The Dark Knight Rises

[Kal]

Thanks guys. Makes me feel good to see so many mixes opinions on this. SPOILERS

I'm sick of hearing everyone love this, say that it is the best film of the year, or even the best film ever. It's just not very good. Lots of problems with the script, with the characters, everything... Bane is just not a good villain at all. Compared to The Joker he was a joke. And his voice was annoying.

Catwoman is not really catwoman. She doesn't contribute anything. Neither does Joseph Gordon Levitt, who happens to be a cop, who happens to be everywhere at the right time, and also happens to know Batmans identity.

Also a bit of a Dr. Evil thing... why didn't he just kill Batman instead of putting him on that place? He is Batman. Of course he can escape. And everyones backstory is just not interesting. Not to mention the twist, which sucked, and nobody cares because that character did nothing in the movie. Bruce Wayne has sex with her once, but there is nothing that makes anyone care about her or trust her. 

And I don't know what happened with all the guns of the cops trapped in the sewers. Or what happened with everyone else in Gotham. People just chilling at home? Months went by and the place seemed pretty quiet. The streets were clean and empty. No traffic, no fires, nothing crazy...

I don't know... it's just a lazy film. It has some good things but far from being as great as people say, and nowhere as good as the last one.

[Ghostboy]

Gary Oldman wears Daniel Plainview's sweater in one scene.

[AntiDumbFrogQuestion]

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(seriously, should anyone be reading this topic at this point if they haven't seen the film???)


I got just what I hoped for out of this movie.  It was about Batman and not how bad-ass his villains were.  It was a bit cartoony, as was Batman Begins and small moments in The Dark Knight, but it was far from a crappy film.

I felt as if Joseph Gordon Levitt was a surrogate for the audience, although the ONE SUPER CLEVER THING they could have done was
A) say that his character was the kid who Batman gave binoculars to in "Batman Begins" then
B) say the kid saw him in the orphanage as Bruce Wayne therefore
C) give the connection he made less about emotional sensitivity and pair it with a tangible experience. (he could have explained the lack of blonde hair away by saying "you wouldn't recognize me nowadays because I used to be a toehead" or somethin')
ANNNNYWAYS
I think JGL added to the movie by being a normal person who was just as pissed off about the dumb way things work in a bureaucracy as the rest of us.  And the fact that they gave him th depth before giving us a little twist at the end shows me that Nolan & co. respected the audience enough to not try and lure us in with the promise of this character showing up in the film.

So.
I'm not going to bitch as much about the film as a couple of my friends have. I left the theatre satisfied with the Nolan Batman Trilogy.
I look forward to a Nolan-esque take on Superman because according to the teaser ol' Supes has one of the manliest jobs around. Zack Snyder tends to suck, though.
Transmission complete.

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[diggler]

SPOILERS

I actually quite liked Bane as a villain in this, it was good to see Batman meet his match physically. There are stretches of this film that are great, most of them without Batman. I loved the morbid tone of Bane's post apocalyptic Gotham (that shot of the people hanging from the bridge was very effective).  As soon as Batman returns, things got too hokey for me.  I hated the giant Bat symbol torch (there's a ticking time bomb stupid, stop decorating!)  I didn't mind the Talia Al Ghul twist so much, but it led to the most anticlimactic villain showdown in the series. I even thought of The Incredibles' "You got me monologue-ing" scene as she blabbed away.  Then Catwoman just drives in, shoots Bane, and gives the corniest line in the film? It all just felt so hokey to me, which might have worked better if the tone of the film wasn't SUPER FUCKING SERIOUS.

[JG]

i don't feel up for saying too much, but i will say that all the haters are overreacting, as are the people who think its the best thing,  or that christopher nolan is the best thing. its an above average entertainment movie, because it has a lot of positive qualities that other entertainment movies, even the "good ones," (avengers) don't have.. but, like, nolan's last movie, its extremely flawed, esp. re:  pace and structure. (thought the first act was messy, but i had a lot of fun once gotham went "bad." i think its ridiculous that the movie feels like it has to move so fast, when it could just have so fun with its heightened milieu. i thought wally pfister did a great job, but again, over-editing spoils it. the effects were above-average as well.) i just hate that we have to pretend this is a step below nolan's other movies, because all the problems this movie has inception has as well.

his movies are good.

one thing that certainly is horrible is bane's voice. it sounded non-diegetic. like, how did bane's voice actually sound if you were in the room? there's it had total disregard for any aural perspective, and it pulled me out of the film every time he talked. how does this happen?

