Major spoilers for basically the whole movie.
The Internet has engineered a brutal, stupid feedback loop between film writer and film consumer, one that only seems to precipitate with each high-profile release that garners some degree of negative critical attention. I first became aware of the problem with Toy Story 3, a fine and warm movie that earned its tiny pool of detractors hatred that Pixar could never have imagined; this vitriol has only snowballed with each major studio release that has Rotten Tomatoes on its side early enough to earn it the adoration of raving, faceless idiots. The Avengers is an earlier example from this year, but The Dark Knight Rises got people mad enough to send death threats to critics audacious enough to speak ill of it.
Attitudes like this, obviously, are detrimental to film criticism and the improvement of the form as a whole. Glenn Kenny wrote an interesting, if not slightly overgeneralized, piece about how nerd culture and fanboyism tend to omit alternate interpretations of what constitutes "art." Yes, hivemind thought has always existed, and yes, relegating it to a scope as comparatively small as film discussion is a little bit frivolous when it led to things like the ascendancy of the Nazi party. But this is all emblematic of the Internet's democratization of voice, a process that both giveth and taketh away. We have access to voices of staggering breadth and diversity, all of which are privy to shitty comments posted by indignant 14-year-olds.
So essentially what this all amounts to is the eternal lash, backlash, back-backlash that the Internet permits, amplified to a degree that only the biggest movie of the year could possibly reach. I am joining the fray because, well, that's what I like to do. I enjoy the opportunity to organize my thoughts on movies, especially ones that are as grandiose and ambitious as The Dark Knight Rises. It's a three-hour long comic book magnum opus, something that I would never have thought possible a decade ago were it not for its overwhelmingly successful predecessor, and as such it has its share of problems. Because the film attempts so much, I feel it's best examined by looking at each of its major elements and figuring out how they contribute to or detract from the film at large. Maybe it seems picky, but such is the aforementioned power of the Internet.
