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

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/714f131866/bane-after-batman

easy joke but i love it

Saw this yesterday - I enjoyed it! I wasn't expecting to. Didn't really expect to. Bane had seemed a poor choice villain for a concluding film (surely you want someone more iconic), and I found both previous films impressive but tiring, to slightly different degrees.

But Bane worked for me as a figure of super-competent and direct brutality, at least initially. I liked the quick destructive directness of his chaos. I even quite liked his voice, esp as an almost parodic emulation of Bale's absurd growl (one of the things that has irritated me most about the films). I agree with everyone who's said Bane's conversion to Miranda's butler was disastrous; she was roundly dreadful as character and actor, and his relegation to protective beefcake rather than a grotesque combination of mastermind and brutal thug was bizarre and idiotic. That combination of fearlessness and super-competent strength fit in well with him climbing out of the pit and the change makes a retrospective nonsense of the rather impressive 'You only adopted the darkness, I was born in it' speech. In all other respects this film was the equivalent of a juggernaut going through a long slo-mo crash, grinding its way through all obstacles, sparks flying out everywhere, until it comes to a halt just before the hospital or cliff edge - did Nolan really want a totally pointless twist that much? It almost mattered, but by that stage there were only a few more steps to get to the finale so it didn't have time for it really to take the wind out of the sails.

I don't really agree with Soto upthread where he says that Wayne/Batman/Bale is null. I think as much as can be expected for a comic book superhero, the humanising of Batman in a context of Wayne's specific attributes worked. In fact it worked far better than I expected, in that I didn't really mind that long sections of the film didn't have any Batman in. It seems reasonable to see BB as illustrative of the building up of Wayne's psyche, TDK as the analysis of that psyche, and TDKR as looking at Wayne himself and the death of Batman. As others have pointed out, everyone seems to know who Batman is, this is about Wayne/Batman coming together, not being kept apart, so much that like someone else upthread, I was surprised when they did the reveal to Gordon (not much of a detective are you?). But, yes, I liked Bale in this, the vulnerability of age suited him as both Wayne and Batman well. Can never quite stop hearing him going LA-DA-DA-DA-DA when I see him on screen, but you need a bit of light relief in a Nolan film.

I thought BB was quite boring, mainly because I don't buy Batman in the context of international conspiracy, esp not some ninja gentlemen's club - now Ras Gul was a shit villain - he always seems better as a fighter of exotically loopy gangsters rather than international mystical terrorists, and that's a bit of a problem here as well.

TDR was clearly much much better, but I was surprised at how angry I felt at the whole panopticon thing being used once and once only at the end. Surprised because I didn't think the politics wd offend me, but the 'it's ok in certain circumstances' combined with the generally pompous nature of Nolan's films, had me leaving the cinema very angry, and I didn't expect to be bothered by politics in a comic book film (shd I be worried that it was the pragmatism, not the crypto-fascist tyranny of violence that annoyed me? No, this is a superhero film, cftv is what it's all about).

But any politics here were so totally confused as to have no meaning, I think. I admit feeling slightly uneasy where you've got the police running into a civvy mob, where the police represent decent humanity, and the civvies represent yahoos. (There's another line isn't there? 'We've got 300 men down there', '3000 police men'. Because they are better than people.)

I'm not really that interested in plot holes (felt the same about the picking at Prometheus - admittedly a film so bad by the end that it deserved to have any threads that led you to its climax unraveled and held up to scorn). I don't mind because it doesn't really seem to me to be important that it's inexplicable how people get from one place to another. It's necessary to have Bale climbing out of an impossible pit, so he can confront his demons, discover Bane's weakness, and get back to Gotham to do something about it. I think films that try to make good these gaps are often laborious, tho in films dealing more in realistic scenarios it becomes more important. Nothing about the plot holes destroys the universe.

(There is one disastrous exception to this, so brutal that it offends decency, which is the Indiana Jones Crystal Skull movie, where, to take the most egregious of many examples, at one point Ford is desperately riding on a motorcycle beside a train which has his son in and without any rational conclusion to the scene it suddenly cuts to them sitting in a smalltown bar having a chat. At the very least in an action movie you need to take the action to a conclusion).