[Brando]

SPOILER

I enjoyed it. I had huge excitement/expectations last summer when the first teaser was released but I guess I'm just getting old cause I couldn't keep both up for an entire year. I went in expecting a conclusion to the story and knowing the second film is usually the best of a trilogy. So my expectations were met.

I liked Bane as a villain but there was too much of him in the film. Heath Ledger was fantastic and stole every scene he was in so you want a lot of him(Imagine how great it would have been seeing the Scarecrow as the judge and the joker as the prosecutor in the courtroom) but Bane is only interesting when he is fighting. They don't need him giving speeches about harvey dent and so on.

The second film did a great job of setting up the chaos and unpredictability which the third didn't. It was anti-climatic. Finally, I was only a reader of this messageboard when the dark knight was released but I remember somebody praising Nolan for keeping a lot if not all of the third act out of any of the trailers.  He didn't do it for this film one.  There wasn't a lot of surprises in the final act like there was for the second.

[Pozer]

I felt as if Joseph Gordon Levitt was a surrogate for the audience, although the ONE SUPER CLEVER THING they could have done was
A) say that his character was the kid who Batman gave binoculars to in "Batman Begins"

then the part would have gone to this guy ...



ewww.

[Jeremy Blackman]

I feel like I saw Batman Begins, but I have no clear memory of it. Is this a common experience?

[polkablues]

The thing is, everything that people are complaining about in this movie was just as present in the other two.  The reason people forget that is because when they think back on TDK, all they remember is the amazingness of the Joker, and as JB implies in the previous post, nobody particularly remembers Batman Begins whatsoever.  I felt like this, despite the rough edges that are present in every Nolan film, was the strongest overall of the three films. 

It's a weird thing to watch a Batman movie and like it best when Batman is nowhere to be seen, but here we are.  This was epic on a scale far grander than the other films.  Expanding the focus beyond Bruce Wayne/Batman allowed Nolan to make the point he's been trying to get at this whole trilogy, about the transformative power of ideas, how our myths allow us to control our reality.  Yeah, there was cheesy shit, but it was a big film about big ideas, and I'm willing to cut those some slack.  I'll take this over an empty popcorn kernel like The Avengers every single time.

[modage]

Well said, polka.

I'll take this over an empty popcorn kernel like The Avengers every single time.

This especially.

[picolas]

*SPOILS*

- the biggest problem with this movie is batman doesn't die. the whole Point of nolan's take on batman is that there are consequences to being batman. (and that as a symbol, anyone can theoretically become batman as jgl shows.) that point is utterly negated by batman surviving. it's exactly what we expect of the character.. i don't think batman's ever been killed in a mainstream thing before. it's such a mistake for him to live after that scene. that amazing moment where he takes a deep breath as the bat rises, a private moment of fear, is just emotional manipulation if he doesn't die.
- the best part of this movie is when bane beats him. i realized how long batman has been around in my life and how disturbing it is on a deep, childhood psyche-level to see him lose. to see the mask crack. even he can't believe it. the lack of score is also really helpful there.
- there are so many pieces of dialogue that should have been cut or changed. biggest example (paraphrasing):
• "so.. you came back to watch your city burn."
"no... i came back to fight you."
we know, batman! you didn't need to clear that up. or at least say something interesting like "i know how to punch you in the face better now."
• also alfred didn't need to say a goddamn word to those tombstones. sobbing is enough. why is there so much explicit stating of facts??
• like after batman tells gordon his identity and gordon has the falshback and then goes "......BRUCE WAYNE.".. just watch him fly off gordon. we saw inside your brain. we know what you're thinking.
• when batman goes "then you have MY permission to die!" he's just crudely lowering himself to bane's level. he needed to do Something with that phrase..
- when batman says "so that's what that feels like" he really should've said it in the bruce wayne voice. there was no one around. i would've enjoyed that moment much more. though i did laugh, and i think this is probably the funniest of the three.
- WHY was batman better at punching bane's face the second time? this needed some kind of explanation for it to make sense and be dramatically interesting.
- why did talia need to initiate sex with bruce wayne? is that part of the knife twisting deeper?
- probably the second biggest problem is the ambiguity around how bane runs this new liberated gotham for MONTHS. why is fox free to walk around and talk to people and shit? talia kind of makes sense but that would raise a lot of suspicion for me if i were fox. what are the rules of this new gotham exactly? how has Nothing happened in MONTHS? it's a clear plot contrivance for the sake of having a nuclear device degrade to the point of detonation. i guess that takes months, so they have to drag out that idea for months, which is insane. MAYBE one month.. maybe.. but FIVE MONTHS? WITH NO INTERFERENCE?

i mostly enjoyed this movie but it's really soured by the ending and all the mistakes that could have been rectified with one more draft.

