[SPOILERS] The Dark Knight Rises (2.0)

HJackson wrote:

Control wrote:

I wouldn't have minded if we get a glimpse of Alfred at that table, looking across and smiling, without showing Wayne. Then, anyone who had been paying attention would have caught on that he spotted Wayne, instead of blatantly showing him there with Selina Kyle. Pretty half-witted

The entire film is half-witted. Three hours of the stupidest shit I've seen in a cinema in a long time. Really drive home that Wayne survived, but please don't bother to explain how he got half way around the world and into a city disconnected from the rest of society, after escaping such a hellish prison (replete with flat-screen tellies and Doritos). Please don't explain how you can fix a broken back by punching it. Please don't explain how Bane knew the location of Wayne's top secret armoury. Please don't explain why every single police officer (sorry, 'not all of them...') piles into a small cramped network of tunnels. Were the Nolans drunk when they wrote this film?

I've heard it argued that Nolan had long since lost interest in the series and just made the third out of contractual obligations. The quality of the screenplay sure suggest there is some merit to that story.

More generally speaking, I believe we can now conclude that the entire series has yielded just one decent film (the first). The second one was a mess that was somewhat saved by a single performance that was hugely overrated in itself. The third felt like Nolan and co throwing shit up against the wall and seeing how much of the excrement would stick.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

I think he only dislocated a vertebrae.

Which you can't punch back into place.

Almost certainly not (I do think that with dislocated vertebrae, they do move it back into place without surgery), but this is a comic book movie.

Harmsway wrote:

.... but this is a comic book movie.

Same old excuse.

Salomé wrote:

HJackson wrote:

Control wrote:

I wouldn't have minded if we get a glimpse of Alfred at that table, looking across and smiling, without showing Wayne. Then, anyone who had been paying attention would have caught on that he spotted Wayne, instead of blatantly showing him there with Selina Kyle. Pretty half-witted

The entire film is half-witted. Three hours of the stupidest shit I've seen in a cinema in a long time. Really drive home that Wayne survived, but please don't bother to explain how he got half way around the world and into a city disconnected from the rest of society, after escaping such a hellish prison (replete with flat-screen tellies and Doritos). Please don't explain how you can fix a broken back by punching it. Please don't explain how Bane knew the location of Wayne's top secret armoury. Please don't explain why every single police officer (sorry, 'not all of them...') piles into a small cramped network of tunnels. Were the Nolans drunk when they wrote this film?

I've heard it argued that Nolan had long since lost interest in the series and just made the third out of contractual obligations. The quality of the screenplay sure suggest there is some merit to that story.

More generally speaking, I believe we can now conclude that the entire series has yielded just one decent film (the first). The second one was a mess that was somewhat saved by a single performance that was hugely overrated in itself. The third felt like Nolan and co throwing shit up against the wall and seeing how much of the excrement would stick.

That explains a lot. I agree that Ledger was the best thing in The Dark Knight. Should probably give Batman Begins a watch.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Same old excuse.

Yep. And you either buy that excuse or you don't.

And Batman's back-healing is so blatantly preposterous that I think it's actually one of my favorite elements of the story; it's as if Nolan finally began dropping all these "realism" pretensions with THE DARK KNIGHT RISES and actually starts reveling in the pulpiness of the material (see also Bane's preposterously over-the-top line readings and Catwoman's Newmar-esque outfit).

I can see why someone would hate that element, of course. And it's only one of many, many significant plot holes (i.e., Blake somehow figuring out that Gordon will come down the spillway, which is edited terribly and would make little sense even if it was edited correctly). But Wayne getting his back healed by some crazy guy in a backwater prison who punches his vertebrae back into place? That's the kind of crazy I actually like.

A friend of mine suggested that the prison could have possibly been Nolan's version of a Lazarus Pit, which would perhaps explain how Bruce's back healed after only a few months.

Hmmm, I doubt that is the case, why would he suddenly go to allegorical constructs after painstakingly insisting he wants a more realistic superhero experience for all those years?

