Anyone else think Batman really is dead? I took the last scene in Florence as Alfred seeing what he wants to see as a way to make peace with Bruce dying.
It was cool. It dragged a little once they hit the 'No Man's Land" part. I really think they should have split the movie into two separate ones: One leading up to Bane taking over Gotham and another one showing the aftermath. (kind of like Empire Strikes Back/RoTJ)
..btw, how did Bruce Wayne get from the prison back into Gotham? He didn't take THAT many supplies.
I didn't even imagine that to be a possibility until right now but I really, really like the fact that it works as another interpretation of the ending. Nice one
I agreed with Scott, it was all kinds of awesome. But I guess the *big* question is was it as good as The Dark Knight? Scott, care to comment??
I like the idea of splitting it into two films, they could have fleshed out Catwoman alot more that way.
I dont believe Bruce died, if the idea is he died in the explosion then why would Nolan include the scene where Fox was informed that he had fixed the autopilot six months prior? Although I guess it really is open to interpretation which is a good thing...
I think he lives as well. The way they told the story in the first scene, they showed another couple right after Alfred imagined Bruce at the other table. The 2nd scene had Bruce and Selena right there with no change and Alfred had more of a 'happy' smile than a 'wishful' one.
Also, having Fox check on the Bat's auto pilot and have it confirmed that Bruce actually fixed the feature himself is another supporting story that he did make it out okay.
I don't think so. I would have liked it a lot more if they left the ending ambiguous. Like you see Alfred sitting the cafe, looking up and smiling, but you don't see Bruce. So you leave maybe thinking he survived or maybe he didn't.
IMO, it's not as good as TDK, but that's not a knock on TDKR at all. For me, saying TDKR is not as good is like saying the HHH/HBK/Benoit Backlash rematch was not as good as their WMXX match. Just because it didn't top it doesn't mean it was wasn't awesome in its own right.
Mark out moment: when batman comes back to save gotham and lights the fire bat signal.
I thought this movie was awesome and had a perfect ending. When I heard catwomen was in the movie I thought that sounded horrible and would drag the movie down. (I was worried we'd get all those shitty cat puns) However its a great character and it makes sense he would end up with her. And the robin thing was awesome and makes me want to see a spin off movie.
Loved bane. I was wondering if they were screwed because anything would suck in comparison to ledger. This character was just as awesome. I loved how he decided to killl batman anyways after the love of his life asked him not to as the last thing she said before they thought the bomb was going off.
My only criticism would be that it was pretty obvious miranada tate was going to be some kind of bad guy. (I don't know she was already a character in the comic book though)
The film had me the second I saw Aiden "Littlefinger" Gillan 45 seconds into the movie. The movie is a bit of a jumble in the first 45 minutes due to having to bring so many characters in quickly, but the excellent call-backs to previous source material (back-breaker! An evil Daggett! Talia Al Ghul!), the excellent jobs by newcomers Anne Hathaway (exceeding even my highest expectations, and they were high) and JGL, and the way they went balls-out with the stakes of the story since it was definitely the end, and giving a satisfying conclusion to it all, made it a great experience. It lacks that timeless quality that Ledger's performance gave to TDK -- and none of the TDKR setpieces top the vehicle chase in that film -- but it's still an excellent film to close out one of cinema's greatest trilogies.
Not full monty, but I feel good at ****1/4. Maybe bump it to a 1/2 since I have seen it three times already.
Also I would say Nolan's batman is the best trilogy of movies I've seen. Godfather and Gf2 might be my favorite movies but the third one sucks so godfather is dq'd from being the best trilogy. I like starwars but a lot of that shit was selling toys to kids (ewoks?), indiana jones wasn't as good, you could argue lord of the rings but I prefered this one.
Yeah, he's definitely alive. I was expecting the film to end at Alfred looking at the camera and nodding, but after all the shit Bruce went through in the last two movies...I think we should see him being happy and fulfilled after sacrificing so much for Gotham. Cue ALL the Batman/Catwoman fanfics!
I loved it, but of the 3 Nolan Baltman movies, I still place it 3rd in order of quality (with TDK at #1 and BB at #2). If I were to lodge a critique, I would say that it would've been cool and played into the story and characters well if Batman couldn't physically beat up Bane after almost having his back broken in their first encounter and came back using gadgets and environment alot more rather than another fist fight. This is nitpicks though.
I seem to be in the minority but I was shocked as to just how poor TDKR was compared to the first two Nolanverse films.
The plotholes and logic jumps were jarring this time round whereas in TDK they seemed less glaring. Plus some of the dialogue was so poor and there was too much of Nolan's exposition hammer work.
It saddens me greatly to say all this because BB started me down the Batman fanboy path, but this 3rd part really does suffer from the classic trilogy curse.
Not to say there weren't good parts. JGL rocked as Blake and Bruce Wayne's arc is completedthe in a very fitting and satisfactory manner.
I liked it, I didn't love it. Easily the worst of the three, but that's like saying Temple of Doom is the worst of the Indiana Jones Trilogy.
You have an actor in Tom Hardy, with an impeccable English accent, and the first thing you do is mask his voice? Shit, at that point you could have cast Michael Clark Duncan as Bane as you take away Tom Hardy's most distinguishing feature.
The movie tried to do way too much, and forgets crucial things. For instance, we don't really see how anyone is living under Bane's rule, outside of the rich getting pulled out of their houses by the criminals.
I don't like how Bane's defeat is reduced to a punchline by Catwoman.
Also, I felt the sacrifice play by Iron Man was much better in the Avengers.
See I disagree strongly about the Iron Man comment.
The difference between the two was I never for a second believed Iron Man/Stark was going to die. As I was watching the ending to TDKR I truly believed Bruce Wayne was going to make the sacrifice and that's what drew me in.
I don't think it's as easy to say that anyone could've been cast as Bane just because his mouth was covered up. I think Hardy did an exceptional voice with his physical mannerisms and his eyes. Sure, he sounded like Sean Connery, but he still played the role pretty darn well.
His exact words to Fox near the end of the movie are "Even without the auto pilot, thanks." And Fox says "Auto pilot? That's what you're there for." So unless he fixed it while fighting Bane, he didn't fix it.
You're in the minority, but you're not alone. From the first scene the whole thing felt strained and contrived for me, and while its audacity was impressive, it was in many ways just as silly as the '80s/'90s films, which'd be fine if that was the tone Nolan had struck right from the start. On the heels of the surprisingly plausible Batman Begins and the brilliant villain in DK, this film was cartoony and featured a dull villain. And its cartoony aspects made the dark aspects an ill fit.
No but it could be wish fulfillment. Alfred's whole thing throughout the movie is Bruce finding someone and he knows about Selina so he could be just imagining it. Just because you see it on screen doesn't mean it's a reality, especially iin a Nolan movie.
Yeah, I also he was dead. I got the bit about the auto-pilot being fixed, but I thought that just reinforced Bruce's 'wish to die' that Alfred often harped on.
But my wife pointed out that Selina has the estate's missing pearls. So yeah, he's alive.
At the very end? I'm talking about when Bruce comes back from prison and he meets up with Fox for the last time. And then he tells Gordon, Catwoman, etc that there is no autopilot before he gets in
Yeah, it was after this. I believe it was around after the funeral scene. Morgan Freeman and some tech dude talk about it and he says Mr. Wayne fixed it 6 months ago, then they cut to Alfred in Italy.
A lot of people have an issue with the "how did Bruce get back to Gotham" thing, but I don't see the problem. There are a few things to keep in mind. For one, it's been established that the guy can disappear with nothing and survive quite effectively. Even get from one place to the next. This was established in the backstory provided in Batman Begins. Also, keep in mind that he didn't do this overnight. I don't remember the exact numbers, but when Bruce escaped from the prison there was something like 23 days left before the bomb went off. When he returned to Gotham, it was something like 12 hours. Quite a bit of time passed between the two events -- and frankly, I'm glad they didn't waste the time showing how he got from A to B.
I don't understand the hate for Bane. He was an unstoppable monster. He wasn't as good as The Joker (but nobody was going to top Heath Ledger's performance), but Tom Hardy did a good job of playing a completely evil, brutal killing machine. I thought Bane was a more interesting villain than Scarecrow from BB by far
I think it was pretty clear that he lied to Gordon and Catwoman in order to fake his death. If he fixed the autopilot (which we know he did given the Fox scene), he was quite obviously lying.
While I do believe Batman lived through the explosion, there's one part of that scene that bugs me: if he was supposed to escaped and left the vehicle to autopilot, why is there still a scene showing Batman in the vehicle seconds before the bomb goes off?
They did a great job of making you believe that Bane was an unstoppable physical monster even though Tom Hardy is 5'9" and not a huge guy. Even after adding all the weight, Christian Bale was still actually a bigger human being. It was great camera work and direction to make the viewer not only not see that but ignore it if they knew it beforehand.
I think they did a great job on the character's look also. I know that traditionalists wanted him to wear the lucha mask but honestly the spiderface look was uncomfortable to look at. It just made me feel a natural sort of revulsion which was perfect for the character.
From what I read it was some cgi used. Why not use a bigger actor and have Hardy do the voiceover? This one message board I went to was screaming for Lesnar to play the part of bane and use a v/o.
Don't get me wrong, I liked the movie a lot, but it could have been so much better if Nolan would have just addressed some of the obvious plot holes and logic gaps that were created throughout the movie. I almost wonder if 30-45 minutes had to be cut which would have addressed some of these issues. There were even edits that were just really obviously flawed. For example: we see Matthew Modine shooting it out on the street with a handgun, the camera cuts away, it comes back and he's in the same spot but now he's got an automatic--Nolan is better than that. I was almost expecting it to come back again and he's holding a bazooka, like in a cartoon.
Or the prison. It appeared that everyone could reach the ledge with ease by scaling the walls, so why not just keep scaling rather than go through that almost impossible leap? And what followed the leap that lead to escaping the hole, exactly? It was still a ways to the surface? And if they have a rope down there, why aren't they just using that? From Begins and Dark Knight (not to mention Memento, etc...) I've come to expect more from Nolan than literally having to turn my brain off and stop asking questions to get through a movie. The first two movies were nearly air-tight and this one felt like it could only be appreciated symbolically.
The worst thing was the deflation of Bane at the end of the movie. Once his back-story went to Talia, the character seemed significantly deflated. Through the first 2/3 of the movie it appeared he was going to be and icon, like Joker but instead he just ended up being a plot device like Scarecrow. And I still don't understand how he fit into the scheme. Was he in the LOS before or after being thrown in the hole? Where did the mask really come from? I know they said the prison doctor made it, but I don't buy that the guy just whips up an anesthetic mask from scraps (never mind where the actual anesthesia was coming from). Was the mask also giving him his strength? Yes I'm overly curious about the mask and the origin, but I feel like I was told to be so when the soldiers kept talking about it at the start of the movie; don't introduce a plot device at the start of the movie if you're just going to casually discard it later.
And Bane's death really ended any chance of him getting Darth Vader status. Once more, he was treated like Scarecrow, who went down to Katie Holmes' stun-gun in Begins. I almost wish they could have just done without the whole bomb plot and just focused on the fact that Gotham was destroying itself. That was Bane's grand scheme and it was interesting. The fact that it was all for nothing since the bomb was just going to go off no matter what really sucked the wind out of what the previous 2 hours had established.
The worst part about this movie is the more I discuss it, the less I like it. Maybe I need to watch it again and I'll see that I was missing some stuff, but I'm fairly certain that some questions just don't have answers (and don't tell me that makes it good because it's open for interpretation, that's a cop out).
The easiest way to describe my reaction is to compare it to the flair-steamboat series. BB was the chi-town rumble, DK was the clash 2-3, but instead of wrestlewar, TDKR is the spring stampede match from 1994, still recognizable, but just off the mark. . .
Forget Brock, they could have used Kane. A lot of the reviewers were pointing out what a great job Hardy did at emoting using just his eyes and body language. Say what you want about him as a worker but that had always been Kane's greatest strength. Plus he would have looked the part and they wouldn't have needed any kind of tricks to have him tower over everyone else.
No, but there was more emotion there when he's making his sacrifice play.
Remember how in Iron Man 2, he's dying from the over usage of the arc reactor in his chest, except he doesn't bother to tell anyone he's dying? And he feels guilty about not telling Pepper of all people?
Him calling her first and foremost as he's making the play with the bomb and her not answering the phone because she's glued to the screen like everyone else across the world was one of the most heart breaking things I've seen.
Yes, he survived. But the emotion was there moreso than it was in DKR.
Some people I've read have noted that Bruce actually did die and Alfred only sees what he dearly wants to in Florence.
But then why would he see Selina of all people with Bruce? He barely had any contact with her, outside of ordering her around as a maid at the beginning of the movie. He had also left Wayne Manor by the time Bruce and Selina had started forming their love/hate relationship and would be unaware of how they came together. Besides, he was also pushing Miranda/Talia on Bruce.
Or why does Batman explicitly say to Catwoman, "there's no autopilot" when he's the one who fixed it? That's the biggest flaw in the movie to me, that bit of dialogue only exists to remind the viewers something they already know, it could have been left out.
I agree with your points, but, much like a number of other things in the film, it was handled sloppily; the passage of time during Bane's occupation wasn't marked very clearly (no calendars, no sign of decay on the streets, even the cops looked relatively clean-cut for being in the sewers nearly half a year) and we didn't get - at least in this version - any look at Bruce's process for getting back into town, which dilutes the impact of him swaggering back into town.
Not to say there weren't mark-out moments for me, either: the choice to not lay any score over the first Sting/Vader Bats/Bane fight was great; seeing Burn Gorman from Torchwood pull out the Frank Gorshin impression of a lifetime made me feel great for the guy; and the appearance of Scarecrow as an unrelenting figure of dickishness at Gotham's fringes speaks to how well the series was put together as a whole.
