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

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.

this.

joker was a lone nut who stuck his nose in the mob drama consuming gotham, once he was caught, the ending of the mob shit was definitely the bigger story. Part of my lack of enthusiasm with the film was that it was definitely more of a sequel to Batman Begins than the Dark Knight but shoehorning references to the dark knight that have nothing to do with the subject of the film would not have improved it.

Now if they had made the film I wanted them to, with Batman having to endure a rogues gallery of mob bosses with bizarre aesthetic tastes, THEN they should have been like "hey remember the joker"

im gonna guess all jokermention was omitted out of respect to ledger or something

this movie definitely has so many references to someone named Harvey who wasn't there that i half-expected Jimmy Stewart to show up

well the plot had nothing to do with joker anyway, but yeah, since we all know the real reason there's no joker action why bother with any gratuitous joker mention.

no mention at all is definitely preferable to covering their asses with a "the Joker died on the way to his home planet" aside

feels appropriate to the nolan batman vibe that after being caught the joker has been sitting in jail for the better part of a decade and didn't just dance out for more adventures immediately like in the comics.

i think nolan said in an interview that the joker was executed for hsi crimes

yeah i'm glad he left that out of the movie

no mention at all is definitely preferable to covering their asses with a "the Joker died on the way to his home planet" aside

― Pollopolicía (some dude), Monday, August 13, 2012 9:51 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I want this, with the Poochie animation

can we talk a bit about how mesmerizing Cillian Murphy still is in 2012

just thinking about those eyes

well the plot had nothing to do with joker anyway, but yeah, since we all know the real reason there's no joker action why bother with any gratuitous joker mention.

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 14, 2012 2:43 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because they mention Dent so much and take such pains to make this a resolution to the "trilogy."

Dent pretty central to the story and the themes though

also wtf at Nolan saying the Joker was executed. Do u even like Batman dude

the thing I liked most about the nolan Batmans is that they didn't just murder the villains in the end, but Nolan is just like eh nevermind they get executed later

did Nolan actually say that though?

I just take whatever Hungry4Ass says as gospel

I do like the idea in Batman, or maybe just the comics, that Arkham is pretty much like a bullpen, and every once in a while there's a call up and a criminal escapes and wrecks havoc on Gotham.

Dent pretty central to the story and the themes though

― Legendary General Cypher Raige (Gukbe), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 9:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

WHAT STORY AND WHAT THEMES

the dent stuff and the way it relates is just soooo stupid...

http://i.imgur.com/NTWaP.jpg?1

whether you think the Dent relation is stupid or not doesn't really matter. It's there because it relates (infinite detention, etc) to the story.

it matters to me because i had to sit through 3 hours of it

The entire "we built the city's peace on a house of cards" angle only works as window-dressing and is the tie from movie 2 to movie 3, but it's such a weak tie. Bane reading Gordon's letter did nothing to the plot whatsoever. The entire "politicians and policemen need to stay honest" part of the movie was ehhhh

yeah, that stuff was just nothing.

movie needed less of that, more plane terror and Catwoman bar negotiation hijinks

Harvey Dent is the heart and soul of the entire franchise. They should retroactively insert him into the first one, Lucas-style. They should also put him in most other movies.

So has Cat Woman just been chilling in Gotham for years, or was she just passing through?

Nolan: you can't bury the truth, even with a batshovel!

Audience: what? who cares

You can bury a nuclear fusion device, but you can't bury the truth!

The entire "we built the city's peace on a house of cards" angle only works as window-dressing and is the tie from movie 2 to movie 3, but it's such a weak tie. Bane reading Gordon's letter did nothing to the plot whatsoever. The entire "politicians and policemen need to stay honest" part of the movie was ehhhh

― your native bacon (mh), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 10:06 AM Bookmark

Agreed that the letter-reading was totally irrelevant. I think the general issue of the suppressed truth WAS relevant, because it has to do with Batman figuring out whether the things he's done as Batman have made things better or worse, and whether "white lies" can be justified. The key scene in a way is Alfred telling him about Rachel's letter - - - ie., about Alfred's white lie for a greater good, and Batman totally can't take it. And as the audience we're pissed at him at that moment. So the movie's forcing you to acknowledge on some level that Bruce's policy isn't consistent, that his moral compass has gotten out of whack, and that while he started down this path with good intentions, he's sort of gotten everything muddied up along the way.

Somewhat less effective is the scene with JG-L confronting Gordon about the Dent lie, just because it comes out of nowhere and Gordon is so likable, and the story is set up where JG-L is ultimately supposed to change his mind and realize Gordon is right, which sort of undermines all that stuff I was just talking about. This is why I think the movie does have themes, but that they're inconsistently played to the point where it does become easy to fret about plot minutia.

JG-L is ultimately supposed to change his mind and realize Gordon is right

I didn't get this at all. His distaste for Gordon burying the truth and using Batman as a scapegoat becomes less important in the face of the events of the plot, but I don't think it's ever really dismissed. The John Blake character arc has a lot more to do with discovering that blindly following authority has its pitfalls as he keeps bumping against bureaucracy -- which Gordon was part of in name, but he was good at going off on his own -- and he ends up leaving the police after the GCPD fires on him and blows the bridge because they won't believe him and follow their orders.

Bane reading Gordon's letter did nothing to the plot whatsoever.

It got the people of Gotham all revved up about going into the prison and letting out all the criminals who'd been incarcerated there, which kinda kicked off the whole Scarecrow-court reign-of-terror thing.

On second thought, he does end up telling the kids to get back on the bus and justifies it to the orphanage director by saying that he'd rather they have hope, even if they're going to die, so you're right that he does end up believing there's a use to white lies.

xxxpost Right, agreed, but then at the very end at the funeral he seems kind of won over to the idea that Batman is bigger as an "idea" than Bruce Wayne as a man, which seems like a related concept. Which is why he then bothers to go find the Batcave, right? I mean, I assume he's not there to dig all the stuff up and show the world the TRUTH, he's there to become a new Batman and engage in the same kind of "greater good" lies that work outside the normal channels of civil society. His ditching the police force and "normal" ways of getting things done is basically him choosing vigilantism.

xxpost I still don't get that the "people" of Gotham had anything to do with anything Bane did except as victims - - felt like he started the movie with an army of thugs and continued to have the same army.

i keep thinking about that horrible statue scene now

So has Cat Woman just been chilling in Gotham for years, or was she just passing through?

There was an 8 year jump from the last movie so she could well have been chilling in gotham for years

I swear that statue was created from the same model as the Mountain Dew Batman in-store cooler thing

Kind of wish Bane had looked like this:

http://images1.variety.com/graphics/photos/_mugh/hardy_tom_2012.jpg

no face though. just a beard.

they expect one beard in the wreckage, BROTHER

the movie should have just been bruce wayne's wild adventure trying to get from a hole in the desert to his girlfriend in lockdown gotham with bum knees and no money, this wacky bearded fellow tripping him up all along the way. Then at the end, TWIST. The bearded fellow, he is BAAAANE.

i totally had fun watching this! it's so escapist! nolan loves the surface of surfaces! and making that look all heavy and deep when it's so obviously not! it's great and all i wanted from a batman movie tbh

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Saturday, August 4, 2012 11:53 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i had an embarrassing amount of fun watching this, don't know that i head-banged but i definitely fist-pumped at least once

so should I bother seeing this

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but no

shakey: not if you are going to be a whiny crank about it

I liked the other two movies a lot fwiw