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

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

what's the scene in the cafe like at the end? from reading about it it sounds great! like a.. heartwarming, romantic finish after all that grimness.

Yeah, I'd cosign that description.

I don't know many non-fictional people with a complex political philosophy, to be honest. Villains usually have some motivation or other, the Batman films have just had Ra's as generic Kill-The-West terrorists and Joker as an amoral psychopath. Bane and Talia are pretty well-definted by comparison - she's revenging her father, he's dopey about her.

Massive massive spoilers in my 2000 word blog post about being mildly disappointed on first viewing - http://sickmouthy.com/2012/07/21/the-dark-knight-rises-disappointing/

One last dumb complaint spoiler

Bane was less intimidating and became a second banana with the introduction of Talia. You're hoping for a clever or thoughtful way for Batman to get the upper hand on a guy who seems every bit a stronger fighter than Batman, but when they finally have a rematch Bane's just no longer the better fighter -- that's it! On any given Sunday anyone can defeat anyone, I guess. Oh, and Batman figured out to punch him, literally, in the mouth (that weakness reminded me of that scene in Dumb and Dumber, when they're discussing Harry wearing a bulleproof vest: "But what if he shot you in the face??") And, of course, Bane is eventually taken down by a bullet. Although that seemed to be less of a bullet than the kind of laser beam blast that fired out of "guns" in children's cartoons in the 80s and 90s. It's just classic comic book arbitrariness when it comes to violence and injury. It's a lot like pro wrestling in that regard (why is Shawn Michael's kick to the face so much more devastating than another wrestler's kick? Because Shawn Michael's kick is a Finishing Move, that's why).

When I'm sitting in the theater none of these complaints seem reasonable -- I'm not sure I even think of them or notice them until later. I'm having just good clean fun, generally. It's related to the part of my brain that, if I stumble on a Toys R Us in a foreign part of the city, says "All right! Found a toys R Us!!" and only a second later, after gaining my compusure, does it tell me "You're a grown man and that store offers nothing to you any more." suspension of disbelief and intelligence maybe.

Bane was a fun villain, and a great contrast with the Joker. Fun popcorn movie. All of the IMAX stuff looked great.

Definitely fun, some very exciting scenes, but ultimately a little disappointing because it's not as good as the first two, the emotional beats weren't there. Hardy was great. Hathaway was all right, exceeded my expectations. I hardly consider it a curse to be in the same company as Return of the Jedi, trilogy-wise.

(Also yeah the politics are a little 'HRM')

Bane was less intimidating and became a second banana with the introduction of Talia. You're hoping for a clever or thoughtful way for Batman to get the upper hand on a guy who seems every bit a stronger fighter than Batman, but when they finally have a rematch Bane's just no longer the better fighter -- that's it! On any given Sunday anyone can defeat anyone, I guess. Oh, and Batman figured out to punch him, literally, in the mouth (that weakness reminded me of that scene in Dumb and Dumber, when they're discussing Harry wearing a bulleproof vest: "But what if he shot you in the face??") And, of course, Bane is eventually taken down by a bullet. Although that seemed to be less of a bullet than the kind of laser beam blast that fired out of "guns" in children's cartoons in the 80s and 90s. It's just classic comic book arbitrariness when it comes to violence and injury. It's a lot like pro wrestling in that regard (why is Shawn Michael's kick to the face so much more devastating than another wrestler's kick? Because Shawn Michael's kick is a Finishing Move, that's why).

Yeah, I hoped they were going to do the dynamic of the Mutant Leader fights from DKR where Batman loses the first fight because he fights angry and wins the second one because he fights like an absolute cunt. I guess he could maybe have used his bionic wall-destroying foot to kick Bane in the face at some point?

Watched this in a small cinema for £5, but the sound system was so bad I could make out like 30% of what Bane said; thought he had a double-tracked Neesonvoice at first. Bane and Two Face both had some anticlimactic fuckin deaths man

I hope Cillian Murphy just gets to turn up and be a jackass for 2-3 minutes in every movie from the next batch too

Yeah, I hoped they were going to do the dynamic of the Mutant Leader fights from DKR where Batman loses the first fight because he fights angry and wins the second one because he fights like an absolute cunt. I guess he could maybe have used his bionic wall-destroying foot to kick Bane in the face at some point?

given that it was probably not realistic to expect them to use Sting vs Vader as the template, I mean

o yeah, how did Wayne get back into locked-down Gotham?

He's the goddamn Batman, how do YOU think he got back into Gotham?

under an aid truck probably

that's some pre-batman league of shadows basic skills

and batman is better than bane when he comes back because it's all about facing your fear and believing in what you're fighting for maaaaan

also, he wasn't all throwing himself willy-nilly at him like he did the first time. bane totally pulled a rope-a-dope the first time, then just hit him really fucking hard!

bane might not be dead

you're right about two face! how did he die, anyway? did gordon shoot him?

bane is muhammad ali

two face already had severe trauma, was running around with half a face, then fell several stories on to uneven ground!

It felt slightly ambiguous whether Dent died or not at the end of TDK, if the funeral service was fake, etc. but I'll chalk that up to the filmmakers not being sure if they were going to use him again. If they were able to get Ledger back they probably would've gotten Eckhart back too...

