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

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

like blade runner, the fifth element borrows a great deal from the airtight garage as well as other moebius & old MH stuff. the original total recall less so, though there's clearly some influence (very poorly articulated, i'd argue).

fwiw, i too was bummed by the boring minority report flatness of the future depicted in the new TR preview. i'd prefer something more colorfully exaggerated, perhaps along the lines of the fifth element.

btw "something you don't know anything about" shakey is which moebius i'm talking about and what parts of total recall i'm talking about

number none did you miss the part where they gang-raped her mom to death and then dragged bane down into the basement, smoked bath salts and snacked on his face?

yeah but it was still quite pleasantly lit

see that's the part that gives you hope, the part that scares the bat

beyond the level of flat visual design there are similar images in moebius and total recall, like the expanding heads, skeleton-view gag, the brain bug in the nose

i think maybe shakey mo is taking the "everything is shit" position and i missed that

btw "something you don't know anything about" shakey is which moebius i'm talking about and what parts of total recall i'm talking about

oh you tease

more lolz xp

just gonna put this Moebius Batman here
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iatdgEyOf_Q/T1tgxTkg76I/AAAAAAAAfoY/tng0KNYTP4k/s1600/Batman+Moebius.jpg

i'm not sure there's a movie that ever nailed that side of moebius

yeah but it was still quite pleasantly lit

^^ nolan in a nutshell!

So Nolan won't direct another Batman film but WILL HE DO NIGHTWING?

A little disappointed by this, truth be told. Fun and exciting but nowhere near as good as the second one.

superman preview looked lame

so bummed about that Superman movie

didn't even get a Superman trailer to complain about

chillwave nostalgia superman

Actually, you know what I did find encouraging about the Supes trailer? It looked nothing like a Zack Snyder movie.

oh i dunno, there's probably a magical owl of gahoole in the fortress of solitude

Saw this tonight. My friend was a bit disappointed, but I really liked it. Felt like there were a few more clunky lines in this ("not every cop!") than the last one. Agree it would have been better not to see what Alfred was looking at. But overall, I thought it was pretty great.

Gordon trying to find the right truck really reminded me of one of the early levels of Jungle Strike on the Mega Drive...

Also thought the supporting cast/cameos were uniformly v good, eg Burn Gorman. He didn't have too exciting a role but that guy just has the most fascinatingly blank face..

This thread -- and certainly this post -- needs to be SPOILER tagged.

- Still not sure how much I'm attracted to Anne Hathaway. Is she nice-cute or a sex bomb? I'll let you guys know when I have the answer. Unbelievably, Catsuit didn't answer the question.

- lol at the heavy handed handling of exposition in the first few scenes "Boy, life sure is peaceful in Gotham since Batman took off for good the past eight years. Yep, with Harvey Dent a hero and Bruce Wayne living in solitude, this city..."

- This was better than I remember Dark Knight being. All the "Harvey Dent was a hero/Batman a villain" subplots were too inside baseball and TL;DR for me. Batman is obviously a good guy, "surely Gotham knows that" I thought. It feels like Ledger's death had something to do with all the confusion between the second and third movies. If they could've used the Joker like they wanted to it would've been seamless perhaps.

- People are bringing up character motivation gaps, and in his review Ebert mentioned Bane's unclear motivation for wanting to destroy Gotham.

In Robert Warshow's 1950s criticism of comic books he specifically mentions the crude way that comics deal with villains, and their reasons for doing evil, as a corrupting influence on the minds of children -- it doesn't promote a nuanced look at the human condition and whatnot. "Evil people are evil because they love to perpetuate evil and create chaos," is as far as the origins and reasons for evil go in these movies. Don't know why Ebert suddenly and only now notices this with comic book villains. As if any of these bad dudes have a complex political philosophy ever.

- The movie's conservative politics. Even if it's just a coincidence that Bane's street team of williamsburg child soldiers resemble Occupy, there's also Cat Woman's "I don't know what your hang up is with using guns" remark to Batman after she saves his life, which felt like a reference and rebuke to every superhero's hypocritical fear of dishing out violence via the bullet.