Think you're giving Nolan too much credit. His action sequences were always jerky and full of holes. From Batman Begins (where you couldn't actually tell what actions were going on...did he punch the guy? Elbow him? What happened?) to Dark Knight (Did Joker cut Gamble's throat? Slit his mouth? Where did Gordon come from in the trailer sequence? How did he get around Joker's goon to sneak up on Joker?)
Guy is great with themes...great eye for shots...but his action sequences always left something to be desired.
Thought TDKR was just as enjoyable as the other 2 films in the series, but not quite as good as them. But does it really matter? It's very good on its own. When the DVD comes out, I'll be as sure to nit-pick every second of the movie just like everyone on the planet is doing, but I can't see why anyone just can't sit back and enjoy it.
My take on Bane's mask was that it came from the League of Assassins when they took over the Pit. You see him with his head all bandaged up, so obviously the prison didn't do it. Plus Talia seems to know how it works.
IIRC, he didn't say "There's no autopilot", just "No autopilot", as in he was voluntarily not going to eject himself (or at least, making everyone think that so he can disappear from Gotham forever)
I've seen it a couple of times now. My initial reaction was that I loved it, and I still do. But after seeing it a few times it's probably natural to pick up on little things that I felt could be better.
First off, he lives. Bruce didn't die. The more you see it the more obvious it is. When I first saw it I wasn't sure. If you wanted to believe he died you could certainly draw that conclusion, and Alfred seeing him at the end could have been an Inception type thing. But after more viewings, they beat you over the head with the auto-pilot thing - he fixed in six months ago and was making a point of lying about it since. The scene when he talks to Fox before gearing up for the last battle makes it very obvious - the way Bale throws in "even without the auto-pilot" - clearly lying. So, if he's lying about it there's gotta be a reason for it. Even when at the end, he's not saying "I have auto-pilot but I might not get out in time" he's still lying right until the end....and Alfred seeing him at the end clearly isn't a dream. If he saw him, looked away, looked back and he was gone, maybe. But it's pretty straight forward - he looks up, is surprised to see him, does what he said he always imagined and that's that. No shot showing Bruce wasn't there. (Also, supposedly in the novel version Alfred went to the cafe 5 days in a row before he finally sees him, it's more straight-forward.)
My biggest complaints were that he wasn't Batman all that much in the movie and how it ended with Bane. They build up the anticipation for the final battle, making you want to see Batman be able to over-come Bane. And he does that, briefly, but in the end Bane is about to kill him and Catwoman saves him. I wanted to see Batman beat Bane himself - I got chills when he said "when I have the detonator, you have my permission to die." Then the Talia thing happens, Batman loses again, and Selina has to kill Bane to save him.
Actually, Talia wasn't necessary. In repeated viewings, it's very obvious she's in on it. There's no reason for this random character to be in the middle of everything and made out to be so important. When she reveals herself, she takes the "heat" off Bane, which sucked because they made him out to be an awesome villain. And she fucked up the previously mentioned Batman defeating Bane moment I wanted.
So, yeah, I liked it a lot, but put him in the suit and drop Talia and I'd have been happier.
I think that had more to do with trying to keep it a PG movie - same as how nobody bleeds when they get shot. When Bane breaks people's neck they pull away or cut to another shot so as to not show the actual violence. Same as Joker and Gamble - slitting his throat is a bit graphic for a PG movie.
I don't know if it means anything, but when Batman is flying the bomb out, they show him in the cockpit from the side, with the buildings passing by in the window. That last shot is from the front, so you can't really see where he is. He might've been in another vehicle that he used to make his escape? He had a pained expression on his face, which sort of suggested he was about to die. Or he could've been in pain because he was stabbed. Or he could've been bracing himself for the bomb going off, not knowing for sure if it was far enough away.
What about the Robin stuff? Kind bugged me. I would've prefered his name turn out to be Dick Grayson somehow. Cause is he gonna become his own thing and be Robin? Or is he gonna take up the mantle of the bat?
Bruce lived. Besides the autopilot and the scene in Florence, there was also the fixed Batsignal for Gordon and the directions to the Batcave for Blake....he let all his closest allies know that he made it.
The 'trick' in the second fight was that Batman damaged Bane's mask, so he did use his wits to defeat him. Once the mask was damaged, Bane fought back in panic but Bats was able to overcome him and had him beaten before Miranda/Talia turned.
I've seen it criticized in some quarters that Bane gets beaten too easily and Bruce doesn't actually beat him himself, but Batman had Bane finished....Catwoman just added the finishing touch.
I generally don't hear pro wrestling-style pops in a movie theatre, but when we got the revelation about Blake's real name, the audience just went nuts cheering.
And also, what was up with Batman's friends(?) in the pit? Here's the thing, I can buy Wayne's back healing through the wacky prison chiropractor, but I'm distracted by wondering why this guy bothered to do so in the first place. At first he mentioned that Bane was paying him to keep Bruce alive, so it appears he's on Bane's side. But then he fixes Bruce's back, so is he hoping for Bruce to defeat Bane? Ok, but then why does he agree to feed Bruce the false story about Bane? I don't remember if he explicitly said it was Bane who climbed out (as opposed to Talia, with Bane being the protector) but he definitely let Bruce get that impression. Then he stopped the story short because "I've already said too much" (or something like that). Well, if he's worried about upsetting Bane by saying too much about him, wouldn't he be more worried about how pissed Bane will be when he finds out he fixed Batman's back and guided him out of the hole? It just doesn't all fit together; it's like the characters were just doing what suited the story rather than acting on behalf of real motivations.
It's tempting to say 98% of what I didn't like about the movie was direct fallout from the Talia revelation. Maybe the problem was that it came so late in the movie that it consequently negated a lot of what came before it (like everything that had led us to perceive Bane as a criminal genius/revolutionary). If Nolan really wanted that character in there and to use that twist, maybe it should have happened earlier and actually been worked into the plot rather than just dropped on top of it.
I honestly wish they would have just left all the R'as Al Ghul/Gotham Reckoning in the past and done more of a Knightfall story. I always thought it was kind of corny that there was this shadowy organization bent on destroying a civilization that was choking on its own decadence, but their plan didn't extend beyond bringing down one American city. It actually seemed kind of unambitious given the scope of the League of Shadows organization. Like it seems like kind of a waste of thousands of years of ninja training in the Himalayas that the most revolutionary thing they can think to do is kill a bunch of city-dwellers because they can't seem to stop mugging and bribing each other.
If you would have told me before hand that was going to happen, I would have completely shit on it. But Gordon-Levitt's performance sold it for me. He stole the movie for me. I would much rather see them continue in the Nolanverse with him as Robin/Batman/Nightwing whatever instead of a reboot.
I'm critical of it, but I will say that I at least didn't walk out of the theater feeling like I'd just been slightly molested--unlike when I saw the third Spiderman and X-men films.
I'm firmly in the Bruce lives camp now but to play devil's advocate, I'm positive they told Alfred who Tate really was and plus Alfred even suggests to Bruce to hit up Kyle. So if he is going to imagine anyone with Bruce, it might as well be her because there was no one else.
Right, I get that. That's why he told those guys to keep Bruce alive. But he didn't want Batman to escape from the hole and return to Gotham. So why did those guys fix his back and let him escape? If they were supposed to keep him alive, you'd think they wouldn't have let him climb the wall without the rope. If they were supposed to keep him in the hole, you'd think they wouldn't have let him try climbing period. And why feed him the misinformation about Bane? What purpose did that serve (beside conveniently misleading the viewer)?
Well they never said Bane escaped, just that it was a child. Bruce is the one who thinks it's Bane. And they show other people trying to escape and failing, it's the prison's own security system. So they don't need guards, so there is no one there to stop Bruce from trying.
Those two older guys that help him out are also prisoners. It's not like they were aligned with Bane, so what the fuck did they care?
For what it's worth, Nolan was interviewed on the BBC on Sunday night and was asked about the ending and why - when he's famed for ambiguity - this ending was so clear cut. He said that since this was the end of the trilogy fans deserved to know for sure how things end up for Bruce.
The Alfred wish theories are cute but nonsense, I'm afraid. Between the auto-pilot, the directions for the Bat Cave, the new Bat symbol on the GCPD roof and the missing pearls that Selina is wearing, I'm not sure why anyone really believed Bruce might not have survived.
And how weird and ambiguous was the reason for needing the mask in the first place? A bunch of prisoners attacked him (for some reason, maybe because they wanted to molest the kid, they weren't attacking anyone else for escaping) and beat him not to death, but to the point where he needs to wear an anesthetic mask for the rest of his life. That just doesn't seem to sink up with an ass-kicking, especially not with a guy as tough as Bane. He somehow wasn't crippled and was still a perfect physical specimen, but he just hurt all the time, so much so that he couldn't stand it when a couple of the tubes came loose. Yet, when it showed him after the beating (with the bloody bandage over his face), he wasn't writing and screaming, he seemed pretty chill. And also, there wasn't any gas tank attached, was the mask magically making its own anesthesia? I'm not sure why Nolan couldn't have either fleshed this concept out or just used the venom from the comic book (which would have explained Bane's freakish strength far more adequately).
This isn't stuff just being left to the viewer's imagination, it is wide gaping, festering plot holes that really detract from my appreciation of the elements that did work in the movie.
The ending was left to interpretation... though I think the visual Alfred has is possibly in his own mind, I think Bruce Wayne survives as 'The Bat' was on autopilot when the bomb exploded... I presume as much as they kept mentioning 'autopilot'.... so at last it finally worked.
As for John Blake... I doubt he is Robin, he is likely to take over the mantle as Batman and if he ever gets a sidekick he is likely to call him Robin as he has no association with the Robin character in the comics... his character in the movie was loosely based as a sidekick and that might just be a 'nod', but I doubt there was or will be any intention for him to take up that role as Nolan has stated he dislikes Robin and Bale would refuse to do a Batman movie if Robin were to ever appear in one.
Yeah, the passage of time was wonky in the movie. Plus there were a couple of scenes where I was confused about when it was supposed to be set. Like the scene at the stock market I thought took place at opening/lunch and it turns out to have been near closing?
I thought it was better than TDK. The Dark Knight drags and is about twenty minutes too long and the whole boat scene just dies on repeat viewings. I absolutely loved TDKR and I'm not ashamed to admit I cried when I thought Bruce had sacrificed himself.
I thought Catwoman was pretty fleshed out. She had the sort of Joker backstory where we had vague details and that was enough.
Flair, you're not the first person to say they thought it was the worst of the trilogy. And... have you seen Begins recently? I like the movie, but my favorite thing about it was the promise that followed.
Someday he's gonna have "the" movie that puts him over the top and makes him a mega-star, he's one of the best actors going, even in things like 50/50 that a lot of actors would have sleepwalked through.
Yeah, if you'd seen Ironman 2 (I hadn't). That's the problem with the Avengers, if you go into it without seeing all of the other Marvel movies you're missing stuff, and some of it is really crucial.
The difference between the two was I never for a second believed Iron Man/Stark was going to die. As I was watching the ending to TDKR I truly believed Bruce Wayne was going to make the sacrifice and that's what drew me in.
Exactly, I remember tearing up watching TDKR and thinking, "fuckin' a, he actually did it..."
The story of the mask was to give Bane some depth and suggest that he wasn't a total monster, just a fanatic (and it adds some depth to his comment on the national anthem). The beating was because a riot had started. I got the sense that Bane was being stoic but was in incredible pain (and the damage to his face caused breathing problems) so the mask was to assist with that and its as self-contained like a rebreather that he changed every day.
I really enjoyed it, it didn't wow me as much as Dark Knight but I didn't expect it would because I doubted anyone would top Heath Ledger's performance. I feel like with this whole trilogy, people have gotten too wrapped up in the comic book movie aspect and not in the stories about living in chaotic worlds with terrorist threats that the Nolans were trying to tell. I don't really care that Catwoman got the final kill on Bane, I don't really care that Batman looked weak, I don't really care whether Bane seemed like a badass at the end. That wasn't the story being told. As for the story as it was, like I said, I enjoyed it. It didn't blow my mind and leave me awestruck the way the last one did, but I didn't completely forget about it the way I did with Batman Begins (which, to be fair, I saw after Dark Knight, so it didn't have the impact it could've).
I always feel like people would shrug off these criticisms if the Nolans had made a trilogy of movies about an eccentric billionaire who happened to get trained as a ninja and have access to military-grade spy equipment that fought off charismatic terrorist enemies in a corrupt city, but gave the characters new names and didn't have them wearing costumes and had nothing to do with Batman. Some people just have their own expectations about a "superhero" movie, and can't see past what the Dark Knight trilogy was all about.
I thought the Talia/Bane swerve was to echo the Ducard/Ra's swerve from Begins. People act like Bane had no part in planning what happened. The sense that I got was that Talia had been in Gotham for what; five years? So Bane was not the mastermind behind it all, but certainly wasn't just a goon following orders.
I loved TDKR, my favorite comic book movie ever, my favorite of the summer, and my favorite of the trilogy. I know there were some complaints about different aspects but it didn't jar me enough to take me out of the film.
I liked that TDKR was actually a wrap up to the trilogy rather than just a third part. I liked the echoing of themes from earlier and that they fleshed out characters in the movie. And I liked little things that I caught the second time I saw it: like the fact that you couldn't make the jump with the rope because it wasn't long enough (remember, there's no despair without hope).
I heard a few complaints about how Blake knew who Bruce was. I took, "once I saw that look... I knew" to be "once I saw that look I realized that the guy with the motive and the resources was Batman", the look was the final piece of the puzzle.
