Knowing comics fans, I’m figuring that everyone who’s inclined to see “Dark Knight Rises” (henceforth DKR) in the theaters will have done so already. So let’s delve into it for the dancing and dining pleasure of the folks hereabouts. Spoilers, regrettable but necessary, abound, since I can’t discuss the things that bothered me without blowing key moments of the film. So: you are warned.
I won’t bother giving you a blow by blow summary because I honestly don’t see the point of that. So let’s just go over the things that I liked and didn’t like.
LIKED: The human factor. The fact is that the human body isn’t designed to endure the sort of punishment that normally occurs in an action adventure film. This was lampshaded in the sorely underrated deconstructive “Last Action Hero” where wounds catastrophic enough to be fatal in the real world are dismissed as “barely scratches” in the fictional world of films. Martin Riggs got perforated at the end of “Lethal Weapon 2”; by the next film, he’s back and barely lost a step.
Yet in DKR director Christopher Nolan once again grounds his film (co-written by Jonathan Nolan) in reality by giving us a Bruce Wayne whose body was ground down thanks to the constant pounding he’s taken since putting on the bat armor (and before that, when you think about it.) He walks with a cane, his body’s cartilage is nearly non-existent, and he has head trauma (which explains a lot, actually.) Presumably because having people see him in such a weakened condition is anathema, he’s turned recluse, prompting some Howard Hughes references that will likely go past anyone under the age of twenty-five.
I have to say, I appreciated this move. Television and movies oftentimes present a world where the effects of violence are minimized. Sure, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has mega-healing powers, but Giles and Xander got hit in the head so many times they should have been drooling idiots by season 2. I think downplaying the catastrophic effects of violence sends bad messages. I don’t think movies need to be splatterfests, but we also don’t need to let kids think that they can, say, hit another kid in the head with a pipe and the victim is just going to bounce to his feet and say “Ouch.” The problem with movies and TV isn’t that they show too much violence; it’s that they don’t show enough, i.e., the consequences. DKR at least attempts to do so, so well done all around.
LIKED: The acting. All around kudos to all. Christian Bale’s Bruce remains a seething volcano of guilt and self-loathing. He’s been mourning Rachel’s death and blaming himself for eight years. And if that seems a bit much (as it did to Harry Knowles in his mostly wrongheaded, although occasionally correct, condemnation of the film) well, consider that his guilt over his parents’ death caused him to retreat behind two masks: Batman’s, and the fake Bruce Wayne persona of jovial playboy. With Rachel’s death, he retreats all the way into himself and the furthest recesses of the manor. For me, that tracks.
Then there’s Anne Hathaway, who my wife asserts—correctly—is so much a modern day Audrey Hepburn that it’s astounding they haven’t had her star in a remake of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” (For that matter, can you imagine her in a remake of “My Fair Lady” with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as Higgins and Pickering?) This is clearly an actress loving every second of being Catwoman and—despite the Halle Berry misfire—could easily support her own stylish caper film as Selina Kyle. Pay particular attention to the moment when she simulates fear to convince the police that she’s just a horrified bystander. Even though we know it’s Selina faking out the cops, she’s nevertheless utterly convincing to us that she’s simply a terrified woman, panicked to be caught in the crossfire of such violent men. The fact that she can turn it on and off like a spigot with such seeming effortlessness underscores the quality of her acting.
And effortless also describes performances by Michael Caine, who makes it look so easy by this point in his career that it’s easy to take him for granted. We should not. In one of the more controversial moments of the film, Alfred actually abandons Bruce when he sees him heading down what he perceives as a road to destruction. Some contend that Alfred would remain with Bruce to the bitter end. But Caine plays it in the same way that someone who has been enabling an alcoholic or drug addict would: he has to walk away, even though it’s tearing him up inside, so that the addict can hit bottom and hopefully survive it. And what else is being Batman BUT an addiction, a manifestation of both survivor’s guilt and a death wish?
Gary Oldman doesn’t have much to do beyond what the plot demands of him, which is a shame considering what we know he’s capable of. Marion Cotillard is amazingly exotic—by turns unknowable and then intimate—and does a superb job pulling off a shock twist that even had Kathleen looking at me and saying, “You’re kidding.” And Tom Hardy’s “Bane” comes across like the love child of Fezzik and Hannibal Lechter: a hulking physical presence wearing a mask over the bottom of his face, capable of easily beating the crap out of you while dispensing psychological bon mots except you have to strain to understand what the hëll he’s saying.
LIKED: The directing. Nolan gets great performances out of his actors and although the action sequences aren’t particularly inspired, at least I can follow what’s going on. Give me that over the salad shooter technique of action from films like “Quantum of Solace” any day.
However, Nolan has to take the rap for where I do have issues: Namely—
DISLIKED: The plot. As Jon Stewart would say: Christopher Nolan—can I call you Chris?—meet me over by camera one.
Okay, Chris, we get it. You were doing the French Revolution. The peasants rising up against the rich, with a dash of the Wall Street sit-ins tossed in. You have them storm the Bastille, except it’s Black Gate Prison, which is (if I’m following the geography correctly) inexplicably situated next door to City Hall. Because naturally if you’re planning a city, you want to have the most dangerous building in town adjacent to the place where high-ranked politicians and dignitaries are going to pass through. What could possibly go wrong? You have the rich being dragged down by average citizens, put on non-trial and given a choice of “exile or death” that’s played so ludicrously one almost wants to see it being presided over by Eddie Izzard (although I will say, choice of judge? Nice touch.) And if all of that is still too subtle for the history impaired, you make sure to have a reading from “A Tale of Two Cities,” which probably will still go past a lot of Americans who spent their time falling asleep in high school Lit classes, but you sure did all you could.
Except I don’t buy it.
First of all, Paris went berserk after years of the peasantry—which was pretty much everyone except the nobility—knew hunger and deprivation. Yet we’re told that Gotham City, after eight years, is a dámņëd good place to live. Everything is positive, the mayor (Batmanuel) is well into at least his second term, and the Dent Act (whatever the parameters of that may be) have cleaned up crime. Yes, there are still people in trouble—kids, mostly, due to a skid in Wayne Foundation contributions—but still, it’s clear that Gotham is thriving.
And then Bane shows up and in almost no time flat, the city is willing to jettison its moral center because of him. The nominal leader and hero of this We-the-People movement claims he is turning the city back to the people. But he’s clearly not some messianic individual. He is a terrorist who murders someone on the Jumbotron with his bare hands, threatens the populace with nuclear destruction and, most heinous of all, blows up their football field during what was shaping up to be a pretty good game.
How does he undermine their faith in Harvey Dent? By reading a letter purportedly from James Gordon that asserts Dent was a murderous douche bag and their faith was misplaced. The fact that the letter is genuine is beside the point: the people have witnessed that Bane himself is a murderous douche bag, so how does he have any credibility? (Not to mention that any time he made a public address, I kept waiting for the crowd to chorus, “What?” just as the Transylvania crowds did every time Inspector Kemp’s accent in “Young Frankenstein” rendered him incomprehensible.)
Bane releases a thousand criminals. Okay. But there’s twelve million people living in Gotham, and I’m betting a lot of them have their own weapons. Why are nearly twelve million people going along with this guy? Because he represents something better? You can’t be serious.
Meanwhile Bane is inexplicably keeping three thousand buried Gotham cops alive. Why? What possible reason? There’s no believable in-story justification for it; it’s only for the story reason that Batman is going to require an army to attack Bane later on. Which is odd because in “Batman Begins” he had an incredibly devastating army at the call of his boot heel. Rather than risk three thousand human lives in broad daylight, he could have attacked at night while summoning a few thousand bats to send the freaked criminals running. Done deal.
What makes Gotham’s slide into anarchy especially egregious is when you hold it against the climax of the previous film, in which two ferries full of passengers are willing to risk being blown to hëll rather than themselves condemning others to death, all to satisfy the dictates of a murdering lunatic. Batman proved the Joker wrong: the moral centers of the citizens of Gotham City were not for sale, even at the risk of their own lives. Order trumped chaos. Even the criminals didn’t knuckle under to the vision of a madman. Yet now it’s eight years later, things are supposedly even better, but suddenly it’s every man for himself just because Bane says so. The positive message of the previous film has been thrown under the bus just because—I don’t know, Chris–you and your brother decided “Les Miz” was the greatest show ever and wanted to reenact it, right down to having barricades and casting Fantine as Catwoman.
And speaking of Catwoman, particularly how she figures into the end: Really? The whole film; is about the dyanamic between Batman and Bane, but the moment it’s revealed that he is actually someone else’s stooge, he literally becomes cannon fodder for a quipping Catwoman? Really? It’s like having Princess Leia take out the Emperor: interesting development, but it’s not what the film’s dynamic is about. Bane vs. Batman is mostly a psychological battle; you don’t resolve it with twin cannons from the Batpod fired by a supporting character. Not without risking the resolution being a huge letdown.
And then there’s the ending. MAJOR SPOILER, KIDS.
I’ve made no mention of Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s intrepid office Blake. I disliked the character intensely, and it’s not because of the actor. JG-L was fine. I’d expect nothing less. But his mere presence telegraphs the resolution: Batman will be gone and this guy will take his place so that Gotham will continue to have its symbol. He has no other reason—none—to be in the film. Way too much time is invested in setting up his backstory to justify him serving any other purpose than to be the next Batman, which means the current one goes away by film’s end.
