Exactly, I think effzee's claims are fair, but it really does work both ways. What I don't agree with is the fact that you're considered a hater simply for not finding something perfect or disagreeing with some points. There can never be a middle ground.
I strongly agree with this. Some posters here really don't let you sit in the middle. You have to love it or dislike it.
I'm a massive fan of Batman. I watched the original when I was a boy, loved the animated series and games, and Batman Begins is one of my favourite movies of all time. Then, TDK came along, and whilst not as personal of a story, it was still fantastic with the enlarged scope. With TDKR, I feel there were good ideas, but the execution was lacking. It was just too ambitious for its own good. Too many characters, a lack of focus in some ways and this hurt the movie. Overall, it was disappointing
because it wasn't perfect or simply
good enough. I don't think it's a bad movie. On the contrary, I'm beyond biased, so I still enjoyed watching it for the first time. But the disappointment of certain things is much higher since this was the end and there won't be another Nolan Batman with this same cast of characters.
More than anything, I felt let down by how so much time was spent on introducing these new characters whilst certain characters, namely Gordon, got left behind. I mean, there was so much potential for him in this movie. He lost a lot thanks to the events of BB and TDK and we spend all of around 10 minutes with him. His wife and kid left him. He's old and alone. We get no insight into this outside of a little scene with Blake where he expresses his frustration. What the hell is that? This was the perfect movie to place more focus on him. I guarantee you it would be much more crowd pleasing considering how genuinely likeable his character is. Showing him go from a beaten and old man to actually getting some life and fight back in him to aid Batman would've been awesome. That arc is there, but again, it's rushed and kind of crap because there's not enough time to really connect.
Instead, we get needless time focused on Blake and some other middling characters like the officer. Now, I know people are going to harp on about how Blake was some necessary story element because of the theme of Batman living on, but it's such utter bullshit. A theme doesn't need physical representation to be driven home. You could easily take out his character and achieve the same result.
Just more time to focus on Bruce, Gordon, and to ultimately, tighten the story. More time to let certain scenes breathe and the story sink in a little. TDK had many characters also, but it didn't have as many sub-plots as this. The characters were much more connected in terms of serving the over arching story. Even Talia is a wasted inclusion in TDKR. The revenge story is inserted to try and make it seem more personal, but it's unnecessary. It's as personal as it can get for the audience since we're invested in Bruce's journey. It would've been better to leave the focus on Bane. It's not hard to change things slightly, and just have the narrative be that Bane was the original disciple of Ra's al Ghul but was too extreme in methodology and ideals even for him. And with Batman eliminating Ra's al Ghul and the League in tatters, he basically returned and made them stronger than ever. It's a slight twist on the story, but it eliminates the need for an extra character. Heck, you could even make it that Bane had a twisted admiration for Ducard even after being abandoned. Maybe because Ra's saved him from his hell and gave him a reason to live. There's plenty of directions you can go in with just Bane serving as the central villain.
TDKR just felt a little too big and sloppy with some elements just there for fan service, whilst BB and TDK are a lot tighter and seemingly more focused as actual movies. Take out a few characters from TDKR, and you can still keep the main themes and arcs in-tact but tighten the story up much more.
