I saw it. Enjoyed some parts. Really, REALLY loathed other parts. I hated just about everything from when Bane takes over the city through the end.
Gonna delve into some spoilers here...
All the scenes chasing the bomb around the city were beyond ludicrous. What irritated me the most was the timer on the bomb, as it made NO SENSE. Not the physics of it, which were questionable but hell I can live with that level of disbelief. You want to time when the "instability" of a fusion reactor reaches critical down to the second over a 5 month span? Dumb, but forgivable. But the way they counted down just didn't make sense. "We have nine minutes... let's force them to drive towards the reactor!" And what? Let's say the villains cooperate and drive down into the SEALED OFF UNDERGROUND BUNKER and park next to the reactor. Let's say they rode down the slow-ass freight elevator. Even under the absolute most IDEAL scenario that the bomb gets where you need to get it... THEN WHAT? Is there an industrial crane on the truck? No. And last I checked Batman didn't have super strength. And Morgan Freeman is like 90... he can't dead-life a half-ton bomb. And then who's going to hook it up afterwards? Umpa-Lumpas? Even if they had FOUR HOURS there was no way they'd get the bomb into that reactor, much less nine freakin' minutes. So their goal from the start was laughable.
So then with 90 seconds left, what do you do? Hook it up to a helicopter. And it flies off like 10 miles over the bay. By my quick, very brain-tired calculations, that's traveling at 400 miles per hour. From a dead stop in a powered-down helicopter. A freakin' rocket ship can't travel 10 miles from a dead stop in 90 seconds. God, the bad, bad physics just made my brain hurt. If you want the tension of a count-down to be effective, it must be credible. Here, it was not.
Other problems I had - the whole point of The Dark Knight, a film I very nearly loved, was that the citizens of Gotham when faced with certain death would make the moral choice. In TDKR, as soon as martial law is instated (and the island was sealed off... AGAIN), the citizens devolve into a rabid mob. Kangaroo courts to kill anyone they were jealous of. Rioting. Panic. And eventually everyone hunkers down in their homes and gives up. This was the same city where prison inmates chose death over blowing up the other boat??!!
I'll note in those sections I did like the very strong anti-socialist political message. Though I felt he might have gone a bit overboard portraying the have-nots as really selfish, jealous degenerates.
So it betrayed the film I liked, and it defied basic math in a maddening way. Two strikes. There were probably four other strikes through the last half of the movie.
Three of them involve some Don't read if you haven't seen the film SUPER SPOILERS...
I knew the chick was the bad girl pretty much from the first time she was on screen. I didn't know she was Talia... didn't connect that dot... but I knew she was the one with the trigger who would betray Batman. Lazy. Obvious. Painful.
When Batman was flying off with the bomb, I kinda rolled my eyes with the "hero sacrifices himself" ending. I bought into it. It sucked. Alfred crying... very moving. It was predictable, but I could respect it. Sucks to go out on a low note, but sometimes that's the best way to tell a story. And then they turn it around and reveal it was all fake. Instead of feeling elation the hero survived, I felt like "you bastards... you put me through all of that just to wimp out?" On top of that, Batman quits? To live the good life in paradise with Catwoman? No more duty to his city? (granted they did turn out to be a bunch of ungrateful, cowardly, murderous thugs...) He just abandons his life's mission? Retires? Really pissed me off.
The "Robin" reveal... not horrible... just lame. And he's going to become Robin without Batman? Guess they had to hang a sequel onto something...
So yeah... not real happy with the movie. I liked Bane well enough. The action that wasn't ruined by bad clock management was decent. Good to know you can heal a dislocated vertebrate by hanging from a rope and getting punched in the back a few times.
Gha... I should just stop typing... all I'm doing is pissing myself off more. I really disliked Batman Begins for similar reasons, and I think this movie is cut from the same mold. Seems like Nolan may have made his own Original Trilogy. Innovative first film whose innovations outshine the other weak elements. Brilliant second film. Mostly bad final film.