Fun fact: Nolan originally wanted to kill off Batman. DC refused to sign off on it. I kind of wish they hadn’t blocked that ending, because if you thought Bane snapping Batman’s spine was painful, that’s nothing compared to the back breaking contortions they had to go through to keep Bruce alive. He keeps the fact that he’s fixed the autopilot secret from Lucius Fox. Why? On the off chance he may have to fake his own death?
He flies a ticking down atom bomb out into the bay. We see him in the batwing seconds before detonation. One assumes he bails out at some point. So what? He’s still going to be well within the bomb’s six mile blast radius. How does he survive the bomb blast at effectively ground zero, especially without a refrigerator to hide in?
Then again, we must suppose it’s a good thing that Bruce Wayne skips town considering that, thanks to the fallout, at least half the town is going to get cancer, many children are going to be born deformed, and the drinking water won’t be safe for about forty years.
What it all comes down to, Chris, is that the moment the physical infrastructure of Gotham collapses thanks to Bane’s explosives, the infrastructure and believability of the plot goes with it. Which is a shame considering the adherence to realistic thinking that you displayed when showing how Bruce’s body was so banged up. Eventually Bruce is able to overcome his physical weakness, but the literally holes that open up as part of the plot swallow all sense of logic and reality into a pit from which the film doesn’t quite manage to escape, no matter how many feel-good last moments are crammed into the end.
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It’s really interesting that you thought that JGL was being set up to take over the Batman mantle. My first thought wasn’t Batman, it was Nightwing.
On the way out of the theater, I made a crack that they should’ve had an after-credits scene showing how Batman survived the nuclear explosion. I suggested showing him ejecting from the Batwing and crawling into a lead-lined refrigerator.
Good review, and I agree with most of it. Except I didn’t even like some of the things you liked. Like Anne Hathaway, who I thought made a very dull Catwoman. She wasn’t fun (except in her introductory scene), she wasn’t sexy, and she wasn’t interesting, psychologically or otherwise (especially compared to what Judd Winick is currently doing with her). I was expecting the Anne Hathaway of Rachel Getting Married, and I got the Anne Hathaway of The Devil Wears Prada. She is definitely not the modern Audrey Hepburn (if such a thing is even possible). Maybe the modern Mary Tyler Moore.
And I thought the action sequences were pretty “salad shooter,” but I expected that from the previous movies. This is why I think Haywire is a better movie than this one. You can actually see every single punch and kick, and every movement leading to every punch and kick, and every thought leading to every movement leading to every punch and kick. I think Steven Soderbergh would be an amazing Batman director (or better yet, Quentin Tarantino… why on earth hasn’t he made a comic book movie yet?). Nolan is an intellectual director, but action isn’t his thing. That’s partly why The Dark Knight is by far the best of the trilogy: it’s the least action-oriented.
Robert Fuller, I completely disagree. Anne Hathaway was the highlight of TDKR. I missed her when she wasn’t on the big screen. Anne pulled-off the the aspects of Catwoman ( sexiness, complexity, anger, playfulness, and the danger) . Nolan’s Catwoman was not well-written, but Anne made the role her own. And, yes, their are times Hathaway reminds me of Audrey Hepburn. Anne has enormous charisma, and Mary Tyler Moore has very little charisma ( no comparison) . I didn’t want Hathaway be in the vein of the over-the-top , the derange, and the very unstable Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. I like Michelle’s performance, but that is not the real Catwoman.
Well, to me, Hepburn was the very definition of European class, grace, and elegance, while at the same time being completely adorable. There’s just no one comparable to that, in my opinion. But Mary Tyler Moore was a better actress than Hepburn, who never could have pulled off what Moore did in Ordinary People. But Anne Hathaway easily could, in 15 years or so. So I think they’re comparable.
IS a better actress, I should say. She’s still alive.
Oh finally someone who agrees with me. Hathaway was abysmal at best. No chemistry between her and Bale.
I LOVED JGL. I thought he absolutely stole this film and I suspect that is why you hated him so much. That he stole the show and his characters purpose was to push the story forward.
The plot was hugely weak for me and I am sad now that I realize how disappointing that is but Nolan is still a great filmmaker.
I totally agree with you Peter, about the notion of banged-up superheroes; in fact, they explored a similar them in Daredevil; one of few things I really liked about it. It’sthe fact that these guys continue to fight even when they’re held together by spit and bailing wire that makes them even more heroic. That being said, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the early part of the film. Maybe I missed something, in which case somebody can explain it for me. At the very end of the previous film, Batman takes the blame for Harvey’s death, thus giving Gordon and his cops an extra motivating factor in terms of their work. The implication, at least the way I understood it, was that the Gotham police force would start cleaning up the streets while Batman would do the same thing, albeit behind the scenes. When Dark Knight Rises begins, it therefore makes a lot of sense that Batman is pretty bad shape physically; after all, he’s spent the last eight years kicking ášš and catching crooks. But if I understand Nolan’s story correctly, Batman has been sitting things out the whole time and keeping a low profile, while Gordon’s cops, armed with some draconian legislation, have been putting crooks behind bars on their own, without any help from Batman. Is that right, or did I misunderstand things completely?
You are completely right, Joe.
Instead of Batman on the streets beating up criminals, being chased by the police and being chased by the people he’s protecting we get…
Eight years later with Howard Hughes-Wayne.
No, you’re right. That’s another thing that bugged me about the movie. What was the point of setting Batman up as a wanted fugitive at the end of the last movie, only to have him disappear for eight years? A more interesting movie would have continued where TDK left off, and have him fighting crime AND the police.
Keep in mind, any plans in place at the end of the TDK were scuttled with Ledger’s death. Im guessing the 8-year timeframe came along later, as a way to justify incorporating elements of The Dark Knight Returns.
From what I understand, Ledger was NEVER coming back as the Joker…Nolan had to endure a lot of arm-twisting simply to do a third film and rejected Warner putting TONS of pressure on him to use the Riddler because he felt he would be too similar to the Joker and he wanted to do something new. Given the acclaim and money, it’s possible he would have dipped into the Joker well again if Ledger was still alive, but I really doubt it.
Completely agree with you.
I would have loved to see Nolan kill him off, because he would have done it right and instead we get a messy act 1 and the rest of the movie is like Avengers even down to the bomb blowing up.
If it had been grounded in reality like Dark Knight I would’ve liked it more.
Well, I guess every movie trilogy has to get it’s own Ewoks and Bane and his groupies are Batman’s Ewoks.
Drive the bomb around until it decays and blows up? What kind of plot is that?
I really, really liked seeing that Bruce’s body was finite and at some point he just would have to stop being Batman. I loved Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle and wished there was more. The actors and the characters overall were fantastic. Bane was pure evil, where Joker was chaos Bane was calculating. And Peter is 120% correct that once you start looking at the plot/motivations, etc the cracks start adding up. Perhaps Nolan and gang were suffering from fatigue because it was a long movie. One of the things that bothered me was the fast transitions in time, where other than the day/night cycle and the sudden winter weather, which I know that Bane held Gotham hostage for months. Minor I know, it’s that little bit that made everything start to feel rushed to get to the ending. Bruce shouldn’t be able to escape the nuclear blast let alone the blast should have produced a wave…maybe tidal wave. And the bomb itself was a fusion device and then the control rod was removed which is what typically fission devices use. BUT all-in-all it was an enjoyable movie and a reasonably good way to end this run of batman. I really hope that we won’t see a reboot but a continuation with John Blake either as batman or nightwing or even in a Batman Beyond sort of situation would be cool.
While I, too, found much to like about the film, I think you helped sum up while the ending seems a huge disappointment..anticlimactic…lacking a payoff…no one at the screening I saw stood up and cheered..or clapped..and I think instead of the awesome climax people were investing 2+ hours in they got the cinematic equivalent of blue balls.
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And come to think of it, even before the climax, there was plenty leading up to it that just DIDN’T MAKE ANY FREAKING SENSE.
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Let’s see…Part of what has crushed Bruce’s spirit and has him a recluse is that he thought Rachel and he were going to have a life together and that he blew it…Alfred finally tells him..eight years later? If he thought it might lessen his friend/quasi-son/boss’s pain, why wouldn’t he reveal that sooner?
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If part of the reason to get the fingerprints of Bruce wayne is because – never fully explained – Bane wants to target him individually – wouldn’t you do it more quietly? Using computers and subterfuge? But no, they have Bruce lose his fortune as Bane is punching the info in DURING A TERRORIST ACT, where the entire exchange is terrorized…Don’t you think ANY trades made that day would at the very least, be put in limbo? Do you really think the authorities from the SEC to FBI would let someone like Wayne lose his fortune/house when these trades occurred during the morning of criminal activity/terrorist act? Makes NO sense.
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Though it’s a great visual, the football field blowing up scene is ludicrous…Even if the runner was one step ahead of the detonations he would have been tossed forward at least..Plus, you get no feelings from the “fans” of either danger or true horror over what they’ve just witnessed..and there is never any fear that the rest of the structure may cave in as a result..Again, it’s shown as a cool video game scene and then it’s on to the next part of the story.