I also didn't take away that Bane was just dumb muscle for Talia. I thought that while he wasn't her equal, he was certainly part of the planning and execution of the scheme. Talia had been in Gotham for five years at that point?
My only gripe was that the movie was unnecessarily long, I think it could of been 2 hours or a little longer and still have the same effect.
I was talking to a friend about the movie and my friend remarked that it was funny that no one knew Batman was Bruce Wayne just because of his voice and I said that they knew but just didn't want to admit that it was Bruce and wanted to keep it a mystery(I was led to believe that because if I recall correctly didn't someone flat out just say Batman was Bruce Wayne?).
Also, I want to moment on the Avengers va TDKR debate. I think some of the fan flack for TDKR came from Avengers fanboys who wanted Avengers to "win" the Summer. I liked Avengers, it was a good comic book movie but TDKR was a great MOVIE that was about a comic book character.
I think my chief complaints about Avengers was that Loki never struck me as a threat, you couldn't JUST see Avengers, you had to see all the Marvel movies for it to have the same impact, and the film as a whole felt glib and superficial.
If Thor could beat Loki alone, why did I worry about the whole Avengers taking him? I actually thought Batman might die at the end because they're rebooting the series. And I love Whedon and I'm super-happy but the whole script is just quip after quip after quip. I liked it, but I didn't think it had high stakes. Perhaps a little of the hour long alien battle could have been devoted more to character?
Which is not to say TDKR was perfect, I felt like Nolan did a shoddy job of the passage of time and I wanted to see a bit more Batman, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Sure it was PG-13...but one moment the knife is in his mouth, the next he drops dead. I'm semi-intelligent and can figure out what happened...but it's sloppy.
Where did Gordon come from? The truck? Walk me through it. Watch the scene. Batman is on the ground, face up. Joker goon #1 is standing at Batman's 1 o'clock. Joker goon #2 tries for the mask, but gets shocked. Joker laughs at him and stands over Batman, from Batman's 4 o'clock.. Next shot is Gordon standing with a shotgun to Joker's head from JOKER'S 4 o'clock. What happened to Joker goon #1? How did Gordon get past him without alerting anyone? Not a huge deal in the overall scheme of things...but don't tell me Nolan doesn't have his hiccups.
I loved it. It's my favorite of the trilogy as a matter of fact. I didn't think it was too long at all. And as for Bane: Holy Shit he was awesome. In my opinion Hardy's Bane was as good as Ledger's Joker. I wont say either was better, but they were on the same level. Hardy captured the sheer menacing presence of Bane, the physicality, the intelligence of the character. Also the voice is a point of contention but I loved it and have been mimicking it for days. The mask was really cool too.
As a wrestling fan I view this film as if it were a storyline. Batman would be the top face in the company who always perseveres(lets go with John Cena) Bane comes in and they immediately establish him as a seemingly unstoppable monster. In their first encounter(match) Bane kicks Batman's ass and breaks him. Holy shit there's a new sheriff in town. Now that Batman couldn't stop Bane, who can? The heel runs a muck over Gotham(WWE) for months beating everyone in his path. In the meantime Batman(Cena) is forced to rebuild himself. Not only his physical well being but him mind and spirit as well. He's never been dominated like that. The new heel(Bane) reveals a plan to destroy the company(city) Who will save the WWE(Gotham)? Batman returns and the big fight(match) Is set. Batman vs. Bane. In this encounter Bane is still dominant, but Batman somehow finds a weakness and uses it to get Bane down. Now in wrestling terms it might be smarter to go the way of Knightfall and have someone else that you want to establish take down the Monster Heel. Oh man, I just layed out how Brock Lesnar's return should have went!
See below. What happened to Joker goon #1 standing at Batman's 1 o'clock? How did Joker NOT see Gordon taking out the goon, while Joker was standing at Batman's 4 o'clock? And if he didn't take out the goon, how did he sneak up on Joker? Meanwhile, Joker is acting like there is no goon #1...again, not a big deal...but Nolan's not perfect and he's not Kubrick.
I agree, if they would of ended it at the first fight or somewhere in that area, I would of enjoyed it much more than I did and I enjoyed this movie a lot.
I think the turn would have been more effective if it happened early to, possibly replacing Selina leading Batman into Bane's trap for Talia doing it. Selina doing it wasn't even that much of a stretch - he asked her to lead him to Bane, so she did. But have Talia kidnapped or something and Batman try to save her, do the reveal there, and now Bane and Talia are revealed as leading the League of Shadows and you don't spend the second half of the movie forcing her, or mentions of her, into every other scene to keep her visible for the big twist at the end.
It actually makes more sense now that I think about this - if things had gone according to plan, Bruce would never have known who Talia really was. He would've been locked in the prison, Gotham would have been destroyed. I assume Talia and Bane were going to die with the city since there was no mention of them having an escape plan. And Bruce never would have known that Talia was Ra's daughter. You'd think if you're going to go through the trouble of destroying a city to honor your fathers work and spite the man who killed him, you'd want that person to be aware who you are and why you're doing it.
Of course now that I think about it the stock market business may have been completely unnecessary to. Did they do it so John Daggett could take over Wayne Enterprises? Because they ended up killing him right after. Did they do it knowing Bruce would get Miranda to take over in his place? Because all they had to do was kidnap three board members and they had the machine. I guess they could have done it so Miranda could take over and then find out where the machine was, but they always could've forced Fox to do it. Actually, why didn't Fox find it odd that as soon as Miranda found out where the device was kept Bane suddenly knew where to find it?
Catwoman was looking for a clean start, and Bruce Wayne has the ability to give her one. Presumably he can give one to himself as well.
He fixed the autopilot, but didn't tell anyone and lied about it just before he goes out in the Bat. He pretty clearly got out of the Bat asap, that shot of him could have been him in an escape pod, met up with Catwoman and went off to start a new life not burdened by their pasts.
The pearls that Catwoman liked were noted to be missing from his personal effects, presumably because Bruce took them and gave them to her. They had a tracking device in them, which explains how Alfred knew where to look.
It's was a happy ending for Bruce. And I don't care that how he got back to Gotham after climbing out of the pit. I just care that he did. Much like I don't care how the Joker managed to escape from the bank at the right time for a gap in the traffic for the bus to fit into, or the various other times in the Dark Knight where he needed to be nearly omniscient. The details don't matter as much when you care about the film.
Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman always have some interesting thoughts on movies. Mike is "70 minutes Phantom Menace guy". Their actual discussion starts about 3 minutes in after they've done their little skits they always do.
It was weird at the midnight showing on Thursday that happened but I went to see it Saturday and you could hear a pin drop when Blake's name was revealed.
Without reading through all the posts, my gripe was that Bane's voice reminded me of a certain Sean Connery impression:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1SvsOWQlAA&feature=youtu.beI had to stifle laughter for Bane's first few lines, and the vibe came and went throughout the film.
I was totally confused because the prison well/cave he had to climb out of looked exactly like the batcave he was in back in Batman Begins. I thought Bane had taken over the batcave.I wish the football scene hadn't been used in the trailers, but I realize they need to show something cool. It was also distracting that the field was so clearly Heinz Field in Pittsburgh and they used NFL player Heinz Ward. They should've tried to be more generic. Minor, but bothersome. Same with how the size of the crowd kept changing with each shot.I think Anne Hathaway nailed it. Great performance. I liked her better than Bane- could his voice been any sillier? Why was he targeting Gotham? Why was he releasing all the prisoners if he's just going to blow everything up anyway? Was he going to just hang around and die when the bomb went off?Between this, Avengers and Spider-Man, New York/Gotham has really taken a beating this summer.This was good, but I thought the other movies were more "fun". I did laugh when Catwoman disappeared and Batman muttered "So that's how it feels when I do it" or something.
The movie tried to do way too much, and forgets crucial things. For instance, we don't really see how anyone is living under Bane's rule, outside of the rich getting pulled out of their houses by the criminals.
Well, it's not criminals it's the criminals and the non-rich. People are terrified and living in fear, others are living in the former upper-crust penthouses, people are staying where they can and hoping that the power stays on. You see the St. Swithin's kids, you see the Wayne Enterprises Board, you see the people on trial, you see Selina, Holly, and her friends in those homes. It's martial law.
I'm gonna say it: I liked him better than the Joker. I thought he took the cunning of Ra's Al Ghul and the determination of the Joker and combined them.
I thought the action in BB was meh, but I got what he was going for (that the audience is confused as the dudes Batman is taking out) it just didn't work. I liked The Dark Knight's action but there are a couple of times where I'm just like, huh? And then I thought he learned from Inception and really brought that to TDKR.
PG-13, but yeah, you're right. In fact, that was the one thing that sort of irked me. That moment where the Deputy Commissioner is lying there dead and bloodless. I didn't need him to be covered in gore, but something to indicate he died a violent death.
The doctor was the one who screwed up Bane's operation after the plague riot. When Ra's and Talia came back and cleared out the prison he was left there (I'd assume as punishment). Bane let him live there so he could suffer a long, drawn-out death.
I actually thought the reveal played really well the second time. If you watch they never say that it's Bane who climbed out of the pit. Bruce infers that and then it's solidified by the hallucination of Ra's.
My one concern about him playing the new Batman: could he pull off Bruce Wayne? Bale didn't just nail everything about Batman (I know some people hate the voice, I love it) but he also nailed Bruce Wayne. I joke that finding out Bruce Wayne is Batman in the DCU is like finding out that Scott Disick is Batman in our world. Bale just nailed the drunken goof that was the public persona of Bruce Wayne.
"Huh, isn't that interesting. This new vigilante is calling himself Robin and looks like that cop John Blake." "Oh, that's interesting." "What?" "A cursory file check that literally anyone could do reveals that John Blake's real first name is Robin." "That has to be a coincidence. No one would be stupid enough to use their real first name as a vigilante".
In a movie about a guy that dressed like a bat the moment that I most had to suspend my disbelief was that Hines Ward was that fast and returning punts.
As for why he targeted Gotham... I feel a bit like David Duchovny in Zoolander, "I literally JUST explained that". He released all the prisoners to take over the city and torment Batman by crushing the city before he burned it to the ground. And yes, Bane and Talia were going to die with Gotham. They were going to be martyrs, like terrorists tend to.
I agree that it's the weakest of the three, it was way too long, but I have some more complaints.
Not enough Bat-Man, Bane was a dull, uninteresting villain who never got to firmly establish his character, Blake was an unnecessary role and JGL isn't that good of an actor to justify getting as much screen time as he did. I also dislike how this movie turned the Dark Knight and especially the Joker into filler. I know that Ledger is dead, but...he didn't matter, at all, the best acted and most interesting villain was just a monster of the week. Also, why did they introduce the facts of Batman's fucked up leg and not actually do anything with it later on? It just felt poorly paced and edited. Also Bane's voice sounded so ridiculously VO'd it made me laugh my ass off, I'm pretty sure I heard the sound engineer in the booth next to him chewing on gum.
Good parts, the performances were pretty damn good, as useless as Cat Woman was to the story, Anne Hathaway did a great job with the role, major props. Also, while I thought Tate was completely pointless, her turn was great, dramatic, and played into the whole Bat-Canon and continuity very strong, IMO that was the emotional height of the film.
All-in-all, good solid film and a satisfactory end to the series. I'd give it a B.
Actually, it's not fair to compare a completed show with a currently running one. IMO the Wire is the greatest televised drama EVER and only season 3 & 4 of Breaking Bad have approached the plane of greatness the Wire existed on. Seasons 1-3 of the Sopranos come close though.
Am I missremembering? (haven't read LOTR since high school) I thought originally it was 1 book that was broken into 3 by the publisher? Are you including The Hobbit and parts of the Silmarillion?
Yeah, I actually watched BB and TDK before going to see TDKR. I still love BB sooo much. I think it's the first 45 minutes that makes me love that movie so much, plus it had some good laughs and is a bit "lighter" in tone in comparison to parts 2 & 3. However, I do think Bane is way more bad ass than Scarecrow and Rhas.
Yeah, we never saw Batman until a full hour into the movie. I remember checking the time on my phone. This was more like a Bruce Wayne movie with three Batman cameos. The Michael Keaton one was kinda like that- it felt like we barely saw him in the suit.
More than anything, I hate that Bruce Wayne quits being Batman after the events of the Dark Knight. Batman DOESN'T QUIT because a loved one died. Hell, a loved one dying is the reason he's Batman in the first place.
But hey, he doesn't need to be Batman because the Dent Act magically put all the bad people behind bars.
Also, Gordon's letters about Dent being revealed pretty much meant jack shit. I mean, why would anyone believe some random guy who sounds like Sean Connery anyway? "I have a bomb that I'm going to blow you people up with, and by the way, Harvey Dent killed people and was a complete psycho with half his face burned off. It says so right here on these papers I'm holding!"
And also, what exactly makes Blake qualified to be the next Batman?
I don't think the whole subplot with Gordon's letter to Dent needed to happen. JGL chewing out Gordon was pointless and didn't really go anywhere.
I don't have as big an issue with Bruce brooding after the events of Dark Knight. He lost Rachel, Gotham was doing relatively well and he was injured. It makes sense to me. Bane was the big bad evil enough to get Bruce out there again.
I'm with you. I loved Avengers and thought it was fun as hell, but it wasn't in TDKR's league. Nolan has set a new precedent for what a comic book movie can be and I don't know if his Bat films can be matched.
The stakes were definitely much higher in TDKR. Which is funny considering the world was at stake in Avengers and only Gotham was at stake in TDKR. But, Avengers didn't have me believing for one second that anyone was in trouble. TDKR really had me thinking Batman was dead. Like you said, Loki never felt like a real threat. Bane on the other hand, did. I hope Avengers does a better job of building up Thanos in the next one.
