The Dark Knight Rises (now with spoilers)

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For the record, the subtext I'm referring to is not manipulation by bane or anything else that's explicitly stated.

The subtext I read from the film which concerned me was:

Being poor and controlled by terrorists == bad

Being poor and controlled by Commissioner Gordon and Batman == good
 
I just watched this-a-here movie. My 2 cents is I overall liked it. It had some issues, but what movies don't. I agree with Charlie about the editing. It was bad. It was better than Spider-Man's editing, but it was still pretty bad. It was fairly enjoyable despite it's heavy handed political nonsense. My main issues were shit like:

-The fucking ending. They should have ended the movie on Michael Caine looking at the camera. That would have been enough. It wasn't necessary to show us Bale and Hathaway eating lunch. AT ALL.

-Batman's magical healing body. I'm pretty sure he didn't have his magical leg brace in super jail there and as a guy who suffered a pretty bad knee injury when I was young, I can tell you no amount of pushups will fix it.

-Bane's Sean Connery voice.....man, it's like they wanted someone with a goofier voice than Christian Bale's grumbatmanvoice.

-Levitt's real name was Robin? UGGGGGGH.
 
-The fucking ending. They should have ended the movie on Michael Caine looking at the camera. That would have been enough. It wasn't necessary to show us Bale and Hathaway eating lunch. AT ALL.

-Batman's magical healing body. I'm pretty sure he didn't have his magical leg brace in super jail there and as a guy who suffered a pretty bad knee injury when I was young, I can tell you no amount of pushups will fix it.

-Bane's Sean Connery voice.....man, it's like they wanted someone with a goofier voice than Christian Bale's grumbatmanvoice.

-Levitt's real name was Robin? UGGGGGGH.
I loved Bane's voice. It might have been a bit hard to understand at some points but i thought it was badass
 
I dunno, I felt it was intimidating, but still charismatic.

also one other problem

I thought not having any reference to the joker was a mistake. Even letting us know he was dead or moved to another city would've been something. Since the scarecrow was free, they obviously freed up arkham. Does anyone really think that with all that going on, the joker wouldn't have done anything if he was released?
 
I dunno, I felt it was intimidating, but still charismatic.

also one other problem

I thought not having any reference to the joker was a mistake. Even letting us know he was dead or moved to another city would've been something. Since the scarecrow was free, they obviously freed up arkham. Does anyone really think that with all that going on, the joker wouldn't have done anything if he was released?
OH YEAH! I was gonna mention that but completely forgot. What's up with that?
 
It was supposed to be "out of respect for heath ledger" but I don't understand that. I get not having another actor play him, but they gotta say something. I think one line where one of Bane's henchmen talks to him and says something "I freed up arkham, except for this one guy with makeup. Seemed too crazy." Would've been great.
 

North_Ranger

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It was supposed to be "out of respect for heath ledger" but I don't understand that. I get not having another actor play him, but they gotta say something. I think one line where one of Bane's henchmen talks to him and says something "I freed up arkham, except for this one guy with makeup. Seemed too crazy." Would've been great.
Agreed. That would have been great.[DOUBLEPOST=1343110176][/DOUBLEPOST]
For the record, the subtext I'm referring to is not manipulation by bane or anything else that's explicitly stated.

The subtext I read from the film which concerned me was:

Being poor and controlled by terrorists == bad

Being poor and controlled by Commissioner Gordon and Batman == good
This was also one part of the political reading I saw one critic get out of the film; how basically Nolan - a highly-trained European - is criticizing American society for pretty much wanting some manner of pseudo-Fascist dictatorship, bat fetishism optional. I don't know how much credence I'd put into that, though... the film was lousy with political messages anyway.

Though I do admit liking a quote attributed to Michael Caine: "Superman is how America views itself. Batman is how the rest of the world views America." Which is a quite poignant point-of-view, and a bit of a zing, too.

Aaaand now I'll just wait to be told how anti-American I am. Again.
 
Agreed. That would have been great.[DOUBLEPOST=1343110176][/DOUBLEPOST]

This was also one part of the political reading I saw one critic get out of the film; how basically Nolan - a highly-trained European - is criticizing American society for pretty much wanting some manner of pseudo-Fascist dictatorship, bat fetishism optional. I don't know how much credence I'd put into that, though... the film was lousy with political messages anyway.

Though I do admit liking a quote attributed to Michael Caine: "Superman is how America views itself. Batman is how the rest of the world views America." Which is a quite poignant point-of-view, and a bit of a zing, too.

Aaaand now I'll just wait to be told how anti-American I am. Again.

America's parents are dead?
 
I think it's interesting the "political" messages people are taking from the film. Seems like a pretty wide range of stuff people are getting out of it/reading in to it.
 
S

Soliloquy

It was supposed to be "out of respect for heath ledger" but I don't understand that. I get not having another actor play him, but they gotta say something. I think one line where one of Bane's henchmen talks to him and says something "I freed up arkham, except for this one guy with makeup. Seemed too crazy." Would've been great.
 
