Come anticipate "The Dark Knight Rises" with *BATSPOILERS*

It was ok.

http://news.sky.com/story/962756/reports-10-shot-dead-at-batman-film-premiere

Uh-oh, *someone* only rated it a 7.

Sorry, that's not funny.

Uh, wow, Holy shit at that.

As for the movie itself, kind of a bummer. Anne Hathaway was great, plot was several times more convoluted than necessary; a streamlined screenplay w/ more time spent with the, y'know, characters would have helped immensely. Hints of great atmosphere from time to time. Overall not a patch on TDK, for sure.

That's awful.

But yeah, aside from the awfulness of this shooting, I'm seein this tonight and super-psyched. Have read several reviews (including spoilers, which, if you've got any knowledge of the Batman universe, are pretty predictable and logical) and they all point towards me loving it.

plot was several times more convoluted than necessary; a streamlined screenplay w/ more time spent with the, y'know, characters would have helped immensely.

This pretty much guarantees that I'm going to love it.

Batman Begins is just one of the most superfluous movies I've ever seen. If they felt the need to reference it in The Dark Knight (and they didn't), they could have just put up a title card reading "Bruce Wayne is Batman. You know, Batman".

but they're referencing it a lot in this one apparently

Well that's not good news, as I remember fuck-all about it. To Wikipedia, I suppose.

Opening / origin / reboot (superhero) movies are seldom, in my experience, as good as first sequels; too much context and exposition and scene-setting, not enough actual plot and drama and character. Third movies tend to then over-egg the pudding as a rule. The Raimi Spiderman movies being the QED of this.

I gather bits of this reference BB, in that Bane is another League of Shadows effort to destroy Gotham, but I'm fine with that. Rewatched both BB and TDK over the last week and they both stood up; TDK is better, for me, because it does away with the aforementioned context and exposition and scene-setting.

this movie was nbd

i think at this point we're all familiar w nolan's tricks

so i saw this w/ some friends who got in a rowdy debate about whether it was good or not

- tom hardy's voice and accent. what, like liam neeson's accent was so amazing? does it not make sense that a thug would have a classy voice or is it supposed to be a thought-provoking contrast?

- batman not being a superhero, is that what we really want to see in a batman movie? looking at society instead of just having an action romp?

- action set pieces were dark and confusing with too many fast cuts, too many, not enough, too short or too long, etc.

- why are the female characters in this movie so shallow, compared to the ones in the previous movies? *actual LOLs at this one*

- michael caine and morgan freeman are underutilized in their roles as cranky old british wisdom and patient humble old black wisdom (assume they mean by nolan in this movie and not by hollywood in the last 25 years)

- why is every piece of the dialogue connected to a portentous IMAX shot and a plot event involving inanimate objects and/or vignettes of stock footage city people doing stock city living things, except injected with MEANING

- why so much frosted glass, heavy old corroded metal, concrete, etc

all of which i replied to w/ FFS this is a nolan movie (featuring the usual types of richly detailed / super austere sets that he demolishes rube goldberg-style) and all of the portentous *meaning* it implies

also have you guys ever seen a movie that came out before you were born, and if so didn't you guys graduate college (or high school, as it were) ten years ago?

and didn't you know that this is about as good a version of "dark knight returns" as we can hope for from hollywood and that this bane is a hell of a lot of better than bane from the comics which is pretty damn rare for a screen hero!

i don't know, i don't get movie-going as a hobby. if i went out to eat at a restaurant every friday and it sucked 2/3 of the time i would probably just stop going and watch old movies on netflix and hulu (actually what i do, only see movies in theaters 3-5 times a year) instead of making a big hobby out of going and then complaining about it (people who yelp are scumbags)

i went to see it again this morning in IMAX but it was a madhouse zoo full of elementary school kids and i didn't want to deal with that

so basically no surprises, except this doozy: anne hathaway (who i don't like) not only doesn't suck but she actually steals the show!

she's no michelle pfeiffer ... but who is?

previews were a big letdown ... "neighborhood watch" looks pretty good, sad to see "total recall" looks more "i, robot" / "minority report" than "fifth element"

so basically no surprises, except this doozy: anne hathaway (who i don't like) not only doesn't suck but she actually steals the show!

Yep, and also I hope JG-L sends his agent a very nice gift basket this Christmas.

Did you get the trailer for Affleck's next movie?

oh yes! that looks stellar! i have no joke *deep respect* for clooney as a human being and actor and i'm excited to see him move into production

that said i was shifted around really uncomfortably during that thing, i have bad memories of the hostage crisis

who is jg-l?

Yeah, my family was stationed overseas in 1979 and my dad was in a unit that was likely to be deployed if shit got real. Until the trailer made clear what the movie was going to be, I was like, "Uh . . . this might be kind of a politically irresponsible movie right now?" But it looks cool!