I've got nitpicks about TDKR, but I don't even feel like mentioning them because I enjoyed the ever loving fuck out of it, so why bring up all the negatives?
Big Ben, Willie Colon, and a couple of others were there too. Hines Ward with any kind of speed will always shatter suspense-- should've used Mike Wallace!
She has a certain elegance that a lot of celebrities lack. Maybe it's the accent.
Bane's death it just seemed like an afterthought. We see a random blast from nowhere and then Catwoman busts out a quip and it's done. I thought it would have worked much better had Batman had Bane reeling then Catwoman blasts him. Then as Batman is interrogating Bane, Talia stabs him and she tells the emotional story about how Bane saved her. Tear in Bane's eye, sad music, THEN he dies. Would have given him a more memorable demise.
It's the Patrick Bateman experience. I don't know if it's just b/c it's Bale or what but I can't stop thinking during these movies that public Bruce Wayne is Bateman.
Anyone else catch JGL throwing down his gun after he accidentally shoots the goon via ricochet? Nice foreshadowing there.
Question for the comics nerds out there: does the JGL character exist in the comics? If so, does he become Robin or Batman?
Also, it really bothered me that Batman didn't train Robin at all. We're supposed to believe he's just going to magically become Batman/Robin without League of Shadows training?!
Similarly, the timeline of Bruce in prison bothered me. Seems like it would take MONTHS to recover from a broken back to the point that he's a physical specimen again. Not weeks. And what about his leg? Did they let him keep the high tech brace in prison?! I think not...
There was an article on gammasquad.uproxx.com that agreed with you. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Begins but I think it's the weakest of the three. It actually didn't have a massive budget (one-hundred and fifty million dollars, so one-hundred million less than the next two) and rewatching Begins it struck me how TDK and TDKR made Gotham feel more like a real city. Begins uses a LOT more constructed sets rather than location shooting and you don't get a sense that it's happening in a real city which lowers the stakes. I think if they had defined Gotham they way TDK and TDKR did the plot would have had more weight. That's why Bane's takeover resonated with me, because this was a defined city with real consequences.
I want to talk about what I like most about it because I don't want to seem overly negative. It does a great job of creating a creating a public persona for Bruce that explains how it could cover for Batman. I also love the way it explained how Bruce became Batman and created a template (for better or for worse) that most superhero films are following.
But it's also a film where I got the sense WB had a lot of involvement and I thought that there were some conflicting visions. Also, I'm not a fan of David S. Goyer as a screenwriter and I (rightly or wrongly) attribute a lot of the hokey one-liners to Goyer (since they weren't present in the other two films in the trilogy). I just remember Gordon's one-liner about "I gotta get me one of these!" seeming out of place after the next two films.
But I do love the movie, I just love the ones that follow more and more. I know that it's the first (and so far only) superhero movie where I walked out and was so excited with what came next, and then leaving TDK I was mad I had to wait three (not realizing it would be four) years for the sequel.
What did people think of the MOS teaser? I wasn't blown away and I'm not thrilled at the idea of a Zach Snyder directed, David Goyer written movie. And why is Superman on deadliest catch?
Originally, LOTR was meant as a sequel to The Hobbit, which it is. However, Tolkien wrote a massive book and the publisher broke it into 3, as you know them today.
When reading the books, it seems like it may be separate "books" because of the way Tolkien wrote them. He follows a set of characters to their conclusion practically, rather than interweaving the stories. Obviously for the movies, they did mash it up so it would have a better flow.
Wouldn't disagree with that. I don't worship at the alter of The Dark Knight either (although I agree that Heath Ledger's performance deserves all the praise it gets).
Three volumes, six books, plus the Hobbit and the Silmarillion, but I'm forgetting the last one since it's such a clusterfuck. Oh, and there's like his unfinished writings and notes, but...don't think that counts either.
I don't find Superman interesting in general but trying to match the "gritty reboot" quality of the Dark Knight Trilogy with Superman is a recipe for disaster. Zack Snyder will almost definitely overdo it on the violence, and the soundtrack will be full of facepalm material. Like, I'd eat my hat without salt if "Superman's Dead" by Our Lady Peace isn't in there somewhere. Or, even worse, "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down.
However it will look good. Snyder has a great visual eye. I effing loved some of the shots in Watchmen.
Actually, Batman defeats Bane until Talia stabs him in the side. Catwoman doesn't physically beat up Bane she shoots him with a projectile that has been shown to blow up cars.
As I said in an earlier post: I took, "once I saw that look... I knew" to be "once I saw that look I realized that the guy with the motive and the resources was Batman", the look was the final piece of the puzzle.
I'll be interested if they nail the idea that Superman is truly alone and carries a burden not being able to help everyone. But like I said, I don't have high hopes based off of Goyer and Snyder's track record.
I can't see Snyder overdoing it on the violence because it's a PG-13 movie.
I don't want a gritty reboot, but I hope that they try to ask some interesting questions like Nolan did and actually think about the character. Some of my disappointment was based on Pa Kent's voiceover from the trailer: "You're not just anyone. One day, you're going to have to make a choice. You'll have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, is going to change the world." Now, again, this is devoid of context so I could be wrong but based on the Russell Crowe voiceover in the alternate trailer it sounds like there's more moral guidance coming from Krypton dad than Earth Dad. I really hope they'll consider things like how would people react to Superman? How many people would really be rejoicing?
But this is all based off a teaser trailer so I could be WAY off.
ACTUALLY the whole point of the movie is I make a lot more money than it cost to make. Or, if you're like me and more creatively inclined, it's to tell a good story. And TDKR did, the Catwoman shooting Bane was a great moment that showed she had grown as a character by caring about someone besides herself.
A great moment that totally deflated the entire story and made it a pointless affair as the hero doesn't actually accomplish anything other than finally not having to be a hero anymore.
One of the things that's been bandied about is that Nolan's Batman is far too grounded to fit into a world where Superman exists.I've never agreed with that, but for anyone that has I can't see how the TDKR wouldn't change your mind.
Not only is it over the top, but they recast Batman at the end of the film to make way for someone else taking the reigns behind the camera.Add to that the fact that Nolan did an interview about producing the Batman reboot (the head of WB said he was a year ago, Nolan says he isn't) which might as well have consisted of him saying "Justice League" over and over again, it's clear where it's all going.
That argument sounds to me like you were expecting something completely different than what you should have considering the films Christopher Nolan has been making. It's not about "bad guy gets beat up and superhero gets his big babyface moment", it's a more complex story than that. If you were expecting the Joel Schumacher Batman you maybe should've been watching one of the cartoons, or something.
Besides which, Batman doesn't kill people. Why does everyone think "oh no but this time it's okay, because....." He was never going to kill Bane, so what's the difference?
And good performance in other movies doesn't mean you're going to do good performances in every movie.
But no, I wasn't impressed with his performance, and whatever charisma is, to me, he didn't have it. I didn't give a fuck about some random schlub cop who's character was just "Orphan, badass".
Respectfully, you should consider seeing him in those films. He's been turning in excellent work for some time now, and certainly has done a lot to shake off his early sitcom origins.
To me, he was (cliched, I know) "the heart and soul of the film," and he and Hathaway were the two best things about it.
Wait, doesn't accomplish anything? He beats the bad guys, saves the city, and comes to peace with his life. You don't think it's good, there's a difference between opinion and fact and it irritates the hell out of me that people don't get that. I went to school for five years for film and if you want to debate technical pieces of the movie, that's where you can get objective. But subjectively, you didn't like it. That doesn't make it a bad movie.
Many times Ive thought "How awesome would it be if Joker had some color as he's laughing maniacally after being thrown into the glass mirror & breaks it". Would have further put him over.
When Bruce is intimate with Talia the camera briefly catches a similar scar that Bane has all over his body on Talias back. So throughout the movie I was waiting for a reveal that Talia was either Bane's lover or sister or something.
Still an enjoyable movie. I particularly liked the Robin part. Just so dark and dreary and depressing before the final 15 minutes where Batman saves the day. It was Passion of the Christ'esque in that they had to bring the viewer to such a low place before the resolution.
I agree Banes voice was silly. In a really weird way, it lent some more intrigue to the character for me since he's such a strong badass. He kind of sounded like a British-Indian dude, I was thinking of a strained version of Pete Postlethwaites ridiculous accent in the Usual Suspects for some reason.
I was expecting Batman to defeat Bane, not Catwoman.
But then, I was also expecting a reason for Gordon-Leavitt to suspect Bruce Wayne was Batman outside of a convenient "look" so apparently I was expecting too much.
I didn't say it was bad. As a film it's fine, things happen though most of them are non-sense.
What did the movie accomplish? Batman can't defeat his greatest nemesis on his own. Gordon-Leavitt is a mind-reader that can figure out anyone's secret based on a "look". Bruce Wayne finally got the hero worship he desperately craved.
Anyone else think Batman really is dead? I took the last scene in Florence as Alfred seeing what he wants to see as a way to make peace with Bruce dying.
ReplyDeleteIt was cool. It dragged a little once they hit the 'No Man's Land" part. I really think they should have split the movie into two separate ones: One leading up to Bane taking over Gotham and another one showing the aftermath. (kind of like Empire Strikes Back/RoTJ)
ReplyDelete..btw, how did Bruce Wayne get from the prison back into Gotham? He didn't take THAT many supplies.
No, I think he lives.
ReplyDeleteI didn't even imagine that to be a possibility until right now but I really, really like the fact that it works as another interpretation of the ending. Nice one
ReplyDeleteHe is one of the most durable and resourceful people on the planet. He figured it out.
ReplyDeleteI agreed with Scott, it was all kinds of awesome. But I guess the *big* question is was it as good as The Dark Knight? Scott, care to comment??
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of splitting it into two films, they could have fleshed out Catwoman alot more that way.
I dont believe Bruce died, if the idea is he died in the explosion then why would Nolan include the scene where Fox was informed that he had fixed the autopilot six months prior? Although I guess it really is open to interpretation which is a good thing...
There's no doubt in my mind...Batman lives. Why would Alfred see him with Selina? He couldn't have known they would end up together.
ReplyDeleteI agree the moving was amazing and that Batman did intact survive the explosion.
ReplyDeleteI think he lives as well. The way they told the story in the first scene, they showed another couple right after Alfred imagined Bruce at the other table. The 2nd scene had Bruce and Selena right there with no change and Alfred had more of a 'happy' smile than a 'wishful' one.
ReplyDeleteAlso, having Fox check on the Bat's auto pilot and have it confirmed that Bruce actually fixed the feature himself is another supporting story that he did make it out okay.
I don't think so. I would have liked it a lot more if they left the ending ambiguous. Like you see Alfred sitting the cafe, looking up and smiling, but you don't see Bruce. So you leave maybe thinking he survived or maybe he didn't.
ReplyDeleteHe's alive. The hint (well, not so much of a hint) was given when Lucious found out that Wayne had fixed the auto-pilot months back.
ReplyDeleteSo he just reprogrammed the auto pilot on the Bat for kicks?
ReplyDeleteIMO, it's not as good as TDK, but that's not a knock on TDKR at all. For me, saying TDKR is not as good is like saying the HHH/HBK/Benoit Backlash rematch was not as good as their WMXX match. Just because it didn't top it doesn't mean it was wasn't awesome in its own right.
ReplyDeleteMark out moment: when batman comes back to save gotham and lights the fire bat signal.
ReplyDeleteI thought this movie was awesome and had a perfect ending. When I heard catwomen was in the movie I thought that sounded horrible and would drag the movie down. (I was worried we'd get all those shitty cat puns) However its a great character and it makes sense he would end up with her. And the robin thing was awesome and makes me want to see a spin off movie.
Loved bane. I was wondering if they were screwed because anything would suck in comparison to ledger. This character was just as awesome. I loved how he decided to killl batman anyways after the love of his life asked him not to as the last thing she said before they thought the bomb was going off.
My only criticism would be that it was pretty obvious miranada tate was going to be some kind of bad guy. (I don't know she was already a character in the comic book though)
The film had me the second I saw Aiden "Littlefinger" Gillan 45 seconds into the movie. The movie is a bit of a jumble in the first 45 minutes due to having to bring so many characters in quickly, but the excellent call-backs to previous source material (back-breaker! An evil Daggett! Talia Al Ghul!), the excellent jobs by newcomers Anne Hathaway (exceeding even my highest expectations, and they were high) and JGL, and the way they went balls-out with the stakes of the story since it was definitely the end, and giving a satisfying conclusion to it all, made it a great experience. It lacks that timeless quality that Ledger's performance gave to TDK -- and none of the TDKR setpieces top the vehicle chase in that film -- but it's still an excellent film to close out one of cinema's greatest trilogies.
ReplyDeleteNot full monty, but I feel good at ****1/4. Maybe bump it to a 1/2 since I have seen it three times already.
Also I would say Nolan's batman is the best trilogy of movies I've seen. Godfather and Gf2 might be my favorite movies but the third one sucks so godfather is dq'd from being the best trilogy.
ReplyDeleteI like starwars but a lot of that shit was selling toys to kids (ewoks?), indiana jones wasn't as good, you could argue lord of the rings but I prefered this one.
Yeah, he's definitely alive. I was expecting the film to end at Alfred looking at the camera and nodding, but after all the shit Bruce went through in the last two movies...I think we should see him being happy and fulfilled after sacrificing so much for Gotham. Cue ALL the Batman/Catwoman fanfics!
ReplyDeleteI loved it, but of the 3 Nolan Baltman movies, I still place it 3rd in order of quality (with TDK at #1 and BB at #2). If I were to lodge a critique, I would say that it would've been cool and played into the story and characters well if Batman couldn't physically beat up Bane after almost having his back broken in their first encounter and came back using gadgets and environment alot more rather than another fist fight. This is nitpicks though.