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And the ending..oy vey, the ending pretty much demolishes everything that has been built up to that point…First, the Talia reveal probably looked like a good twist on paper…But it destroys the dichotomy that had been building up to that point..That being, Bane is Batman’s “ultimate” villain, who was a match for him physically and psychologically…In an instant, he becomes a stooge to the real mastermind.
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2.) Then, as you stated, Catwoman offing what had been the main villain and a challenge/metaphot/yin/yang/twin to Batman in many ways and quickly and with a quip seemed empty…It would be as if Faith came out of nowhere to kill Glory in the Season 5 Finale by ripping the hammer from Buffy and hitting Glory once in the head with it.
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3.) After this BIG REVEAL, Talia spends only a couple minutes on screen before dying like a complete loser in a common car crash. Really? She’s R’as Al Ghul’s daughter, been trained as an assassin, broke out of the “unbreakable” prison – which really lost it’s reputation as well since Bruce is now the third person to break out instead of the second and one of them was not his nemesis but a young girl – trained with one of the most dangerous groups on Earth for years; was able to manipulate both Bane and Batman, but she doesn’t know enough to wear a seat belt? THIS is how she goes out? Quicker than she came in? LAME.
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Again, it may have been cliche..but a true ending would have had them dismantling the bomb before Bruce dies on the street…overcoming his hurt and final betrayal to at least “give his all” to Gotham and find peace.. I truly was hoping that when that bomb exploded there wouldn’t be a cheat…That his death would mean something..Especially since it was glaringly obvious “Robin” would be taking his place…The implausible escape and “happy ending” to me undermine the whatever power the scene still had.
“Bruce is now the third person to break out instead of the second”
I thought that Talia was the 1st and he was the 2nd. Bane said that he never made the jump, implying that Talia came back and lowered a rope for him.
Bane never escaped without aid. The youthful Talia escaped and then presumably she aided him later.
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Okay, my bad…But the “Talia twist” still ruined the ending..well, that and bane dying not at his nemesis’s hands but a cat burglar on a bike..They could have salvaged it if either batman died from being stabbed in the back (literally)and betrayed/abandoned by someone he let his guard down for..there were so many ways to end it…Talia dying in a car crash was definitely not one of them.
In Talia’s recounting of her “origin”, we see a flashback of the young Ra’s and a team descending into the pit. Bane is sitting up against a wall, his face in bandages.
He never jumped out, the Ra’s raid was him getting vengance for his wife’s fate and is where Bane is rescued.
“no one at the screening I saw stood up and cheered..or clapped..”
Really? At my screening, they not only cheered at the end, but several other scenes.= as well.
I agree with you Jerome. That whole Wall Street thing seemed like a huge stretch. Come on, Bruce loses his fortune during a terrorist attack and they know the guy was doing something on the computers? Come on.
I did like the Talia/Bane switch that she was the one that snuck out, that was one of the few things that surprised me. I figured out who she was during the sex scene and figured little Damien was being concieved.
I was a bit disappointed that she died at the end, only for Damien’s sake.
I liked Catwoman. The part where she switched on the fear and then turned it off like a switch was fun to watch. I thought she did a good job as Catwoman.
Agreed. Ms. Hathaway was my favorite part of the film..the fact there is not one scene where Batman is someone to be feared is the least.
“I figured out who she was during the sex scene and figured little Damien was being concieved.”
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I figured it out when she took control of Wayne’s Enterprise and Bane said that everything was going according to plan. Also, if Catwoman was a hero and not a villain then there had to be a female villain. That is just the way it works in Hollywood.
I think you’ve pretty much articulated all of the problems I had with the film and more. But then, the one particularly twist wasn’t much of a twist at all to me; as soon as somebody else put in their (long rumored and spoiled by photos from the set) cameo, I knew exactly what was coming.
Still, I though the film was ok, but easily the worst of the trilogy. My wife hated it so much though that she was tempted to walk out halfway through.
Speaking of halfway through, it was about that long before we actually saw Batman. Which is absurd in its own right, but made worse by the fact that this film was probably 20 minutes too long, too.
The judge was perfect, and puts another nice bow on the entire trilogy. However, a lack of mention of the Joker is disappointing, regardless of trying to honor Ledger. You can’t have all these criminals be set free and then have the greatest one the city has ever known go unmentioned as to whether he too escaped. I’d seen it mentioned that the novelization addresses it with a single sentence: that he may be still be in Arkham, but nobody knows for sure. There, that wasn’t so hard, was it?
As for Bane? Well, the acting was ok, but the voice was terrible and still hard to understand. And in the end, he was just a pawn. So much for making him the great villain.
JGL is proving himself (imo) to be a capable action hero, as it were, but yeah, it was so dámņ obvious what was going to happen with him in this film. And that particularly bit just goes to show how even MORE irresponsible Bruce Wayne is: he’s left his entire collection to an untrained cop. Really? If Blake takes up the mantle of Batman, he doesn’t last 10 minutes.
Finally, I was just thankful the ending wasn’t a repeat of Inception. Inception had a fantastic ending that fit that particularly film. And there’s a certain point where somebody gives a nod of the hend where I thought “and there is it”. Thankfully, the credits didn’t roll right then.
I never feel a film is too long unless it’s boring..I’ve always felt it’s more fun to watch an entertaining three-hour movie versus a boring 90-minute movie..In fact, a lot of films work better with their (now-almost-obligatory) “deleted scenes”.
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I can understand them not mentioning the Joker…That they diminished the lead villain and had both of them meet their end in lame ways are far more troubling, in my opinion.
Question to everyone. I saw the movie in IMAX so I’m not sure if this was an isolated incident, but I swear about a quarter of the movie’s dialogue was lost to the deafening score. Was this something that you guys also experienced?
Nope. I didn’t encounter that at all. I’d complain to the theater.
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I didn’t encounter that either
I saw the film at the Ziegfeld in New York. No IMAX, but a very big screen. Quite a bit of the dialogue was inaudible. Anthony Lane even commented on it in his review in the New Yorker.
My experience wasn’t that bad, but a lot of the dialogue was difficult to hear, especially Bane’s.
The weirdest thing for me was that, in the theater in which I saw it, the picture was slightly compressed horizontally, so everyone looked slightly shorter and wider. It wasn’t so bad that it made me want to get my money back, but it was a bit annoying.
Your theater either had the wrong lens in the projector, or put the wrong film in the wrong projector. More likely the former.
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Just saw the film yesterday in IMAX, and I had the same issues. Didn’t understand Bane or Batman, didn’t understand anyone who wasn’t speaking at normal (non-muttering) volume. Didn’t understand anyone when music or sound effects were loud, which was a lot. Left the theater feeling half-deaf.
Also, in TDKR, Christian Bale gives his best performance as Bruce Wayne. Bale has great chemistry with Anne Hathaway in this movie ( I wanted them to have more scenes) . Being a fan of Bale and having seen most of his films, Hathaway maybe the only actress to have believable sparks with Christian, and loosen him up on camera.
Saw the movie today, and liked all the things you liked, Peter. And yes, Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was equal to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman.
As for the script, well, yes, it has flaws, but so were the stories it was inspired from: Knightfall, The Cult, No Man’s Land. So you can blame the source material: the comics themselves. Just like the Adam West TV series was inspired by the comics of the day, TDKR is inspired by the comics of the last 25 years, and let’s face it, some of these stories falls apart once you apply logic to them.
One little thing left: “Torture by Hope” ? Somebody has read “La Torture par l’Espérance” by Villiers de L’Isle-Adam. French litterature used in a super-hero movie. Who would have thought ?
Sorry, but to “blame the comics” is a huge copout..One of the benefits of putting these characters on film is that you can pick and choose what you feel works and what doesn’t and fill in “holes” with the cement of new, fresh ideas.
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Being inspired by the comics doesn’t mean slavish devotion to them..In fact, some of the complaints..Bane’s voice being hard to understand at times, Talia, etc. are COMPLETELY Nolan’s work/ideas. It was truly Nolan’s work..for all the good in these films and the bad, he told the story HE wanted to tell.
It’s especially a cop-out when you consider that the script was only very loosely inspired by those comic stories. It took a bit here, a bit there, mixed them together with an incomplete understanding of them, and then thrust the whole shebang into a real-world setting, where it clearly didn’t belong. You can’t blame the comics for that.
I haven’t read Knightfall or The Cult, but I did read No Man’s Land, and I thought it was much better than this mess of a movie. It had a clear, multi-act story to tell, with a lot of different elements and points-of-view, but it took the time to explore all of them, and it all cohered into a single, solid narrative. I didn’t feel that way about DKR, which tried to do too much and failed at most of it.
That’s no excuse, Gerard. I’ve taken screenplays that had holes you could drive the tumbler through and turned them into coherent and seamless novels. Saying, “Well, there were problems in the source material” is never an excuse for substandard work.
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Also, there is simply no depth and no real stakes in the film…Other than as a plot device, why should we care if Gotham gets blown up? There is no scene comparable to Bruce losing Rachel…If we were given even a couple minutes to care about one of the football players before he went on the field, their deaths would have meant something..Instead, it looks like a video game..There is no scene where the commissioner or “Robin” or Batman/Bruce is rushing someone to the hospital/providing comfort to someone injured or related to someopne who died or was severely injured. Even if Bruce or someone just said that they “knew someone on that bridge” or one of the football players, then you would get a sense of true personal loss.
http://billwalko.deviantart.com/art/Break-In-At-Tiffanys-294233714?moodonly=24
A nice poster for “Break In At Tiffany’s” starring Selina Kyle.