I never viewed Nolan's films as entirely realistic. Grounded for sure with a realistic aesthetic, but there were always goofy comic book moments in these flicks that always suggested Nolan wasn't entirely for pure realism.

I think RLM makes a great point that these films are less about plot and more about feelings.

More like "feeling".

Harmsway wrote:

And it's only one of many, many significant plot holes (i.e., Blake somehow figuring out that Gordon will come down the spillway, which is edited terribly and would make little sense even if it was edited correctly).

I found the whole film to be made up of those sorts of moments, which became troubling quickly. The plot kept turning entirely on coincidences and implausibilities. Strange to say about a film apparently in development since 2008, but I think it could have stood a rewrite.

Python wrote:

I think RLM makes a great point that these films are less about plot and more about feelings.

But not character and atmosphere, which is what Burton excelled at.

Burton's films were a good exercise at those, but that's all.

There's a brilliant Batman film between the Burton and Nolan films somewhere.

Come to think of it, it's MASK OF THE PHANTASM.

MASK OF THE PHANTASM is still my favorite Batman film, and the ANIMATED SERIES, on the whole, is the all-time greatest adaptation of a comic book superhero. I doubt we'll see its like again. Oh, and Shirley Walker's Batman theme is still the best one ever written for the hero.

Louis Armstrong wrote:

Harmsway wrote:

And it's only one of many, many significant plot holes (i.e., Blake somehow figuring out that Gordon will come down the spillway, which is edited terribly and would make little sense even if it was edited correctly).

I found the whole film to be made up of those sorts of moments, which became troubling quickly. The plot kept turning entirely on coincidences and implausibilities. Strange to say about a film apparently in development since 2008, but I think it could have stood a rewrite.

I think the problem probably lays with the original draft's length: 400 pages. Whittling down a script of that length to the length of 150 pages or so is going to result in a lot of compromises. And yep, they are abundant (though I do think the film's script tries to address some of the talking-point complaints). Another weird one: Gordon claims that confronting Bane and dying at his hands would show Bane's "true colors." Bane already killed the mayor and Dr. Pavel in the stadium in front of everyone. I don't think anyone is going see Bane killing Gordon as some kind of break with his pattern here.

More here:
http://www.jest.com/article/185011/dark-knight-rises-newspaper-headlines

I've been going to a chiropractor lately. I'll just find a 60 year-old prison inmate to punch me in the spine and hang me from the ceiling.

Hopefully a big screen TV's nearby.

Control wrote:

Hopefully a big screen TV's nearby.

Bane has a connection in the Geek Squad.

Control wrote:

More here:
http://www.jest.com/article/185011/dark-knight-rises-newspaper-headlines

TBF to that ridiculous sequence, he didn't return in "days", but months. Doesn't make it any less dumb, but they themselves are using hyperbole in their mocking.

It could've been worse -- they could've used the method his back was healed in the comics: a hollistic doctor who is in love with Bruce Wayne uses her latent telekinetic powers to heal his spine, but the resulting drain of energy reduces her mind to that of a child.

How much of the film was derived from the comics?

Control wrote:

How much of the film was derived from the comics?

Bits and pieces. It's a patchwork of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, KNIGHFALL, and NO MAN'S LAND, aside from the ending, which is unique to Nolan's vision.

Fairbairn-Sykes wrote:

It could've been worse -- they could've used the method his back was healed in the comics: a hollistic doctor who is in love with Bruce Wayne uses her latent telekinetic powers to heal his spine, but the resulting drain of energy reduces her mind to that of a child.

She becomes Chris Nolan?

Harmsway wrote:

Control wrote:

How much of the film was derived from the comics?

Bits and pieces. It's a patchwork of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, KNIGHFALL, and NO MAN'S LAND, aside from the ending, which is unique to Nolan's vision.

I finally saw it today ... loved it, almost unequivocally ... but I was wondering about Bane's backstory as it was first presented, when he is the one down in the mineshaft who gets out. Is THAT from the comics?

