There are a lot of different ways you can look at The Dark knight Rises; On it's own, as part of a trilogy or as an adaptation of a comic book. I'll try and address each of these options as i have a lot of mixed feeling s about Christopher Nolans wrap up to his Dark Knight story.
If this movie was it's own enclosed vision it would be considered an epic feat. We have three distinct acts that work really well, if only the last act lags a little bit because the bat is not on the screen a whole lot. The ideas of "falling only to rise again" are shown throughout. Bane serves as a good catalyst for the fall and rise of Batman, but it almost felt as if they had an idea for a story and then molded a member of Batman's rouge gallery to fit the bill. The villain could have easily been The Riddler, The Penguin or Mr. Freeze, that's how much of Bane's story is changed to fit the mold here.
It's on the merits of the previous argument that "Rises" feels like a complete retread of ideas put forward in the previous 2 films. This story already had Batman take a fall at the end of the Dark Knight, why does he need to be physically taken down in the second act of "Rises"? Joker put the fate of the city and it's people in the hands of regular joes and vicious inmates and they rose to the occasion and proved the Joker wrong, here Bane turns over the city and everything goes to hell. Also if you watch all three movies back to back you are so jared by the different visual styles and locations that you can't believe for a moment all of this takes place in the same "Gotham City" (In my personal opinion the fact that DC takes place in fictional cities is what will forever place it behind Marvels place in our world).
Lastly we have the comic coming to the real world. Nolan always wanted to make things seem as if it could happen right now in our world. So here we are given Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle who is never referred to as Catwoman (but delivered my favorite performance) and a young detective who helps Batman only to have him revealed to be Robin at the end of the film (more on that later). Bane is a known terrorist who wears a mask because they say he has to. It all works, in fact it works a little to easily. I really wish he would have tried to adapt like he did with the Joker, taking a character that is bigger than life and presenting him in such a new light. Also I fell the reveal that Jospeh Gordon Levitts detectives real name is Robin is a great disservice to the film. Of course he's Robin, just come out and say it!
Maybe this film will age better with time, but the moment I left the theater I had some serious thoughts just bouncing around in my mind. It does give the trilogy a nice little ending, I think I am excited to see someone make a new film and try to embrace the mythos a little more like the recent Arkham games. One final thought: When a director continues to use the same actors across different movie worlds it get's confusing; ie: I expected Leonardo Decaprio to spring in and tell everyone they were dreaming (four actors were held over from Inception).
