{"id":30540,"date":"2012-07-20T14:23:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T21:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=30540"},"modified":"2012-07-20T14:23:16","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T21:23:16","slug":"rethink-reviews-the-dark-knight-rises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2012\/07\/20\/rethink-reviews-the-dark-knight-rises\/","title":{"rendered":"ReThink Reviews &#8212; &#8220;The Dark Knight Rises&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"inline-playlist playlist\" title=\"\"><li><a href=\"http:\/\/ia700806.us.archive.org\/25\/items\/DailyDigest-072012\/DarkKnightRisesKpfk_1-2.mp3\">Listen to this segment&lt;br \/&gt;\n<\/a><\/li><\/ul>\n<p><a href =\"http:\/\/www.rethinkreviews.net\"><img decoding=\"async\" align=right width=55% src=\"\/home\/graphics\/rethink_reviews_small.jpg\" alt=\"Rethink Reviews\" \/><\/a><strong>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. <\/strong>  <\/p>\n<p><em>Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. <\/em>  <\/p>\n<p> Read his reviews online at <a href=\"http:\/\/ReThinkReviews.net\">ReThinkReviews.net<\/a>. Watch his videos at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim\">www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim<\/a>, and follow him on Twitter at <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews\">twitter.com\/ReThinkReviews<\/a>. ReThink Reviews&#8217; theme song is by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.myspace.com\/restaurantmusic\">Restavrant<\/a>.    <\/p>\n<p><strong>The Dark Knight Rises<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The day so many of us have waited for is finally here, with the arrival of 164 minutes of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES, the final chapter of Christopher Nolan\u2019s Batman trilogy that brought superheroes and villains into the real world and redefined the genre. Nolan has proved himself to be one of the very best directors of his generation, especially since his last two films, \u2018The Dark Knight\u2019 and \u2018Inception\u2019, are universally-acclaimed masterpieces. But that means that to avoid disappointing fans, Nolan has to outdo himself and somehow top not one, but two of the greatest movies ever made.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 takes place eight years after \u2018The Dark Knight\u2019. Harvey Dent, the crusading district attorney whose transformation into the villain Two Face was kept secret from the public, has been made into a hero and martyr, and a law named in his honor has helped clean up Gotham\u2019s streets. No longer needed, Batman has disappeared after taking the blame for murders Dent committed, and Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale) has become a recluse. <\/p>\n<p>But when a masked villain named Bane appears in Gotham with a band of mercenaries with plans to take over the city, Batman is forced out of retirement to confront him with the help of a driven young cop named John Blake (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and an unlikely ally in the form of a cat burglar, some might even say a Catwoman, named Selena Kyle (played by Anne Hathaway). <\/p>\n<p>The scope of \u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 is much larger than its predecessors, with hundreds of extras, big chases and battles through city streets, and some new Batman hardware. Hathaway provides a spark with her sex appeal, badass attitude, and refusal to be impressed by Batman, and Gordon-Levitt does a solid job, though the accent he puts on is hard to place. And, like all Nolan films, \u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 is beautiful to watch, particularly the big action scenes and many of the exterior shots, which were shot in IMAX. <\/p>\n<p>But I think the biggest problem with \u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 is the bar set by its predecessor, \u2018The Dark Knight\u2019, and particularly, the ghost of Heath Ledger and his groundbreaking, Oscar-winning performance as the Joker. Bane (played by a masked Tom Hardy) simply isn\u2019t as interesting, menacing, unnerving and magnetic as the Joker, and, to be honest, the effect put on Bane\u2019s voice sometimes makes him hard to understand. Ledger\u2019s brilliant performance embodies the perfect counterpoint to the psychology of Bruce Wayne, where trauma drives one man to an obsession with chaos and the other with justice, and whether Batman\u2019s lawlessness and costume actually makes Gotham safer or drives criminals to be crazier. <\/p>\n<p>The social commentary in the Joker\u2019s message about how little it takes to drive a civilization to barbarity is also much more thought-provoking than Bane\u2019s claim of wanting to save Gotham from inequality and corruption, despite how timely it feels with the Occupy movement. And I also wasn\u2019t crazy about the fact that \u2018Rises\u2019 brings back a plotline from \u2018Batman Begins\u2019 that I was never crazy about. <\/p>\n<p>Nolan has sometimes been criticized for directing fairly cold performances, a criticism I never really agreed with. But with Bane and Catwoman being such cool customers, and without the passion and fire of the Joker, Harvey Dent, and the love triangle between him, Wayne, and Rachel Dawes, it feels like some emotional heat is missing in the gray and swirling snow of Gotham. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018Rises\u2019 is certainly epic, ambitious, occasionally dazzling, and provides a satisfying end to Nolan\u2019s trilogy. And to be honest, I sort of feel like this review is premature since, like most Nolan films, I really feel like I need to see it again to look for nuances and story points I might\u2019ve missed. \u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 is very impressive and definitely worth seeing, but without a once-in-a-lifetime performance like Ledger\u2019s Joker to provide the pulse, we\u2019ll have to be content with a final chapter that certainly delivers, but in a trilogy that peaked in the middle. <\/p>\n<p>\u2018The Dark Knight Rises\u2019 is rated PG-13. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking a deeper look at current and past films and how they relate to the world today. Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic who writes and produces film reviews for Uprising and other outlets. He is a former co-producer at Brave New Films. Read his reviews online at ReThinkReviews.net. Watch his videos at www.youtube.com\/user\/jsjkim, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rethink-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}