If so, then I'd say John Logan appropriated it wholesale for STAR TREK NEMESIS, because all this 'young child down in the hole who would have been killed if not for the powerful benefactor' aspect IS Shinzon and his Viceroy (Ron Perlman) in NEMESIS.

Either that or Nolan is too heavily influenced by Logan, something I just cannot bring myself to consider as possible, not even if all possibilities get their own quantum timeline.

Kept me thinking of Bond movies from LTK to (obviously) TWINE, but also found myself alot more emotionally engaged throughout most of the movie. When Blake does the mychildhood bit,, it actually got to me, whereas I always find these kinds of scenes cringeworthy. Caine amped it up a little much, maybe to compensate for not being in much of the show, but that kind of smacked of YODA fading out in JEDI, that they just had to clear the deck of a character or two and didn't have another plotline to toss him into (don't exactly see him and Lucius Fox doing buddy movie stuff together, but maybe in the spinoffs?)

Got to hear Bale make the kind of noise that Bond should have made in the CR torture scene, which was good. Think that perhaps Gordon SHOULD have died for his sins, but making him live may be torment enough.

Contrary to a lot of folks I'm reading online this afternoon, I found act 3 damned near perfect. I was especially impressed with the flying Bat in both daylight and night scenes, very few telltales to distract.

My sole GEEZUSCHRIST! moment is when Batman helps Selina out early on and flies off, when he could have just dropped his plane on Bane and ended the movie right there, saving thousands of lives. I know Batman doesn't kill and that you need to put everybody in the city through a wringer to make a movie, but just shooting that scene differently, with the Batplane just whizzing away instead of hovering right over the baddie first, would have kept me from getting pissed at the movie in the way I get when Nick Nolte gives up his gun in 48HRS (when ANYBODY gives up his gun in a movie, to tell you the truth.)

If it is true that they weren't laying a path for the sequels to follow, then Nolan & co are to be commended for weaving things together in a way that doesn't play like JEDI with a ritual and dogmatic dotting of Is and crossing of Ts. The points get made, but they're not screamingly obvious (note that they didn't need to run the BB Raz quote about 'becoming legend' when the BatStatue is unveiled ... glad they didn't hit THAT one over the head.)

Hathaway and her character were a total and welcome surprise (up until act 3, but that's okay.) I thought having her and Marion in the same movie would be like having Meryl Streep playing a scene with Talisa Soto, circa 1989, but I'm happy to be wrong on that one, and she didn't look like she had dieted her curves off, which would be a relief if I hadn't seen even more recent pics of her that made me ill with the apparently deliberate starvation. If she keeps the weight off, any Catwoman sequel would have to be called MRS MACHINIST.

trevanian wrote:

I finally saw it today ... loved it, almost unequivocally ... but I was wondering about Bane's backstory as it was first presented, when he is the one down in the mineshaft who gets out. Is THAT from the comics?

Not really. In the comics, Bane does come from a prison, but the character of that prison, as well as its connection to the "al Ghul" family was invented by Nolan.

trevanian wrote:

Hathaway and her character were a total and welcome surprise (up until act 3, but that's okay.) I thought having her and Marion in the same movie would be like having Meryl Streep playing a scene with Talisa Soto, circa 1989, but I'm happy to be wrong on that one, and she didn't look like she had dieted her curves off, which would be a relief if I hadn't seen even more recent pics of her that made me ill with the apparently deliberate starvation. If she keeps the weight off, any Catwoman sequel would have to be called MRS MACHINIST.

She lost all her weight to play a starving prostitute in the upcoming LES MISERABLES. She says she misses her DARK KNIGHT RISES figure.

Saw this again yesterday ... found myself pondering on how its basic plot (megalomaniac threatens a heavily-populated area with nuclear devastation) used to be a Bond staple, but they seem to have found it passe in recent years. Interesting, given that DKR could well be the biggest box-office movie of the year.