And he did it back in April! Great minds! (Well, his and my wife’s.)
PAD
Don’t forget to add Adam Hughes to that list of Great Minds!:
http://adamhughes.deviantart.com/art/Break-In-at-Tiffany-s-129643914
It was Adam’s interpretation of Catwoman that warmed me up to the news that Anne Hathaway had gotten the role.
OK, going to try this for a third time… Comments are hard
Add Adam Hughes to that list of people!
http://adamhughes.deviantart.com/art/Break-In-at-Tiffany-s-129643914
It was his interpretation that warmed me up to the idea of Anne playing the role of Catwoman.
I agree with your review. Loved the actors, especially Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle(the bar scene was fantastic), loved the directing but the plot has so many holes. I was surprised by the twist but as people have pointed out, undermined Bane’s character. It is a shame they didn’t let Nolan kill off Batman. I also wonder what the movie would have been if Heath Ledger hadn’t died and Nolan would have used the Joker.
The missing piece at the end of the movie?
Capt. Tom saving Batman/Gotham as a tie in to the new JLA movie.
Just sayin’
Capt.Atom!
sheesh
I just assumed that Bane had left the cops trapped underground to die and that JG-L and some others in the Resistance were supplying them with food to survive.
“He’s still going to be well within the bomb’s six mile blast radius. How does he survive the bomb blast at effectively ground zero, especially without a refrigerator to hide in?”
I’VE BEEN SAYING THAT SINCE I SAW THE MOVIE
I was so, so angry that they kept him alive. It was absolute B.S. I was upset at the death, yes, but I remember thinking “they killed Batman. They had the balls to do it. But it’s how Bruce wanted to go out and the Batman lives on. Well plaOH GODDAMMIT SERIOUSLY”
Maybe there’s a secret tie-in with next year’s “Man of Steel” (did everyone see the teaser before TDKR?) and Supes saved Batman from the bomb?
I am not going to allow an “a wizard did it” on a Christopher Nolan movie. 😛
I saw DKR tonight. I had thought the movie took part of its ending from DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, where Batman “dies” but the man behind the mask lives on.
PAD’s explanation of DC refusing to allow Christopher Nolan to kill off Batman makes sense.
1. I agree with the comments about head trauma. For years I’ve asserted that James Bond should, at least have erectile dysfunction by Thunderball.
2. I liked the Tale Of Two Cities aspect, but I disliked that it only seemed like the criminals were the only ones taking part in the chaos. I thought a theme of the movie was supposed to be about whether Gotham was redeemable, but the actual people of the city were only really ever seen standing around in a football stadium. One thing Tim Burton’s first Batman film did right was showing the citizenry show up for free money at a parade thrown by a known active mass murderer. It spoke to the basic greed that is part of the human condition. If there had been something like this, I think the French Revolution angle might have worked better.
3. I didn’t mind Bane being a stooge, because he wasn’t a monosyllabic stooge like he was in his previous film appearance. I think making Bane a stooge says some things things about the deterioration of Bruce Wayne between films.
4. A James Bond rule applied to this film. If the hero sleeps with a woman too early in a film, she will die. The only variable is whether she will be the innocent whose death spurs the hero on, or a villianess. The scar on Miranda’s back gave away the variable.
5. I hated how vague the description of the Dent Act was. The only concrete thing I picked up was that it denied some convicts parole. After that, I have no idea how draconian it was. I understand that real-world politics play into this and you run the risks of alienating a large section of your audience if you get into specifics. However, lack of exposition can really detract from a film if not handled correctly. However, I also suffered from an inability to hear dialog over some of the action, so I might have missed something.
6. I like JG-L’s character. I didn’t like how telegraphed it was that he was going to become the next Dread Pirate Batman. I kept hoping through the whole film that all the foreshadowing was a red herring. While the set of circumstances that made him who he was was similar to Bruce Wayne’s, he still wasn’t Bruce Wayne. We saw Batman take down about eight guys in the time it took Blake to take down just one. The films showed us that Batman was more than the sum of his toys and cosplay, but there was no indication of how Blake would receive his League of Shadows level training to be effective as a lone crime fighter.
7. Though I hadn’t heard of the film’s resolution beforehand, I knew that unless there was a body, Bruce was alive. This knowledge robbed any emotional impact at his memorial service. Sure, Alfred’s weeping eulogy was moving, but I knew that WB was not going to let the movie end without Alfred getting his cafe scene. There was some bad editing here too. The sequence of events should have been everybody getting the goodies from Bruce’s will, the euglogy, credits, and then the cafe scene. That would have at least allowed us cynics to experience some emotional impact from Bruce’s supposed death and Alfred’s feeling of failure.
Overall, I actually liked the movie. It had some big problems, but it was an enjoyable flick.
I also liked how they showed the accumulated damage done to Bruce’s body, however they really kind of screwed it up in my opinion. He had massive damage to his knees and shoulders, but he straps some little cyber-brace to one knee and he’s all better.
This particularly jarred me at the end of the scene where Bruce and Miranda bumped uglies, when he got up and walked off without a limp and I thought, “So he wears that brace to bed, huh? That would chafe.”
And don’t get me started on free-scaling up a rock wall after having vertebrae sticking out of your back…
WRT dialogue, I found I had no problems understanding Bane, or anyone else for that matter, and I’m usually the first one complaining that I can’t hear what anyone is saying.
I thought the action scenes were pretty good, in that “at least we can follow what’s going on” is the most you can expect these days. I definitely agree with you on “Quantum of Solace” which left me very annoyed and slightly nauseous by the end of all those fast cuts. The Bourne movies suffer much the same problem. I think John McTiernan and Jackie Chan should open a school together for action movie directors.
“The fact is that the human body isn’t designed to endure the sort of punishment that normally occurs in an action adventure film. This was lampshaded in the sorely underrated deconstructive “Last Action Hero” where wounds catastrophic enough to be fatal in the real world are dismissed as “barely scratches” in the fictional world of films. Martin Riggs got perforated at the end of “Lethal Weapon 2”; by the next film, he’s back and barely lost a step.”
Forgive me for another digression, but I read this part of the review right after a couple of days at work where I listened to a new novel, “Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas” by John Scalzi about the spaceship Intrepid and its crew. The crew has learned to try to avoid going on away missions with any of the ship’s senior officers, and one of those officers is constantly clobbered. But he recovers in a few days. There’s a reason the ship’s existence is so chaotic, but I don’t want to spoil the book for those who have not yet read it.
I do recommend it, though I feel I should warn everyone that the first coda is a little too metaphysical for its own good.
Oh, and the audio version is read by Wil Wheaton.
Peter wrote:
“Then again, we must suppose it’s a good thing that Bruce Wayne skips town considering that, thanks to the fallout, at least half the town is going to get cancer, many children are going to be born deformed, and the drinking water won’t be safe for about forty years.”
Actually, no fallout. This was a pure fusion reactor, not a fusion bomb. A fusion reaction doesn’t create dangerous levels of radioactivity like a fission reaction does. The reason fusion bombs in their current state create radioactive fallout is because in order to reach the temperature necessary for a fusion reaction, they get started by a fission bomb. But, the whole thing about the fusion reactor is that it was a clean energy source, so obviously, Bruce, Lucius, and any other scientists working on the project had found a way around that.
Very good review, PAD. My review is at http://thearmchaircritic.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-dark-knight-rises.html
One thing I would add is that this moie had the *worst* prison ever. Bane breaks Batman’s back (holy alliteration, Batman! and leaves him in a prison to suffer and watch Gotham go to hëll. So what do the wardens — who work for Bane — do? They fix Batman’s back (not sure if you can punch vertebrae back into place, but anyway…), let him build his body back up, give advice on how to get out (reminding me of the sketch from THE STATE: “There are only two ways out of this prison. Death… and that hole”), and chant for his success during the big try. Further, since Bane was surprised to see Batman again, apparently no oe decided to tell the boss that their biggest prisoner had, y’know, gotten out.
(On the plus side, I loved Anne Hathaway: looks, attitude, and action.)
I thought they were fellow inmates, not wardens.
If I may get off on a tangent here. I read Peter being taken to task on this board for seemingly always giving positive movie reviews. If so, I think it’s because he knows how hard it is to produce anything good. It’s not a case of him kissing ášš, but rather, feeling their pain. I’m sure it’s a case of being impressed that it’s “even this good” given the circumstances. I don’t think the average viewer is aware of how much luck, chemistry and inspired editing it takes to move something from the page to the stage and make movie gold.
Just something i’ve been meaning to get off of my chest.
Regarding your issue with the revolutionary aspect, I say this:
Why is it hard to believe that a group of prisoners, indigent, and crazed criminals can commence a revolution “of the people”? (And the threat of a nuclear bomb? You don’t see that as having an enormous psychological effect on one’s notion of right and wrong? A few weeks to live… and you might be singing a different tune about morality). The notion that the general population of Gotham shuns chaos (as in The Dark Knight) is not mutually exclusive from the notion that the aforementioned contingent of prisoners, indigent, and criminals can embrace chaos (as they do in The Dark Knight Rises).
