That figure is Bane and as it turns out he's far better connected than anyone suspects. Before he ever sets foot in Gotham various members of the board of Wayne Enterprises along with a rogues gallery of Gotham baddies have laid the groundwork for his arrival and the implementation of his master plan, which bears a suspicious resemblance to the agenda of Ra's Al Ghul from "Batman Begins". That film in fact is much more the direct predecessor of The Dark Knight Rises than 2008's "The Dark Knight" which when taken in the context of the new film seems to have existed solely to set up the circumstances of Bruce Wayne's apathy. Wayne is a mess at the beginning of "Rises". Hobbling around on a cane because his years of being Batman have left him with no cartilage in his knees, ankles and shoulders he is, (to borrow a line from "Black Hawk Down"), "combat ineffective". But he's not just physically out of action he's also an emotional basket case having never reconciled himself to the death of Rachel Dawes. In the eight years since the events of The Dark Knight he hasn't been completely sedentary however. He has managed to oversee the rebuilding of Wayne Manor which returns to take it's place in Wayne's personal narrative ever more the occupied mausoleum it was in "Begins". The other occupant of that mausoleum is Alfred who has been waging a pitched battle to get Bruce up off his ass and back into the billionaire dating scene, alas, to no avail.
This first hour of "Rises" is breathtaking film making with Nolan at his story telling best and I sat through it wide-eyed and mesmerized. All the actors inhabit their roles with gusto while newcomer (to the series) Ann Hathaway steals the early show with her deft portrait of the determined, amoral, infinitely pragmatic cat burglar (she's never referred to as "Catwoman" in the film). Her Selina Kyle is the embodiment of all the other self-serving toadies who collectively make up the upper crust of Gotham society. The only difference between her and the "elite" is the scale of amorality. As the saying goes "steal a little and they put you in jail steal a lot and they make you king".
One of the things she steals is a pearl necklace that belonged to Bruce Wayne's mother. She acquires it by acting as a waitress at a Wayne Foundation function and sneaking into Wayne Manor's east wing where she lifts it from a safe. Her activities, however, get the attention of the Hermit of the East Wing and they have the first of many face offs. She gets away but Bruce's interest is piqued. His investigation into her identity is just what his rusty old instincts need to get him back on the horse and his pursuit of her sets him on a collision course with Bane who has snuck into town and is busy building an underground prison where he'll entomb Gotham's police force.
Here's where things get muddy. Turns out Wayne Enterprises had developed a fusion reactor which would apparently be able to provide the world with almost unlimited free energy. Bane has been using various proxies in order to gain access to this device, which BW had shunted away underground when it became apparent to him several years earlier that the reactor could be used to create a nuclear weapon. Bane and Company have devised a plan to rain financial ruin on BW (though I'm never really sure why) that includes a daring daylight assault of Gotham Stock Exchange and the implementation of a computer program that bankrupts Bruce. Selina Kyle covets this program because it'll apparently help her wipe out her identity and thereby operate with impunity.
Meanwhile without ever getting much of a brief on Bane or what he's up to BW decides he represents a significant enough threat to dust off the batsuit. But his return doesn't last long and he spends much of the movie's middle down a hole in the desert trying to remember "why we fall". There's so much exposition in the 2nd act, (much of which has little bearing on the outcome), that you start to wonder if Nolan got paid by the word. While I admire his desire to present us with characters that are more than cardboard cutouts the fact is all this talk serves more to bog the story down than flesh it out. That's particularly true when it comes to the story's principle threat: the nuclear annihilation of Gotham (Manhattan). Nolan seems to be of a mind that 'wordy' equals 'realistic' when in fact all the talk used to convince us of the 'reality' of the nuclear threat simply adds up to 'ponderous', not 'realistic'. And one more thing: this is not a film that unfolds over a 24 or 48 hour period yet the handling of the passage of time is nothing short of confusing and more often than not simply has a toss off feel to it ("Yeah. Yeah. It's a month later than it was a minute ago. Deal with it.").
Once we get into the 3rd act things thankfully begin moving again. Batman escapes from his 2nd act prison and returns to the streets of Gotham determined to take down Bane and Nolan injects a couple of clever twists into the story line that reinvigorate it. The action sequences are for the most part top notch though they play out on eternally unpeopled streets. (Nolan's preference for shooting on location in large urban areas and then emptying them of all but essential cast didn't work in "The Dark Knight" and it doesn't work here either. There are supposed to be several million people trapped in Gotham with no way to escape. Where are they?) The film's climax is riveting and ultimately things wrap up in a way that is sure to please some and infuriate others, while leaving several possible ways for Warner Brothers and DC to move on with the franchise.
Taken as a whole Nolan's Batman swan song is a good film that could have been a great film. Unfortunately, like that other blockbuster director with creative control, James Cameron, Nolan doesn't know how to edit himself. Had The Dark Knight Rises trimmed much of the fat of the 2nd act we'd be talking about a lean, mean movie machine; the best of all the Batman films. Instead what we've got is the 2nd best of Nolan's trilogy, after "Batman Begins".
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