I'd generally no more complain about some of the logistics and motivations of the film than I would Wayne's butler Alfred being able to get the same table at a busy Florentine bar every year. What can destroy the universe are things that offend the poetry of the piece - here the Bane/Miranda thing being a huge example (sorry, it feels ugly to use the word 'poetry' in relation to something so monolithic and unrelenting). But I think generally Nolan gets it exactly right, which is why despite all the many annoyances and absurdities, the film works. I didn't like Inception (probably hadn't helped that I'd just read a book - The Arabian Nightmare - that dealt with the same subject much much better, and in fact is briefly referenced in the film). But for all the pompous seriousness that does so much to make his films laughable, I liked The Dark Knight Rises. There was one bit where it all became too much and I actually burst out laughing, which is where the statue is unveiled of Batman. I was trying to work out why I'd found it automatically so silly, and was reminded of the Wallace Stevens essay 'The Noble Rider and the Soul of Words', where he talks about Verocchio's statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni, the Venetian condottiero, (superhero/villain types of the age, rite?). I couldn't remember what he said, so I had a quick look after I got back:

What man on whose side the horseman fought could ever be anything but fearless, anything but indomitable? One feels the passion of rhetoric begin to stir and even to grow furious; and one thinks that, after all, the noble style, in whatever it creates, merely perpetuates the noble style. In this statue, the apposition between the imagination and reality is too favorable to the imagination.

I'd probably reverse that for the Batman statue - in a Hollywood film, about a children's comic book hero, as a symbol it was too favourable to reality - there was a high seriousness to it which was laughably absurd. And although that seriousness is what marks Nolan's Batman films, it's also what makes them rather silly, and sometimes a little dangerous (as with the panopticon). And I wonder as an aside, whether that seriousness allowed the genuine evil of the Colorado cinema shootings to take the form it did in the person it did.

But I liked it! I liked Catwoman, and Catwoman/Batman scenes, I liked Batman fighting in the snow, the massive destruction of Gotham, the airplane scene at the beginning, the Dickens, and I liked especially Alfred drinking Fernet.

And, fuck you all, i really liked the end bit where you saw Bale and Hathaway together - I was pleased for them, wanted to see it on the screen.

That combination of fearlessness and super-competent strength fit in well with him climbing out of the pit and the change makes a retrospective nonsense of the rather impressive 'You only adopted the darkness, I was born in it' speech.

The climbing reminded me more of the third Indiana Jones film where its not about strength or agility but about a wishy-washy conception of faith and will to pull you through so in that sense he was born in, and lived in darkness of that impossible pit. I would be interested to see how Bane is transferred from the comic, and one more positive is that a comic book film has actually made me interested in reading the comic itself. I'd probably end up like one of those comic book fans you read about who totally hate these films tho'.

I think the slight twist falls in line with the feeling that this isn't the usual comic book film. Another example of that is Wayne/Batman almost always on the back foot and really almost always losing the war for long periods. In the prev film the Joker causes such mayhem and destruction with Batman only really 'winning' him in the end, and with the people's help (they don't push the trigger). Batman, in the last two films, really gives them a helping hand more than saving the day on his own, a very collaborational relationship.

Loved that it took itself so seriously but if I were to unpack that its again in opposition to the other comic book films and I'm not sure how long you can take that. I saw the re-boot of Spiderman last night and emo-ness was more laughable (I liked it very much though).

Thank you for not being bothered by plot holes.

there aren't really any good comics with Bane in them

good post fizzles

^^^

this movie was pretty terrible, i was pretty surprised at how shitty it was

Fizzles’ post is great!

i saw this! my basic take is that bane and catwoman gave the movie some life but otherwise it was kind of perfunctory and joyless. it wasn’t unenjoyable but it def had more problems than the first two.

i had in my head the line from whichever newyorker bro, that movie didn’t have any unplanned or unaccountable gesture or movement, but i think i found one: a captured bat-tank driving the snowy streets, and the fat front wheels are throwing up a steady spray of snow clumps onto the front armor under the windshield. i was like huh, that’s kind of a design flaw for the winter, isn’t it?

it feels overplotted but still full of holes. things are overexplained but still not coherent or comprehensible within their own genre/conventional limits. too many people tell their life stories at odd, implausible moments. it labors to demonstrate the wrong things.

i got increasingly annoyed with this stuff. certain people seemed to figure out who batman/wayne was on no evidence, leaving those still in the dark looking totally blind and making the secret dramatically meaningless.

the mechanism of the nuclear bomb... that’s going off on an inexorable timer... but has its own trigger... which may be held by ‘anybody’... but that’s a lie... it’s the secret master of the conspiracy who has it... this stuff isn’t layered like a mystery, it just feels made-up in the third act, like the script was never read end-to-end.

