"The Dark Knight Rises" Review and Discussion Thread (spoilers)

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by JacksonArcher, Jul 10, 2012.

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How do you rate "The Dark Knight Rises"?

  1. Excellent

    147 vote(s)
    58.3%
  2. Good

    61 vote(s)
    24.2%
  3. Fair

    26 vote(s)
    10.3%
  4. Poor

    12 vote(s)
    4.8%
  5. Terrible

    6 vote(s)
    2.4%
  1. Lapis Exilis

    Lapis Exilis Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I have a hard time understanding why anyone gets hung up on any of this real world detail. It's a story about a billionaire who dresses up as a bat to beat up criminals with a personal tank and heliplane. You accept that basic premise and then argue about whether he could get into a city? You accept that a clean energy nuclear fusion device could be easily converted into nuclear bomb by one guy working with no tools (the one person in the ENTIRE WORLD who can do this) and then argue about what its realistic blast radius would be? I'll tell you: zero miles - because such a device would never exist.

    Don't get me wrong - I understand that there's a breaking point for any one person's suspension of disbelief and TDKR has many of them that might throw you out of the narrative. I'm just pointing out that there's a selective application of standards of realism going on here...

    PS, Yminale - you are now my absolute hero!
     
  2. Agenda

    Agenda Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    It's obvious to me that Bats would have secret "safe houses" all over the world where he could regroup. I'm sure he has them in the comics.
     
  3. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Ambiguity is merely fashionable right now. It's fine once in a while but the urge to project it on everything should be resisted.

    In my day movies would take a stand. It wasn't "left to the audience to decide". Darth Vader was Luke's father and you just had to deal with it.
     
  4. Guartho

    Guartho Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    No! That's impossible!
     
  5. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Commodore Commodore

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    Can you imagine if the fans where online in the days of the original trilogy? There would have been Luke and Leia shippers. What would have been the reaction when it was revealed they are brother and sister??!!! LOL
     
  6. NCC1701

    NCC1701 Commodore Commodore

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    This is pretty much my thoughts as well, but not about TDKR, but The Dark Knight, pretty much how I felt about it back in 2008 and I still thought it was slow, plodding and boring when I rewatched both Begins and Dark Knight before going to see Rises on Sunday. The acting and music are both top notch, everything else is pretty meh in my opinion.

    So I was pleasantly surprised to see that I liked Rises even more than Batman Begins, which is still one of my favourite superhero movies, beaten only by from X-Men: First Class, maybe. So I voted Excellent in the poll :techman:
     
  7. Mr. Adventure

    Mr. Adventure Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    When I was a kid before ROTJ I was sure Vader was lying to mainpulate Luke. It was just inconceivable. :lol:
     
  8. trekkiebaggio

    trekkiebaggio Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I haven't read through the thread yet so some of this stuff has probably been brought up already.

    I saw it last night and I loved it, it was intense, brutal and epic. I thought Bane was ferociously awesome and Anne Hathaway was perfect. The action set pieces were really cool and although a LOT of plot happened I didn't find it too confusing to follow.

    However, I did feel it was fairly predictable (not that that's necessarily a bad thing, the way it happened was awesome). I felt the ending was a bit of a cop out.

    The ending...obviously there was a lot of speculation that Bruce Wayne would be killed off and Blake would take his place. For the film, it made narrative sense for Bruce to sacrifice his life to save Gotham, which I didn't have a problem with, and it was a great moment when Blake discovered the Batcave and the platform rose.

    I like the idea that Batman is an enduring symbol no matter who is under the cowl. Buuuuuuut then they had to show that Bruce is alive and well with Selina. It just seemed like Bruce's whole reason for living was to be The Batman, but then suddenly he changes his mind and realises Alfred was right.

    Which isn't to say he doesn't deserve a break, but it seemed like he was resolved to die as The Batman, and we never got a glimpse into his psyche to see why he changed his mind.

