The Dark Knight Rises

"Robin, what's your secret identity?"

"Robin"

"No, what's your SECRET identity, like how mine is Batman so I can protect the people I love blaaaaah"

"Oh...ermmm Pigeon?"


The fact he's called Robin is evidence in itself Nolan won't return

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Just to be devil's advocate, the first two are silly complaints because they're not unreasonable at all in my mind. The Alfred complaint is only legit because of the dialogue, but at this point it seems like they're looking for problems. Then they mention the relationship between Bruce and Miranda wasn't developed but they didn't have one...sooooo anyway. The flaming bat was covered earlier in the thread. "Bruce doesn't do background checks" well when you're a depressed fool you lose your mojo, not farfetched really. And to answer this question:

"Speaking of which, if Anne Hathaway’s Selina is easily able to adopt fake identities and hack super encrypted passwords (like the one on Wayne’s expensive safe) why does she need the Clean Slate program so badly? I mean, its probably the worst MacGuffin in the Nolan Batman trilogy."

Well you can't be a hacker when you make a lifestyle change. Derp.

"Why Does Bane Take a Break from His Master Plan to Ship Bruce Wayne Off to the Desert?"

He's playing the waiting game once the bomb is created. I'm pretty sure the desert is in Asia but he had, what, a month of free time? That doesn't really help Bruce's case with getting back in town though, which was the article's next point, which I also cannot answer.

So did TDK Gotham. I didn't hear anyone say it then.

However, this - "We get to watch him recuperate again before finally facing Bane at the end (sans limp, btw, even without the brace)." - is a good point. Cartilage takes up to 12 years to grow back. They went on to complain that Bruce recuperating twice in the film is annoying but w/e that's a lame complaint. I'm getting bored.

Since I'm the only person to use the term "nit-picking" in this thread I feel the need to respond. I only brought up the nit-picks to the people who seemed to only use those as the negatives to the film. Every film has things that can be nit-picked, but I don't think it's a strong criticism of a film.

Dialog, plotting, pacing, glaring plot holes, bad lighting/editing/shooting; these can all be strong criticisms of a film. Saying Batman shouldn't be able to escape via the Bat-wing, asking how, with all of his resources, he got into Gotham at the end of the film, or complaining about why he took the time to set fire to the bridge just comes across as petty.

Feel free to tell me it was over long or dully plotted or the action was poorly shot or it didn't tell the story that it needed to in order to satisfy the ending of the trilogy or anything other than tiny plot points and maybe we can have a valid discussion. Even the 15 things in the article come across as petty and trivial without ever really touching on the actual journey Bruce Wayne makes in the film. In fact, I think I'm the only person to actually bring up the journey he makes in the film which, IMO, shows just how much people are not interested in actually talking about the film!

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I feel, and Yoda hinted at it, the journey was also for the citizens, especially because Batman was intended to be the everyman, yet rich people and cops saved the day. Bruce's own journey could easily be interwoven into that.

I nit-picked as you put it alot but I also had a lot of reasons to why I didn't like it. TDK May of had its flaws aswell but everything else about the film made up for them. Rises tho was just alot weaker of a movie and that's why people don't like it as much.

Now this is just incorrect. Yes, your opinion is incorrect. There was enough in Rises to make up for flaws just in the same way as in TDK. The reason people don't like Rises as much is because, as previously established, there's no Joker, and also because it's so similar to TDK that because The Joker isn't there, all the flaws of TDK that were carried over are now being seen more plainly.

It has nothing to do with the Joker, why do people keep telling people why they don't like it. How about the fact this movie is cheesy as anything, or the weak James bond plot, or the fact they turn bane into talia's little puppet and get rid of him so easily. Maybe they don't like the fact Nolan stepped abit out the realism he created with the first two when we have Bane punching chunks out of brick walls, or the fact that the movie seems a mess at times. Any of them good enough reasons.

I don't entirely see the disagreement. He's saying the rest of TDK was better and thus he was more willing to overlook flaws. You say this is because of the Joker...but the Joker is part of the rest of the film he's talking about, no? It's a more interesting character and a dramatically better performance. That's a rational reason to prefer it and overlook some of its flaws.

And the Joker is hardly the only difference. Even if we were to agree, for the sake of argument, that the suspension of disbelief isn't any higher in TDKR than it was in TDK, it seems a near consensus view even among people who like the film that TDKR's first half is a lot looser than the rest of it. I've heard a lot of people (most of whom know a good deal more about such things than I do) suggest that it's not particularly well edited. Maybe this is only true next to TDK, which is incredibly svelte and just oozes precision the whole way through (to me, at least, after a dozen viewings), but it seems to be a common view among people with otherwise varying overall reactions to the film.

I can write a lot of them off too and in my write up, did.

I wasn't directing at you, just merely observing this debate is fruitless at the moment. Like I said above, in my write up I did specifically mention or least try to allude to the fact that many of the trivial bits I can overlook. TDK had them, for example when Joker throws Rachel out the window- why doesn't Batman get Joker as he's leaving the building? I can let that go as although it's a niggle, doesn't massively effect the overall trajectory or undermine anything hugely. Similarly with travelling to Hong Kong, that bugged me and there's a lot of silly aspects about that but I let it slide. But when a film has a string of them like TDKR it has a more compound effect.

Anyway, my write up a couple pages back, I consider, illuminate flaws that bothered me personally and some objective complaints if you want to pick them up.

What you said is 100% correct, TDK flowed so nicely from start to finish with a good story and good characters. Rises started great and I was thinking wow ime in for a treat here, then the second part came along and it felt messy, to much crammed in, to many characters and to much going on. They seemed to have forgot about bane, pushed him aside and moved on to something else, it felt like throughout the movie aswel.