The population of Gotham is not prompted to overthrow the government in The Dark Knight. If The Joker had done so, would it be unbelievable to see the dregs of society play along and embrace the notion of mass chaos? Probably not. But that wasn’t The Joker’s game. He wanted to impose his will through his battles with Batman (and to some degree Harvey Dent). Yes, there was the ferry scene, but that was a blip on the radar compared to what we saw in The Dark Knight Rises.
Bane, meanwhile, does prompt the people. He parlays the position of Gotham’s deadbeats and his own power to overthrow the rich, powerful, etc. Not such an unbelievable notion in a place like Gotham. “Prosperity” for the city as a whole obviously does not equate to prosperity for the lowly. And, as mentioned earlier, the hysteria prompted by a nuclear threat in one’s city is reason enough to believe that a happy middle class “could” stoop to the level it did in The Dark Knight Rises.
I mostly enjoyed it quite a lot, but it was missing the hopeful moment in Dark Knight when the boats didn’t blow each other up,a and I have some small gripes. Alfred telegraphing the ending about 15 minutes into the movie kind of irked me. Batman lying about the autopilot to everyone is … odd. Did he not want the audience to know? My biggest gripe is that this movie is sup-plot city, it doesn’t have the elegance of the Joker / Dent / Wayne triad that drove Dark Knight. Like why the heck was Matthew Modine in the movie? Why is Batman only in about 20% of the flick and there’s about 40 minutes of Wayne trying to crawl out of a hole with Bane running Gotham into the ground. But there’s a ton of good stuff, Bane’s psychological and physical damage to Bats was great, Batman having someone ditch on him mid-conversation, anytime Catwoman is riding the Batpod YE GODS!!! Not my favouriest superhero movie of the summer (that’s Avengers) and not the best of Nolan’s efforts (I actually wouldn’t put it in my top 5 Batman movies. Thats Batman: The Movie, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Batman Returns, Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, The Dark Knight).
Is there a quote where Nolan said he flat-out wanted to kill Bats but DC said no? I’d love to see that.
Also? “Someday’s you just can’t get rid of a bomb!” Best reference I saw to that was someone said that was probably written on the base of the statue that was dedicated to Bats at the end of the movie.
Does the threat of a nuclear explosion not completely distort one’s sense of morality? Someone tells me my city will blow up in 3 weeks… and I have no way out… it’s a different ball game all together.
Even absent that scenario, I think one has to be careful comparing the moral decisions of Gothamites in the two movies. TDK explores chaos. TDKR explores government overthrow. The Joker has no code — no “plan” save drawing Batman into his game. Bane, as nuts as he might be, does have a plan. Who’s to say one can’t shun the first while embracing the latter?
I had less problem with Joseph Gordon Levitt’s John Blake, though I agree that his presence telegraphs the resolution of the film. My issue with his was more that he’s a nobody character that the Nolan’s have shoe-horned into a spot that could have, should have, easily been filled by a character already extant in the mythos (sorry to sound pretentious, but there you go). John Blake could have easily been named Ðìçk Grayson (or Tim Drake, or Jason Todd), and his story otherwise been completely the same. To keep the punch of the reveal at film’s end, Nolan could have easily chosen to have the character’s name not mentioned at all (it’s barely mentioned as it is), had him referred to as patrolman and then detective, and had the “It might be under my full legal name” scene play pretty much the same. I felt much the same about Rachel Dawes; who the heck is Rachel Dawes, and why isn’t she Julie Madison (Bruce’s fiancee/first love from his earliest appearences)? Seems like these would be easy, costless bones to throw to the fanbase.But whatever Still a great trilogy.
As to weird city planning, in Jefferson City, MO, there’s a penitentiary smack in the center of the city, surrounded by some really lovely old victorian houses (which are generally owned/rented by prison staff). Interestingly, it’s set off from most of the rest of the city by the river, which makes it, should the prisoners ever take control, an extremely defensible position…
He was basically Tim Drake, mostly because he figured out who Batman was. Little bit of Ðìçk Grayson cuz he’s orphaned. The reveal that his name is “Robin” is basically for the more mainstream audience that they get it. Ðìçk Grayson / Tim Drake / Jason Todd woulda flown over the heads of probably half the audience. Anyway, we get new Robin’s once every few decades in the books so this was familiar enough of all of their elements to still be Robin.
I’m not the biggest fan of Drake in the movie because honestly I think he’s a bit of a snooze, but I do like the idea of when you’re watching the movie you just saw an entire Nolan-verse flick with Robin and you don’t even know it till the end! That’s cool. Just play the name game to keep it a surprise for the audience. And while I thought it was blatantly telegraphed he was supposed to replace Batman at some point, the fact that he’s Robin is not what I saw as the outcome. But, hey, even Ðìçk replaced Bruce for awhile there, didn’t he? So there’s enough layers of various Robin mythology in there to accept the re-naming and keep it as a cool surprise for the audience.
*not the biggest fan of “Blake” in the movie cuz I think he’s a bit of a snooze* I mean. Getting my Robin’s confused. I like the general idea of it, though. Maybe just a bit too much Robin.
“Ðìçk Grayson / Tim Drake / Jason Todd woulda flown over the heads of probably half the audience. Anyway, we get new Robin’s once every few decades in the books …”
Well, since 1984 we’ve gotten new Robins every decade. It was Ðìçk from 1940-84, then we had Jason for the 80’s (along with Carrie Kelly in Dark Knight Returns), Tim for the 90’s, and then Damien (and very briefly, the Spoiler) for the 00’s. Actually, I think most people who have heard of Batman have heard of Ðìçk Grayson as Robin; anyone familiar with any of the Batman cartoons know who Ðìçk Grayson is, as he’s been Robin in all of them (as well as in the Teen Titans cartoon, though they were coy about it) and in the animated Young Justice, too. And even if they didn’t know and the name “Ðìçk Grayson” was meaningless to them, my point remains: if his name can be ANYthing, why not Ðìçk Grayson?
Just imagine how that scene with the social worker could have gone. “You should go by your first name. I like it much better… Ðìçk.”
‘Just imagine how that scene with the social worker could have gone. “You should go by your first name. I like it much better… Ðìçk.”’
*Blake wiggles his eyebrows at her* “So… what are you doing later, sweetie?”
Thanks for your insights. Peter. I really enjoyed the film despite my many, many issues with it. I agree with you that the attempt to show the wear-and-tear effects of crime-fighting on Bruce was a great idea. Unfortunately, I think Nolan failed to convey that properly. The magic leg brace was ridiculous. If Bruce had that thing lying around, why wouldn’t he just slap it on eight years ago, just so he wouldn’t have to use a cane? And when he went to the doctor, it seemed to me that both his knees were in the same sad shape, yet he only used brace magic on one? And later, when he’s in the pit, he doesn’t have the brace any more… yet nary a limp is seen. If you’re going to go to the trouble of trying to realistically portray the hardships of superheroing on the human body, at least carry that through in a way that makes some sense. Surprised this did not bother you.
PAD — you should repost your old “But I Digress” column where you talk about how audiences will forgive unrealistic endings if it’s the ending they want. Like the ending to Back to the Future 3.
I had no problem with the ending or Bruce surviving. I thought it was beautiful.
I had most of the same problems, and I found them fairly distracting during the movie. Particularly:
1. That’s not how financial markets work. Trades would be voided, lawsuits filed, and Bruce wouldn’t lose a penny for years, if ever.
2. Billionaires don’t go broke like just plain folks (see #1). They don’t become penniless overnight. It takes months to get permission to shut off power to a double-wide trailer. There’s no way Wayne Manor goes dark overnight. As an aside, even if I accepted him being “broke,” Bruce is Batman. There’s no way Batman doesn’t have secret accounts and bases all over the world. In fact, his swift return from the prison argues as much.
3. Fusion reactors don’t work like that. I would’ve given that a pass until they started tracking it by the radiation trail, AFTER touting it as “clean energy.” That term, I do not think it means what Nolan thinks it means.
4. I was okay with the magic leg brace until Bruce ended up in the prison, and miraculously returned to full fighting form. If that’s where they wanted to go, then they should have toned down the initial damage a lot.
Put me down as a big fan of Hathaway in this movie, too. That’s one of the best things (though they probably let some of her scenes run on too long just because she was so good). And I actually liked where it ended up — I’d enjoy seeing a follow-up with a new Batman mentored by Lucius Fox. Sort of like Batman Beyond — acknowledging established continuity but unencumbered by it.
Oh, yeah, the blast radius bothered me, too. I found myself calculating the Bat’s possible speed vs. the amount of time left. Without knowing the Bat’s top speed, it’s tough to say for sure, but it would be a VERY close matter. Probably better if they’d left 5 minutes or so on the clock. As for Batman’s survival, I didn’t think too much about that — I just assumed he set the autopilot and bailed almost immediately, within easy swimming distance of Gotham. That would allow the Bat to accelerate even faster (couldn’t tell if it had jets or just blades, though) — no fear of the pilot blacking out.
I’d love to say I’m overthinking things (and lots of folks probably will), but this is stuff that just jumped out at me and pulled me out of the movie. That really didn’t happen to me with the first two.
“As for Batman’s survival, I didn’t think too much about that — I just assumed he set the autopilot and bailed almost immediately, within easy swimming distance of Gotham.”