I always just thought it was funny how a (gunshot-wounded?) batman survived that fall but the insane villain didn't

also of the three other villains up to that point two just went to jail and one was an immortal who blew up off screen so I maybe wasn't sure where the bar was for villain deadness

Will Smith as Ali would've been a great Bane.

i think liam can keep coming back dead jedi style and we can chalk it up to ninja hypnosis.

i say keep two face locked up and bring back a new joker

bane eventually became an antihero, right?

maybe in the universe where he never became a scientologist

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/528866_268228676610276_712433066_n.jpg

and batman is better than bane when he comes back because it's all about facing your fear and believing in what you're fighting for maaaaan

― the late great, Saturday, July 21, 2012 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://gifsoup.com/webroot/animatedgifs/267298_o.gif

they shouldnt have cut the part where batman tebowed after climbing out the pit

for the first few minutes of that airplane scene i was like, wait, why is rand paul in this movie

overhyped scene imo

that was carcetti from the wire, dude

overhyped scene imo

― the late great, Sunday, 22 July 2012 06:36 (3 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah, there wasn't one memorable set piece in this thing

Okay I'm glad someone mentioned Cilian Murphy.

Saw it last night in one of those fake IMAX setups. Loud, of course.

Anyway, couple of muddy soundtrack/dialogue moments aside, rather loved it. Was bemused by Nolan/Goyer overegging the French Revolution referencing with the Dickens quote at the burial from Gordon.

Also didn't expect (therefore appreciated) that when Alfred left he actually left instead of returning with thirty minutes to go or something.

that was carcetti from the wire, dude

― hot sauce delivery device (mh), Sunday, July 22, 2012 3:23 AM (6 hours ago)

yeah i know i figured it out after a minute, couldn't place him at first. they do kind of look alike!

Also didn't expect (therefore appreciated) that when Alfred left he actually left instead of returning with thirty minutes to go or something.

usually happens at night

instantrimshot.gif

Catwoman's sidekick seemed pretty underdeveloped. Does she exist in the comics?

Not as far as I know, but she's played by Juno Temple from Dirty Girl, and Chloe Grace Moritz and Jennifer Lawrence both auditioned for the role!

Yup, she was in the comics, I think she originated in Batman: Year One

it's not as good as the first two, the emotional beats weren't there

throw those beats u know where

Still kind of amazed my joke about Bane taking over the Wayne company ended up actually making it in the film

I liked this, as with the last one it could've been shaved down by about 20 minutes, but I thought it was a pretty satisfactory way to wrap the trilogy. Sure, some clunky Nolan dialogue moments, but nothing enough to ruin the film for me. I think what surprised me the most was that I didn't hate JGL in this as I expected and Hathaway did a pretty good job in her role.

Ended up having to see this again with another group. More thoughts spoilers

- They're are a lot of bad performances from the actors with bit parts. This feels like one of those movies where many of the "one-line" roles were given to people who were owed a favor or were friends with someone, and so you get non-actors overacting and blowing their one line. That, or Nolan doesn't do a good job getting performances out of actors who aren't seasoned pros or loose canons are going to do their own thing anyway. Maybe both.

- The redneck sheriff who chases after Batman during the bank sequence reminded me of the redneck sheriff in the boat chase of "Live and Let Die."

- The Russian prisoner who's lived half of his life in the Great Pit of Carkoon (Star Wars joke for you there) has been modernized enough to call Bruce Wayne "a man of privilege." Odd euphemism.

i thought ut was all very james bond

Sicinski:

And all this over Christopher Nolan! One thing that comes across when you really look at The Shining or any Kubrick film is that, micro-manager or not, the guy was weird. Part of the reason one can groove on both his technique and his minutiae is that there are off-kilter line readings, unmotivated zooms, singular, indelible images throughout his oeuvre. (Needless to say, the same is true of Hitchcock.) PTA and Fincher vary from film to film, of course, but what I’m talking about here, if you’ll forgive me for being reductive, is poetry. It is certainly possible to see these directors as fetish-filmmakers, and to make fetishes out of them in kind. But one’s appreciation will almost inevitably open along those fault lines, those textual hiccups where sounds and images make a different form of sense, one irreducible to lockstep narrative logic. Is this something anyone can say about Nolan, as a general rule?

...If I might be so gauche as to state the obvious, we are well past the era when the default notion of “art” can be expected to be culturally oppositional. As there seems to be not only less and less of an outside to neoliberal capital, but less and less of a space for imagination of an outside, many of us can conceive of cinema only as the Will to Power. That is, we find ourselves looking for signs of big money, friction-free, exacting masculinized, motorized one-size-fits-all allegorical hollow-tip mega-narrative at the undifferentiated mass, without the unalloyed expenditure of poetry. If we all get behind this, if we keep this Bat-Signal 100% Fresh and punish anyone who introduces the “noise” of a contrary expectation, we could treat every day in our democracy like it’s Halloween.

http://cinema-scope.com/currency/sifting-through-the-guano-christopher-nolans-the-dark-knight-rises/

I and every other critic knew he or she was setting themselves up to be pilloried, insulted, even “threatened” (after a fashion—I mean, like the Legion of Combox Doom actually knows how to find Marshall Fine, much less throw a punch)

"Arts critic as Internet hardman" is NAGL.

yeah i am kinda w/him on some of that. brody is on the same wavelength:

There are no moments of affecting plainness—a person walking unportentously or even moving with any sort of undetermined impulse, instinct, or distraction. (See the head toss at 1:17.) Yet, at the same time, the movie is surprisingly, blandly uninflected, devoid of anything off center or disproportionate—or even incisively angled or hysterically restrained—that would elicit a feeling of synaptic leaps, of subjectivity made physical.

... The film may have been made in part on location in New York, but nobody is in danger of getting dog poop on their shoes. Neither on the grand nor the intimate scale does the movie allow for accidents or coincidences. Gotham is the city without serendipity.
xp

Anyway

http://banescoat.tumblr.com/

not as good as hitchcock? you don't say!

the 'occupy' inspiration was just the worst thing, not sure a comic book movie could possibly be more out of touch