"The Dark Knight Rises"

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of The Dark Knight Rises for many months, so last weekend Chandra and I watched The Dark Knight to refresh our memories and gear up for the new movie. (In hindsight, I wish I'd taken the time to re-watch Batman Begins as well, since its story line really plays into The Dark Knight Rises much more than I thought it would… oh well!)

I was really impressed with both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, so I was crossing my fingers that The Dark Knight Rises would live up to my sky-high expectations. It did. Actually, it surpassed them. I absolutely loved the movie! It was a tad hard to follow and I got confused several times as to what was happening. In my defense, there was a lot going on in this movie plot-wise, not to mention the fact that the movie is almost three hours long! Subtitles would've been helpful since some of the dialogue was hard to catch, but all in all, this was a great movie and I can't wait to see it again.

Heather rating: 10/10 stars. Giving a movie a perfect '10' is a first for me, since I always like to leave at least a small margin of error. (I'm the kind of person who never goes "all the way" to one extreme or the other when filling out a survey where you have to assign a number on the 1 – 10 continuum to denote how good/bad something is.) Who knows… when I watch this movie again I might feel differently since I sometimes experience "rater's remorse;" but for now, I'm sticking with a perfect '10!'

Something else I was thinking about… I can't help but wonder what path the story line of the movie would've taken if Heath Ledger (who played the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight) wouldn't have died  in 2008. The Dark Knight  ended in a bit of a cliffhanger with unfinished business regarding the Joker, so I'm sure the Joker character would've played a significant part in The Dark Knight Rises. I guess I'll never know what would've happened and will just have to wonder. Fortunately, there are plenty of other villains in the world of Batman so that this installment of Batman movies didn't die with Ledger.