S

Soliloquy

This guy explains how I felt about the political side of the movie much better than I ever could (However, I liked the movie a lot more than he did).

http://exiledonline.com/the-dark-knight-rises-vs-the-99/
You know, those complaints may very well be right on the money as to Nolan's intentions. But...
if Nolan wanted his film to be anti-occupy-wall-street-mentality, I think it would have been much more effective if he had Bane's plan simply be the one that he stated to the people, and had Batman fighting that, instead of going with the "Bane is secretly evil and wants to kill you all" approach. But it's entirely possible he didn't want to go with that kind of moral ambiguity but still wanted to bash OWS.

Besides all that, I have a few issues with the film, even though I loved it.

  • Why didn't Bruce Wayne not alert any authorities when he found out someone had blatantly stolen his fingerprints? I can understand not alerting anyone if it was just the theft of his pearls, but if you're a billionaire and you found a clearly skilled thief has blatantly gone out of their way to steal important identity information, how can you not foresee horrible things happening in the immediate future if you don't let anyone know what happened?
  • For that matter, why didn't Bruce Wayne put forward any sort of challenge towards the fraudulent trades made on the very same day that there was a major heist at the stock exchange? Even if he didn't want to hand over the evidence Batman collected, it'd still make a convincing argument.
  • I thought for sure I had a third issue, but I can't for my life think of it. So that's an issue in and of itself, I guess?
 
  • Why didn't Bruce Wayne not alert any authorities when he found out someone had blatantly stolen his fingerprints? I can understand not alerting anyone if it was just the theft of his pearls, but if you're a billionaire and you found a clearly skilled thief has blatantly gone out of their way to steal important identity information, how can you not foresee horrible things happening in the immediate future if you don't let anyone know what happened?
  • For that matter, why didn't Bruce Wayne put forward any sort of challenge towards the fraudulent trades made on the very same day that there was a major heist at the stock exchange? Even if he didn't want to hand over the evidence Batman collected, it'd still make a convincing argument.
  • I thought for sure I had a third issue, but I can't for my life think of it. So that's an issue in and of itself, I guess?
Completely agree, all that was silly.
 
Another nitpick from my bag of nitpickery that I forgot.

They had video footage of Bane at the stock exchange, why the fuck did Foley still doubt he existed?
 
When Batman got stabbed... and stood there to listen to Talia's 5 minute story while she was gutting him with the knife I couldn't help but go... "so she's stabbing him.... and he sits there to listen to the interesting story? The hell."

Batman then proceeded to jump into the "The Bat" with went ahead to fight his enemy in G-force combat as if the stab would never happened.

Wat.

Batman is no superhero like Superman or Green Lantern... he a guy in a suit with a tool-belt of tech goodies, the reason he's special is because he's human. So while the whole end sequence went on I kept wondering, if I was stabbed in the gut, would I be able to control a Harrier like Jet dodging missiles and shit?

I liked the last movie but it was by far the weakest of the three films.

I was pleasantly surprised with Hathaway's performance but no where close to how I was with Ledger's.
 

BananaHands

Staff member
I saw it. It was okay.

  • They did such a lazy and poor job with Bane's voice. You could tell the solution they had for people not being able to understand him was to just lay his audio track over EVERY track.
  • I spent most of the movie baffled on the decision making process of every character.
  • Also, at least I know if someone breaks my back I just need to have someone punch my spine and dangle me from a rope before I can climb out of the goddamn Lazarus Pit.
  • The whole Talia thing turned Bane from a mastermind to an extremely buff puppy that was friendzoned with the "Goodbye, Friend." at the end.
  • Shut the front door with that stupid "Oh, your first name is Robin!" thing.

Still, I liked a lot of the fight scenes and Anne Hathaway surprised me.

It's not going to be a movie I would ever buy or go out of my way to see, but it did give enough closure... even if they did spoon feed it to the audience with that ending sequence.
 
  • Shut the front door with that stupid "Oh, your first name is Robin!" thing.
Yeah, that was so annoying, it felt like they wanted everyone to know who he was instead of just people that are familiar enough to recognize Grayson.

And they kept mentioning the whole "it's an icon" ad nauseam...

Otherwise it was pretty good, even if Hathaway doesn't have the physique for Catwoman, her performance made up for it well.

Oh, and the ending scene in Florence was also too direct...
would have been better if it just showed Selina sitting with someone who's back is turned and then raising her glass at Alfred... worked well in Inception, didn't it.

Silly Rabbit, the Joker doesn't get sent to Blackgate...


EDIT: Almost forgot: CRACKED WAS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!
 
Otherwise it was pretty good, even if Hathaway doesn't have the physique for Catwoman, her performance made up for it well.
I think her physique was just fine, if you know what I mean.

...

I actually don't know what I mean, but I thought she made a great Selina Kyle.
 
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