How do you top something like The Dark Knight? The simple answer is that you don't. It's not as though The Dark Knight Rises is a bad film, per se, just that it failed to match its predecessor on almost every single level. It's a motion picture that tried so very desperately to be bigger, more complicated and noticeably darker that it came across as too self-conscious an effort on director Christopher Nolan's part. Not to forget those plot holes. To the hype, then. The marketing material for The Dark Knight Rises teased a far better motion picture than the one we actually got. After four years of waiting for Christian Bale to reprise his role as Batman, this... this messy conclusion is what they opted to deliver? And, of course, there was that little Heath Ledger problem to contend with. How does one find a way to incorporate a similar element of pure, chaotic genius? Ledger gave The Dark Knight its life force, after all; he was the secret ingredient that made a good movie into a great one. Try as they did, nothing in The Dark Knight Rises come close to his Joker. Viewed as a lone movie, perhaps, away from the precedent set by The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises might have fared betted. Hype or no hype, though, it did fall short. Like this article? Agree? Disagree? What do you make of the films mentioned here? Did they fail to live up to the hype or did they meet expectations? Let us know in the comments.
Sam Hill is an ardent cinephile and has been writing about film professionally since 2008. He harbours a particular fondness for western and sci-fi movies.
