The Dark Knight Rises: 10 Ways It Didn’t Live Up To The Hype

By Stuart W. Bedford /

6. John Blake

While Joseph Gordon-Levitt performed well as he always does, I couldn€™t help but squirm at some of the finer points of his character. I get it; Nolan€™s pulled the old switcheroo here and slyly included an origin story within a swansong. Very clever, true enough, but I can€™t shake the feeling that it was forced in clumsily, possibly to address the fact that Batman just kind of€ quits. Handed the keys to the Batcave, it€™s left to us to imagine that this rookie-cop with no training (remember Bruce Wayne trained for fifteen years before becoming the Dark Knight), no experience and no Batman to guide him will become the new symbol of Gotham. He nearly got himself killed on the bridge in the climax of the film, in a unexplained display of bravado against the military. Am I the only one who immediately imagines that John Blake will be dead within the week? I suppose this gripe is more related to Batman€™s actions in the film in handing over the Bat-torch €“ we€™ll get to that of course €“ but in the TDKR€™s final moments I wasn€™t feeling this sense of completion that the first wave of reviews had promised. Levitt€™s character added more discrepancies for me than closure and again, with a film so revered by its reviewers, I€™d have really expected these flaws in logic to have been addressed in the script.