The Dark Knight Rises -- Movie discussion thread [spoilers]

[El Sombrero]

Fox finds out that Wayne had fixed the auto pilot at an unknown time before the events of the film take place.

How was it a mirage? Alfred knew nothing about Bruce and Selina's romance. Just that she was a jewel thief. Also, there was multiple references to the 'clean slate' program which Catwoman was after. Also, it was revealed that the autopilot bug was resolved 6 months prior. Add all that up, Bruce lived. I didn't think this would be something up to interpretation like Inception's ending.

Ahhh I forgot all about the auto pilot thing. Thanks guys hahaha.

[Russ840]

I have read that there is a killer croc reference. Can someone enlighten me.

[Agent_Dark]

I have read that there is a killer croc reference. Can someone enlighten me.

I can't remember the exact wording, but it's a cop joking about mutant alligators in the sewers or something.

[Russ840]

I can't remember the exact wording, but it's a cop joking about mutant alligators in the sewers or something.

Thanks dude. Lol nice

[Jared]

(spoilerific thoughts on the movie in no particular order)

My immediate reaction to the film was "Fuck Yeah!!!"

I kind of envy people (some of whom I was with) who didn't know about Talia and thus never suspected anything was up with Miranda Tate. I think most posters here figured who Cotillard was playing very early on, if not before the movie even started. I did not see the reveal of her as the child from the pit coming, though. So that was nice.

Was Bane's lieutentant ever named on-screen? I took to calling him Bird in my head, since he looked more like a guy who'd be called Bird than a Zombie or Trogg.

I, for one, would be all for a sequel with the continuing adventures of (Blake) Batman. Who's with me?!

The Bat-copter thing was a lot cooler than I thought. I have no idea if something like that could ever actually fly, but it looked more credible than I expected from the glimpses in the previews.

I do wish Bane and Bruce could had somewhat quicker fight choreography, though perhaps the suit makes that impossible.

Are we to assume that Bruce's knee was messed up from the fall he took at the end of TDK, or just accumulated wear and tear? I did notice that Batman's last "confirmed sighting" was the night Dent died, but I don't think Bruce or Alfred ever said precisely when he had last put on the suit.

Yup. Why else include dialogue/exposition about autopilot if you're not going to ever shoot that gun?

Yeah, I didn't think there was anything ambiguous about it. For a second I thought it was just going to end on Alfred smiling at something he's looking at offscreen, which would have been ambiguous as hell, and a braver ending but perhaps not a satisfying one.

I've never read A Tale of Two Cities. So I have no idea what the parallels are.

If Ledger hadn't died, I really got the sense there would have been a Joker appearance, or at least reference, somewhere. He wouldn't have taken Crane's place as the judge, but before the end we probably would have seen that he'd escaped his cell or something like that. With all the rest of the history getting touched on, the Joker did feel like a big piece that was missing.

I wouldn't say Hathaway delivered an amazing performance, but she was very very good. I had no complaints. Although, I will say that the mask/goggle/ear thing never did stop looking at least a bit stupid. The Jim Lee costume really would have translated to live action damn well, I still wish they'd done something like that. She still looked stunning, though.

A few of Bane's lines were unintelligible, but as a trade-off, I understood everything Batman said in the first go-round, unlike last time.

I didn't quite get the cops forsaking all tactical sense to just charge at the Bane's men into a melee. At the very least, put guys with rifles and SWAT gear in the front ranks!

BB - King Joffrey getting the grappling gun.

Hey, I love that scene, especially in hindsight with it being the actor who plays Joffrey. Because it makes my "it's Jason Todd!" fanon belief seem all the more fitting.

[cosmicjoke]

Well, I just got back from this.

It was okay. It wasn't anywhere near as good as The Dark Knight or even Batman Begins, I didn't think. But it was still alright.

Probably my main complaints would be, for some reason, a lot of it just was corny and induced eye rolling from me. I've heard people say it's the most emotional film of the three, but I felt it was the least, and also felt it essentially copped out and didn't take any chances with the ending. No one of any particular importance dies in the movie, no one the audience has developed a connection with or cares about. Nothing really bad happens to any of them. In TDK, Rachel dies, and Harvey Dent is mentally and physically mutilated. Nothing like that here.

I don't know. It just felt... empty to me. And it didn't really feel like a Batman movie to me. It didn't have the sense of adventure or crime fighting that the first two films did. In the first two, you felt like Batman was what he was. A man who fights crime, whether it be organized crime, petty crime, or super villain crime. But it was still crime.

They tried to up the stakes in the film, by having the whole city be in peril, at risk of being blown up by a nuclear explosion. But it didn't FEEL like the stakes were higher. Nothing in particular felt ominous or threatening. Nothing really had me on the edge of my seat, or feeling particularly tense.