So many people are saying this, but it clearly showed him piloting it with 5 seconds to go on the clock. It reminded me of why I hated My Bloody Valentine 3D: besides it just being a bad movie, *Spoiler Alert* at one point an individual is shown locked in a cage watching the killer. Later it’s revealed he’s the killer. You can’t show something and then pretend to the audience you didn’t show it. That’s not a clever movie trick, that’s just poor film making. Fight Club did the same story but didn’t break its own rules. Had it shown Batman with five minutes left and then shown the bomb that’d be fine. But the filmmakers showed the audience Batman holding a nuke 5 seconds before it exploded; it’s a stupid ending and deserves any criticism it gets.
Granted, it would have been just as absurd as claiming you can survive a nuclear blast inside a fridge, but it would’ve been slightly easier to swallow if they’d insinuated that the cockpit had survived the explosion intact, rather than claiming autopilot saved the day.
Yeah, they could have established what the Bat’s top speed was earlier in the movie. If they had gone with Mach 5+ the 5 seconds could’ve been plausible because the Bat could have traveled more than 5 miles in those 5 seconds. Regardless, they should have had longer on the clock.
Or, as someone else mentioned have his survival tied to the Man of Steel movie.
Or, they also could have just had Bruce be prepared in dealing with the bomb by having him already know how to defuse it in case of an emergency, which is something the comic book Batman who created emergency protocols against the Justice League would have possibly done. Though, I suppose that could end up as being somewhat anti-climactic.
Regardless, I was happy with the way Catwoman was written and was thrilled that they gave Bruce and Selina a “happy ending”. My biggest complaint was that I didn’t like the way Talia was written. But then, I was also disappointed with the way Ra’s was written in the first movie.
Okay, one more, and I SWEAR that I’m done. “The Charge of the Gotham Brigade” was just stupid. I’m no tactical genius, but you do NOT charge headlong at an enemy with superior firepower holding a more defensible spot. Cops would know this way better than me. How about some strategy? If you’ve GOT to have the uniformed guy go down to complete Modine’s character arc, have him volunteer to lead a token force in as a distraction while you mount another attack or Batman blows up the barricade or something (heck, even have some of the cops sneak in from below, since they’ve been down there all this time — give their imprisonment some narrative purpose). That was another big HUH? for me.
I had an “Inception” moment in the final scene. Alfred is sitting at his table in the cafe and looks across to see Bruce and Selina at another table; they see him and no one acknowledges each other. At this point I expected Alfred to pull out a small top and start spinning it on the table and then fade to black.
I had to suspend a lot of disbelief watching this. I knew there was something off about the whole thing but I couldn’t pin point big things just the little things. Like how Bruce recovered so fast from having no cartilage in his knees what so ever (I knew a guy like that and even after a surgery he still hobbled–so no magic brace could help you in that respect) or how he jumped out of a hospital window with his tethering rope right after. Also, if Gotham is in a state of lockdown (which is surprising that the government didn’t get more involved–they would have sent someone in) how did Bruce manage–with no money, by the way–cross multiple borders and an ocean without travel restrictions?
An irrelevant point but how does Bane eat? It’s like they didn’t want the cartoony plot points but yet they couldn’t work without them.
Lots of protien smoothies through a straw, that’s why he’s so jacked!
What makes Gotham’s slide into anarchy especially egregious is when you hold it against the climax of the previous film, in which two ferries full of passengers are willing to risk being blown to hëll rather than themselves condemning others to death, all to satisfy the dictates of a murdering lunatic. Batman proved the Joker wrong: the moral centers of the citizens of Gotham City were not for sale, even at the risk of their own lives. Order trumped chaos. Even the criminals didn’t knuckle under to the vision of a madman. Yet now it’s eight years later, things are supposedly even better, but suddenly it’s every man for himself just because Bane says so.
I did not see it that way. In the boat situation, the Joker made it clear that everyone would die if half did not die. He did not offer the slightest glimmer of hope.
Bane promised to blow up the entire city if even one person resisted or escaped. However, Bane also offered Gotham the hope of surviving his reign. No matter how injust Bane’s “rule” was, and no matter how many hundreds died, anyone who resisted would kill millions, including their families and friends, by triggering the bomb detonation.
More of Gotham’s citizens started to resist and escape when they learned that the bomb would go off anyway no matter what they did.
“Then again, we must suppose it’s a good thing that Bruce Wayne skips town considering that, thanks to the fallout, at least half the town is going to get cancer, many children are going to be born deformed, and the drinking water won’t be safe for about forty years.”
As mentioned above, there should be no fallout, but even if there was, why would that be Batman’s fault and not Bane and Talia’s?
Finally got around to seeing TDKR this past weekend. I enjoyed it very much and felt it was a good ending to the Nolan-Batman Trilogy.
Having read Batman as a fan and watching the movies. One thing I do love about modern times is that we’re able to see our heroes in action on the big screen!
I think the Nolan Trilogy worked for me largely because there’s a real world element at work in it that makes it all the more enjoyable. Sure in the Superman films, you see a man fly and do all sorts of unbelievable things ~ but, then that’s Superman ~ it’s a necessity to show why he’s both “super’ and a “man” in the movie. You can bypass that sort of thing with Batman because he’s basically an ordinary guy doing extra-ordinary things with the help of both technology and ultra-intensive physical training.
Still, I did note a number of inconsistencies in TDKR that, at first, pushed the envelope for me a bit much. A lot of these things have already been discussed here and given enough of an explanation that I don’t really see there’s any need for them to be repeated.
Christian Bale as Batman ~ works for me ~ although, I’d expect a bit more of a physically fit person (see Hugh Jackman as Wolverine) to fully carry off the role a bit better. Take a look at an Olympic-level athlete ~ note how they generally look and carry themselves ~ you get a sense of physicality to them ~ I never saw much of that with Bale.
Anne Hathaway as Catwoman. Easily one of my favorites of the film. Some folks prefer the Pfeiffer version ~ my vote is for Hathaway. See the movie as to explanations.
Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth. His portrayal comes across quite well ~ more of a trusted friend & sage advisor than mere butler.
Gary Oldman as James Gordon. Not nearly as meaty as TDK when the character really shone through. Still ~ serviceable enough.
Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox. This trilogy re-evisioned the Fox character and made him Batman’s “Q” in such a way that it worked. i never had a problem with Batman being smart and educated ~ just that his level of proficiency at nearly everything is shown to be off the charts to DaVInci levels. Having Fox to shoulder the majority of the burden of technology works.
Tom Hardy as Bane. For the majority of the film, Bane was a character of serious note. Then, he’s reduced completely. This part, I felt, was a dis-service to the character. Still, his portrayal of Bane completely redeems the atrocity of Batman & Robin in which the character was completely wasted.
Marion Cotillard as “Talia.” I agree that her character need more oomph to be truly effective ~ this movie made Talia come off like a firecracker that was supposed to be a big show but ends up being a simple “pop.” Anti-climatic.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt as John Blake. I think Peter pretty much summed up my response to the character.
One side note:
Heath Ledger turned in a remarkable performance as the Joker in TDK. Despite what some people are saying, I agree that the character did not need to be shown in TDKR. Doing so would have not only cheapened the character established in TDK but, also would not have a good memorial for Ledger.
Still, one does wonder about the Joker in light of Bane’s actions in TDKR. I’d like Peter’s take on this, if possible.
I read online about a small mention in the novelization that purports to explain the whereabouts of the Joker:
“Due to the DENT ACT, criminals no longer are able to use insanity as a defense. Putting aside any real world questions that bit of information raises ~ that leaves the question of whateve happened to the JOKER after TDK.
Apparently, Blackgate Prison became the preferred choice to incarcerate any prisoners. All in one place.
Legend was that Arkham Asylum was largely emptied save for one sole inmate: the JOKER.
Maybe. Nobody knew for certain.”
Okay, I paraphrased here and there ~ but, the facts are largely the same.
Some SPOILERS follow.
I took my 9-year-old nephew to see the matinee show the day it opened (Just for fun, when we got in the car, I had him say “atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed.”). He seemed a bit disappointed that there wasn’t much Batmaning going on.
(I would also have taken him to see Amazing Spider-Man the day before, but he was tired from a long car trip. I think he would have liked that film better.)
Anyway, my initial feeling, coming out of the theater, was that I liked it; but the more I think about the various plot holes, the less likely I am to re-watch the movie just for the sake or re-watching it.
The revelation about Talia caught me off guard. I never even thought about the character, even though Ra’s Al Ghul was mentioned throughout the film. Recall that in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne met a man who called himself Henri Ducard, who said he worked for Ra’s Al Ghul. In the comics, the two men have no connection whatsoever; in the film, it turned out that Ducard really was Ra’s. So, in The Dark Knight Rises, when Batman is led to believe that Bane was born in a prison and climbed out of a pit to escape (both of which happened in the comics, as I recall), and is the child of Ra’s Al Ghul, I figured it was just another such variation from the comics. Meanwhile, Talia hid in plain sight.
As to the revelation that Detective John Blake’s full name includes the name Robin, I didn’t have a problem with that minor twist in the mythology. To sort of piggyback on what PAD was saying in his “Myth and Archetypes” CBG column, recently reprinted on this blog, Batman, like Star Trek, has reached mythic status.
Look at just some of the permutations we’ve seen in the comics alone since 1939: Bruce Wayne buys a mansion as an adult and discovers the Batcave when he falls through the floor while exploring a barn on the property; Bruce Wayne discovers the Batcave on the family property when he falls into it as a young boy. His parents were killed by a nameless mugger; they were killed by Joe Chill; they were killed by Joe Chill, who was hired by Lou Moxon; they were killed by a nameless mugger; etc. The Batcave has been known about and used for centuries; very few people know about it. And so on.
