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

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

Not all messages are displayed: show all messages (2541 of them)

but no

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

I liked the other two movies a lot fwiw

in that case: yes

i dunno man this movie was pretty fuckin terrible

*shrugs*

I liked the other 2 quite a bit, I was intermittently bored by this one. It definitely feels more slapped together, and altogether fairly nonsensical, which I wasn't expecting. Hathaway is pretty good.

That's about as much as an endorsement as I can give.

i thought it was about as good as the other two.

http://www.cracked.com/article_20012_if-dark-knight-rises-was-10-times-shorter-more-honest.html

Ha!

Finally saw this. It was decent but very cheesy compared to the previous two. Caine was dreadfully unconvincing.

Hathaway's ass was like a young Marlon Brando.

Are you trying to make this look like a plane crash? Do you really expect people to believe this plane's wings broke off and then it flew for about 100 more miles before crashing?

Lol, had not thought about this.

the phrase "10 times shorter" makes less sense than most of the plot holes they're pointing out

still, lol:

(Mickey Mouse voice)

OF COURSH!

So is it accurate to suggest that this movie just did not capture the zeitgeist at all? It feels like it exists, and made a lot of money, but didn't really enter the public consciousness the way the last did. Except, of course, related to the shooting, but I don't blame the shooting for this movie's failure as an "event."

How far would a plane continue to fly if its wings fell off mid flight? Like based on its altitude, groundspeed, flight path, etc.?

I'm just asking the aerospace engineers in the audience, btw.

Same way a man would devote his life to dressing up as a bat and fighting crime.

i thought this was pretty awful in exactly the same ways 'inception' was, but worse because of what they made poor tom hardy wear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFdIxE9tqO0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BepyTSzueno

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

athaway's ass was like a young Marlon Brando.

sweaty and a Polack?

simmering with barely controlled fury

So is it accurate to suggest that this movie just did not capture the zeitgeist at all? It feels like it exists, and made a lot of money, but didn't really enter the public consciousness the way the last did. Except, of course, related to the shooting, but I don't blame the shooting for this movie's failure as an "event."

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, August 26, 2012 10:15 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

that's kinda what happens with MOST sequels, ain't it -- makes a ton of money off name recognition, but rarely sticks in people's minds beyond a continuation of the adventures of the characters they already know from the previous movies

I liked this. More than the other two. Sue me.

*files lawsuit*

*demotes the Capitaine to corporal*