that there was no way since Warner Bros wasn't about to kill a lucrative character no matter what the director wanted to do. I know in the comics he dies a few times, but he always was brought back in ridiculous ways like a lazarus pit. Nolan's films were too firmly footed in a gritty reality to have something so strangely fantastical and mystical like that to exist.

Although I could totally see it with this Batman.

Our argument spanned the space of many months and a lot of innocent bystanders were dragged in. We would be at a restaurant bantering loudly and we would drag our server into the discussion. We even made our coworkers choose sides. It was quite the affair and I feel that I should apologize to some of them (but not Josh because he chose poorly and sided with Ricky, shame on you Josh.).

So as you can see I had incredibly high hopes going into this movie. I loved the cast and the other movies that made up the trilogy. The only thing I didn't like was the fact that I had to wait for the movie to be released. To prepare I watched everything I could that related to this movie in some way including: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Inception, The Prestige, Newsies and several others.

They may have ended up jumbling together in my mind.

 To not cheat those of you who haven't seen the movie I will refrain from adding spoilers (probably). The movie takes place eight years after the death of Harvey Dent. During those years Bruce Wayne has become a recluse and Batman has not been seen on the streets. Because of the Dent act that is in place the streets are the cleanest they have been in years, at least they appear to be. There is some unrest in the city and people (Anne Hathaway and Joseph Gordon-Levitt) attempt to get both Bruce Wayne and Batman back on the scene.

Batman comes back and so does Bruce Wayne. While this is going on there is quite the plot to undermine Bruce Wayne's power and Bane enters the picture. I will stop with my telling of the plot and allow you to see it without anything given away. The story is great and the movie is well paced. It left us with quite the sense of completion and Nolan did not let us down at all. Tom Hardy somehow made me like him even more.

This is on my desk right now.

I really enjoyed this movie and *spoiler alert*  I totally beat Ricky in our argument! Take that good sir.

Rating 5 stars