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

Yeah, except that it's the movie that sets up Bane's posse as "the people," it's Bane, the supervillain, who makes all these statements about the PEE-POLL but nobody seems remotely interested and his revolution just amounts to his thugs messing with people. The movie doesn't make any effort to show people signing up en masse for Bane's gang or anything like that; the lessons Gotham learned in the second movie have apparently stayed learned, which I guess is why Batman feels it's time for him to ride off into the atomic sunset once the super-criminals are taken down.

honestly i think this is more about the nolans not thinking this through than it is a statement about the people of gotham, the movie seemed very squeamish about showing what an anarchic regime lorded over by a supervillain and his army of thugs would be like beyond some show trials

Ha! Well I was countering the message that Bruce is on the side of the rich or what have you. Or that this needed to take place at night.

Don't really care for specific messages from films -- but the politics is part of it, as any kid of art. Nolan is playing with it, so..

xp = i think he showed enough, no? Show trials and lawlessness. Lets 'think this one through'??

i think the larger problem is, though, that bane's whole... THING... was just way too vague. was he a high-minded moralist a la ras? a master of chaos who just wants to watch the world burn a la joker? without that, his confrontation with batman didn't have much oomph.

and his whole plan to blow up gotham... but wait a couple months so batman could watch it on tv... was pretty lame.

at first i thought the implication was that the citizens of gotham would turn against each other and descend into civil war/anarchy but that didnt really happen?

bane's whole... THING... was just way too vague

yeah that's exactly my problem with the movie. made the whole thing almost inert.

also his rage for batman was kinda misplaced considering batman killed the guy who exiled him from his lady love??

i mean i know he was just being a good bf but

nah he was totally in the friend zone

lol

Talia was the main villain, avenging her father's death.

Is that ok?

define ok

I enjoyed this, but LORD there was a lot of stupid going on. Bloated and two movies stapled back to back and a lot of unneccessary shit.

I think the Magic Bomb annoyed me the worst and made me and several others in the theater laugh at implausible movie bollocks like I hadnt since Prometheus.

Hathaway surprisingly good. Enjoyed that they worked in far more TDKR and Knightfall than I thought they would. When JGL quits being a cop and goes on about a shackling system, I half-expected him to become Azrael.

It's really hard to analyze this movie and its motives/messages, because it is thematically incoherent. Everything seems retrofitted post-fact, like they storyboarded the whole thing and introduced three or four major new characters, including one set up to carry on the franchise, then thought, hmm, I guess we should put some themes into this while at the same time. But it rarely gets deep, no doubt because they got distracted wasting all that time investigating the stock market machinations and sidelining Batman and stuff.

So many things still bug me. Like Levitt wasting all his time trying to evacuate a mostly empty school bus of a dozen kids. Like, why? Was everyone else trying to squeeze through that one tunnel? Me thinks his efforts and energies could have been better served.

Modine close-up death scene was super lame. Did the dude really deserve his own fancy crane shot?

Basically, this movie combines the worst traits of the first one with the worst traits of the second, but doesn't really add enough good to balance it out.

So many things still bug me. Like Levitt wasting all his time trying to evacuate a mostly empty school bus of a dozen kids. Like, why? Was everyone else trying to squeeze through that one tunnel? Me thinks his efforts and energies could have been better served.

this reminded me of the "two boats" stuff in dark knight, just way too much ~meaningful~ shit going on when the movie should have just been focused on ending already

ehh but i think that one had sufficient thematic relevance to earn its place; so much of the context of the joker & batman was about the people being inherently good, or inherently corruptible, & it was a litmus test of that, as well as a conveniently kinda big-city-in-panic set piece. also it didn't seem to drag on the pace, to me.

Also, in final open street police confrontation, it was nice that the armored cops let the unarmored cops lead the infantry charge towards the guys with assault rifles.

I get the emotional/dramatic point they're going for, but 300-style mass fistfight clashes in the street don't make sense when every single person there is packing a firearm.

Another plot bit that I got what they were trying to achieve but that made no sense is just Bane showing up on TV to read Gordon's letter.

Or Gordon racing thru the city to "get in front of a camera" as if webcams built into laptops and cell phone that can record/stream video don't exist.

ya i didn't quite get how the cops didn't immediately all get mowed down

ehh but i think that one had sufficient thematic relevance to earn its place; so much of the context of the joker & batman was about the people being inherently good, or inherently corruptible, & it was a litmus test of that, as well as a conveniently kinda big-city-in-panic set piece. also it didn't seem to drag on the pace, to me.

― , Blogger (schlump), Saturday, July 28, 2012 1:18 PM (46 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im just appalled at how many movies are hitting the 2.5hr-3hr mark lately, and they imo never ever earn it

i mean i watched back to the future again last weekend and it fit in SO much plot in 1h45, it was like a miracle

And yet people bitched about the length of "Tree of Life," when that movie is like an hour shorter than this one, and so much richer. And better to look at.

xp
yeah that's true. idk these long comic book movies feel like weird exceptions to considerations of length, to me; i have to really psyche myself up to get around to watching something long ordinarily, particularly at home. but going to see a long-ass comic book movie at a cinema seems different, because i'm not restless, there, & because they're frequently distracting/absorbing, &c (or w/the second flick have sufficient momentum/explosions to distract you from where they're upto).

otm re: back to the future!

This is a v diff film from Back to the Future and Tree of Life (from what I heard anyway as I haven't seen the latter, don't care for Malick since he came back).

