Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy has established itself as a core part of the cultural zeitgeist. In particular, the villains have been widely praised, and have been immortalized through memes, parody, and gifs.
However, the final installment of the trilogy is somewhat controversial and has polarized fans. Some people love the film, while others loathe it. To be fair, both have good reason for their feelings. The movie did a lot right, but it also fell short in a number of ways, and those problems have become all the more apparent with the passage of time.
10 Aged Well: Bane Is A Memorable And Memeable Villain
Bane is one of Batman’s greatest villains. He is also a guy with impossibly large muscles, a head lodged in the middle of his shoulders, and a luchador’s mask. At least, that is how he was portrayed in the comics.
Such characteristics do not translate easily into a live-action film. Despite this, the portrayal of Bane from actor Tom Hardy is now infamous. Some fans love him, others despise him, but either way, he is now a living meme.
9 Hasn’t: Detonating A Nuke Over Water Is Not A Solution
At the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman hops in his airplane and flies a nuclear bomb out of Gotham City. It detonates over the harbor.
While Gotham was not wiped out in a single blast, nuclear radiation does not just go away. Now, all of Gotham’s water is poisoned. All of the water and fish on the East Coast of the United States are irradiated. In fact, the oceans would be poisoned, impacting the whole globe. Despite this, flying the bomb out over the water is presented as somehow a solution.
8 Aged Well: The Opening Scene Is Brilliantly Shot
The very first scene in The Dark Knight Rises depicts a CIA agent boarding an airplane with a nuclear scientist, as well as a few recently-captured men who work for Bane and who have bags over their heads. It turns out that one of these men actually is Bane, who intended to be captured. While handcuffed and surrounded by armed CIA agents, the villain fights his way out as another larger plane filled with his own men attacks the CIA’s smaller aircraft.
This scene is absolutely brilliantly shot and paced with dramatic reversals and reveals that build Bane up to be a great villain. It may very well be the best part of the whole movie.
7 Hasn’t: The Ending Makes Absolutely No Sense
There is a montage at the end of the film that tries to tie all of the different plot threads together. There is a monologue commemorating Bruce Wayne’s death, which Commissioner Gordon reads at his funeral as all those who knew him gather around.
The character most impacted by his death is Alfred, who cries at Bruce’s grave, then travels abroad, where he mysteriously sees Bruce and Selina Kyle. But Bruce was on an airplane that blew up with a nuclear blast. Even if he jumped out of the plane, he’d still have died. On top of that, Officer John Blake is set up to become both Robin and the next Batman, despite there really being no reason for this.
6 Aged Well: The Batwing Was a Great Addition to the Lore
Each of the films in the Christopher Nolan Dark Knight Trilogy adds a classic vehicle from Batman’s arsenal. The first movie gave him the Batmobile (or, as the film called it, the Tumbler). In the sequel, Batman rode a motorcycle (the Batcycle). To end the trilogy, he was given access to his famous plane, the Batwing.
By making the Batwing a vehicle specifically designed for aerial combat in urban settings, the film adds gravitas and believability to this classic vehicle.
5 Hasn’t: It’s Defense Of The Rich Is Tone-Deaf Amid Growing Economic Inequality In The Real World
One of the biggest themes in The Dark Knight Rises is a dialogue about wealth and privilege. Selina Kyle tells Bruce at a party for the super-rich that their time is coming. Similarly, Bane plays into populist rhetoric with both anarchistic and socialist elements.
Director Christopher Nolan makes these people villains and has constructed a story that works to justify the rich having their hoarded wealth while all of the villains are the ones decrying such an oligarchy. But Gotham is a city with widespread poverty. Its high crime rate is the direct result of people in desperate situations committing desperate acts to survive. The message was tone-deaf especially coming from a rich Hollywood director at the time of its release- and the divide has only gotten greater with time.
4 Aged Well: The Soundtrack During Batman’s Escape From Prison Is Inspiring
The trailers for The Dark Knight Rises feature three unique songs, based on which trailer one was viewing. One was the Dark Knight score, a second featured a little boy singing the US National Anthem, but the third one was a truly epic chant.
This is the chant the inmates cheered as Bruce Wayne escaped the prison that Bane threw him into. It is the sort of rising chorus that makes the soul sing.
3 Hasn’t: Its Idolized Depiction Of The GCPD Is Nonsensical
Batman Begins demonstrates that Gotham’s police are almost all corrupt and Jim Gordon is presented as the only notable exception. In The Dark Knight, the cops are also presented as murderously corrupt, but they are somehow also treated with an almost idolatrous reverence in scenes like the one where Harvey Dent turns himself in or during the police parade.
The Dark Knight Rises takes this idolatry to new extremes. Along with Batman, the police are presented as Gotham’s only saviors, and Bane only takes over the city after subduing the cops and trapping them underground. In both movies prior to this, the villains literally used the police as henchmen to kill people for them. For whatever reasons, the final installment in Nolan’s trilogy breaks its own internal logic to glorify cops, making the film uncomfortable for modern audiences.
2 Aged Well: The First Catwoman Scene Is A Great Introduction To Selina Kyle
Catwoman is a difficult character to adapt into film. She has been so many things at different points in comics history that it is difficult to find the balance between grounded realism and the sensationalism of a character who backflips over rooftops in a skintight leather catsuit while wielding a physics-defying bullwhip.
Actress Anne Hathaway finds something close to a good balance (though she clearly leans into the more grounded interpretation). Her infiltration of Wayne Manor is brilliantly executed, making her a believable but extraordinary cat burglar.
1 Hasn’t: The Stock Market Crime Makes No Sense
The scene in which Bane and his cronies show up at the Gotham City stock exchange to crash the economy makes no sense. For one, financial crimes happen all the time. They don’t require an armed takeover, and as reporting has consistently shown since the 2008 Recession, financial crimes are almost never enforced when committed by the uber-rich (like Bane’s ally Daggett).
There is also no reason that Bane would need to be on location for a digital crime (as proven by the fact that he and his men finish their hack from the back of motorcycles). Finally, Bruce Wayne is financially ruined for what are clearly illegal transactions he did not commit during this very public crime.
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