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Top Critics (45)
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The story is dense, overlong, and studded with references that will make sense only to those intimate with Nolan's previous excursions into Batmanhood.
There was an opportunity here for Nolan to show us another way, to (again) stretch the boundaries of what is possible in a superhero film. Instead, alas, the latter half of The Dark Knight Rises retreats toward conventionality.
I'm not arguing that Rises should be Singin' in the Rain. But its Wagnerian ambitions are not matched by its material. It hasn't earned its darkness.
The biggest surprise may just be how satisfying Nolan has made his farewell to a Dark Knight trilogy that many fans will wish he'd extend to a 10-part series, at least.
Others will see it differently, but for me this is a disappointingly clunky and bombastic conclusion to a superior series -- Nolan's biggest and worst movie to date.
The director and cowriter/brother Jonathan Nolan pay heed to Wayne's wounded emotional arc. And the film is a feat of painstakingly crafted closure.
The Dark Knight Rises, the year's silliest and most stubbornly self-serious blockbuster, arrives on Blu-ray with a flawed A/V transfer and a slew of largely inessential extras.
Weighed down by portentousness and momentousness. The overall story remains a bit muddled. A better trilogy-capper than a movie in its own right.
It makes an acceptable, if somewhat anticlimactic, conclusion to the three-part story arc. (Blu-ray Combo edition)
There's plenty of action, intrigue, special effects, and high-tech gadgets to maintain our attention at least in spurts.
There's enough that works in The Dark Knight Rises that I can overlook most of the more glaring flaws, but it remains to date the most disappointing film I've seen from 2012.
Nolan keeps things dark and dangerous
Doubtless flawed and arguably overlong, it's nonetheless a personal and heartfelt ode from the director to the greatest comic-book character ever committed to paper -- and now film.
Nolan's finale isn't perfect, and may not be the greatest installment of the trilogy, but it solidifies this three-part tale of the Batman legend as one of the best ever told.
... if Gotham falls, so does Bruce Wayne. Rarely, in film, have we understood and sympathised with a hero's mission as much as Bruce's.
The Dark Knight Rises succeeds in surpassing 2008's 'The Dark Knight' to become the best of his three films. Whether that will be enough to secure his Best Picture Oscar is frankly irrelevant - because what matters is that this is Batman's best picture.
Though not without the odd minor niggle, The Dark Knight Rises is an intelligent, gripping, complex and suitably satisfying end to what is now - quite easily - the best comic adaptation trilogy of all time.
The Dark Knight Rises is the film event of the summer. A completely satisfying piece of filmmaking that delivers so much more, making for an excellent sign off for one of cinema's finest trilogies.
[It] may be the weakest film in the trilogy, but it is still a satisfactory and exciting conclusion to what has been the greatest treatment of any superhero in film history.
Every shred of wit, mystery and humanity is pummeled out, leaving only a bullish mishmash of zeitgeisty anxiety
Disconnected significantly from the flow of logic between the first and second installments of Christopher Nolan's "Batman" films, "The Dark Knight Rises" is a disjointed mess.
Nolan again transforms Bob Kane's classic DC Comics creation into a superhero for our times, flawed but fighting against supervillains and also the decay and corruption that created them.
Manages to mitigate its slew of shortcomings with a cinematically-administered, turbo-charged dose of adrenaline in the form of its sublimely symphonic finale.
Contains images destined to become classics of what we might call pretentious popular culture. For example: Batman and Bane, slugging it out on the steps of a neoclassical downtown building, in the midst of a sunlit snowstorm...
When the credits roll at the end of this overlong action epic, it feels like we've just turned the final page of an immersive novel
It addresses the darkness in everyday life, acknowledges the pain, and fights back.
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