Its kinda odd at the amount of explanation for each of the plot points -- which in turn make any plot holes become more annoying -- and then its also quite miraculous at how the pace and drive the films gather are maintained. xp

And all I was coming here to do was to report how I sat next to someone that shed a tear as the Bat went to his (near) death. That was fkn hilarious!!

I think I shed a tear three times, though maybe not at that bit. One of Bane's bits (maybe his speech to the masses about taking over the city), Anne Hathaway's "you've given these people everything" and then the kiss. I cry a lot.

I guess the original cut was 4 hours long? Which might explain a LOT, both in terms of actual plot and what the hell Nolan was aiming at.

jesus wept.

And enough people have pointed out by now, Batman doesn't use guns, unless theyre mounted on a bike, batmobile, tumblr, helicopter, etc.

then just break out the .50 cals.

thats another thing that bothered me about the lame-ass "now i give YOU permission to die!" line, batman should never threaten to kill anyone

I wonder how much of the character stuff makes sense when you view them all as only Nolan creations and not in terms of what the actual characters are. Batman doesn't quit or nope about for 8 years cuz his lady and friend got offed , seeing as how it was the violent graphic loss of his parents is the foundation of him.

However, Nolan Batman would, I guess.

Saw this last night, and I don't know what I was expecting, but it was like getting teeth pulled. I remember liking the last one, but It didn't stay with me. This one was so incomprehensible and pretentiously delivered that the jumbled politics shouldn't have even bothered me because they clearly weren't thought out, but lines like "in order for despair to live, you must feed them... HOPE" get nothing more than one big Fuck You from my corner

Also, Prometheus ruled and I saw it twice

And I'm not dropping a non-sequitur by mentioning that film; I actually began taking it personally after reading so many reviews complaining about the implausibility of Prometheus, then going into this one which some reviews were freely calling a masterpiece, and getting something with so many gaping holes and insults to any intelligence - I kept thinking, why? This film is even -more- insufferably pretentious and filled with empty characters all overacted, and has less of anything to take home to think about. Once you cut away the distractingly bad TV acting & pacing, Prometheus had a good conceit.

all the connective tissue of plot and characterization that we used to require of a film in order for it to make sense, I'm all for it being taken for granted and cut away if it makes for a faster ride to your main point. But oh man, not this, please not this

frankly, i enjoyed Prometheus more than DKR!

thats another thing that bothered me about the lame-ass "now i give YOU permission to die!" line, batman should never threaten to kill anyone

I wonder how much of the character stuff makes sense when you view them all as only Nolan creations and not in terms of what the actual characters are. Batman doesn't quit or nope about for 8 years cuz his lady and friend got offed , seeing as how it was the violent graphic loss of his parents is the foundation of him.

However, Nolan Batman would, I guess.

thats another thing that bothered me about the lame-ass "now i give YOU permission to die!" line, batman should never threaten to kill anyone

In order to beat him, he had to become him! (dark superhero cliche #43)

what does it even mean to "become" bane, his only distinguishing characteristics are muscles and spooky voice (which batman already has)

during the stadium scene i kinda wished the nuclear physicist had answered the question "and who is qualified to defuse the bomb" by saying "oh any number of trained technicians"

was the talia thing actually meant to be a notable twist? i didn't know the talia al ghul backstory beforehand but it seemed obvious to me that she was implicated from the point that we zoomed in on the scar on her back. also cuz she had the same accent as bane. wise up bruce ffs.

The only action-movie line that bothered me was Anne Hathaway's "About that whole no-guns thing … turns out I'm not as commited to it as you are". When you know where a line's heading from the off, it needs to be lot shorter. "About that whole no-gun thing" followed by a look would have done it.

Mereyeux, I believe they are known as "hints" that you were clever enough to pick up.

during the stadium scene i kinda wished the nuclear physicist had answered the question "and who is qualified to defuse the bomb" by saying "oh any number of trained technicians"

Physicist should have said "you, Bane." Then Bane would have killed himself. The end.

When you know where a line's heading from the off, it needs to be lot shorter.

By this standard, the whole movie should have been a lot harder. Was there any twist or surprise not telegraphed?

she shoulda just said "guns ftw"

Like, was there a line with Alfred telling Bruce "be careful, master Wayne, or you will one day wake up to find yourself in a dark, deep PIT OF DESPAIR!!!!"

i gotta admit i didnt see the talia thing coming, although i was sort of rumbling with discontent about the marion cotillard character and the fact that they were making a batman/catwoman movie with no romantic subplot b/w them. so the twist worked for me, it was def the plot point i liked the most.

some of those early alfred lines were so literal... "so master wayne, you've been in hiding for eight years, however, you are unsatisfied and it is evident gotham needs you. also, it would please me if you took a wife. want something to drink?"

Speaking of pits of despair, when Batman was incapacitated I kept thinking of "The Princess Bride." "Oh, no one ever escapes! Have a cracker..."

Seeing as I'm on a negative tip, the only big plot point (hole?) to bother me was the idea of Bruce mothballing the fusion project when he found out that it could be weaponised. I mean, can't any nuclear programme be used for ill if you want? Why would this particular project make it easier for baddies like Bane to make a nuclear bomb? I couldn't figure that out.

ha, hints okay, but it seemed completely obvious! maybe i am just a terribly suspicious person.

Because it was telegraphed literally by the script, of course. "I shut down this secret nuclear reactor because I didn't want a villain to find out about it and kidnap this specific Russian scientist to tell him how to turn it into a bomb. Oh, also, the underground hiding spot floods."

xpost