To prefer it yes, but to overlook the same peculiarity problems, that makes no sense.

The editing really isn't the problem, but that's a go-to complaint so I'm not really surprised. Since Nolan and his brother worked on the script together, they were practically in the first stage of editing in preproduction, so it's the script that's faulty in the second half, and that's only because he was trying to fit too much into too small an area. I don't hear many people complaining about the pace though, just more peculiarities, this is the first I'm hearing of it. People from the beginning have complained about the scripting of the end.

It depends on what you mean by overlook, I think. If you mean that the problems suddenly aren't even problems, then that makes no sense, agreed. But if it means that the good simply outweighs the bad--which I'm pretty sure is what Masterman was saying--then it makes total sense.

Anyway, I dunno if others have a problem with the pace, but I'll say it could've been a litter brisker early on.

Mainly, though, my gripes are just about the pulled punches with narrative and symbolism. And the mere idea of a ticking time bomb, which is a lot like something I expect lesser films to do.

If it seems like I'm grousing a lot, it's just because I know what these films can be when they get that extra 10% put into them. But I am looking forward to seeing it again. I expect parts of it will be better. And the more I learn about it (it seems to have been modeled on A Tale of Two Cities), the more forgiving I feel towards some of the more head scratching things, like Gotham's police force standing in for the entire populace.

It's not how I would use the word overlook but oh well.

With all the Selena Kyle sequences, the slowness of the beginning seemed pretty evened out. Opening with a mid-air plane jacking might have put the idea of fast-paced in the minds of many.

Indeed. It seemed like Bane was capable of something less lazy, though I guess he ended up being somewhat of a pawn.

I know what you mean and agree that it could be better. Tale of Two Cities? I thought he cited Battle of Algiers - which makes the cops as heroes bit all the more bizarre.

& I did mention that the rest of the movie didn't satisfy the good ending.

& you still haven't come up with a good reason for the 8 years absence.
If you had said he was broken down cos of Rachel, I would have settled with it.
But you said it's so, cos there's no more organized crime.. so you're admitting something that couldn't probably be possible in that movie universe.

Also, you mean to tell me Lucius or Alfred never warned him about the business going down?
So Lucius just waited for 8 years to tell Bruce?
Doesn't this guy have his father's dream to uphold? where's you personal journey in that.

& Don't those tiny plot points make up the story?
I am sure if you see even the terrible movies & ignore those tiny plot points, some good might come out of it..
If you take out those tiny things out of Batman & Robin, that ends up somewhere in a not so bad zone too.. I am sure some smart-ass could even draw philosophy from it..

Well for me, I don't give a damn about that personal journey.. Doesn't help me like the film any better.

The fact is you just don't want to dislike the movie, & you don't really have answers to peoples tiny plot points.
So that doesn't make those discussion invalid.

Random thought about the movie: I think Michael Caine's performance deserves an academy award nomination. For the short amount of time he was in the film he was great. I hope the academy sees that.

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Going 18600 miles per second.

I have seen the film twice, as with any Nolan film I recommend at least 2 viewings, his films are an effort to watch which I immensely enjoy being challenged. Anyways, upon my first viewing (in IMAX) my initial reaction to the film was as follows:
1.)Highly entertained
2.)Not quite as good as the first two
3.)Too many characters a bit rushed in the middle
4.)Very satisfying end of the trilogy and movie.

Now the next day I went to the local theater. One thing I immediately noticed from IMAX to regular theater was I could understand Bane a lot clearer, had no problem hearing his dialogue there. But during the second viewing a few things were cleared up
1.)The middle didn't feel as rushed
2.)I had a better understanding of all of the characters motives and why they were included in the story (especially Catwoman's)
3.)I accepted that the action was not as good as the first two, because Nolan wanted a more physical movie then the previous entries, which improved the fighting scenes for me greatly.

The second viewing will definitely help with nitpicking in the story. Well most of the nitpicks.

I thort there was alot more action in this movie than the first two.

Why?

Yes, because there are no more bad guys to hunt. Period. Why is that so hard to accept, especially when several characters say it in the film?

This film was made after the stock market tumble of 2008. Is Wayne enterprises immune to that sort of event? It was a great way to tie this universe to the real world.

No. The story makes up the story. It's extremely simple to fill in most of the gaps left by the plot points that have been raised. How did Wayne get back into Gotham? Because he's freaking Batman; the world's greatest detective with tons of resources, even without his money. How did he get away in the Bat-copter? Because he led the police to that exact spot knowing that it was parked there.

Then you have no understanding of story-telling, a hero's journey, or how to watch a film. Why are you posting on these forums if the most important aspect of every film goes ignored when you watch them?

Yeah, it kinda does make them invalid when they can be reasoned out with a minutes worth of thought. Again, no one can argue the theme or journey of the film because it's a solid ending to the trilogy, so they attack everything else.

Concerning pacing, my 8-year-old with borderline AD/HD was able to sit through the entire film and he loved it. He had trouble sitting through the slower parts of The Avengers. I know pacing can be relative to the viewer (David Lynch, anyone?), but I think that speaks highly of the film that my son could sit through it and be entertained.

No more bad guys? in a comic book movie? Thats a mega leap of disbelief no?

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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.

Good post, I agree with a lot of this, and your observations after a second viewing are both what I've been hoping and expecting.

I'm definitely with you on the action. I feel it was far less fun, exciting, and inventive...but probably intentionally so, in that it's supposed to be brutal and taxing. So, double-edged sword, there, in that it has a purpose but inevitable hurts the raw entertainment value. The first fight with Bane, though, was pretty great. I love that there's no music.