The whole movie feels so like a series of contradictions - bloated and long yet rushed, deeply serious yet utterly silly, politically minded yet ultimately vapid.

What’s worse is that it’s all meaningless. The movie makes some noise about being political, but the politics of the movie are empty. The film makes some nods to economic inequality, but in the end that's just wallpaper.

Tom Hardy is, without a doubt, criminally wasted in the film. Bane is a dud.

As the movie wrapped up with five final minutes that play out exactly like Superhero Hype forum fanfic, I wasn’t hating it. I hadn’t been squirming in my seat. I thought a lot of it was dumb, I laughed at things that probably weren’t meant to be laughed at, and I experienced a few moments of deflation when I realized the movie had nothing to actually say.

Christy Lemire, a smart and respected critic for the AP, didn't like The Dark Knight Rises. Her review was well-written and reasonable. When she posted it on Rotten Tomatoes she was greeted with comments like this:



The Bat Jihad strikes again. Lemire isn't the only victim; Marshall Fine was the target of a ton of abusive language and death threats. Reports Matt Singer at Critic Wire:



Rotten Tomatoes was forced to go to tweet a reminder that any commenters who broke their basic terms of service (which I'm sure include things like 'Don't make death threats') would be banned from the site. That they would feel the need to do this only hours after the first negative reviews hit shows the force of the onslaught. There are thousands of hate comments still standing, with many having been deleted by a surely overworked moderator. And the Mujahabateen keep coming.

I'm familiar with these people - they've been coming after me ever since I dared find Batman Begins disappointing and subpar. I cemented the problem by giving The Dark Knight a radically low 8.5/10 instead of the only acceptable score, a 10/10. And they've been sharpening the knives in anticipation of my coming The Dark Knight Rises review - you may have seen one of them spamming the comments on multiple articles with a treatise that begins "DEVIN FARACI IS A CUNT."

We joke about furries and hentai pervs and steampunks as awful fanbases, but in reality they don't hold a candle to this special and disturbing group. Ignorant, enraged, often misogynistic and fundamentalist to the extreme - James Rocchi's 3 star review of the film at Movies.com has led to a deluge of commenters furious he only said the movie was good, not the greatest thing to ever grace screens - this modern Batman film fanbase has actually become frightening.

This is the end game of the sickness of fandom. Passion is one thing, but it can be twisted into something dark. That's happening here. These people have tied their identities and self-worth into Nolan's Batfilms so strongly that the smallest slight feels like a deep, personal attack. These sad, mentally unhygienic people lash out with fury. It's ugly and sad and makes me ashamed to be a nerd, to share a pop culture space with these people.

I know that our fan culture can be better. It can be supportive and inspiring at the best of times. But every year I see less of that and more anger and hate and ugliness. I want to remind you guys of my Take Back The Nerd: Five Ways To Be A Good Fan piece from back in May. Let's aspire to be a great community that, at the very least, doesn't threaten to kill people who don't like movies we haven't even seen yet.

UPDATE: Rotten Tomatoes has turned off commenting on reviews for The Dark Knight Rises. They will be instituting a Facebook-based commenting system to make sure cowards can't spew hate behind anonymity.

It's definitely a fascinating, unsettling trend, this -obsession- with the Rotten Tomatoes score. The nerds sharpening their claws, waiting to pounce upon the poor soul whose opinion doesn't exactly correspond with the opinion they know they will hold once they, oh, see the movie.

The actual criticism doesn't even matter any longer.

Consider our dear, dear BMP. If Christy Lemire wrote a review hailing this film as a masterpiece, he would just see it as another rightful ripe tomato on the virtual vine. But the minute she wrote a mixed review, she became a BITCH. How dare this BITCH give a mildly positive review to Battleship and a mildly negative one to The Dark Knight Rises. The nerve on this BITCH.

It's definitely a fascinating, unsettling trend, this -obsession- with the Rotten Tomatoes score. The nerds sharpening their claws, waiting to pounce upon the poor soul whose opinion doesn't exactly correspond with the opinion they know they will hold once they, oh, see the movie.

The actual criticism doesn't even matter any longer.

Consider our dear, dear BMP. If Christy Lemire wrote a review hailing this film as a masterpiece, he would just see it as another rightful ripe tomato on the virtual vine. But the minute she wrote a mixed review, she became a BITCH. How dare this BITCH give a mildly positive review to Battleship and a mildly negative one to The Dark Knight Rises. The nerve on this BITCH.

You sure are awful interested in the reviews for a movie you have vowed to never watch.

TDKR RT final score, it is gonna go down hard

Fact is that The Dark Knight Rises will now and forever be judged against the series' second installment, The Dark Knight, and will be found wanting. The Dark Knight Rises is less thematically interesting, less structurally compact and less energetically propelled than The Dark Knight, a comparison that is less a slight than a simple statement of fact.

The Dark Knight Rises feels like a hustle-filled but ultimately cursory trot around the bases, a pleasing but slightly wheezy victory lap as we raise the Bat-jersey, as Nolan tailored it, to the rafters of the pop-culture arena.

3 out of 5 stars

no new reviews at RT.... They stop posting?

But when you're a journalist paid to review movies, you need to be as objective as possible. You can't just say a movie isn't good because you didn't like it.

What does this even mean? Are we still referring to Christy Lemire? She wrote a fair, mixed review. She didn't just say, "Batman poopy pants! One star!"

What does this even mean? Are we still referring to Christy Lemire? She wrote a fair, mixed review. She didn't just say, "Batman poopy pants! One star!"

No, we're not still referring Christy Lemire. I was speaking in general, because you made fun of that other guy who was criticising a critic. I was saying that yes it is perfectly to criticise reviews. "Everyone has the right to their opinions" isn't an unbreakable firewall.

I'll have my revenge with Craplight 4.2