ReplyDeleteLOTR is really one movie broken into 3 parts. Does that still count as a trilogy?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a trilogy.
ReplyDeleteLittlefinger>tommy carcetti
ReplyDeleteI seem to be in the minority but I was shocked as to just how poor TDKR was compared to the first two Nolanverse films.
ReplyDeleteThe plotholes and logic jumps were jarring this time round whereas in TDK they seemed less glaring. Plus some of the dialogue was so poor and there was too much of Nolan's exposition hammer work.
It saddens me greatly to say all this because BB started me down the Batman fanboy path, but this 3rd part really does suffer from the classic trilogy curse.
Not to say there weren't good parts. JGL rocked as Blake and Bruce Wayne's arc is completedthe in a very fitting and satisfactory manner.
Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb.
ReplyDeleteI liked it, I didn't love it. Easily the worst of the three, but that's like saying Temple of Doom is the worst of the Indiana Jones Trilogy.
ReplyDeleteYou have an actor in Tom Hardy, with an impeccable English accent, and the first thing you do is mask his voice? Shit, at that point you could have cast Michael Clark Duncan as Bane as you take away Tom Hardy's most distinguishing feature.
The movie tried to do way too much, and forgets crucial things. For instance, we don't really see how anyone is living under Bane's rule, outside of the rich getting pulled out of their houses by the criminals.
I don't like how Bane's defeat is reduced to a punchline by Catwoman.
Also, I felt the sacrifice play by Iron Man was much better in the Avengers.
Winner.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I wasn't mad about was they did gloss over Wayne having a relationship with Talia.
ReplyDeleteWinner.
ReplyDeleteSee I disagree strongly about the Iron Man comment.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between the two was I never for a second believed Iron Man/Stark was going to die. As I was watching the ending to TDKR I truly believed Bruce Wayne was going to make the sacrifice and that's what drew me in.
That's a huge difference to me as a viewer.
I don't think it's as easy to say that anyone could've been cast as Bane just because his mouth was covered up. I think Hardy did an exceptional voice with his physical mannerisms and his eyes. Sure, he sounded like Sean Connery, but he still played the role pretty darn well.
ReplyDeleteHis exact words to Fox near the end of the movie are "Even without the auto pilot, thanks." And Fox says "Auto pilot? That's what you're there for." So unless he fixed it while fighting Bane, he didn't fix it.
ReplyDeleteIt was revealed at the end that Wayne had installed auto-pilot on the bat 6 months prior. Did you miss this part?
ReplyDeleteYou're in the minority, but you're not alone. From the first scene the whole thing felt strained and contrived for me, and while its audacity was impressive, it was in many ways just as silly as the '80s/'90s films, which'd be fine if that was the tone Nolan had struck right from the start. On the heels of the surprisingly plausible Batman Begins and the brilliant villain in DK, this film was cartoony and featured a dull villain. And its cartoony aspects made the dark aspects an ill fit.
ReplyDeleteNo but it could be wish fulfillment. Alfred's whole thing throughout the movie is Bruce finding someone and he knows about Selina so he could be just imagining it. Just because you see it on screen doesn't mean it's a reality, especially iin a Nolan movie.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I also he was dead. I got the bit about the auto-pilot being fixed, but I thought that just reinforced Bruce's 'wish to die' that Alfred often harped on.
ReplyDeleteBut my wife pointed out that Selina has the estate's missing pearls. So yeah, he's alive.
At the very end? I'm talking about when Bruce comes back from prison and he meets up with Fox for the last time. And then he tells Gordon, Catwoman, etc that there is no autopilot before he gets in
ReplyDeleteShe's Batman's baby's momma...
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was after this. I believe it was around after the funeral scene. Morgan Freeman and some tech dude talk about it and he says Mr. Wayne fixed it 6 months ago, then they cut to Alfred in Italy.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know he was McGuyver.
ReplyDeleteBest line ever posted. Ever.
ReplyDeleteI never believed for a minute that Bruce Wayne was going to die.
ReplyDeleteNow I remember, they said it was a software patch or something.
ReplyDeleteYep.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people have an issue with the "how did Bruce get back to Gotham" thing, but I don't see the problem. There are a few things to keep in mind. For one, it's been established that the guy can disappear with nothing and survive quite effectively. Even get from one place to the next. This was established in the backstory provided in Batman Begins. Also, keep in mind that he didn't do this overnight. I don't remember the exact numbers, but when Bruce escaped from the prison there was something like 23 days left before the bomb went off. When he returned to Gotham, it was something like 12 hours. Quite a bit of time passed between the two events -- and frankly, I'm glad they didn't waste the time showing how he got from A to B.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand the hate for Bane. He was an unstoppable monster. He wasn't as good as The Joker (but nobody was going to top Heath Ledger's performance), but Tom Hardy did a good job of playing a completely evil, brutal killing machine. I thought Bane was a more interesting villain than Scarecrow from BB by far
ReplyDeleteI think it was pretty clear that he lied to Gordon and Catwoman in order to fake his death. If he fixed the autopilot (which we know he did given the Fox scene), he was quite obviously lying.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do believe Batman lived through the explosion, there's one part of that scene that bugs me: if he was supposed to escaped and left the vehicle to autopilot, why is there still a scene showing Batman in the vehicle seconds before the bomb goes off?
ReplyDeleteBut did you believe Iron Man was going to die?
ReplyDeleteThey did a great job of making you believe that Bane was an unstoppable physical monster even though Tom Hardy is 5'9" and not a huge guy. Even after adding all the weight, Christian Bale was still actually a bigger human being. It was great camera work and direction to make the viewer not only not see that but ignore it if they knew it beforehand.
ReplyDeleteI think they did a great job on the character's look also. I know that traditionalists wanted him to wear the lucha mask but honestly the spiderface look was uncomfortable to look at. It just made me feel a natural sort of revulsion which was perfect for the character.
From what I read it was some cgi used. Why not use a bigger actor and have Hardy do the voiceover? This one message board I went to was screaming for Lesnar to play the part of bane and use a v/o.
ReplyDeleteIf they had done that the movie would have gone from eh to horseshit.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I liked the movie a lot, but it could have been so much better if Nolan would have just addressed some of the obvious plot holes and logic gaps that were created throughout the movie. I almost wonder if 30-45 minutes had to be cut which would have addressed some of these issues. There were even edits that were just really obviously flawed. For example: we see Matthew Modine shooting it out on the street with a handgun, the camera cuts away, it comes back and he's in the same spot but now he's got an automatic--Nolan is better than that. I was almost expecting it to come back again and he's holding a bazooka, like in a cartoon.
ReplyDeleteOr the prison. It appeared that everyone could reach the ledge with ease by scaling the walls, so why not just keep scaling rather than go through that almost impossible leap? And what followed the leap that lead to escaping the hole, exactly? It was still a ways to the surface? And if they have a rope down there, why aren't they just using that? From Begins and Dark Knight (not to mention Memento, etc...) I've come to expect more from Nolan than literally having to turn my brain off and stop asking questions to get through a movie. The first two movies were nearly air-tight and this one felt like it could only be appreciated symbolically.
The worst thing was the deflation of Bane at the end of the movie. Once his back-story went to Talia, the character seemed significantly deflated. Through the first 2/3 of the movie it appeared he was going to be and icon, like Joker but instead he just ended up being a plot device like Scarecrow. And I still don't understand how he fit into the scheme. Was he in the LOS before or after being thrown in the hole? Where did the mask really come from? I know they said the prison doctor made it, but I don't buy that the guy just whips up an anesthetic mask from scraps (never mind where the actual anesthesia was coming from). Was the mask also giving him his strength? Yes I'm overly curious about the mask and the origin, but I feel like I was told to be so when the soldiers kept talking about it at the start of the movie; don't introduce a plot device at the start of the movie if you're just going to casually discard it later.
And Bane's death really ended any chance of him getting Darth Vader status. Once more, he was treated like Scarecrow, who went down to Katie Holmes' stun-gun in Begins. I almost wish they could have just done without the whole bomb plot and just focused on the fact that Gotham was destroying itself. That was Bane's grand scheme and it was interesting. The fact that it was all for nothing since the bomb was just going to go off no matter what really sucked the wind out of what the previous 2 hours had established.
The worst part about this movie is the more I discuss it, the less I like it. Maybe I need to watch it again and I'll see that I was missing some stuff, but I'm fairly certain that some questions just don't have answers (and don't tell me that makes it good because it's open for interpretation, that's a cop out).
The easiest way to describe my reaction is to compare it to the flair-steamboat series. BB was the chi-town rumble, DK was the clash 2-3, but instead of wrestlewar, TDKR is the spring stampede match from 1994, still recognizable, but just off the mark. . .
ReplyDeleteForget Brock, they could have used Kane. A lot of the reviewers were pointing out what a great job Hardy did at emoting using just his eyes and body language. Say what you want about him as a worker but that had always been Kane's greatest strength. Plus he would have looked the part and they wouldn't have needed any kind of tricks to have him tower over everyone else.
ReplyDeleteNo, but there was more emotion there when he's making his sacrifice play.
ReplyDeleteRemember how in Iron Man 2, he's dying from the over usage of the arc reactor in his chest, except he doesn't bother to tell anyone he's dying? And he feels guilty about not telling Pepper of all people?
Him calling her first and foremost as he's making the play with the bomb and her not answering the phone because she's glued to the screen like everyone else across the world was one of the most heart breaking things I've seen.
Yes, he survived. But the emotion was there moreso than it was in DKR.
Some people I've read have noted that Bruce actually did die and Alfred only sees what he dearly wants to in Florence.
ReplyDeleteBut then why would he see Selina of all people with Bruce? He barely had any contact with her, outside of ordering her around as a maid at the beginning of the movie. He had also left Wayne Manor by the time Bruce and Selina had started forming their love/hate relationship and would be unaware of how they came together. Besides, he was also pushing Miranda/Talia on Bruce.
A ball-point banana!
ReplyDeleteOr why does Batman explicitly say to Catwoman, "there's no autopilot" when he's the one who fixed it? That's the biggest flaw in the movie to me, that bit of dialogue only exists to remind the viewers something they already know, it could have been left out.
ReplyDeleteWait for the director's cut, where Alfred looks down and sees a top on the table, just spinning and spinning....
ReplyDeleteI agree with your points, but, much like a number of other things in the film, it was handled sloppily; the passage of time during Bane's occupation wasn't marked very clearly (no calendars, no sign of decay on the streets, even the cops looked relatively clean-cut for being in the sewers nearly half a year) and we didn't get - at least in this version - any look at Bruce's process for getting back into town, which dilutes the impact of him swaggering back into town.
ReplyDeleteNot to say there weren't mark-out moments for me, either: the choice to not lay any score over the first Sting/Vader Bats/Bane fight was great; seeing Burn Gorman from Torchwood pull out the Frank Gorshin impression of a lifetime made me feel great for the guy; and the appearance of Scarecrow as an unrelenting figure of dickishness at Gotham's fringes speaks to how well the series was put together as a whole.
Think you're giving Nolan too much credit. His action sequences were always jerky and full of holes. From Batman Begins (where you couldn't actually tell what actions were going on...did he punch the guy? Elbow him? What happened?) to Dark Knight (Did Joker cut Gamble's throat? Slit his mouth? Where did Gordon come from in the trailer sequence? How did he get around Joker's goon to sneak up on Joker?)
ReplyDeleteGuy is great with themes...great eye for shots...but his action sequences always left something to be desired.
Thought TDKR was just as enjoyable as the other 2 films in the series, but not quite as good as them. But does it really matter? It's very good on its own. When the DVD comes out, I'll be as sure to nit-pick every second of the movie just like everyone on the planet is doing, but I can't see why anyone just can't sit back and enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteMy take on Bane's mask was that it came from the League of Assassins when they took over the Pit. You see him with his head all bandaged up, so obviously the prison didn't do it. Plus Talia seems to know how it works.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you mean where did Gordon come from? He was driving the truck. (Sorry if that sounds crass, I don't mean to be.)
ReplyDeleteObvious answer to the Joker question is that it was a PG-13 movie. Use your imagination.
He probably knocked the goon out. Goons have been proven unreliable.
But I can't explain anything about away about Batman Begins. Those were bad fight scenes.
Agreed. Plus, if we were supposed to believe that it was an illusion, why offer that information about Bruce fixing the autopilot?
ReplyDeleteBecause that would have been stupid.
ReplyDeleteIf only Nolan would have watched See No Evil!
ReplyDeleteIF ONLY!
IIRC, he didn't say "There's no autopilot", just "No autopilot", as in he was voluntarily not going to eject himself (or at least, making everyone think that so he can disappear from Gotham forever)
ReplyDeleteI wanted that too. Like how Batman finally defeats the Mutant Leader in Dark Knight Returns.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it a couple of times now. My initial reaction was that I loved it, and I still do. But after seeing it a few times it's probably natural to pick up on little things that I felt could be better.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, he lives. Bruce didn't die. The more you see it the more obvious it is. When I first saw it I wasn't sure. If you wanted to believe he died you could certainly draw that conclusion, and Alfred seeing him at the end could have been an Inception type thing. But after more viewings, they beat you over the head with the auto-pilot thing - he fixed in six months ago and was making a point of lying about it since. The scene when he talks to Fox before gearing up for the last battle makes it very obvious - the way Bale throws in "even without the auto-pilot" - clearly lying. So, if he's lying about it there's gotta be a reason for it. Even when at the end, he's not saying "I have auto-pilot but I might not get out in time" he's still lying right until the end....and Alfred seeing him at the end clearly isn't a dream. If he saw him, looked away, looked back and he was gone, maybe. But it's pretty straight forward - he looks up, is surprised to see him, does what he said he always imagined and that's that. No shot showing Bruce wasn't there. (Also, supposedly in the novel version Alfred went to the cafe 5 days in a row before he finally sees him, it's more straight-forward.)