I believe the character of Robin was inspired in part by Robin Hood, but I don’t recall with absolute certainty if that’s the case (though in-universe, Ðìçk Grayson said Roin Hood was one of his favorite characters); and the Robin Hood tales have gone through endless variations, including the era in which they were set (they weren’t always set in the time of King Richard I). And, of course, Robin Hood’s true name and background has varied. So, does it matter that this “Robin” is John Blake instead of Ðìçk Grayson, or Jason Todd or Tim Drake or Carrie Kelley (though most “civilians” would likely only recognize Grayson’s name)? No. Because even though we’re likely never going to see a film centered around him, acknowledging a “Robin” and hinting that Gotham will continue to be protected is another variation of the myth. And as is the case with Robin Hood, I’m sure there will be stories about Batman centuries from now. These will no doubt conflate various situations and characters seen over the years.
All that said, knowing this was the last film Nolan and Bale were making, I was sort of hoping/expecting to see Batman unmasked during his climatic (and possibly fatal) battle with Bane. Not unlike the situation in Adventure Comics #462, where the Earth-2 Batman died in battle, after which everyone knew his dual identity (until the next issue, when Dr. Fate used a spell to make everyone think Bruce Wayne and Batman had died separate deaths that day. As to all the newspaper headlines and other such public records, maybe Dr. Fate borrowed the Time Lords’ perception filters).
I suppose that within the universe established by the Nolan films, Blake could become the new Batman, but I doubt he’d do that. People, including Blake himself, believe Batman died. He might think calling himself “Batman” would cheapen the other man’s sacrifice. Though, again, since there probably won’t be any movie with the character, it’s a moot point.
I saw Amazing Spider-Man with a friend last Monday, and afterward we discussed the two films (he’d be more inclined to take his grandson to see Spider-Man). He didn’t like Dark Knight Rises nearly as much. He’d found the ease at which Bane took over the city hard to swallow. Up to a point, I agree, except Bane did have a nuclear device. Who in the outside world knew whether he’d detonate it? Ask me, the Bane holding Gotham hostage storyline with a nuclear bomb is more believable than the “Cataclysm” and “No Man’s Land” storylines from the comics. As I understand it (I didn’t read them), these boiled down to A) Gotham’s hit by an earthquake (despite not being on a fault line) and B) the rest of the country says, for no apparent reason, “you’re on your own”, and isolates the city.
As to the “drive the bomb around until it decays and blows up” bit, maybe I missed something, but I got the impression the guys doing the actual driving didn’t know that little detail. I don’t recall now if Bane himself knew.
That this movie takes place eight years after the last is fine, but I agree that Bruce should have been Batmaning during that time, not Howard Hughesing; and that Alfred should have mentioned Rachel’s letter a long time ago.
I agree with PAD about Bane’s reading of Gordon’s letter regrading Harvey Dent; but now that we know what was in said letter, I can’t help but wonder what sort of reception it would have gotten had Gordon read it at the party, as he’d obviously intended.
It’s a stretch, but maybe the Batwing was constructed in such a way that Batman could separate himself from the main ship and fly off to safety. Either that, or he did have a lead-lined refrigerator in his utility belt. Or maybe this film anticipates the day when DC and Marvel are owned by the same parent company (putting all the characters in the same universe), and Batman used a Life Model Decoy (I haven’t read all that many marvel comics where they play a role, but I’m hoping the phrase is a fancy name for “android” rather than a “hey, George, get plastic surgery to look like me so you’ll take the proverbial bullet in my place.”).
Batman’s thought as he was racing over the water in the Batwing: “some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”
Rick
I think Mr. David is pretty much accurate in all of his “plot holes” or whatever you want to call them — I noticed them too, but they just didn’t bother me.
Because if you get turned off by plot holes, you’re probably not going to like many movies. I love The Dark Knight but…
– When the Joker made his attempt on the life of the mayor, no policemen noticed that the honor guard were suddenly totally different people that no one knew? A threat has been made on the life of the city’s leader and the security is lax enough for the honor guard to be kidnapped with no one knowing and a new team of guys to take their place… no one notices?
– When the cops are transporting Harvey Dent, the street is blocked off by fiery wreckage, forcing them to go into the tunnels — except the other side of the street isn’t blocked at all. I mean, the street were barricaded off, so no traffic coming the other way — why not just go around that side and skip the tunnel altogether?
– Every cop in the city is at a hospital and not a single one notices the Joker strolling out (he wasn’t mixed in with the crowd) in plain sight, full make-up, as he detonates the bomb to blow up the hospital? The nurse’s outfit was funny but it wasn’t that great a disguise…
– How the hëll did Harvey Dent manage to track down all those people in such short order by himself?
– Wouldn’t all of Batman’s tech indicate that only a very rich person with access to advanced military technology could be Batman or be financing Batman? When you look at the motivations of all the wealthy of Gotham, plus factor in Bruce’s mysterious 7 year disappearance, shouldn’t figuring out he’s Batman be child’s play?
Okay, let’s put Nolan’s Batman movies aside — it’s in just about every superhero movie.
When Tony Stark escaped the prison in the first Iron Man movie and his rocket thrusters cut out, he landed head-first into the sand — armor or not, shouldn’t that have broken his neck or spine?
In Superman: The Movie, he’s not fast enough to stop both missiles — but then when it’s time to reverse time, he circles the Earth in less than a second.
In The Avengers, Black Widow is able to take down Chintauri aliens with just a couple of hand-guns and some karate moves — why didn’t Fury and/or the President scramble assloads of special forces and other military members (not to mention fighter jets for the flying things) with much more powerful weapons, like machine guns and rocket launchers? When Black Widow jumps onto the flying speeder vehicle, why are her arms not ripped out of their sockets? Instead of using handguns and arrows, why didn’t Hawkeye and the Widow bring powerful automatic weapons — or just use the advanced weapons from dead aliens around them?
In Captain America: The First Avenger, the plan to infiltrate the Skull’s base is to get captured and then his buddies crash through the windows to save him… why not just crash through the windows to begin with? Why not do it with your team? How did he know the guys with the flamethrowers wouldn’t just incinerate him on the spot or the Skull just wouldn’t shoot him point blank in the head? How did he know he’d be taken to that room specifically? What if the glass they planned to crash through was bullet-proof? Wouldn’t they just hit it and then fall to their deaths?
In my opinion, I think we notice these things in a movie we dislike and disregard them in a movie we don’t. If something illogical happens in a “good” superhero movie, we write it off as “conceits of the genre” or think people are taking things too seriously. If it happens in a “bad” movie, then it becomes a major sticking point.
It’s what a friend calls the ‘Thirty Second Rule’. As in, thirty seconds worth of coherent thought would fix most of those holes and leave a much better movie for it. The fact they couldn’t be bothered is quite irksome.
I want to imagine you listened to our podcast, but I know it’s probably just that great minds think alike 😉
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/57187
I really enjoyed the film, and walked out of it on a bit of a high. The audience in my screening clapped, which is particularly unusual in the UK!
I wasn’t a big fan of the 8 year gap in Batman activities, and would have preferred Bruce to have continued fighting for at least some of the time. Soooooo…I totally fan-wáņkëd it.
At one point, someone says that 8 years ago was the last CONFIRMED Batman sighting. So I like to pretend that Bats was still fighting incognito (no longer liaising with Gordon) for at least a few years while the Dent Act took effect. This wouldn’t stop Bruce becoming a recluse from the moment TDK ends. It would also better explain his injuries.
Personally, I like to think Nolan got away with killing Batman by being sneaky. As Peter already pointed out, there’s no way in hëll Batman could have gotten clear of the bomb’s blast radius in time, autopilot or no autopilot. The last shot of Alfred seeing Bruce having a meal with Selina could easily be a wishful dream that Alfred experiences in his grief-plagued sleep. (Anyone remember the end of INCEPTION? This has the same level of ambiguity.)
For some reason I have doubts that Selina would appear in Alfred’s dream. He was out of the picture for most of that relationship. If not for that, I would absolutely think Nolan pulled another Inception on us.
I thought it was likely a dream as well…if Selina wasn’t in it, I would think it was stronger possibility
No. The first indication that we get that he’s alive is Fox finding out that Bruce fixed the autopilot problem before he had his first dustup with Bane and remotely uploaded the fix. You might make the argument that Alfred was fooling himself as to who he saw at that cafe, but Fox didn’t have the same huge emotional investment in Bruce being alive. Also, we get the guys inventorying the estate noting that Martha Wayne’s pearls are missing. I didn’t notice if Selina Kyle was wearing them in the last scene, but I’d bet she was.
Bruce Wayne was definitely alive at the end of the movie. The utter impossibility of him getting out of the blast radius (we see him in the cockpit less than ten seconds before the blast) is simply ignored to get to that last bit where Bruce and Alfred nod at each other. Maybe Bruce used Tesla’s magic machine from the Prestige to make a duplicate Batman, meaning that he both died AND survived…
” I didn’t notice if Selina Kyle was wearing them in the last scene, but I’d bet she was.”
I”ve seen the movie twice and made sure to check the second time. She is wearing the pearls.
