The Dark Knight Rises Prologue Review

The fire rises. And hopefully, so does the movie's sound mix.

Yes, I have seen the prologue for The Dark Knight Rises. And much like the bank heist prologue from The Dark Knight, it is six minutes of perfect, appetite-whetting AWESOME. It perfectly shows off the mood of the movie, as well as the first real unveiling of the film's villain. And, along with the trailer, it builds the anticipation for this flick that was already at The Phantom Menace-level anticipation to a fever pitch, whilst unfortunately reminding us that there are still seven months to go until the release of the final film. (SPOILERS AHEAD) The prologue itself deals with the CIA taking custody of one Dr. Leonid Pavel (the "mad scientist" announced months ago to be played by Alon Aboutbol), a character who's heavily figured into the marketing campaign, while also attempting to gather information from henchmen on their leader, a mysterious masked muscular mercenary (M's, lol) named Bane. Eventually, while the interrogation on a plane is ongoing, Bane reveals himself, and crashes the plane with the help of his cronies. A few exchanges of dialogue establish that Bane's men are fanatically devoted to his cause (that "the fire rises" line stuck in the head), while managing to toe around the actual plot of the film, which is still a complete mystery. In addition, there was an opening that recalled Gordon's speech about Harvey Dent from the end of TDK, and a short montage of clips at the end (some from the trailer and some not), before showing a shot of all hell breaking loose in Gotham as Bane's men appear to collide in battle with the GCPD. The last shot, of Bane carrying a shard of Batman's broken cowl (as depicted in the above poster) is truly chilling, and, combined with the timeline, gives me the idea that The Dark Knight Rises plot will be something of a hybrid of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Bane's introductory storyline, Knightfall. Of all the good things I've said about this prologue, however, it has one major flaw: Tom Hardy's Bane voice is quite difficult to understand. Some sentences are easier than others, but his last lines were pretty much unintelligible. Christopher Nolan himself has stated that he's only going to make minor sound alterations to the voice, so I hope that they make it count. Still, this prologue only made me more excited. I won't apply a star rating to this one, as six minutes of footage is hard to rate.

The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20.

"When Gotham is ashes, you'll have my permission to die."