I recommend that you don’t read this until after you’ve seen The Dark Knight Rises.

A few personal thoughts before I get into the review proper:

After what happened on July 20 in Colorado, can Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises ever be viewed purely as a form of entertainment? A work of art designed specifically for the purpose of bringing people together for a few hours, to escape the shittier things going on in the world? I think the answer to that question is an unfortunate no. The tragedy that struck that movie theater in Aurora has cast a shadow that hangs over much of the film’s 2 hour, 44 minute runtime. If anything, it’s managed to make the events of the film itself even more unsettling than they might otherwise have been (and I think most who see the film will agree, it’s dark and disturbing enough as it is).

It’s a shame really, because this final chapter in Nolan’s Batman trilogy, dark as it can be, is a thrilling, emotional piece of big budget movie-making; thrilling because of tremendous action setpieces and brutal one-on-one battles, emotional because of the pain and sacrifice that Bruce Wayne and the people he cares about most are forced to endure. But most importantly, this is a story about hope, something we can always use, but something that – in the wake of what happened in Aurora – feels more and more like it can only be found in the fantasy world that films like this live in.

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