“I didn’t notice if Selina Kyle was wearing them in the last scene, but I’d bet she was.”
I’ve seen the movie twice and the second time I made sure to check. Yes, Selina is wearing the pearls.
David Hunt sez:Maybe Bruce used Tesla’s magic machine from the Prestige to make a duplicate Batman, meaning that he both died AND survived…
Then we would have Schroedinger’s Bat
I was under the impression that things were not as great in Gotham as the higher-ups were led to believe. Selina certainly didn’t think so.
Those in power rarely think things are going badly ~ until things start to go awry on their doorstep.
I think Bane’s actions simply showed that things were not so calm and orderly as the higher-ups thought. Sure, he made it happen but, he also managed to tap into mass psychology to exacerbate the situation.
Hence, the chaos that he was so easily able to exploit resulting in Batman’s return to action.
Actually, I’m going to stand up and defend the “Gotham Revolution”. Sure, we hear a lot about how much Gotham has improved over the last eight years, and how it’s become a much better place…and those are all politicians and the ultra-rich talking. To them, things are much better because they can walk the streets without fear of running into any of those riff-raff that are safely locked away in prison like they should be.
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In Oldtown, things don’t look any better. The orphanage can’t make ends meet and is kicking kids out onto the street to live in the sewers. The prisons are crammed to bursting because local law-enforcement has used its “sweeping new powers” to disallow previously legal defences. Anyone who hears, “sweeping new powers” and thinks, “Wow, I bet that only locked up legitimate criminal masterminds,” is living a sheltered life. 🙂 In short, you have an upper class that seems completely unconcerned about conditions on the ground, and an underclass that seethes with resentment. “There’s a storm coming, Mister Wayne…”
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Could it have been made less subtle? Probably. But given that the first third of the movie already had scenes like, “Master Bruce, as your butler, I know everything about the League of Shadows and their recent activities, so let me tell you who Bane is and what he’s been up to over the last few years,” I don’t think that we needed more unsubtle scenes. 🙂 I’ll take this for what it is.
I actually saw the “Talia reveal” coming. When Bruce is showing her the reactor, I thought “There’s no way this isn’t going to be a problem. She’s probably Talia.” Then it took so long to get to the reveal that I started to doubt, but then it went and happened.
As for JGL, I thought he was okay, but for the role he was destined to play he might as well been called Officer McGuinness. And then name-dropping that his first name is actually “Robin”. Groan. I’m sorry, but now that the Nolan trilogy is over, can we please get a Batman movie with a proper Robin in it? Someone who isn’t too old like Chris O’Donnell or just a name drop. Because, honestly, I kind of like Robin better than Batman.
I didn’t see the reveal as Talia coming, but I was certain that Miranda Tate had something shady up her sleeve. Even for a character obviously intended to be a potential love interest, she hopped into the sack with Bruce just a little too quickly not to have an ulterior motive.
I’m hoping for a good Robin, too, one that’s actually a teenager. Why is this so hard to do?
And in my dream Batman series, he quits being Robin and disappears for a while, then in the midst of a big fight he shows up to save the day and says, “Just call me Nightwing.”
“I didn’t see the reveal as Talia coming, but I was certain that Miranda Tate had something shady up her sleeve.”
It was a combination of her being the only one to see the reactor, mentioning that it “could” be weaponized and Alfred asking about who was running the League of Shadows that made me think “Talia’
“And in my dream Batman series, he quits being Robin and disappears for a while, then in the midst of a big fight he shows up to save the day and says, “Just call me Nightwing.”
I’d like a younger Robin too. Even Middle School age would be cool (I liked young Ðìçk on The Batman). Never been a big fan of Nightwing, but he might be necessary in a movie series.
I actually saw the “Talia reveal” coming. When Bruce is showing her the reactor, I thought “There’s no way this isn’t going to be a problem. She’s probably Talia.” Then it took so long to get to the reveal that I started to doubt, but then it went and happened.
No real idea why, but during that same scene, when Bruce & Lucius showed her the reactor, I sat forward in my seat and thought, “Oh, frak! She’s Talia!”
That thought was cemented for me by something that I don’t think would have connected the dots to had I not re-watched Batman Begins less than 24 hours before seeing TDKR. In BB, when Bruce is facing his final test to join the League of Shadows, the faux Ra’s is holding a branding iron. That image came to my mind when Bruce noticed the scar on her back.
–Daryl
In fairness, the Manhattan lockup is literally up the street from city hall.
Also, I’m incredulous at the idea Nolan couldn’t kill of Bats if he wanted to. First, there’s no cited quote for that. Second, Nolan’s got the juice and the money to do whatever he wants at this point, even with treasured characters. If DC tells him he can’t end it the way he wants, he’ll just as likely walk.
“Some contend that Alfred would remain with Bruce to the bitter end.”
That would be a valid assertion, if this was the Alfred and Bruce that we see in most incarnations of the Bat-universe. For all that the iconic Batman is driven and obsessed and quite obviously a little disturbed, there is a certain balance to his life. For all the playboy airs of his public persona, Bruce Wayne gives time and money to charities and public works, putting a substantial part of his fortune toward the benefit of all; as Batman, he roots out corruption and crime that the police can’t or won’t touch, making the streets of Gotham a little bit safer. Alfred Pennyworth would indeed stand beside that Bruce Wayne to the bitter end.
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But the protagonist of “The Dark Knight Rises” is NOT that Bruce Wayne. This Bruce Wayne has cut himself off from both the playboy philanthropist and the vigilante. When he does come out of his seclusion, there’s no real effort made to return to public life as Bruce Wayne; it’s all about bringing Batman, and all the dangers that role brings with it, out of mothballs. Even after Alfred pleads with him that more good can be accomplished by Bruce Wayne than by a masked marauder, the only option that Bruce sees is to throw his battered body into the fray once more. I have absolutely no problem with this Alfred rejecting this Bruce’s decision and giving him the ultimatum that either Batman stays at rest or Alfred will leave for good. This Alfred doesn’t want to have to watch the man who is, for all intents and purposes, his beloved stepson sacrifice himself for a costume and an ideal, not when there is so much Bruce could accomplish without ever putting on the Batsuit again.
A friend who did make the mistake of going to see it said the worst part for him was the fact that the World’s Greatest Detective never once twigged to Talia and, when the Great Reveal hit was so dumbfounded that, well, no spoilers but people who have seen it knows what he failed to do and this was utterly out of character for any incarnation. Nolan’s a hack and this proves it.
This is a spoiler thread, and everyone here has seen it, so tell me, what did he fail to do that was so out of character? My mind’s already blanking on this movie.
Fine. SPOILER it is.
When the World’s Greatest Detective spent MONTHS without having a clue as to whom he was dealing with, he was in such shock when she revealed herself and struck him that he just stood/sat there doing nothing as she set off the bomb’s arming mechanism and set it to go BOOM. Any and every incarnation of the Batman known would crawl naked over broken glass to prevent that instead of just doing … nothing. As friend put it, the only way to prevent Bats from acting is either kill him outright, or chop off both arms and legs.
I disagree with many of Mr Davids complaints. The main one being about the citizens of gotham. The citizens stayed in doors most of the time and did not fight bain because he had an atomic bomb. Most of the people doing the rioting were the escaped prisoners and Bains allies like Selina.
As for Robin, that is an important aspect of Nolan’s phylosophy. Batman is a good symbol but Bruce is the wrong person. He is too warped by notions of revenge. Gothom needs an idealistic hero like Dent or Robin. I am sure there will be a Nightwing or Catwoman trilogy soon.
As for banes death, there have been climactic duels since homer. Why not something different. Selina got her redemption by killing Bane.
Well, different CAN be good..just check out the ending to “To Live and Die In L.A.”..it would have even been different if Bane was kicking Batman’s ášš again..that no matter what, Batman just can’t beat him and all hope is lost…but that wasn’t the case here
Agreed with the first part: The citizend of Gotham stayed indoors, with only Bane’s hundreds of henchmen at court and possibly a few random gothamite nutjobs.
Good review and I mostly agree with everything that was said. But two things:
“Fun fact: Nolan originally wanted to kill off Batman. DC refused to sign off on it.”
That’s something that many suspect, but I have yet to see it confirmed. Maybe some citation?
“Then again, we must suppose it’s a good thing that Bruce Wayne skips town considering that, thanks to the fallout, at least half the town is going to get cancer, many children are going to be born deformed, and the drinking water won’t be safe for about forty years.”
Meh, the whole fusion reactor’s explosion make so little sense (if any) that we may as well assume it didn’t leave any radiation.
Just a minor quibble with the fallout issue, but they were quite clear the rigged fusion reactor was a neutron bomb, which leaves no fallout (and if memory serves, kills only organic life-forms, leaving the infrastructure of the city itself largely intact (beyond the initial explosion radius)). It’s actually stated by the physicist in the stadium sequence just before Bane murders him.
I still hold the only “mistake” in the film was holding on the close-up of Batman after the bridge. While I suspect it was Nolan’s Brooklyn salute to WB, from a narrative POV it was disjointed. We shouldn’t have seen Batman after the Bat(wing) leaves Gotham through the explosion. Otherwise, most of the complaints here are absolved with a second, more careful viewing.
Citation? I don’t know what to tell you other than that I was told that by a VERY reliable source from within DC.
PAD