Joseph Gordon-Leavitt.

xp

oh right, the cop. he was *awesome*

i've only seen him in inception but i'll be keeping an eye out for him in the future

i wish they'd used gordon more, but i feel like we have a pretty good read on his character anyway

i think this movie suffers mainly in comparison to the last two, no way anybody could really live up to that joker and the action scenes are just *okay* veering into *stupid* (i.e. flying batmobile dogfights straight out transformers movie)

there's no "mega moments" in this movie. the airplane hijacking was pretty flat compared to the bank robbery in tdk, the climbing-out-of-pit scene was a poor substitute for the part where they are gordon has to drive the joker cross-town w/ batman running interference. also there was no "trippy" part, which i think nolan is good at (thinking like inception dream sequences and/or the ninjitsu-on-shrooms bits from the first one)

i felt better about it when i saw it was clooney because he is v v sympathetic to the political views of our "enemies" in the middle east

i thought it was kinda crummy. its sort of a realization of the caricatured arguments people used against TDK - too long, too serious, too ponderous, etc. i thought the dark knight was fun and exciting! but this was a drag. so long and sloppy. nolan still can't shoot action... theres little suspense or tension, character motivations are often muddled or hidden... catwoman's the first thing that should've been cut

i was really expecting that they were building up to bruce taking a dunk in the lazarus pit to fix his fucked up knees and back, but they pussed out on that. they pussed out on ra's being immortal too, with that stupid-ass fade out to show that hes a hallucination. i thought TKD's tone was appropriate because it was a sprawling crime drama with a cape added, but this should've been pulpier

"total recall" looks more "i, robot" / "minority report" than "fifth element"

because PKD and Moebius have so much in common eh

there's some things to like about it though. bale was surprisingly good, he's usually really boring when he's in action movie mode. hardy's bane voice was a fun and silly little flourish that i liked a lot, but he also did some pretty intense acting with his eyes. i liked how the guys in the worst prison on earth are just like greek pensioners or something... making batman tea on a hot plate... ehh this prison...its not so bad

i thought it was funny when catwoman laid a smooch on bats before he went off to martyr himself for allah, because there was like no chemistry between them before then, and batman basically had a non-reaction where he yanked himself away from her kiss. nolanbot must've been going 'time for some of this "romance" ive been hearing about' but it was so unconvincing

***SPOILER***

the scene where batman's dragging the nuke out to the middle of the ocean seriously made me think of the part from the 60s batman where hes carrying a huge cartoon bomb over his head

Hand it to Nolan, though, for actually, in 2012, going from "Bale and Cotillard kiss and embrace" to "cut to roaring fireplace."

lol

***SPOILER***

the scene where batman's dragging the nuke out to the middle of the ocean seriously made me think of the part from the 60s batman where hes carrying a huge cartoon bomb over his head

― Black_vegeta (Hungry4Ass), Friday, 20 July 2012 20:50 (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

SPOILERRRR
(can we just make this thread all spoilers from now on)
i really thought this bit was gonna be "no sweat i'll just go dump it on brooklyn". on which subject such a weird part of this was seeing New York on screen - thought it was both probably ballsy & super distressing to be shooting downtown manhattan w/smoke pouring out of it, collapsing bridges &c.

found this exciting, partly because of the alternately thunderous & ridiculous score, which with this being a concluding film you get to just have in overdrive, all the time, at the expense of conversation, even over just clerical scenes of morgan freeman talking to bruce wayne. the film wasn't as rhythmically strung together as the last couple, so it felt kinda sprawly, & like we were dipping in & out of threads rather than having to process a lot at once. & i thought nolan coulda listened to some of fitzgerald's advice about killing one's darlings. JLG picking up the bag was dope. the president is surely the least imaginative casting choice in the world, that guy is just forever a senator in something. batman in daylight was generally kinda strange. i have a long thing i can't be quite bothered to write right now about how well the joker clicks with nolan's non-comic-book-Batman universe, & how that dynamic's sorta ruined by a more storybook/less psychological villain - like the joker's character, his various limits and ideology, papers over a lot of the comics-in-the-real-world flaws in a way that a guy who you could just stab in the head doesn't. you know? he makes it metaphysical, & it being physical makes things ridiculous. bain's desire for revolution maybe could've been set up a lil better. MVPs: g oldman + marion cotillard.

but y'know this was fun etc. i wish nolan had stopped just after alfred's last glance, though; from a guy who ended his leo dicaprio movie the way he did i thought he might understand the value of not beating the audience over the head with confirmation of something hinted at.

LOL @ shakey moe, PKD fanboy

lemme guess, the piano was concealing an empathy box

i don't know maybe you thought the visual design for blade runner came from hr giger too

or you forgot the innovative fail that is every straight-faced pkd film

character motivations are often muddled or hidden

i would argue this is not true if you're partial to the "right" comic versions

here's another bit

a bunch of people said stuff about "ambiguous ending"

there's no fucking ambiguous ending, the ending was spelled out in 100 foot high letters called DARK KNIGHT FOREVER

this was pretty bad

and Bane's voice was ridiculous

i liked how the guys in the worst prison on earth are just like greek pensioners or something... making batman tea on a hot plate... ehh this prison...its not so bad

for real. Welcome...TO HELL. Cup of tea anyone?

Anne Hathaway was even better than that time she was a parrot in Rio.

or you forgot the innovative fail that is every straight-faced pkd film

no I just didn't get why you thought a movie should look like Fifth Element even tho it has nothing in common with Fifth Element or its source material

unless you think all sci-fi movies should look the same these days. oh wait they do

(albeit not like the 5th Element)

what would you compare total recall to?

a pile of shit?

for real. Welcome...TO HELL. Cup of tea anyone?

― Number None

but don't you understand, bane already came back and killed all of the bad guys when he "extracted a terrible revenge"

he says it's the worst prison because it will offer him hope

it sure doesn't look like Moebius or Metal Hurlant

xp

okey doke

i don't want to talk about something you don't know anything about shakey

lol

but it looked the same in the flashbacks late great