A The review embargo on The Dark Knight Rises has been lifted and critics are posting their thoughts as of this morning. As you'd expect reviews are pretty much unanimously glowing.
Trade heavyweights The Hollywood Reporter and Variety both offered raves; the former's excellent critic Todd McCarthy calling it "Big-time Hollywood filmmaking at its most massively accomplished" and adding "this last instalment of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy makes everything in the rival Marvel universe look thoroughly silly and childish." Variety's Justin Chung gave his two cents "Few blockbusters have borne so heavy a burden of audience expectation as "The Dark Knight Rises," and Christopher Nolan steps up to the occasion with a cataclysmic vision of Gotham City under siege." For their part both Total Film and Empire Magazine gave the production five stars; 'Film' saying it's a "smart, stirring spectacle that faces down impossible expectations to pull off a hugely satisfying end to business," with Empire echoing the comments and branding it "superhero filmmaking on an unprecedented scale."
The sequel is screening here in Dublin on Wednesday, so I'll have my review live by that afternoon. If you were planning on managing your expectations, everything I'm hearing is going to make that an extremely difficult thing to do.