My biggest complaints were that he wasn't Batman all that much in the movie and how it ended with Bane. They build up the anticipation for the final battle, making you want to see Batman be able to over-come Bane. And he does that, briefly, but in the end Bane is about to kill him and Catwoman saves him. I wanted to see Batman beat Bane himself - I got chills when he said "when I have the detonator, you have my permission to die." Then the Talia thing happens, Batman loses again, and Selina has to kill Bane to save him.
Actually, Talia wasn't necessary. In repeated viewings, it's very obvious she's in on it. There's no reason for this random character to be in the middle of everything and made out to be so important. When she reveals herself, she takes the "heat" off Bane, which sucked because they made him out to be an awesome villain. And she fucked up the previously mentioned Batman defeating Bane moment I wanted.
So, yeah, I liked it a lot, but put him in the suit and drop Talia and I'd have been happier.
*"
ReplyDeletecontrived "
And that's the operative word. Nearly every situation here is set up by some implausible contrivance.
Great direction, poor screenplay.
I think that had more to do with trying to keep it a PG movie - same as how nobody bleeds when they get shot. When Bane breaks people's neck they pull away or cut to another shot so as to not show the actual violence. Same as Joker and Gamble - slitting his throat is a bit graphic for a PG movie.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if it means anything, but when Batman is flying the bomb out, they show him in the cockpit from the side, with the buildings passing by in the window. That last shot is from the front, so you can't really see where he is. He might've been in another vehicle that he used to make his escape? He had a pained expression on his face, which sort of suggested he was about to die. Or he could've been in pain because he was stabbed. Or he could've been bracing himself for the bomb going off, not knowing for sure if it was far enough away.
ReplyDeleteI agree whole heartedly that talia added nothing and was an obvious bad guy/heel turn. My only criticism.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the Robin stuff? Kind bugged me. I would've prefered his name turn out to be Dick Grayson somehow. Cause is he gonna become his own thing and be Robin? Or is he gonna take up the mantle of the bat?
ReplyDeleteBane was AWESOME
ReplyDeleteBruce lived. Besides the autopilot and the scene in Florence, there was also the fixed Batsignal for Gordon and the directions to the Batcave for Blake....he let all his closest allies know that he made it.
ReplyDeleteBatman >>> McGuyver.
ReplyDeleteThe 'trick' in the second fight was that Batman damaged Bane's mask, so he did use his wits to defeat him. Once the mask was damaged, Bane fought back in panic but Bats was able to overcome him and had him beaten before Miranda/Talia turned.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it criticized in some quarters that Bane gets beaten too easily and Bruce doesn't actually beat him himself, but Batman had Bane finished....Catwoman just added the finishing touch.
I generally don't hear pro wrestling-style pops in a movie theatre, but when we got the revelation about Blake's real name, the audience just went nuts cheering.
ReplyDeleteAnd than another Alfred appears with a tennis ball.
ReplyDeleteAnd also, what was up with Batman's friends(?) in the pit? Here's the thing, I can buy Wayne's back healing through the wacky prison chiropractor, but I'm distracted by wondering why this guy bothered to do so in the first place. At first he mentioned that Bane was paying him to keep Bruce alive, so it appears he's on Bane's side. But then he fixes Bruce's back, so is he hoping for Bruce to defeat Bane? Ok, but then why does he agree to feed Bruce the false story about Bane? I don't remember if he explicitly said it was Bane who climbed out (as opposed to Talia, with Bane being the protector) but he definitely let Bruce get that impression. Then he stopped the story short because "I've already said too much" (or something like that). Well, if he's worried about upsetting Bane by saying too much about him, wouldn't he be more worried about how pissed Bane will be when he finds out he fixed Batman's back and guided him out of the hole? It just doesn't all fit together; it's like the characters were just doing what suited the story rather than acting on behalf of real motivations.
ReplyDeleteIt's tempting to say 98% of what I didn't like about the movie was direct fallout from the Talia revelation. Maybe the problem was that it came so late in the movie that it consequently negated a lot of what came before it (like everything that had led us to perceive Bane as a criminal genius/revolutionary). If Nolan really wanted that character in there and to use that twist, maybe it should have happened earlier and actually been worked into the plot rather than just dropped on top of it.
ReplyDeleteI honestly wish they would have just left all the R'as Al Ghul/Gotham Reckoning in the past and done more of a Knightfall story. I always thought it was kind of corny that there was this shadowy organization bent on destroying a civilization that was choking on its own decadence, but their plan didn't extend beyond bringing down one American city. It actually seemed kind of unambitious given the scope of the League of Shadows organization. Like it seems like kind of a waste of thousands of years of ninja training in the Himalayas that the most revolutionary thing they can think to do is kill a bunch of city-dwellers because they can't seem to stop mugging and bribing each other.
If you would have told me before hand that was going to happen, I would have completely shit on it. But Gordon-Levitt's performance sold it for me. He stole the movie for me. I would much rather see them continue in the Nolanverse with him as Robin/Batman/Nightwing whatever instead of a reboot.
ReplyDeleteI'm critical of it, but I will say that I at least didn't walk out of the theater feeling like I'd just been slightly molested--unlike when I saw the third Spiderman and X-men films.
ReplyDeleteBatman absolutely crushes Bane when he comes back so I didn't feel cheated out or whatever when Catwoman saves him.
ReplyDeleteI'm firmly in the Bruce lives camp now but to play devil's advocate, I'm positive they told Alfred who Tate really was and plus Alfred even suggests to Bruce to hit up Kyle. So if he is going to imagine anyone with Bruce, it might as well be her because there was no one else.
ReplyDeleteHe wanted Batman to survive to see what happens to Gotham. I'm guessing the plan was to go back to finish him off after he suffered through it.
ReplyDeleteRight, I get that. That's why he told those guys to keep Bruce alive. But he didn't want Batman to escape from the hole and return to Gotham. So why did those guys fix his back and let him escape? If they were supposed to keep him alive, you'd think they wouldn't have let him climb the wall without the rope. If they were supposed to keep him in the hole, you'd think they wouldn't have let him try climbing period. And why feed him the misinformation about Bane? What purpose did that serve (beside conveniently misleading the viewer)?
ReplyDeleteWell they never said Bane escaped, just that it was a child. Bruce is the one who thinks it's Bane. And they show other people trying to escape and failing, it's the prison's own security system. So they don't need guards, so there is no one there to stop Bruce from trying.
ReplyDeleteThose two older guys that help him out are also prisoners. It's not like they were aligned with Bane, so what the fuck did they care?
For what it's worth, Nolan was interviewed on the BBC on Sunday night and was asked about the ending and why - when he's famed for ambiguity - this ending was so clear cut. He said that since this was the end of the trilogy fans deserved to know for sure how things end up for Bruce.
ReplyDeleteThe Alfred wish theories are cute but nonsense, I'm afraid. Between the auto-pilot, the directions for the Bat Cave, the new Bat symbol on the GCPD roof and the missing pearls that Selina is wearing, I'm not sure why anyone really believed Bruce might not have survived.
Just found this on reddit.
ReplyDeletehttp://i.imgur.com/EI8mN.jpg Give Nolan all the monies to at least produce this.
And how weird and ambiguous was the reason for needing the mask in the first place? A bunch of prisoners attacked him (for some reason, maybe because they wanted to molest the kid, they weren't attacking anyone else for escaping) and beat him not to death, but to the point where he needs to wear an anesthetic mask for the rest of his life. That just doesn't seem to sink up with an ass-kicking, especially not with a guy as tough as Bane. He somehow wasn't crippled and was still a perfect physical specimen, but he just hurt all the time, so much so that he couldn't stand it when a couple of the tubes came loose. Yet, when it showed him after the beating (with the bloody bandage over his face), he wasn't writing and screaming, he seemed pretty chill. And also, there wasn't any gas tank attached, was the mask magically making its own anesthesia? I'm not sure why Nolan couldn't have either fleshed this concept out or just used the venom from the comic book (which would have explained Bane's freakish strength far more adequately).
ReplyDeleteThis isn't stuff just being left to the viewer's imagination, it is wide gaping, festering plot holes that really detract from my appreciation of the elements that did work in the movie.
It was all part of Bruce revealing in various ways to the people who mattered most that he was still alive.
ReplyDeleteThe ending was left to interpretation... though I think the visual Alfred has is possibly in his own mind, I think Bruce Wayne survives as 'The Bat' was on autopilot when the bomb exploded... I presume as much as they kept mentioning 'autopilot'.... so at last it finally worked.
ReplyDeleteAs for John Blake... I doubt he is Robin, he is likely to take over the mantle as Batman and if he ever gets a sidekick he is likely to call him Robin as he has no association with the Robin character in the comics... his character in the movie was loosely based as a sidekick and that might just be a 'nod', but I doubt there was or will be any intention for him to take up that role as Nolan has stated he dislikes Robin and Bale would refuse to do a Batman movie if Robin were to ever appear in one.
Yeah, the passage of time was wonky in the movie. Plus there were a couple of scenes where I was confused about when it was supposed to be set. Like the scene at the stock market I thought took place at opening/lunch and it turns out to have been near closing?
ReplyDeleteNo, I really like that idea, man. It's sort of like the idea that DeNiro doesn't survive the end of the Taxi Driver.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was better than TDK. The Dark Knight drags and is about twenty minutes too long and the whole boat scene just dies on repeat viewings. I absolutely loved TDKR and I'm not ashamed to admit I cried when I thought Bruce had sacrificed himself.
ReplyDeleteI thought Catwoman was pretty fleshed out. She had the sort of Joker backstory where we had vague details and that was enough.
Flair, you're not the first person to say they thought it was the worst of the trilogy. And... have you seen Begins recently? I like the movie, but my favorite thing about it was the promise that followed.
ReplyDeleteSomeday he's gonna have "the" movie that puts him over the top and makes him a mega-star, he's one of the best actors going, even in things like 50/50 that a lot of actors would have sleepwalked through.
ReplyDeleteYeah, if you'd seen Ironman 2 (I hadn't). That's the problem with the Avengers, if you go into it without seeing all of the other Marvel movies you're missing stuff, and some of it is really crucial.
ReplyDeleteThe difference between the two was I never for a second believed Iron Man/Stark was going to die. As I was watching the ending to TDKR I truly believed Bruce Wayne was going to make the sacrifice and that's what drew me in.
Exactly, I remember tearing up watching TDKR and thinking, "fuckin' a, he actually did it..."
It's either going to be Looper or if he ever becomes the new Batman.
ReplyDeleteThe story of the mask was to give Bane some depth and suggest that he wasn't a total monster, just a fanatic (and it adds some depth to his comment on the national anthem). The beating was because a riot had started. I got the sense that Bane was being stoic but was in incredible pain (and the damage to his face caused breathing problems) so the mask was to assist with that and its as self-contained like a rebreather that he changed every day.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed it, it didn't wow me as much as Dark Knight but I didn't expect it would because I doubted anyone would top Heath Ledger's performance. I feel like with this whole trilogy, people have gotten too wrapped up in the comic book movie aspect and not in the stories about living in chaotic worlds with terrorist threats that the Nolans were trying to tell. I don't really care that Catwoman got the final kill on Bane, I don't really care that Batman looked weak, I don't really care whether Bane seemed like a badass at the end. That wasn't the story being told. As for the story as it was, like I said, I enjoyed it. It didn't blow my mind and leave me awestruck the way the last one did, but I didn't completely forget about it the way I did with Batman Begins (which, to be fair, I saw after Dark Knight, so it didn't have the impact it could've).
ReplyDeleteI always feel like people would shrug off these criticisms if the Nolans had made a trilogy of movies about an eccentric billionaire who happened to get trained as a ninja and have access to military-grade spy equipment that fought off charismatic terrorist enemies in a corrupt city, but gave the characters new names and didn't have them wearing costumes and had nothing to do with Batman. Some people just have their own expectations about a "superhero" movie, and can't see past what the Dark Knight trilogy was all about.
I thought the Talia/Bane swerve was to echo the Ducard/Ra's swerve from Begins. People act like Bane had no part in planning what happened. The sense that I got was that Talia had been in Gotham for what; five years? So Bane was not the mastermind behind it all, but certainly wasn't just a goon following orders.
ReplyDeleteI loved TDKR, my favorite comic book movie ever, my favorite of the summer, and my favorite of the trilogy. I know there were some complaints about different aspects but it didn't jar me enough to take me out of the film.
ReplyDeleteI liked that TDKR was actually a wrap up to the trilogy rather than just a third part. I liked the echoing of themes from earlier and that they fleshed out characters in the movie. And I liked little things that I caught the second time I saw it: like the fact that you couldn't make the jump with the rope because it wasn't long enough (remember, there's no despair without hope).
I heard a few complaints about how Blake knew who Bruce was. I took, "once I saw that look... I knew" to be "once I saw that look I realized that the guy with the motive and the resources was Batman", the look was the final piece of the puzzle.
I also didn't take away that Bane was just dumb muscle for Talia. I thought that while he wasn't her equal, he was certainly part of the planning and execution of the scheme. Talia had been in Gotham for five years at that point?
My only gripe was that the movie was unnecessarily long, I think it could of been 2 hours or a little longer and still have the same effect.
ReplyDeleteI was talking to a friend about the movie and my friend remarked that it was funny that no one knew Batman was Bruce Wayne just because of his voice and I said that they knew but just didn't want to admit that it was Bruce and wanted to keep it a mystery(I was led to believe that because if I recall correctly didn't someone flat out just say Batman was Bruce Wayne?).
