- he literally climbs out of a hole in the ground defeating the prison and his own personal demons? Despite the fact that every Nolan film has told stories on multiple levels, literally and figuratively?
lol - give me a break.
He climbs out of a hole in the ground??!!!!
How metaphorically significant.
Climbing back from the dead!??!!!
The layers of meaning astound me with the complex beauty and harmony of intertwining themes layed out for those of us with the intelligence and intuition to grasp.
He climbs out of a hole in the ground??!!!!
How metaphorically significant.
Climbing back from the dead!??!!!
The layers of meaning astound me with the complex beauty and harmony of intertwining themes layed out for those of us with the intelligence and intuition to grasp.
nah -
. . . sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Though I don't think it's Tchaikovsky or anything, here's some enlightenment for you. Sometime's it's OK to read into the film, especially when it's someone who seems to have more to say than what's on the surface with every single film he makes.
The more I think about the film, the less I am enamored by it. And I've been thinking about it a lot. Too many logical gaps. The concepts and ideological statements are there, but they don't seem very well grounded by the story. They're just themes thrown into a big vat.
Saw TDKR and was disappointed. The curse of the number three films is alive and kicking. Not a bad film but poorly paced, written and structured. A very mediocre ending to what was a promising trilogy.
6.5/10 Being Kind.
Whatever pre-judgments I had made about this film I checked at the door and watched it in hopes of enjoying a great film. Unfortunately, if a person is being honest then they have to admit this is not a great movie.
Everything seemed telegraphed and that’s just weak writing in my opinion. The logic flaws about Bane’s whole master plan and how it was executed are blatant. What also detracts from the film for me is the fact that Batman does NOTHING but ride his bike once and get his ass kicked real bad for the first two hours of the film. Even after that, there are no action sequences or scenes of merit. It seems the idea was to make Batman the least appealing character on display (having him do little or nothing for the entire film) and making the movie about Bruce Wayne. Great artistic concept but it comes across as weak.
Even though TDKR is filled with logic flaws, the “surpise twists” are easy to spot and it’s thematically over-ambitious, I still found myself interested in the story. Not a bad film but unless you’re a big fan going in I don’t see how anyone will call this anything but mediocre.
"There’s the outline of a good movie scattered throughout its mammoth 165 minutes, but its buried by the excessive percussion of Hans Zimmer’s jackhammer score and a constant flow of military/terroristic violence that dominates this movie supposedly about a crime-fighting superhero.
If you’d told me that halfway through this movie, I’d want to walk out due to sheer boredom, I’d have thought you a liar."
That review is what most everyone I talk to is saying about the movie.
the man-love Brick has for nolan is creepin me out.
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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.
Without a doubt the biggest film disappointment for me, ever. While cranking up the already enormous visual scale of the previous films, Nolan steps up with the weakest story of the trilogy.
I'm hard pressed explaining anything that happens in this movie, Banes plan seems a lot more focused putting on a good show for the audience than any actual goal. One second he's blowing up an airplane mid-flight, then he's in the stock exchange, then he's blowing up a football stadium, and then he's in charge of Gotham.
Then one of the oldest (and lousiest) action movie cliche's of all time makes an appearance, a nuclear bomb that will blow up all of Gotham. Bane holds the city to ransom and starts messing everything up. Once Batman comes back and punches Bane's head off, Talia (the worst character in Batman history) stabs him in the back and reveals she was actually carrying out her father, Raas Al Ghul's work. In the most convoluted ass backwards way possible. Raas Al Ghul wanted to destroy Gotham, plain and simple. Talia goes about this, by holding the city to ransom with a giant bomb for five months and never blowing it up. It also turns out that her father kicked her lover Bane out of the League of Shadows (probably for coming up with stupid plans) and she is only now carrying out his work because Batman killed him.
The only goal Talia really achieves in the movie is making Bane (the actual villain of the entire movie) look like a mindless pawn. Everything about her story is frustratingly stupid, which brings me to my next complaint. John Blake, a rookie cop who knows Batman's true identity. Keep in mind this never comes back later in the story, he just mentions it to Bruce Wayne, so that he can ruin the (awesome) scene where Bane knows who Batman is. Blake unexpectedly takes a lot of screen time up in this movie and accomplishes absolutely nothing, other than take up Batman's role in 40 seconds of footage at the end of the movie.
The only new character worth their salt is Catwoman. Hatheway is up and away the best part of the whole movie, not just because of her seductive, nuanced performance, but because her part in the story makes ACTUAL SENSE. A new love interest for Bruce Wayne, one to tempt him out of his remorse over Rachel and his inablity to give up Batman. Christian Bale is somewhere in this movie, he climbs out of a hole in like five minutes and shows up briefly in other scenes. Which is well more than we get of any of the characters established in the first two flicks.
Where The Dark Knight Rises completely abandons all logic though, is in it's finale where Christopher Nolan brings his entire filmography full circle. Using editing tricks from Memento, Batman is shown flying a bomb into the ocean and then blows up. Alfred cries, but then he feels like an idiot when he sees Bruce Wayne alive one minute later. On my first viewing I genuinely thought Alfred was imagining this, but it turns out they just threw in the shot of Batman in the "bat" - out of place, to throw the audience off. Needless to say, it was the most effective fake death ever on film. The air was sucked out of the room in my theater, a child roared from the back "oh my god!". Another man exclaimed, "This is an absolute outrage!". The father sitting next to me burst into tears and despondently gathered his family up to leave the screening. Everyone (except for one old cynical man) had walked out of the show by the time Morgan Freeman asked what he could have done to fix the damn auto-pilot. When it was revealed to Freeman that the auto-pilot had been previously fixed, me and the old man exchanged a look of intriguing shock and disbelief. Alfred sits down at the cafe and my heart is beating out of my chest, then
BANG
there's f***ing Bruce Wayne sitting there with Catwoman. I look to the old man and he gives me a life affirming nod. He'd known I had made it, that I'd experienced a cinematic marvel. I nod back.
