read an interesting opinion article on the movie (havent seen it yet)
No escape from this violent reality - KansasCity.com
"COMMENTARY
No escape from this violent reality
By JENEÉ OSTERHELDT
The Kansas City Star
“You think this can last?”
That’s what Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman, asks Bruce Wayne in “The Dark Knight Rises” as they dance at a party full of happy, wealthy people.
“There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne,” she says softly. “You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.”
This exchange captures the tone of Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman flick, the darkest of them all — so dark it’s unsettling.
But in the real world, the storm isn’t coming. It’s here. We’re living in its eye — economic downturn, social injustice, political warfare. And now a different darkness has cast its shadow on what was supposed to be the blockbuster of the summer.
The movie theater massacre. A young gunman attacked an audience Friday in a Colorado theater at the midnight showing of the new Batman movie, killing at least 12 and wounding 59.
Physically wounding, that is. Who can say how many people have suffered emotional wounds? This horrific travesty happened in our country, while people were watching a superhero movie, one of the most somber and dismal superhero movies I have seen.
In the first few moments of the shooter’s attack, some people thought it was a fanboy or some sort of promo event attached to the premiere. As 17-year-old Tanner Coon sat in the back of the theater with friends, he didn’t think it was real.
“I saw a tear gas can fly over the audience,” he told MSNBC. “There was a loud bang and I saw a flash, and I just thought maybe fireworks, you know, people do that kind of stuff at midnight premieres, but I heard more flashes and I instantly knew those were gunshots.”
At a theater. People were murdered, injured and scared for their lives at a theater. Could you imagine going to the midnight showing at Cinemark on the Plaza and facing a killer?
It was already hard to shake the violence and lack of hope in “The Dark Knight Rises.” The standoffs between Bane and Batman are straightforward violence. The score is drum heavy and intense. You can feel every swing, fall and broken bone.
The light is hard to come by in this final chapter. Even the paternal and loving Alfred is glassy-eyed and weighed down by gloom. Fear for his master’s future eats away at his peace.
The plot is partly Occupy Wall Street porn, complete with a stock market takeover. The rich are turned out into the streets and the poor move into their mansions. The other part is a typical hero struggle between doing the right thing for oneself and doing it for the greater good.
Shawn Edwards, Fox 4 film critic, says it’s difficult viewing because of how truthfully it depicts the anger that lives in our world.
“It’s frightening and grim and not to be taken lightly just because the themes are disguised in a comic book movie,” he said. “It’s scary stuff without much optimism.”
And after Friday’s tragedy, the movie will never look the same. This mass murder will stick to every showing, as Heath Ledger’s death haunts “The Dark Knight.” I can’t separate Ledger’s twisted and terrifyingly electric performance of the Joker from the overdose that killed him not long before the movie’s release. What happened Friday doesn’t just change how we perceive the film. It changes us.
Going to the movies provides an escape. Your defenses are down, you’re vulnerable and completely plugged into another world. And when we’re talking Batman, despite some darkness, the series usually allows viewers to float along in a life jacket of optimism — in the end everything is going to be all right.
“The Dark Knight Rises” doesn’t do that. It didn’t do that before the Colorado shooting, and it certainly doesn’t do it now. It closes the doors and locks the light out. It forces the audience to understand that the darkness isn’t just in Gotham.
The darkness lives in the real world. There is no escaping until we face it — and all the complicated questions about violence, mental illness and guns — and try to let the light back in."