With 2012's The Dark Knight Rises, Christopher Nolan completes his Batman trilogy, after beginning in 2005 with Batman Begins and continuing with 2008's phenomenon The Dark Knight. People are often apprehensive about the third film in a trilogy, and I'm honestly not a huge fan of Nolan's previous Batman films, in spite of being quite fond of his non-Batman films. I felt that Batman Begins was an entertaining but uneven film that suffered from some weak dialogue, and I felt that The Dark Knight was an overly long film with a few too many subplots that distracted from Heath Ledger's fantastic, haunting take on The Joker. The Hong Kong plot, Coleman Reese's plot, and Harvey Dent's transformation into full-on Two Face all felt like distractions to me. With that, I went into The Dark Knight Rises not expecting anything spectacular, and was quite surprised; I feel that this is easily the best of Nolan's Batman films.