Bane was an okay villain, but his voice sounded ridiculous, and really, there wasn't much Tom Hardy could do with his face covered. He had essentially the same expression the entire time, these wide, angry eyes. He wasn't even a quarter as dynamic or engaging or enthralling as the Joker. Not anywhere near. And even though Bane was a physical force and kept snapping necks left and right, I never felt the kind of tension or fear or intimidation from him as I did the Joker. There was nothing likable about Bane, nothing which held you captivated. He just kind of seemed like an asshole who you wanted to get his face beaten in.

Speaking of which, the final battle between Batman and Bane was anticlimactic as hell. He just punches Bane's mask off, and suddenly Bane turns into the bitch of the century, whimpering on the ground and crying. I don't know. Tom Hardy tried his best, but it's just not a very good character, and he didn't have much to work with. When I came out of watching TDK, I was so thoroughly taken with the Joker and the film as a whole, and I didn't feel that at all here.

Another thing was that the film felt very disjointed in terms of timeline and pace. One minutes Batman's getting his ass beat by Bane and dragged off to the other side of the world, and the very next scene, it's three months later. And then it's 20 days until the bomb goes off, and the next scene, its 12 hours. There was no real sense of the passage of time, no real feel of it.

Ann Hathaway was good as Catwoman. I liked her a lot, though it wasn't anything special. Really, nothing in this film was. Joseph Gorden Levitt was good too. But again, nothing spectacular.

And I just had an issue as well with Batman's own characterization. He didn't feel like Batman to me. He has in the previous two films, but here, he seemed like something else entirely.

On top of which, and bear with me, but the Joker's absence in this film was glaring. It was essentially the Joker's actions in the last film which the entire plot of this one was predicated on.

Batman retires for eight years because of what the Joker did, killing Rachel Dawes, and corrupting Harvey Dent, which Batman took the fall for. First off, I think it goes well against Batman's character that he would just retire and retreat into seclusion because of tragedy. His whole crusade is based off of tragedy touching him. So it's not believable to me that he would just quit like that. But essentially, Bane is able to beat the shit out of Batman because he's been on the sidelines for eight years and is in physically bad condition, and then Bane reveals that Harvey Dent was really a horrible guy and killed all these people to throw the city into a state of despair (which we never really see, by the way). All of this is a direct result of what the Joker did in the last film, and yet we get not mention, not even an allusion to the Joker, and his absence was painfully apparent. It also kind of craps all over what was established between Batman and the Joker in TDK. When the Joker says to Batman "I have a feeling you and I are destined to do this forever", that was a powerful and compelling moment, and summed up so perfectly what their battle really represents. The eternal struggle between chaos and order, creation and destruction. But because the Joker just disappears in this new film, isn't even mentioned or referenced, we as an audience have no idea what happened to him, and it just causes all of what was established and created between Batman and the Joker ring hollow. Which I think is really a shame and too bad.

And while the special affects were of course spectacular, I never felt more wowed or even as wowed by any of it as the effects and actions sequences from TDK. I don't feel anything in this new film matches or tops either the street fight scene from TDK or the Hospital scene.

This movie just felt empty to me, and in part even corny and mockish. I didn't feel any real threat from Bane or his men or what was going on. The climax, with the battle between the police and the mercenaries felt rushed and boring and anti-climactic.

Just in general, it didn't feel as real, or as emotionally impactful or as tense as either Begins or TDK. And it didn't feel to me like a Batman film.

There were a few things I liked. I liked when Bruce first put on the suit again and went out. That had an air of excitement and possibility to it. But it quickly plummeted from there, with Bane taking Batman out (which was a pretty good fight scene, but not great), and then we don't even see Batman again until the end of the film.

It just felt like they were trying to cram too much in to too little time.

As an overall film, I'd give it probably a 7 and a half or eight out of 10. As a Batman film, probably a 6 or 7 out of ten.

It could have been better, and I think they should have stopped with TDK, to let these characters go on living in people's imaginations.

[Jared]

I think the whole "pegged for murder of Harvey Dent" thing was another big factor in Batman retiring. It'd be hard to fight crime when the cops *have* to chase you relentlessly at every turn, and it's not like the comics where escape is always a snap.

[El Sombrero]

I don't know. It just felt... empty to me. And it didn't really feel like a Batman movie to me. It didn't have the sense of adventure or crime fighting that the first two films did. In the first two, you felt like Batman was what he was. A man who fights crime, whether it be organized crime, petty crime, or super villain crime. But it was still crime.

Just in general, it didn't feel as real, or as emotionally impactful or as tense as either Begins or TDK. And it didn't feel to me like a Batman film.

I definitely agree with these two points.

When I watched BB and TDK a few weeks ago there were multiple points in both films that were just overwhelmingly awesome and left me speechless / chilled / whatever. I didn't really get that here. It did feel a bit "empty" to me and lacking in emotion.

