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

I wasn't really down with The Prestige, but Bowie Tesla was a great source of entertainment

I think The Prestige might actually be my favorite Nolan movie. Having the punchline be "HE WAS TWINS ALL ALONG, IDIOT" is pretty LOL.

That is WHO HE IS.

the prestige owns

Love the Prestige. The punchline is that Hugh has a scientific cloning device. Which I loved. I loved the total dip into fantasy. For better or for worse, Nolan makes movies that seem to be hyper aware they are movies.

Nah that's the first half the punch line -- look at what I sacrifice! Then the second part hits and you realize that possibly cloning/dying is maybe not as bad as Bale's character living half a life the whole time

Em totally didn't recognise bale as the servant dude so she was literally blown-away at that reveal, whereas I'd clocked it was him the second he came onscreen.

Had no idea Bowie was going to make an appearance when we first saw it, and both went, "wait, wtf...? Bowie? No, surely; shit!" cos he was pretty much retired from music by that point as I recall. Had to look up tesla too cos I'd never heard of him so assumed he was made-up.

I keep syaing that all Nolan's films are super conscious of their status as films.

Had to look up tesla too cos I'd never heard of him so assumed he was made-up.

honest to god what the fuck is wrong with you

hey I only know Tesla thanks to (a) the band (b) an old Jack Palance episode of "Ripley's Believe It Or Not"

lol british

I've never come across a band called Tesla nor heard of that TV show, nor am I interested that much in the history of electricity and how the Americans stole it.

and that attitude is exactly HOW we stole it, pal

That and electrocuting elephants

Hey, what was with all the Batman hanging up his cape and cowl nonsense? Was the implication that Gotham was somehow 100% crime free? Since when did Batman not care about petty thieves and criminals?

Also, I can no longer watch Michael Caine without thinking of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFIQIpC5_wY

yeah in the scenes where caine was doing his 'broken voice' i immediately thought of that clip

me too

Me three.

The Prestige is ludicrous but I love it.

SM you should read about Tesla he's fascinating

Hey, what was with all the Batman hanging up his cape and cowl nonsense? Was the implication that Gotham was somehow 100% crime free? Since when did Batman not care about petty thieves and criminals?

His body was badly wounded(presumably from the big fall he took at the end of TDK?) and, being demoralized both by Rachel's death, his failure to save Dent, and the burden of now having his Bat identity's reputation be just as shattered as his Wayne one, he seems to have taken this (consciously or subconsciously) as the cue to retire. I get the impression he convinced himself it wasn't even possible for him to continue. Would have been nice to get some kind of flashback or opening credits montage of the events immediately after TDK; I get the intrigue of starting from "EIGHT YEARS LATER" and piecing it back together, but here it does leave some weird gappy questions.

Oh I've read about him subsequently, and yes, absolutely fascinating.

How comes it's a superhero trope that when the superhero disappears, the criminals wreak unfettered havoc, but not in this movie? (Talking about pre-Bane and his militia). Also, gimpy Batman could still kick criminal butt. And what about other cities? Come on, Batman, show some initiative!

Because Nolan's main thematic arc is that Batman's very presence causes crime; that's what the whole escalation thing in TDK was about; "we but semi-automatics, they buy automatics. We buy bullet-proof vests, they buy armor-piercing rounds".

Yeah, essentially the story they're pitching is that Batman is sort of the brief period of martial law that's "necessary" (or is it?) to kick Gotham out of the cycle of corruption and fear that it was in circa Batman Begins. By The Dark Knight the system is righting itself, Gotham is capable of dealing with the more "ordinary" criminals, but now Batman has stirred up sociopaths like the Joker (and to some extent Bane) whose goal isn't profit or comfort, but to fuck with Gotham and with Batman in particular. Of course, this is undermined by having Ra's and Scarecrow antedate Batman, but you get the idea.