On my first viewing I genuinely thought Alfred was imagining this, but it turns out they just threw in the shot of Batman in the "bat" - out of place, to throw the audience off. Needless to say, it was the most effective fake death ever on film. The air was sucked out of the room in my theater, a child roared from the back "oh my god!". Another man exclaimed, "This is an absolute outrage!". The father sitting next to me burst into tears and despondently gathered his family up to leave the screening.
Yikes...
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#31 on SC's Top 100 Mofos list!!
...I thought the idea is that he was in one...just a different one. They found that prototype back at the lab that had been patched just 6 months ago, remember? And there were numerous references to the Autopilot all throughout the film. So it should be reasonably clear that he got the Autopilot working and switched planes. There are lots of hints in there that couldn't mean anything else. Granted, it's a lot of legwork to make that death seem as convincing as possible (with the shot of him in the cockpit), but they did, in fact, do that legwork.
...I thought the idea is that he was in one...just a different one. They found that prototype back at the lab that had been patched just 6 months ago, remember? And there were numerous references to the Autopilot all throughout the film. So it should be reasonably clear that he got the Autopilot working and switched planes. There are lots of hints in there that couldn't mean anything else. Granted, it's a lot of legwork to make that death seem as convincing as possible (with the shot of him in the cockpit), but they did, in fact, do that legwork.
He climbs out of a hole in the ground??!!!!
How metaphorically significant.
Climbing back from the dead!??!!!
The layers of meaning astound me with the complex beauty and harmony of intertwining themes layed out for those of us with the intelligence and intuition to grasp.
nah -
. . . sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
I'm amazed at how many people say stuff like this.
It may have only taken you two hours to watch, but it took hundreds of people two years to build. And it should be pretty obvious by now which filmmakers--successful or not--actually attempt to build thematically significant films. Nolan's one of them.
Also, you need to decide what you're arguing. Is it that there isn't any symbolism (good luck defending that), or that the symbolism isn't all that impressive? Because they're not the same thing.
Despite the fact that Alfred tells Wayne that he is on a self destructive suicide path? Despite the fact that Wayne says to the doctor "I'm not afraid to die" to which the doctor says "that's why you failed"? Despite the fact that he literally climbs out of a hole in the ground defeating the prison and his own personal demons? Despite the fact that every Nolan film has told stories on multiple levels, literally and figuratively?
And that's how about the extent of those themes-
Ancillary Character: 'THIS IS A THEME'
BATMAN: 'I'LL LITERALISE A METAPHOR'
Show, don't tell Mr Nolan. I'd only have known Batman was a self destructive path because of that line, there's nothing to suggest any of his motivation except for Caine's expository dialogue. Which was also, one of my main gripes with Inception
The themes are never played out, they're delivered and acknowledged through unsubtle dialogue. Batman is the most reactionary character ever (hyperbole but go with it) and the themes MAY be there but only in as much as Nolan tells you they are. Without those massive signpost lines in the script, you'd never know. If you disagree, explain how you knew why Bruce decided he'd live his life with Selina, what was his reaction to Miranda's betrayal, when did he stop mourning Rachel? I'm not disputing them being there, I get the prison was a metaphor and symbolic but it was awkwardly placed in the overall narrative, logically, as well as symbolically; there was never really any great sense of his fall or any prior development of his character, save that one line from Caine.
Yeah, here's the thing: In Batman Begins, we were basically seeing Bruce testing himself and being tested to see what he was willing to do for his ideas of justice. Ra's would have corrupted him into a pawn by helping him seek mere revenge, yet it would have all been a perversion of his ideas of justice. He wanted to be something more, to inspire hope, to stay altruistic to the common good.
Ra's and the LOS were essentially elitist scumbags who hid their megalomaniacal power grabs under the guise of serving justice, but they were rotten.
These movies were always really about the power of ideas, and how symbolism can be used to deceive for both good and evil. I think Nolan may have lost sight of that.
He climbs out of a hole in the ground??!!!!
How metaphorically significant.
Climbing back from the dead!??!!!
The layers of meaning astound me with the complex beauty and harmony of intertwining themes layed out for those of us with the intelligence and intuition to grasp.
Your review of this movie is so spot on and the best review I've seen by ANYONE who saw The Dark Knight Rises (not that I've been reading tons of reviews, though.) You are so right about how stupid the movie is. Gosh, maybe that's why I liked it.
Originally Posted by meadwadsprite
The air was sucked out of the room in my theater, a child roared from the back "oh my god!". Another man exclaimed, "This is an absolute outrage!". The father sitting next to me burst into tears and despondently gathered his family up to leave the screening. Everyone (except for one old cynical man) had walked out of the show
That's gonna be me in a couple of decades -- the cynical old man.
I loved this part of your review, especially mentioning the crying father gathering his family and leaving. I don't know if you're serious, but damn.
Curses are easy to stop. Simply bring a horse shoe, a rabbit's foot, a fortune teller and learn a few spells. Easy stuff.
Ohhhhh, a rabbit's foot. I remember I used to keep one of those on me in my backpack in high school for some reason. You know, the kind on a chain. I think it was green. I miss having one of those things - I need another.
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