Also, I want to moment on the Avengers va TDKR debate. I think some of the fan flack for TDKR came from Avengers fanboys who wanted Avengers to "win" the Summer. I liked Avengers, it was a good comic book movie but TDKR was a great MOVIE that was about a comic book character.
ReplyDeleteI think my chief complaints about Avengers was that Loki never struck me as a threat, you couldn't JUST see Avengers, you had to see all the Marvel movies for it to have the same impact, and the film as a whole felt glib and superficial.
If Thor could beat Loki alone, why did I worry about the whole Avengers taking him? I actually thought Batman might die at the end because they're rebooting the series. And I love Whedon and I'm super-happy but the whole script is just quip after quip after quip. I liked it, but I didn't think it had high stakes. Perhaps a little of the hour long alien battle could have been devoted more to character?
Which is not to say TDKR was perfect, I felt like Nolan did a shoddy job of the passage of time and I wanted to see a bit more Batman, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it.
Sure it was PG-13...but one moment the knife is in his mouth, the next he drops dead. I'm semi-intelligent and can figure out what happened...but it's sloppy.
ReplyDeleteWhere did Gordon come from? The truck? Walk me through it. Watch the scene. Batman is on the ground, face up. Joker goon #1 is standing at Batman's 1 o'clock. Joker goon #2 tries for the mask, but gets shocked. Joker laughs at him and stands over Batman, from Batman's 4 o'clock.. Next shot is Gordon standing with a shotgun to Joker's head from JOKER'S 4 o'clock. What happened to Joker goon #1? How did Gordon get past him without alerting anyone? Not a huge deal in the overall scheme of things...but don't tell me Nolan doesn't have his hiccups.
Gordon was driving the truck.
ReplyDeleteI loved it. It's my favorite of the trilogy as a matter of fact. I didn't think it was too long at all. And as for Bane: Holy Shit he was awesome. In my opinion Hardy's Bane was as good as Ledger's Joker. I wont say either was better, but they were on the same level. Hardy captured the sheer menacing presence of Bane, the physicality, the intelligence of the character. Also the voice is a point of contention but I loved it and have been mimicking it for days. The mask was really cool too.
ReplyDeleteAs a wrestling fan I view this film as if it were a storyline. Batman would be the top face in the company who always perseveres(lets go with John Cena) Bane comes in and they immediately establish him as a seemingly unstoppable monster. In their first encounter(match) Bane kicks Batman's ass and breaks him. Holy shit there's a new sheriff in town. Now that Batman couldn't stop Bane, who can? The heel runs a muck over Gotham(WWE) for months beating everyone in his path. In the meantime Batman(Cena) is forced to rebuild himself. Not only his physical well being but him mind and spirit as well. He's never been dominated like that. The new heel(Bane) reveals a plan to destroy the company(city) Who will save the WWE(Gotham)? Batman returns and the big fight(match) Is set. Batman vs. Bane. In this encounter Bane is still dominant, but Batman somehow finds a weakness and uses it to get Bane down. Now in wrestling terms it might be smarter to go the way of Knightfall and have someone else that you want to establish take down the Monster Heel. Oh man, I just layed out how Brock Lesnar's return should have went!
Weren't folks confused how uh, it got back, and survived a nuclear explosion?
ReplyDelete100% agreement.
ReplyDeleteYeah the 165 minute blockbuster is getting ouy of control.
ReplyDeleteSee below. What happened to Joker goon #1 standing at Batman's 1 o'clock? How did Joker NOT see Gordon taking out the goon, while Joker was standing at Batman's 4 o'clock? And if he didn't take out the goon, how did he sneak up on Joker? Meanwhile, Joker is acting like there is no goon #1...again, not a big deal...but Nolan's not perfect and he's not Kubrick.
ReplyDeleteI agree, if they would of ended it at the first fight or somewhere in that area, I would of enjoyed it much more than I did and I enjoyed this movie a lot.
ReplyDeleteMcGruber>batman
ReplyDeleteI think the turn would have been more effective if it happened early to, possibly replacing Selina leading Batman into Bane's trap for Talia doing it. Selina doing it wasn't even that much of a stretch - he asked her to lead him to Bane, so she did. But have Talia kidnapped or something and Batman try to save her, do the reveal there, and now Bane and Talia are revealed as leading the League of Shadows and you don't spend the second half of the movie forcing her, or mentions of her, into every other scene to keep her visible for the big twist at the end.
ReplyDeleteIt actually makes more sense now that I think about this - if things had gone according to plan, Bruce would never have known who Talia really was. He would've been locked in the prison, Gotham would have been destroyed. I assume Talia and Bane were going to die with the city since there was no mention of them having an escape plan. And Bruce never would have known that Talia was Ra's daughter. You'd think if you're going to go through the trouble of destroying a city to honor your fathers work and spite the man who killed him, you'd want that person to be aware who you are and why you're doing it.
Of course now that I think about it the stock market business may have been completely unnecessary to. Did they do it so John Daggett could take over Wayne Enterprises? Because they ended up killing him right after. Did they do it knowing Bruce would get Miranda to take over in his place? Because all they had to do was kidnap three board members and they had the machine. I guess they could have done it so Miranda could take over and then find out where the machine was, but they always could've forced Fox to do it. Actually, why didn't Fox find it odd that as soon as Miranda found out where the device was kept Bane suddenly knew where to find it?
I'm down with that plan, no doubt. Jessica Biel as Starfire?
ReplyDeleteIt's not like the Joker's antics in the Dark Knight didn't rely on contrivances either.
ReplyDeleteBatman vs Bane= Lesnar vs Cena at Extreme Rules.
ReplyDeleteBatman lived.
ReplyDeleteCatwoman was looking for a clean start, and Bruce Wayne has the ability to give her one. Presumably he can give one to himself as well.
He fixed the autopilot, but didn't tell anyone and lied about it just before he goes out in the Bat. He pretty clearly got out of the Bat asap, that shot of him could have been him in an escape pod, met up with Catwoman and went off to start a new life not burdened by their pasts.
The pearls that Catwoman liked were noted to be missing from his personal effects, presumably because Bruce took them and gave them to her. They had a tracking device in them, which explains how Alfred knew where to look.
It's was a happy ending for Bruce. And I don't care that how he got back to Gotham after climbing out of the pit. I just care that he did. Much like I don't care how the Joker managed to escape from the bank at the right time for a gap in the traffic for the bus to fit into, or the various other times in the Dark Knight where he needed to be nearly omniscient. The details don't matter as much when you care about the film.
Mike Stoklasa and Jay Bauman always have some interesting thoughts on movies. Mike is "70 minutes Phantom Menace guy". Their actual discussion starts about 3 minutes in after they've done their little skits they always do.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5hSwnZ7FyY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3awmpoB6sP4
And then Bale regenerated into David Tennant.
ReplyDeleteHow much has The Dark Knight Rises made so far? I'd assume their under what they were expecting due to the Colorado shootings.
ReplyDeleteIt was weird at the midnight showing on Thursday that happened but I went to see it Saturday and you could hear a pin drop when Blake's name was revealed.
ReplyDeleteWithout reading through all the posts, my gripe was that Bane's voice reminded me of a certain Sean Connery impression:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1SvsOWQlAA&feature=youtu.beI had to stifle laughter for Bane's first few lines, and the vibe came and went throughout the film.
I was totally confused because the prison well/cave he had to climb out of looked exactly like the batcave he was in back in Batman Begins. I thought Bane had taken over the batcave.I wish the football scene hadn't been used in the trailers, but I realize they need to show something cool. It was also distracting that the field was so clearly Heinz Field in Pittsburgh and they used NFL player Heinz Ward. They should've tried to be more generic. Minor, but bothersome. Same with how the size of the crowd kept changing with each shot.I think Anne Hathaway nailed it. Great performance. I liked her better than Bane- could his voice been any sillier? Why was he targeting Gotham? Why was he releasing all the prisoners if he's just going to blow everything up anyway? Was he going to just hang around and die when the bomb went off?Between this, Avengers and Spider-Man, New York/Gotham has really taken a beating this summer.This was good, but I thought the other movies were more "fun". I did laugh when Catwoman disappeared and Batman muttered "So that's how it feels when I do it" or something.
ReplyDeleteOr because he wanted to make sure he had a functioning autopilot?
ReplyDeleteYeah, didn't Batman Begins effectively show that Bruce can get from point A to point B without any money?
ReplyDeleteBut the Wire >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Game of Thrones
ReplyDeleteOne move/three parts. The Indiana Jones trilogy suffers from the shitbox that is Indy 4.
ReplyDeleteThe movie tried to do way too much, and forgets crucial things. For instance, we don't really see how anyone is living under Bane's rule, outside of the rich getting pulled out of their houses by the criminals.
ReplyDeleteWell, it's not criminals it's the criminals and the non-rich. People are terrified and living in fear, others are living in the former upper-crust penthouses, people are staying where they can and hoping that the power stays on. You see the St. Swithin's kids, you see the Wayne Enterprises Board, you see the people on trial, you see Selina, Holly, and her friends in those homes. It's martial law.
I thought he'd be Batman, it was just a wink to the audience that his real name was Robin.
ReplyDeleteI'm gonna say it: I liked him better than the Joker. I thought he took the cunning of Ra's Al Ghul and the determination of the Joker and combined them.
ReplyDeleteI thought the action in BB was meh, but I got what he was going for (that the audience is confused as the dudes Batman is taking out) it just didn't work. I liked The Dark Knight's action but there are a couple of times where I'm just like, huh? And then I thought he learned from Inception and really brought that to TDKR.
ReplyDeletePG-13, but yeah, you're right. In fact, that was the one thing that sort of irked me. That moment where the Deputy Commissioner is lying there dead and bloodless. I didn't need him to be covered in gore, but something to indicate he died a violent death.
ReplyDeleteThe doctor was the one who screwed up Bane's operation after the plague riot. When Ra's and Talia came back and cleared out the prison he was left there (I'd assume as punishment). Bane let him live there so he could suffer a long, drawn-out death.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought the reveal played really well the second time. If you watch they never say that it's Bane who climbed out of the pit. Bruce infers that and then it's solidified by the hallucination of Ra's.
I took it as a domino theory. You destroy Gotham you destroy the American Empire.
ReplyDeleteMy one concern about him playing the new Batman: could he pull off Bruce Wayne? Bale didn't just nail everything about Batman (I know some people hate the voice, I love it) but he also nailed Bruce Wayne. I joke that finding out Bruce Wayne is Batman in the DCU is like finding out that Scott Disick is Batman in our world. Bale just nailed the drunken goof that was the public persona of Bruce Wayne.
ReplyDelete"Huh, isn't that interesting. This new vigilante is calling himself Robin and looks like that cop John Blake."
ReplyDelete"Oh, that's interesting."
"What?"
"A cursory file check that literally anyone could do reveals that John Blake's real first name is Robin."
"That has to be a coincidence. No one would be stupid enough to use their real first name as a vigilante".
In a movie about a guy that dressed like a bat the moment that I most had to suspend my disbelief was that Hines Ward was that fast and returning punts.
ReplyDeleteAs for why he targeted Gotham... I feel a bit like David Duchovny in Zoolander, "I literally JUST explained that". He released all the prisoners to take over the city and torment Batman by crushing the city before he burned it to the ground. And yes, Bane and Talia were going to die with Gotham. They were going to be martyrs, like terrorists tend to.
Really? Cause my whole crew facepalmed.
ReplyDeleteTechnically LOTR is six books, with a prequel.
ReplyDeleteYou lie.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's the weakest of the three, it was way too long, but I have some more complaints.
ReplyDeleteNot enough Bat-Man, Bane was a dull, uninteresting villain who never got to firmly establish his character, Blake was an unnecessary role and JGL isn't that good of an actor to justify getting as much screen time as he did. I also dislike how this movie turned the Dark Knight and especially the Joker into filler. I know that Ledger is dead, but...he didn't matter, at all, the best acted and most interesting villain was just a monster of the week. Also, why did they introduce the facts of Batman's fucked up leg and not actually do anything with it later on? It just felt poorly paced and edited. Also Bane's voice sounded so ridiculously VO'd it made me laugh my ass off, I'm pretty sure I heard the sound engineer in the booth next to him chewing on gum.
Good parts, the performances were pretty damn good, as useless as Cat Woman was to the story, Anne Hathaway did a great job with the role, major props. Also, while I thought Tate was completely pointless, her turn was great, dramatic, and played into the whole Bat-Canon and continuity very strong, IMO that was the emotional height of the film.
All-in-all, good solid film and a satisfactory end to the series. I'd give it a B.
Actually, it's not fair to compare a completed show with a currently running one. IMO the Wire is the greatest televised drama EVER and only season 3 & 4 of Breaking Bad have approached the plane of greatness the Wire existed on. Seasons 1-3 of the Sopranos come close though.
ReplyDeleteDifferent kind of suspension. Everyone else in that universe was fictional- except Hines Ward. He stood out like a sore thumb.
ReplyDeleteI was going to post something like this, but I was afraid I was going to beat it into the ground.
ReplyDeleteAnyways, here's an image I made because I was bored.
I didn't see Ancient Aliens (probably the greatest show every made) in that list, so I don't think I can take your opinion seriously.
ReplyDeleteAm I missremembering? (haven't read LOTR since high school) I thought originally it was 1 book that was broken into 3 by the publisher? Are you including The Hobbit and parts of the Silmarillion?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I actually watched BB and TDK before going to see TDKR. I still love BB sooo much. I think it's the first 45 minutes that makes me love that movie so much, plus it had some good laughs and is a bit "lighter" in tone in comparison to parts 2 & 3. However, I do think Bane is way more bad ass than Scarecrow and Rhas.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure each "book" was two separate books. Like the Two Towers had the Rohan shit and the Hobbit shit.
