Damn. Shots fired.

But that's his MO! He's a deadbeat dad! He sires healthy, happy children and then abandons them to strippers and they grow up to be criminals and deviants.

RAISE YOUR OWN CHILDREN, JJ ABRAMS. DON'T GO OFF TRYING TO ADOPT GENE RODDENBERRY'S.

And you know what, I'm right there with you. 2 will stand against many...etc.

Maybe not about the villain, though I like both a lot, but Dark Knight Rises I think finally nails a good middle ground between the comic-bookier elements of Batman Begins and the Too Serious for it's own good Dark Knight.

I caught the last 30 minutes of Dark Knight on cable about a week back, and it's honestly really hard to take seriously. You have a guy in a bat suit, a cop, and a a guy with half his face burned off standing in a circle yelling overly written dialogue at each other while dramatic music plays, and it just does not work for me anymore. I think Nolan went so far to try to replicate Heat with superheros, that it really undermines the movie when it gets ridiculous and contrived with the ferries towards the end.

Dark Knight Rises is kinda ridiculous and comic-booky from the outset so the crazier stuff doesn't feel out of place within the context of the film, and if you wanna talk about stakes, I think it has greater stakes than almost any movie I've seen in years. And just visually, it's on a completely other level from most comic book movies, and makes Avengers look like a TV movie by comparison.

As opposed to Bane who was a villain 'because of love'?

All three Nolan Batmen have structural problems, but it's most obvious in TDKR. Mainly, there's a ton of doubling for no discernible thematic reason.

To wit: Bruce starts out at a low point after a major financial loss and health problems, miraculously builds himself back up to being Batman, has a falling out with Alfred and a fractured romance with Selina. Then he has a second falling out with Alfred, suffers a second financial loss, has a fractured romance with Miranda, gets betrayed by Selina, suffers more health problems, miraculously builds himself back up to being Batman again, and gets betrayed by Miranda.

There are needlessly doubled characters: Blake/Gordon, Daggett/Stryver, Selina/Jen. The congressman and the scientist who seem important but get discarded. Matthew Modine's bad cop character. There are even two different sewer-level bases (Bruce's and Bane's) and two different underground prisons (one for cops; one for Bruce).

It doesn't sink the film, but it makes it feel flabby to me, especially the long stretch in the middle where Gordon is in the hospital and Bruce is in the pit prison and comes out with no change in character and having learned nothing (or, rather, he learns incorrect information). That crap about jumping without the safety rope was the worst; if you do a lesson-learned sequence, you need to have the protagonist then use it at the climax.

I have some other problems with it, but they're minor. The big reveal at the end requires that Bruce never heard about Bane and Talia during his time in the League of Shadows OR his time in the pit prison (yet ALFRED heard about Bane's past). And the opening lifted from License to Kill is pretty pointless.

Still, the characters are terrific, the acting is good, the focus is on Bruce/Batman, comic-booky things happen, the female characters have something to do, and the John Blake thing is really exciting.

Last edited by Zarban (2012-12-16 22:30:43)

Dark Knight has nitpicks too. People just seem to ignore them or say they are inconsequential because of Joker. Dark Knight wasn't held under the same scrutiny that TDKR was.

Just to clarify, I love the Dark Knight too. In fact, I'd say I like it maybe a tad more than TDKR. The nitpicks in the movie, with the exception of the bullet/fingerprint reconstruction, don't bother me. Just like a lot of the nitpicks in TDKR don't bother me. That being said, they do exist. Here's a few.
1.) How did the Joker plan the gap in the buses when he drove away from the bank? There just happened to be a perfect gap?
2.) Why didn't the mob security guard just spit out the grenade? We don't see Joker secure it in his mouth.
3.) How did Harvey and Rachel end up in their respective barrel rooms? Yes, we see Harvey get driven away by the cop he kills later, but the cop claims " I didn't know what they were going to do to you." So where did he take him? As for Rachel, one minute she's leaving the penthouse, next minute she's tied to a chair surrounded by barrels.
4.) Bruce seems to rely almost entirely on Mr. Fox for technology development and implementation. So then how was he able to singlehandedly use and upgrade the sonar gobbledegook without him?
5.) The whole "Jim Gordon faking his death so Joker will try and capture Harvey" plan. Here's a quote from another website:

"If I understand it correctly, Gordon faked his own death (even though it?s edited to make it look like he got shot for real) to protect his family. Batman then decides to announce who he is but Dent takes his place. The Joker intercepts the Dent convoy but is himself intercepted by Batman. Carnage ensues including the destruction of large parts of the Gotham road system and various buildings and, seemingly by fortune, Batman, the Joker and, the driver of the convoy who is, of course, Gordon, reach a point at which the Joker is captured. Unfortunately for them that’s what he wanted all along."

I guess that's it for me. I'm not going to get into the Harvey Dent legal nitpicks, I'm not a lawyer and that seems like a step into the ridiculous. If there's some points in the movie that explain these nitpicks that I just missed, please point them out.

Last edited by Withkittens (2012-12-17 20:36:39)