sooo, the nuclear physicist is ALSO a crack market quant hacker dude? or were those different guys? and the final underground fight chamber of bane’s HQ is ALSO right below wayne’s arms garage? so, his joints are permanently wrecked and need mechanical assistance early in the movie, but a little prison workout is enough later on? he still knows how to get out of central asia and into occupied gotham in a jiffy? you can have maybe one of these clanking conveniences in a story, this thing just piles them up. i’m repeating everybody else at this point.

i did enjoy bane’s cod-jacobin declamations and appreciated hardy being nuts enough to just sell it totally. i legit-lol'd at some of it but i can't remember what now. the takeover setpieces and lurid terror-gangsta sans-culottes business were the liveliest moviemaking and the funniest for their unhinged black tory venom

oh and the fights are bad. fighting should reveal character and story. you can't see what is different between the first and second times bat and bane fight. you can't see batman thinking on his feet to get around bane's advantages. i guess going for the mask is supposed to be that, but it is presented almost accidentally.

and the final underground fight chamber of bane’s HQ is ALSO right below wayne’s arms garage?

They make a big thing of their finding his garage, no? They steal all his stuff (except the Bat) and fight the police with it.

not fair

They make a big thing of their finding his garage, no?

i must have missed this. how did they find it, exactly? and why does batman's first fight with him happen right at that spot?

i guess it must be that, since catwoman was in on it, bane planned to have the big confrontation happen right there?

still man, idk, that's the kind of thing your great detective would have figured out.

Sorry, not really his garage – it's Lucius's department of Wayne Enterprises, hence their being plenty of Batmobiles to go around. Anyway, the fight happens there because he gets lured there by Bane. I can't remember if it's explained how Bane works out the department's location. Anyway, Bane's men blast through the ceiling of the sewer to it right after Bane and Batman have had their scrap, I think.

I can't remember if it's explained how Bane works out the department's location.

right, this is the element of coincidence i'm moaning about!

I don't think it was supposed to be coincidence. They were deliberately blasting to get to it, as I understood it.

Yeah, he even revels in it to Brokeback Batman. Says something like "Aren't you interested in where we've been digging?" then presses the fuse button and it turns up in WayneTech. Totally deliberate.

oh ha, that line must be one of the 35% of bane's i couldn't understand

May as well go through your other things (not because you don't have a point with them)

certain people seemed to figure out who batman/wayne was on no evidence

Well, Blake explains how he worked it out. Bane, it's not made explicit how he did, but it's not a throwaway thing. It's like "I'm the baddy and I know your secret mwah ha ha". I guess if you want to think about it, he was with the League of Shadows and they know stuff. Actually, didn't Ra's Al Ghul and he cronies find out his identity in Batman Begins? So it's "around" in those circles. And Catwoman finds out when she hears Bane blurt it out.

the mechanism of the nuclear bomb... that’s going off on an inexorable timer... but has its own trigger... which may be held by ‘anybody’... but that’s a lie... it’s the secret master of the conspiracy who has it..

Not sure if you're saying this is a plot hole, or you just think it's silly. It all makes sense I think: the reactor it will go off anyway because its core has been removed (see above for arguments about whether such an event could really be timed to the second), which Bane didn't tell Gotham. There's also a detonator, which Bane claims is in the hands of a random member of the city's population, but as suspected, that's a lie.

sooo, the nuclear physicist is ALSO a crack market quant hacker dude? or were those different guys?

Missed this if so. I thought the main thing there was just to have Bruce Wayne's fingerprints to authorise the trades?

so, his joints are permanently wrecked and need mechanical assistance early in the movie, but a little prison workout is enough later on?

I guess this just about falls within movie logic for me – yeah, he's all worn out at the start but he finds new sense of purpose and through sheer FORCE OF WILL he gets fighting fit again. The cartilage wear might just make movement painful rather than impossible.

he still knows how to get out of central asia and into occupied gotham in a jiffy?

I can't remember how much of a jiffy the timeline requires this to be.

I think it's possible to make the bomb make sense, but goole's right that it's needlessly complicated, too many fakeouts and also just too much setup necessary to get it going, too much dialogue filling you in on what Wayne's relationship is to this thing, why it was never finished before, how he knows Miranda Tate - - seems like the movie could have been a LOT tighter if they'd find a way to not do all that crap.

Yes, I'd agree with that. I'd rather the whole thing had used something other than a ticking bomb, full stop, really.

But it didn't matter to me at the time.

oh and the fights are bad. fighting should reveal character and story. you can't see what is different between the first and second times bat and bane fight. you can't see batman thinking on his feet to get around bane's advantages. i guess going for the mask is supposed to be that, but it is presented almost accidentally.