I don't feel it was a bad movie at all, and I am eager to re-see it, it's just the first of these Nolan Batman movies that hasn't lived up to my expectations.

[Jared]

So far I haven't thought of a really glaring plot hole or implausibility (by the movie's own standards) in the third act. In the first movie it was whole idea of the microwave attack. In the second movie it was the computer that magically turns people's cell phones into sonar devices, and the Joker's magical ability to put hide huge amounts of explosives anywhere at any time.

There's nothing as awesome as the best character moments in BB and TDK, though. Bruce rising is basically a riff on Rocky III, that can't beat his training scenes or Joker's speech to Dent.

[cosmicjoke]

Yeah, exactly.

Plus another thing which really didn't make too much sense to me was how banged up Bruce is. If we go according to these films time lines, Batman was around for roughly a year when the Joker showed up. And then that lasts for at most a few weeks, and then Bruce retires the cape and cowl. Yet he's banged up as though he's been doing this 15 years or more. I just think they tried too hard to tie everything together, and despite it being nearly three hours, there just wasn't enough time to develop everything they were trying to fit in. Thus, it felt very disjointed and ill-paced.

BB and TDK are certainly much more concise and cohesive films, I think.

[Gabe De Los Muertos]

I thought it was on par with the first two films, and appreciated that it wasn't as grounded as TDK. I didn't want another straight-up mob movie. Batman with a flying helicopter fighting a bunch of terrorists led by a guy with a scary mask and Vader-like breathing pattern over a nuclear bomb was as close to comics as Nolan could possibly get. Right now, I enjoy it more than the first two films, though I've probably watched them into monotony. Overall I think Nolan has created one of the greatest film trilogies I've seen. I loved Robin and Catwoman, although I wished his last name was fake too. I thought everyone did well in the acting department and the cinematography was slightly better in this movie than the previous two. I really loved Hathaway as Selina Kyle. The fight scenes were excellent.

Oh, and this film definitely has the best ending of all the Batman films. Okay so it's four in the morning and I'd like to sleep now.

[Jared]

Plus another thing which really didn't make too much sense to me was how banged up Bruce is. If we go according to these films time lines, Batman was around for roughly a year when the Joker showed up. And then that lasts for at most a few weeks, and then Bruce retires the cape and cowl. Yet he's banged up as though he's been doing this 15 years or more. I just think they tried too hard to tie everything together, and despite it being nearly three hours, there just wasn't enough time to develop everything they were trying to fit in. Thus, it felt very disjointed and ill-paced.
.

You need to factor in not just his actually Batmanning time, but the seven years of travel, running with criminals, prison, and ninja training. And then there's the fact that hardcore Batmannery has got to be absolutely brutal on the body. Bruce especially took a beating in the final act of TDK; hit with a metal bar repeatedly, then that long fall after saving James Jr.

The only reason Bruce can still function in the comics is that it's comics.

[Tar22]

Well, I loved it. Entertained and emotionally moved throughout, and a satisfying conclusion to a great trilogy.

I especially loved the ensemble feel with Blake really taking over as the primary protagonist for a good chunk of the film. I felt the new characters (Bane, Selena, Tate, Blake) were really well integrated into the story.

It's really amazing to me how divisive people are about this movie. And there's VERY little that people can agree on; with a lot of films a lot of the negative issues tend to be universal (Such as Spider-Man 3's over-crowded story or Return of the Kings drawn out endings), but that doesn't seem to be the case here. For example:

The film was incredibly well paced vs. It felt really slow and dragged out.
Bane was terrifying and his voice is amazing vs. Bane was bland and his voice was laughable
Hathaway gives an excellent performance that defied my low expectations vs. Hathaway gave a boring performance that was totally lacking
Awesome spectacle and many memorable sequences vs. Poorly shot with unmemorable action
Great, well-balanced use of a large cast vs. Overcrowded film that took focus and screen time away from Batman
Perfect ending to the series vs. Terrible ending that completely goes against the character

This is certainly one you're going to want to judge for yourself.

[Jared]

Oh, and this film definitely has the best ending of all the Batman films. Okay so it's four in the morning and I'd like to sleep now.

I dunno. For a pure ending, the final scene of Batman '89 is pretty damn hard to top.

[cosmicjoke]

You need to factor in not just his actually Batmanning time, but the seven years of travel, running with criminals, prison, and ninja training. And then there's the fact that hardcore Batmannery has got to be absolutely brutal on the body. Bruce especially took a beating in the final act of TDK; hit with a metal bar repeatedly, then that long fall after saving James Jr.

The only reason Bruce can still function in the comics is that it's comics.

Maybe. But he sure seemed to be moving fine throughout TDK. It just seemed like a sudden jump to me, that he's suddenly wobbling around on a cane in TDKR, when he was fluid and easy in TDK. He was only Batman for a year, basically, in this film series.