- How much do you wanna bet Nolan wanted to go with the ambiguous ending, maybe, as someone mentioned, ending the film on Caine's reaction shot, and not letting the audience know if he saw Bruce alive, but then someone took him aside and said "Chris, listen, do you want to spend the rest of your life fielding questions from geeks about whether or not Batman lived or died at the end of the film? And you thought the ending of Inception made your life a nightmare..." And then Nolan went on and made the ending as explicit and "HE LIVES. BATMAN LIVES. BATMAN 4EVER" as he did.

- The ending sets up Nolan to leave as director and continue as producer. Someone else can figure out a way to make the fourth movie work after he wrapped it up pretty neatly. So his legacy as director of the franchise will remain solid but he can still collect that sweet, sweet producer $$$ in the future.

one of the problems w anne is she's nice cute and at worst bitchy princess, cat woman should be lazy sultry sex bomb, anne is petulant and high-strung. maybe she's a reboot too.

exposition = lol old folks ... anyway i thought bane was a basic terrorist, motivated by hazy politics but driven by personal hatred?

anyway ilx aside i don't know that it's necessarily right-wing to call OWS williamsburg child soldiers, a spade is a spade

How much do you wanna bet Nolan wanted to go with the ambiguous ending, maybe, as someone mentioned, ending the film on Caine's reaction shot, and not letting the audience know if he saw Bruce alive, but then someone took him aside and said "Chris, listen, do you want to spend the rest of your life fielding questions from geeks about whether or not Batman lived or died at the end of the film? And you thought the ending of Inception made your life a nightmare..." And then Nolan went on and made the ending as explicit and "HE LIVES. BATMAN LIVES. BATMAN 4EVER" as he did.

I agree, I think that is what happened - the Caine reaction shot would/should be enough, but I have been on the internet long enough to know that there would have been thousands of butthurt "ZOMG DID BATMAN LIVE OR DIE I'M SO CONFUSED" reactions if Nolan didn't make it clear by including the shot of Bruce and Selina.

I can imagine, and I wince, when I think of what the IMDb message board for the movie would be like if they had gone for the ambiguous ending.

one of the problems w anne is she's nice cute and at worst bitchy princess, cat woman should be lazy sultry sex bomb, anne is petulant and high-strung. maybe she's a reboot too.

Who would've been a better casting though? I couldn't think of any Hollywood actresses that would've been better for the role, even with Hathaway's weaknesses. I'll still take Hathaway over sexier beasts like Jessica Biel or ScarJo for that role.

While we're on the subject of Batsex, I was hoping this movie would finally clear up whether Bruce Wayne actually sleeps with those models he is seen out on the town with when he's in playboy mode, or if he casually dismisses them out of the limo ("Get out, get out! it's all an act.") once they're out of the paparazzi's' sight. 'Batman Begins" posed a question I wanted answered.

i've always assumed that batman was essentially asexual and rather misogynist besides.

The movie hews close to comic continuity there, in that the one person he has canonically had sex with is Talia :)

My father referred to "Liam Neeson's character" as Rajon Rondo this evening.

yeah i thought it was a great shoehorning of bane into "the dark knight returns" minus the frank miller shit part

nolan just deep nerd zinged all of hollywood, even w/ ras al ghul hints i didn't see that coming at all

if this doesn't deserve massive spoiler alert i don't know what does

embarrassed by how excited i was to see burn gorman here. also thomas lennon!

thomas lennon played a doctor in memento too, which is really weird and jarring whenever i watch that. is he buds with noles or something???

hathaway's fine or whatever. i mean i dont think shes funny or interesting to watch but the problem is that the character is in there at all. catwoman just takes up space and exists so batman can prove to alfred that hes not gay. she should've been hacked out of the movie and bruce's relationship with talia given more meat - so the reveal at the end might've had some impact, instead of just being an event that happened and that the audience impassively observes

but now she can be in the squeequel