[Pubrick]

Well said, pico.

*SPOILS*

- the biggest problem with this movie is batman doesn't die. the whole Point of nolan's take on batman is that there are consequences to being batman. (and that as a symbol, anyone can theoretically become batman as jgl shows.) that point is utterly negated by batman surviving. it's exactly what we expect of the character.. i don't think batman's ever been killed in a mainstream thing before. it's such a mistake for him to live after that scene. that amazing moment where he takes a deep breath as the bat rises, a private moment of fear, is just emotional manipulation if he doesn't die.
- the best part of this movie is when bane beats him. i realized how long batman has been around in my life and how disturbing it is on a deep, childhood psyche-level to see him lose. to see the mask crack. even he can't believe it. the lack of score is also really helpful there.
- there are so many pieces of dialogue that should have been cut or changed. biggest example (paraphrasing):
• "so.. you came back to watch your city burn."
"no... i came back to fight you."
we know, batman! you didn't need to clear that up. or at least say something interesting like "i know how to punch you in the face better now."
• also alfred didn't need to say a goddamn word to those tombstones. sobbing is enough. why is there so much explicit stating of facts??
• like after batman tells gordon his identity and gordon has the falshback and then goes "......BRUCE WAYNE.".. just watch him fly off gordon. we saw inside your brain. we know what you're thinking.
• when batman goes "then you have MY permission to die!" he's just crudely lowering himself to bane's level. he needed to do Something with that phrase..
- when batman says "so that's what that feels like" he really should've said it in the bruce wayne voice. there was no one around. i would've enjoyed that moment much more. though i did laugh, and i think this is probably the funniest of the three.
- WHY was batman better at punching bane's face the second time? this needed some kind of explanation for it to make sense and be dramatically interesting.
- why did talia need to initiate sex with bruce wayne? is that part of the knife twisting deeper?
- probably the second biggest problem is the ambiguity around how bane runs this new liberated gotham for MONTHS. why is fox free to walk around and talk to people and shit? talia kind of makes sense but that would raise a lot of suspicion for me if i were fox. what are the rules of this new gotham exactly? how has Nothing happened in MONTHS? it's a clear plot contrivance for the sake of having a nuclear device degrade to the point of detonation. i guess that takes months, so they have to drag out that idea for months, which is insane. MAYBE one month.. maybe.. but FIVE MONTHS? WITH NO INTERFERENCE?

This especially.

[polkablues]

CONTRARIAN!

[Neil]

@ picolas regarding your last point.

Despite the fact that the theme wasn't developed nearly enough, I think Nolan was trying to show how docile people become when they're filled with a combination of uncertainty and fear.  At least that's what I thought was trying to be represented whenever Foley came to the door acting like coward. It does look like a ghost town, and to not even address what a huge city is doing during this time is just lazy, but i mean showing the police deputy/commissioner being scared is pretty representational of the rest of the Gotham's psyche, in my opinion.

With that being said, I understand that doesn't remove the issues you have with the film, but if the film(S) are intended to represent the idea that we are all responsible  for maintaining the just order of things (or as MLK jr. said, an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere), then I'd say it's at least peppered in there.  I just have a hard time believing that such a huge plot point slipped Nolan and Co's mind.  I feel like it says a lot, but there probably should've been plenty more instances to showcase that point, but it's tough to find the middle ground as to not beat the audience over the head with critiques of human nature.

At any rate, I can't wait to accumulate some other thoughts and opinions about this spectacle of a film. 

[polkablues]

Spoiler spoiler spoiler


I find the ending works a lot better when I assume that Alfred was imagining seeing Bruce and Selina.  It's closure for him psychologically, not to be literally taken as Bruce surviving.

Besides, the character of Selina Kyle had spent the whole movie being set up as being in what was almost certainly a lesbian relationship with Juno Temple, it wouldn't make sense for her to suddenly be romancing it up with Bruce Wayne in Italy, except in the addled imagination of an elderly British butler.