Thinking back on Oldman again, the guy really disappears into a role frighteningly well. Contrasting him in my head in this movie (and the previous two) with, say, George Smiley and on the one hand, yeah it's the same guy playing him but it's almost hard to sense it.

Of course me being me I'm also thinking of the scene where Tom Hardy as Rikki Tarr gets beaten up by Cumberbatch while Smiley watches and now in this film we have Tom Hardy going "Yeah about that" to a cowering Oldman near the start. Kinda. (Also lolling at the idea of Cumberbatch even slightly being able to beat up a Baneified Hardy.)

Ha, yes!

http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/real-message-of-the-dark-knight-rises.html

"There is, however, one strain of thought that runs consistently through not only TDKR but the entire trilogy: an almost pathological New York–centrism. All three movies are about powerful criminal gangs that are fanatically devoted the reducing the quality of life in one particular municipality, Gotham, which is obviously New York City.

Two unstated assumptions are at work here: First, there is no point in unleashing this sort of hell on any other city, despite their being softer targets lacking superhero protection. And second, at no point can things get bad enough that the people of this city will actually, you know, leave. They can endure blackouts, nerve gas attacks, sadistic attempts to make them kill each other, and evil clown rampages, and they will simply think to themselves, “This is pretty bad, but what am I going to do, move to Jersey?” In this way, the Dark Knight trilogy is merely the flip side of a Nora Ephron movie."

At what point did Gary fucking Oldman become so avuncular? Was it Harry Potter that did it?

xpost -- Thing is, as I understand the numerous comic arcs that Nolan's movies have drawn from, that kind of obsessive focus/inability and-or lack of desire to leave is essentially built into the premise. There's always going to be a lot of people in Gotham, shit happens of all kinds over the decades, there's no sense of people leaving en masse. I figure if you know this, you're not surprised at Nolan's use of it; if you don't know this, you are or can be.

Bar Pompeii, has any city in world history ever suffered people leaving it in this way?

xxp except in the last movie (and in the comics) where it's obviously Chicago.

Gotham is actually in Jersey in the DC universe funnily enough

TDKR has it in 'Gotham State,' I noticed.

does NYC event exist in DC? where's metropolis anyway

*even

do you love all my remedial nerd questions itt

I think the inference in this one is that people would get tae fuck if it wasn't for Bane finally taking the action people have been calling for re: the Bridge & Tunnel crowd.

They change the locations all the time but i think Metropolis is in Delaware or something. New York (rather stupidly) does also exist

Also, there are lots of shitty cities that people still live in in the real world, because moving is expensive and difficult, there aren't jobs to move to, they own the house and can't find anyone to buy it because the city sucks so bad, whatever.

Bizarrely, in DC continuity (at least at one point?), Metropolis, Gotham, and Manhattan were all adjacent to each other. Like, Gotham just replaces Jersey City and Metropolis replaces Queens, or something. Love the DCU.

delaware lol gtfo

"Metropolis is NYC by day, Gotham is NYC by night"

But yeah I think they've been understandably cagey about where exactly the cities are.

looks crowded
http://www.karridian.net/images/dc/dcusa_ne.gif

At least in the 60s TV series it was clearly Gotham, California

Hmmm, things have moved around then, or my info was wrong to begin with. Is Coast City still blown up?

marvel doesn't have fake cities does it? besides like asgard or w/e

kind of an iatee vibe on that map

that's from The Atlas of the DC Universe from 1990. Coast City has been rebuilt i think

Marvel has some made-up towns and plenty of fake countries, but they just use New York as their "big city" setting pretty much. The Great Lakes Avengers were based in Milwaukee I believe.

Marvel's New York is absolutely crawling with superheroes. Some of them should move out

For a while a few years back they were doing a like "fifty state initiative" thing, where every state would get a super-team assembled for it by the government. Around the same time, the X-Men decamped wholesale to San Francisco, whose open-minded leftie government invited the mutant freaks to town to be their new super-cops. It was a fun idea, sort of diluted in the execution.