The Dark Knight Rises finally opened this weekend, and droves of people across the globe lined up to see how Christopher Nolan’s epic trilogy would end. To no one’s surprise, Warner Bros. is making a lot of money off of this film already, with projected domestic opening weekend box office numbers for The Dark Knight Rises ranging from about $170 million to as high as $214 million. The latter would be enough to edge out the record opening for The Avengers, which pulled in $207.4 million in domestic box office for Walt Disney in May.

One would have to assume the higher end of the projection might be out of reach, as some viewers have elected to return their tickets in the wake of the awful Aurora, CO shooting at a The Dark Knight Rises showing. Obviously, everyone at Flapship has the friends and families of those effected in their minds tonight.

Reviews of the film have been all over the map, but have leveled to the point that it’s apparent people are really enjoying it, as evidenced by RottenTomatoes.com‘s 87% critic score, and 94% user score.

You can mark me down as having a positive review for The Dark Knight Rises – An incredibly positive review, at that.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!

THERE’S NO TURNING BACK!

SERIOUSLY, LAST CHANCE.

The Dark Knight Rises Review (with Spoilers!)

Thank God, er, Christopher Nolan, Batman didn’t die. I’ll jump right to that – the very very end of the film. I spent the better part of 185 minutes hoping that the film would not end with my favorite hero’s demise. Call me what you will, but I would have been absolutely broken if Batman had indeed blown up over the murky waters of Gotham Ocean or whatever you want to call it. When we found out that Bruce had indeed fixed the auto-pilot, I was certainly relieved.

You will either see this movie or you won’t, so I’m not going to get into too much detail in terms of plot. My goal is to cover my overall feelings of this movie and to bring up some inconsistencies.

The opening sequence lets us understand the scale of Nolan’s final Batman film, and it is massive. Bane and his boys perform a massive aerial hijacking of an airplane that holds a Russian Physicist and his brain, which we will find is needed by Bane to turn a Wayne Enterprises power-producing thing yada yada yada, bad dude is bad.

Gotham gets destroyed in this movie. I mean, DESTROYED. Bane turns it into an all-out warzone, and I loved every minute of it in stunning IMAX perfection. Batman indeed gets his back, and his spirit, broken by Bane after Catwoman double crosses him/Bruce for the umpteenth time. Bane is a member of The League of Shadows, so he’s classically-trained in the same way Batman is, but he’s younger and stronger and meaner. The scenes with Bruce in the underground prison were spectacular. My emotions were tugged at time and time again hoping for yet another miraculous Wolverine-esque healing factor recovery by Bruce Wayne. When he made that leap to the next ledge, with the spectacular score growing  and growing, I wanted to cheer.

Was I the only person who knew Marion Cottilard was Talia Al-Ghul? I read that somewhere sometime forever ago, and that wound up being a monster spoiler. The whole Bane/Talia/Ra’s backstory was really well done. Nolan did a spectacular job with Bane – turning a rather unbelievable real-world character into something to be believed and something absolutely terrifying.

I’d like to take a moment here to point out that maybe 2 or 3 people got up to use the restroom during The Dark Knight Rises – there is no moment to take a piss. I drank 1/3 of my large Diet Coke. Normally at a movie I down two of them.

There were certainly some oddities, Bruce Wayne escaping a prison in the middle of nowhere and randomly showing up in a locked-down Gotham to confront Catwoman. That was kind of unexplained. John Blake’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) real name being Robin during the loved-it or hated-it ending was pretty corny. However, his discovering the Bat cave and presumably taking the Mantle of the Bat, well, I’m down. I don’t think we’ll see that sequel or spinoff, but I’d certainly adore it if we did.

All-in-all, I came away greatly pleased. I feel like The Dark Knight Rises makes The Dark Knight look like child’s play. Bane makes the Joker look like an amateur. This was the perfect ending to the trilogy, and I’ll be seeing it again with my wife as soon as humanly possible.

The Dark Knight Rises – A+

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