I saw the The Dark Knight as a Monday matinee during our August long weekend in 2008. By that time, it had been out for two weeks and had already generated a lot of buzz. It seemed everyone was talking about and praising its greatness. I did not go as a fanboy of Christopher Nolan nor of Batman, but to merely catch up, and see the sequel to Batman Begins, which I learned about late during its 2005 theatrical run and almost missed.

I liked Nolan’s Inception, and seeing that movie cemented into my mind the idea that I like his films – tone, atmosphere, cinematography. However, was that atmosphere in The Dark Knight Rises? I know in the future I’ll have this film on my system and I’ll put it on as working wallpaper … or will I? Did it have that slow-burn quality against a rich backdrop and wonderful Hans Zimmer soundtrack? Yes, the Zimmer soundtrack delivered, and yes Bane was menacing, but I feel (at this point) that the only part of the film that lived up the hype was the prologue, which had been shown in December, and which made my jaw drop the first time I saw it as a blurry pirated internet clip.

Even though a lot was familar from the trailers etc, I went in with questions about the uprising, which were straightforward: a gang of thugs, the release of prisoners, the cops held hostage.

The whole “city under seige for five months” plot at the end didn’t work, as it was unbeliveable. I think in post-9/11 it would have been a lot more panicked, and the coercion of getting the military to guard the one bridge off the island would never have worked.

I did find Catwoman’s motivations interesting: she wants software that can erase her from all the world’s databases. “Collated, analysed, what we do sticks”. This concern of her seems slightly ahead of the time but only by a week or two. That’s a plot line that will make more sense as time goes on when this movie is just another file in a database we can download with our cloud accounts.

All & all, it seems too soon to judge TDKR. As a stand-alone, it’s weak. However, in the future when we can play the series back-to-back on our own time, when a teenager can spend three nights watching the movies on their tablet before bed, then its failings and successes will be clarified. Perhaps its tone has nuances that we can’t pick up yet, but that will become obvious later.