― goole, Monday, August 13, 2012 2:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

otm

Bane knows where the secret weapons stash is because investor lady/Talia al ghul has access as trusted ally/pres of company to that info and she is his sugar mommy or whatever.

you'd think Batman would be smart enough to target Bane's mask first time around anyway

Bane knows where the secret weapons stash is because investor lady/Talia al ghul has access as trusted ally/pres of company to that info

but doesn't morgan freeman say that all that stuff is off the books and hush-hush? hence it not being nabbed by the bailiffs when wayne enterprises goes tits up.

you'd think Batman would be smart enough to target Bane's mask first time around anyway

mask respect mask

jesus christ people, Bane had yeeeears to track down the secrets of wayne enterprises. as it was, fox flat-out says they consolidated stuff from eight other locations and put them all in the vault. do you think he shipped them all himself, and moved them down there in the dead of night with no one watching?

To me, "it is implausible that Bane would find the vault" is dumb compared to "it makes perfect sense that Lucius Fox hid a bunch of weapon shit in a sub-basement of a corporate building over the course of over eight years and no one ever figured it out"

ok i'll admit they're equally dumb & equally acceptable in a dumb superhero movie.

but but but Nolan's entire schtick is "oh no it's a smart superhero movie do you see"

yeah, but one of the big problems w the film, for me, was bane & talia's complete control of everything. i agree that we don't need to see their dudes infiltrating every construction crew in the city, or finding out where bats hides all his toys, but that kind of crap has to be justified somehow. not just, "oh, look, we run that. oh, look, we know that," whenever a plot progression is needed.

Not sure I see the distinction you're making. Just how much detail of their infiltration *do* you need to see?

Anyway, it's kind of nuts how all this detail has become the focus of this thread. I guess it's easier to write about than the stuff that actually matters to you if you *do* like the film: the myth, the antiheroic struggle, the weight of responsibility, the wheel of history, love repaid and not repaid, sadness about Gotham, sadness about the trilogy ending, the grandness of what Hollywood can do and perhaps won't be able to do for ever, Selina Kyle's lips …

Plot holes are all you can see when you don't see the other stuff, I get that. And maybe the other stuff's not there, maybe it's all in my head. Never mind.

xp

I don't suppose we need to see any of it. A plausible explanation beyond it just being revealed when convenient would have been nice. Demanding plausibility in a movie like this is probably beside the point, though. Nearly nothing that happened made sense.

yeah, i wish the film had resonated for me on the grand, mythic/thematic level you're talking about. didn't.

ya i still can't figure out what the 'themes' of this movie are supposed to be... they're almost as confused as prometheus'

i mostly just liked the mood of the movie, was surprised by how much i felt the overwhelming dread just by virtue of the attack on gotham/wayne's fortune being more comprehensive than i expected so that it seemed impossible at some points for the good guys to win in the end

Which is well set up by the chase scene that leads up to the cops having Batman completely surrounded - - thought that was genuinely exciting and supported the story well, really supported Alfred's argument that Batman is biting off more than he can chew is going to fuck up horribly. Of course he made it out but it didn't feel like a daring, dashing escape against all odds, it felt more like a "fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK, i can't believe i got out of that one, what the fuck was i thinking" kind of moment.

s1ocki otm, it's third movie syndrome for this one where they're like "welp, time to wrap up our loose ends and make this a trilogy"

btw did I mention I still liked this film, found some parts really cool, and some parts emotionally resonant

i thought they did a decent job of tying together pretty much every non-Joker plot/character from the first two movies, it was just doing that PLUS introducing multiple new antagonists PLUS "themes" that made the whole thing buckle

still find it so unbecoming that the joker wasn't even mentioned ONCE i mean come on

i kind of liked that -- gave the impression that the public never really had much of an idea of who he was and that those who did were just glad he disappeared.

fit with the inconsistent backstory "nothing in his pockets but knives and lint" lack of context from which he appeared

how could the public never have an idea who he was? he did like videoconferencing on TV

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_mFapVdwHcyE/Swzn60OI9QI/AAAAAAAAAK4/0zROz82OYHI/s1600/Photo+64.jpg

were batman and commish gordon unaware of his existence too? jesus, the amount of time this movie spent dwelling on that stupid harvey dent shit

R.I.P. some district attorney who pretended to be batman for a day

and he didn't disappear, he was captured alive!

how could the public never have an idea who he was? he did like videoconferencing on TV

― Matt Armstrong, Monday, August 13, 2012 9:51 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

tbh i forgot about Joker's televised threats. but i don't really know what people would say about the Joker in this movie that wouldn't be awkward "this guy's almost as crazy as the Joker!" type shit.