5punk

I'm going to start sound like a miserable bastard, but this is the most disappointing film I have ever seen. Years of waiting, anticipation and excitement, and it turns out to be as flat as a pancake. They should call it The Damp Squib Rises ho ho ho hilarious.

Nothing happens. Straight after the film and even this morning I try to think of a really good stand out scene. Hrm, nope, coming up blank. Actually the end is really good (and I don't mean that facetiously), about the last 5 or 10 minutes are really powerful and poignant, but by that time I was literally looking at my watch wondering how long was left to go. And that's the other problem - it's too fucking long. I wouldn't mind if it was long and packed with great scenes, but it's not. Even up to around the 2.5 hours mark there are scenes that have been put in there just to try and prolong the tension that are utterly unnecessary.

For a Batman film, there isn't much Batman. There isn't even much Bruce Wayne now I think about it. Oh the character is there on screen, but the dialogue and interactions with other people is strangely missing. Two stand out relationship from the other films, Alfred and Lucius Fox, are really watered down. The warmth between the three of them added huge amounts to the first two films, and now it's just gone. Anne Hathaway is all right as Cat Woman, but she doesn't really bring a huge amount to the role. And Bane, oh Bane. I was determined to like him just to shut up the Heath Ledger fanatics, but I'm sorry to say he's not a very good villain. There just isn't that much too him, and the mask covering his face takes away any sense of character coming from Tom Hardy. Oh, and he is quite difficult to understand, though it did lead to many comedy "Meestah Waaaayne" comments coming out of the cinema.

Ultimately I think it's too big (yes, that is exactly what she said). But for all its grand designs and wide ranging scope, it doesn't actually manage to hit the target.

I feel a little bit betrayed. This should have been one of the greatest films of our time, but instead it's a bloated nondescript let down. You might think I didn't like it as much because my expectations were so high, but honestly if you see it, the next day try and think of a particular stand out scene (other than the ending) that makes you want to go back and watch it again.

the stupid "leap of freedom" thing in that prison. The walls of that place were littered with cracks and seams easily big enough for a good free climber to use to climb up. Instead of just climbing up, you have to make a really stupid metaphorical jump.

I can understand why they didn't want to go for the traditional luchador mask for him, as that is exceptionally hard to not make look stupid. I also understand that they were emphasising how the doctor fucked up his medical treatment, and that's why they needed the mask, so I can forgive him having a weird re-breather on his face. Im not sure I would have gone that way, but fine. The thing is, there have been a great many characters in films with masks on, whos mask affected their speech, but who didn't sound like they were talking through a towel. Darth Vader, for example. Just make it a bit deeper and give it a slight echo and it will sound perfectly masky enough without making it any harder to understand.

The bomb was described as having a blast radius of 6 miles. That means that for the batcopter thing to have taken it to a safe distance, it would need to be at least 6 miles out into the bay, preferably more. It didn't start off at the waterside, but the island itself isn't all that huge, so lets say it went 7 miles out, or thereabouts. The last time we saw the timer was just as it was being hefted up, and it was on around 1m20s (slightly under that I think, but that's close enough for my point). That means the batcopter would have had to *average* about 315 miles per hour. It certainly didn't jump to top speed straight away, so it would have had to have hit a top speed waaay faster than that. By comparison, a quick googling suggests the fastest real helicopter in the world can only go about 250ish.