ReplyDeletePatty and Selma dislike this
ReplyDeleteYeah, we never saw Batman until a full hour into the movie. I remember checking the time on my phone. This was more like a Bruce Wayne movie with three Batman cameos. The Michael Keaton one was kinda like that- it felt like we barely saw him in the suit.
ReplyDeleteThe dude has compiled a serious list of great performances. He will be one of the top 5 male leads in the industry within a few years.
ReplyDeleteThey need to do more Plinkett reviews! Love those!
ReplyDelete"Who wants some pizza rolls?"
www.boxofficemojo.com
ReplyDeleteMore than anything, I hate that Bruce Wayne quits being Batman after the events of the Dark Knight. Batman DOESN'T QUIT because a loved one died. Hell, a loved one dying is the reason he's Batman in the first place.
ReplyDeleteBut hey, he doesn't need to be Batman because the Dent Act magically put all the bad people behind bars.
Also, Gordon's letters about Dent being revealed pretty much meant jack shit. I mean, why would anyone believe some random guy who sounds like Sean Connery anyway? "I have a bomb that I'm going to blow you people up with, and by the way, Harvey Dent killed people and was a complete psycho with half his face burned off. It says so right here on these papers I'm holding!"
And also, what exactly makes Blake qualified to be the next Batman?
I don't think the whole subplot with Gordon's letter to Dent needed to happen. JGL chewing out Gordon was pointless and didn't really go anywhere.
ReplyDeleteI don't have as big an issue with Bruce brooding after the events of Dark Knight. He lost Rachel, Gotham was doing relatively well and he was injured. It makes sense to me. Bane was the big bad evil enough to get Bruce out there again.
Second on Bane's death. For how much of a badass he was, it felt way too rushed.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't know what it is but something about Marion Cotillard is just so damn sexy.
I'm with you. I loved Avengers and thought it was fun as hell, but it wasn't in TDKR's league. Nolan has set a new precedent for what a comic book movie can be and I don't know if his Bat films can be matched.
ReplyDeleteThe stakes were definitely much higher in TDKR. Which is funny considering the world was at stake in Avengers and only Gotham was at stake in TDKR. But, Avengers didn't have me believing for one second that anyone was in trouble. TDKR really had me thinking Batman was dead. Like you said, Loki never felt like a real threat. Bane on the other hand, did. I hope Avengers does a better job of building up Thanos in the next one.
I've got nitpicks about TDKR, but I don't even feel like mentioning them because I enjoyed the ever loving fuck out of it, so why bring up all the negatives?
Honestly, that's fine, I think Bruce Wayne is usually much more interesting than Batman, but we didn't see much of Wayne either...
ReplyDelete"Yeah, we never saw Batman until a full hour into the movie."
ReplyDeleteSee also: Batman Begins. I had no issue with it in either movie.
Big Ben, Willie Colon, and a couple of others were there too. Hines Ward with any kind of speed will always shatter suspense-- should've used Mike Wallace!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it was just a quick gag, like Xavier's fondness for his hair in First Class. People are reading too much into it, it's just a touch of levity.
ReplyDeleteShe has a certain elegance that a lot of celebrities lack. Maybe it's the accent.
ReplyDeleteBane's death it just seemed like an afterthought. We see a random blast from nowhere and then Catwoman busts out a quip and it's done. I thought it would have worked much better had Batman had Bane reeling then Catwoman blasts him. Then as Batman is interrogating Bane, Talia stabs him and she tells the emotional story about how Bane saved her. Tear in Bane's eye, sad music, THEN he dies. Would have given him a more memorable demise.
160 in the first week sounds right.
ReplyDeleteIt's the Patrick Bateman experience. I don't know if it's just b/c it's Bale or what but I can't stop thinking during these movies that public Bruce Wayne is Bateman.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I agree. I thought it was pretty cool. Excellent swerve.
ReplyDeletePlus, he had scars all over if you look closely so it was pretty clear that he had overcome great physical barriers to get super jacked.
ReplyDeleteAnyone else catch JGL throwing down his gun after he accidentally shoots the goon via ricochet? Nice foreshadowing there.
ReplyDeleteQuestion for the comics nerds out there: does the JGL character exist in the comics? If so, does he become Robin or Batman?
Also, it really bothered me that Batman didn't train Robin at all. We're supposed to believe he's just going to magically become Batman/Robin without League of Shadows training?!
Similarly, the timeline of Bruce in prison bothered me. Seems like it would take MONTHS to recover from a broken back to the point that he's a physical specimen again. Not weeks. And what about his leg? Did they let him keep the high tech brace in prison?! I think not...
There was an article on gammasquad.uproxx.com that agreed with you. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Begins but I think it's the weakest of the three. It actually didn't have a massive budget (one-hundred and fifty million dollars, so one-hundred million less than the next two) and rewatching Begins it struck me how TDK and TDKR made Gotham feel more like a real city. Begins uses a LOT more constructed sets rather than location shooting and you don't get a sense that it's happening in a real city which lowers the stakes. I think if they had defined Gotham they way TDK and TDKR did the plot would have had more weight. That's why Bane's takeover resonated with me, because this was a defined city with real consequences.
ReplyDeleteI want to talk about what I like most about it because I don't want to seem overly negative. It does a great job of creating a creating a public persona for Bruce that explains how it could cover for Batman. I also love the way it explained how Bruce became Batman and created a template (for better or for worse) that most superhero films are following.
But it's also a film where I got the sense WB had a lot of involvement and I thought that there were some conflicting visions. Also, I'm not a fan of David S. Goyer as a screenwriter and I (rightly or wrongly) attribute a lot of the hokey one-liners to Goyer (since they weren't present in the other two films in the trilogy). I just remember Gordon's one-liner about "I gotta get me one of these!" seeming out of place after the next two films.
But I do love the movie, I just love the ones that follow more and more. I know that it's the first (and so far only) superhero movie where I walked out and was so excited with what came next, and then leaving TDK I was mad I had to wait three (not realizing it would be four) years for the sequel.
What did people think of the MOS teaser? I wasn't blown away and I'm not thrilled at the idea of a Zach Snyder directed, David Goyer written movie. And why is Superman on deadliest catch?
ReplyDeleteSorry, lol, I had to look this up.
ReplyDeleteOriginally, LOTR was meant as a sequel to The Hobbit, which it is. However, Tolkien wrote a massive book and
the publisher broke it into 3, as you know them today.
When reading the books, it seems like it may be separate "books" because of the way Tolkien wrote them. He follows a set of characters to their conclusion practically, rather than interweaving the stories. Obviously for the movies, they did mash it up so it would have a better flow.
Agreed.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't disagree with that. I don't worship at the alter of The Dark Knight either (although I agree that Heath Ledger's performance deserves all the praise it gets).
ReplyDeleteThree volumes, six books, plus the Hobbit and the Silmarillion, but I'm forgetting the last one since it's such a clusterfuck. Oh, and there's like his unfinished writings and notes, but...don't think that counts either.
ReplyDeleteCatwoman defeats Bane.
ReplyDeleteGordon-Leavitt figures out Bruce Wayne is Batman based on "a look".
Gordon-Leavitt's real name is "Robin".
What a terrible way to close out the trilogy.
Terriers or GTFO.
ReplyDeleteI don't find Superman interesting in general but trying to match the "gritty reboot" quality of the Dark Knight Trilogy with Superman is a recipe for disaster. Zack Snyder will almost definitely overdo it on the violence, and the soundtrack will be full of facepalm material. Like, I'd eat my hat without salt if "Superman's Dead" by Our Lady Peace isn't in there somewhere. Or, even worse, "Kryptonite" by 3 Doors Down.
ReplyDeleteHowever it will look good. Snyder has a great visual eye. I effing loved some of the shots in Watchmen.
Wait, you mean that Temple of Doom is the worst of the trilogy, not of all the Indiana Jones movies, right? Because 4 is a steaming turd.
ReplyDeleteActually, Batman defeats Bane until Talia stabs him in the side. Catwoman doesn't physically beat up Bane she shoots him with a projectile that has been shown to blow up cars.
ReplyDeleteAs I said in an earlier post: I took, "once I saw that look... I knew" to be "once I saw that look I realized that the guy with the motive and the resources was Batman", the look was the final piece of the puzzle.
I'll be interested if they nail the idea that Superman is truly alone and carries a burden not being able to help everyone. But like I said, I don't have high hopes based off of Goyer and Snyder's track record.
ReplyDeleteI can't see Snyder overdoing it on the violence because it's a PG-13 movie.
I don't want a gritty reboot, but I hope that they try to ask some interesting questions like Nolan did and actually think about the character. Some of my disappointment was based on Pa Kent's voiceover from the trailer: "You're not just anyone. One day, you're going to have to make a choice. You'll have to decide what kind of man you want to grow up to be. Whoever that man is, good character or bad, is going to change the world." Now, again, this is devoid of context so I could be wrong but based on the Russell Crowe voiceover in the alternate trailer it sounds like there's more moral guidance coming from Krypton dad than Earth Dad. I really hope they'll consider things like how would people react to Superman? How many people would really be rejoicing?
But this is all based off a teaser trailer so I could be WAY off.
*After dosing Miranda's wine with ecstasy*
ReplyDelete"Miranda, I want to see you and Selina... get it on. Come on, it's totally disease free!"
I didn't say Catwoman physically beat up Bane, I said she defeated him, which she did.
ReplyDeleteHad Batman defeated him he wouldn't have been there to get shot by Catwoman in the first place.
The whole point of the movie is to see the hero defeat the villain and he doesn't.
ACTUALLY the whole point of the movie is I make a lot more money than it cost to make. Or, if you're like me and more creatively inclined, it's to tell a good story. And TDKR did, the Catwoman shooting Bane was a great moment that showed she had grown as a character by caring about someone besides herself.
ReplyDeleteA great moment that totally deflated the entire story and made it a pointless affair as the hero doesn't actually accomplish anything other than finally not having to be a hero anymore.
ReplyDeleteAwesome.
One of the things that's been bandied about is that Nolan's Batman is far too grounded to fit into a world where Superman exists.I've never agreed with that, but for anyone that has I can't see how the TDKR wouldn't change your mind.
ReplyDeleteNot only is it over the top, but they recast Batman at the end of the film to make way for someone else taking the reigns behind the camera.Add to that the fact that Nolan did an interview about producing the Batman reboot (the head of WB said he was a year ago, Nolan says he isn't) which might as well have consisted of him saying "Justice League" over and over again, it's clear where it's all going.
You don't think Joseph Gordon Levitt is a good actor? Did you not see Brick, The Lookout, Kill Shot, Hesher, or 50/50? For shame, sir.
ReplyDeleteThat argument sounds to me like you were expecting something completely different than what you should have considering the films Christopher Nolan has been making. It's not about "bad guy gets beat up and superhero gets his big babyface moment", it's a more complex story than that. If you were expecting the Joel Schumacher Batman you maybe should've been watching one of the cartoons, or something.
ReplyDeleteBesides which, Batman doesn't kill people. Why does everyone think "oh no but this time it's okay, because....." He was never going to kill Bane, so what's the difference?
Uh, no.
ReplyDeleteAnd good performance in other movies doesn't mean you're going to do good performances in every movie.
But no, I wasn't impressed with his performance, and whatever charisma is, to me, he didn't have it. I didn't give a fuck about some random schlub cop who's character was just "Orphan, badass".
And then he keeps bugging his eyes out and squealing "What?" over and over again.
ReplyDeleteRespectfully, you should consider seeing him in those films. He's been turning in excellent work for some time now, and certainly has done a lot to shake off his early sitcom origins.
ReplyDeleteTo me, he was (cliched, I know) "the heart and soul of the film," and he and Hathaway were the two best things about it.
Wait, doesn't accomplish anything? He beats the bad guys, saves the city, and comes to peace with his life. You don't think it's good, there's a difference between opinion and fact and it irritates the hell out of me that people don't get that. I went to school for five years for film and if you want to debate technical pieces of the movie, that's where you can get objective. But subjectively, you didn't like it. That doesn't make it a bad movie.
ReplyDeleteReally? Cause I'm pretty sure that was Batman.
ReplyDeleteCatwoman was awesome. For me this movie dragged more than TDK but maybe I was more enamored with the characters of TDK.
ReplyDeleteThis movie was so dark and dingy and depressing until the last 10 minutes. With TDK The Joker popping in and out created a sense of intrigue.
Many times Ive thought "How awesome would it be if Joker had some color as he's laughing maniacally after being thrown into the glass mirror & breaks it". Would have further put him over.
ReplyDeleteWhen Bruce is intimate with Talia the camera briefly catches a similar scar that Bane has all over his body on Talias back. So throughout the movie I was waiting for a reveal that Talia was either Bane's lover or sister or something.
ReplyDeleteStill an enjoyable movie. I particularly liked the Robin part. Just so dark and dreary and depressing before the final 15 minutes where Batman saves the day. It was Passion of the Christ'esque in that they had to bring the viewer to such a low place before the resolution.
I agree Banes voice was silly. In a really weird way, it lent some more intrigue to the character for me since he's such a strong badass. He kind of sounded like a British-Indian dude, I was thinking of a strained version of Pete Postlethwaites ridiculous accent in the Usual Suspects for some reason.
ReplyDeleteI was expecting Batman to defeat Bane, not Catwoman.
ReplyDeleteBut then, I was also expecting a reason for Gordon-Leavitt to suspect Bruce Wayne was Batman outside of a convenient "look" so apparently I was expecting too much.
I didn't say it was bad. As a film it's fine, things happen though most of them are non-sense.
ReplyDeleteWhat did the movie accomplish? Batman can't defeat his greatest nemesis on his own. Gordon-Leavitt is a mind-reader that can figure out anyone's secret based on a "look". Bruce Wayne finally got the hero worship he desperately craved.