Fresh 2 Def Leppard

Okay, I saw Dark Knight Rises Monday night and I've had five days to think it over. In fact, it's all that I have been thinking about whenever I get any sort of free-time, and I've come to a conclusion: It's "pretty good". Now let me back up and explain. I was the most excited I have ever been to see this movie since Return of the King in 2003. I mean, I was practically shitting my pants as I waited in my seat for the movie to start. After the movie ended I was like "HOLY SHIT THAT WAS COOL!"....but then I thought about it. Then I thought about it more. And then I came to the conclusion that I stated above, that it was actually just "pretty good". Here's why; While the story was gripping and had me on the edge of my seat, the characters in the movie kind of fell flat. Bane is a great idea for a villain, but he needed to be more brutal. It kind of just seemed like he was an English gentleman that was just sort of blowing shit up. He was way too calm, which could work, but in this case it didn't. Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle was actually GREAT. She was a really good Catwoman, but I wanted more of her and Batman, because they are notorious for being in love/ hating each other/ helping each other out. However, what I came to realize is that this movie isn't a Batman movie, it's actually a Bruce Wayne movie. Bruce only puts on the suit like two or three times in the entire 2 hours and 45 minutes of the film. Most of the time he's lying down with a broken back in some jail-pit in the Middle East somewhere. Another thing that I had a problem with is that most of the movie takes place during the day. I can really only remember one or maybe two scenes where it takes place at night. It just doesn't work. We don't care about what happens in Gotham during the day, because all the bad shit happens when the street lights come on. I wanted to see that gritty, dirty, shit-hole Gotham that we saw in Batman Begins. To me, that is Gotham. That's what it looks like in all the comic books and all the graphic novels. You mostly never see a comic where it's day-time in Gotham. Besides, night time is when Batman comes out. You'll never see him driving up in the Tumbler at 12:30 in the afternoon. It just doesn't work that way. And THEN there's the whole Joseph-Gordon Levitt thing. Now I like JGL, and I think he did a good job in this movie, but WHAT THE FUCK, ROBIN?!? I literally let out a huge audible groan when THAT shit happened. I mean, it's pretty obvious early on in the movie that Levitt's character is going to become the next "Batman" (or next masked-vigilante, because "Batman" is dead to the people of Gotham), but revealing that his name is Robin is literally the dumbest thing Nolan has ever done. And it was such a throwaway line too, like they added it in on the fly. Listen, all they had to do was reveal that his real name was "Mr. Grayson". They didn't even have to call him "Dick Grayson", just "Mr. Grayson" would have been enough and I WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY FINE WITH IT. But instead, he's just some dude named Robin who will never actually be Robin because there was never a Robin named Robin!! He can't even be fucking Nightwing because that was Dick Grayson. So who is JGL supposed to become at the end of the movie? WHO FUCKING KNOWS!! I re-watched Batman Begins yesterday and I actually think I liked it more than DKR. It's just a better Batman movie. Then of course there is the impossible-to-top Dark Knight. The reason why Dark Knight was so incredible was not only because of Heath Ledger's performance, but because just the character, even just the idea of the Joker is the best thing ever. He's the best villain that Batman has, and I think he's the best superhero villain period. You can't top such a great character that causes chaos just because it's fun. However, I did like Dark Knight Rises, I just expected way more.