    As I was watching it I thought they may have left it ambiguous and just have a shot of The Batman at the end, so you weren't sure if it was Bruce or Blake under the mask.

    ****

    It was a bit on the nose that Blake's name was Robin, I don't think there would have been any harm in calling him Dick Grayson.

    ****

    I loved the first fight between Bane and Batman, and the reveal that Bane was right under Bruce's armoury.

    ****

    A bit that I felt was glossed over - one minute Bruce escapes from the Lazarus Pit, the next he's back in Gotham where supposedly a close eye is being kept on people entering and exiting.

    ****

    Poor Bane - manages to help Talia escape the Pit, gets a messed up face, excommunicated from the League of Shadows, does a load of work for her, and still ends up in the friend zone.


    Overall thought I thought it was fantastic and I left the cinema feeling pumped.
     
  9. Guartho

    Guartho Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Did they ever refer to the prison as the Lazarus pit? I've noticed a lot of people calling it that, but I didn't catch it.
     
  10. LaxScrutiny

    LaxScrutiny Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    It is surprising when the character has had many bad days and has never done anything like this before, to our understanding. Bruce Wayne is not an Everyman, he is a very extreme, disordered personality. It's like taking someone with OCD and taking away their anxiety for an evening because they had a bad day. I'm not saying his behaviour was impossible, but it wasn't in character, and a shift in character like that should have been framed more clearly.

    I would rather see it that Bruce was already at the point of change after the years of seclusion, and was at the point of finally being capable of intimacy, because fulfilling that need was the only path he had left. Talia was a mistake made by someone who was emotionally and sexually little more experienced than a teenager. But Talia forshadows Bruce finally being able to walk away from Gotham and sit smiling and happy in a cafe with a beautiful Selina.
     
  11. Greg Cox

    Greg Cox Admiral Premium Member

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    I seem to recall several debates on this topic in my college sci-fi club, in the years between Empire and Jedi. Which is probably why they needed to have Yoda confirm it in Jedi.

    "Your father he is."

    There were people who didn't believe it until then.
     
  12. V

    V Commodore Commodore

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    It wasn't a bad movie, nor would I say we fell into the curse of the bad third act (Spiderman 3, etc.). Sort of like Return of the Jedi compared to Empire Strikes Back (and I LOVE Return of the Jedi).

    Bane was great, how I would want comics-Bane done well, its just that he's not as iconic a villain as the Joker or even the Riddler.

    There were a few too many characters, not quite a problem; some hated Catwoman; I thought Hathaway was actually really great -- this criticism is to her praise; she was almost under-used (almost). I loved how she used that duality-camouflage, you know when cops show up pretending to be a frightened flighty girly-girl to sneak away.

    As an "Elseworlds", it was great; it wasn't trying to tell the iconic "what if Batman were very realistic" story. It was trying to tell the story of Nolan's Batman.

    Many have pointed out that Batman would never quit for 8 years like he did. Well, even in The Dark Knight, *Nolan's* Batman stated he hoped there would reach a point where he didn't need to be Batman anymore....not so much for himself, as that he hoped the police wouldn't need him. Arguably, the Dent Act is what gave Gordon this power. So Batman respects the Good Cops enough to leave them alone when they don't really "need" Batman (it would only make them look weak that they can't chase him).

    Is this "the" Batman? No, but Nolan did establish the Nolan-Batman as like this.

    Heck, even the cartoon show had to come up with a plausible reason Batman would quit before dying (to save a hostage he had to pull a gun on a criminal, not that he fired, but this is how he could "Succeed" in his final mission without dying, yet realize he was too old to go back out again).

    So my one general complaint, that pervades the movie, is sort of the whole point: Nolan skipped ahead in time to the point when Batman is kind of too old to keep doing this. They made it a point when he's at the hospital to point out that all of his cartilage is shot, his body has all sorts of trauma -- one of the science of Batman specials pointed out that even Olympic athletes are only active for a decade or so, and realistically, Batman can't keep this up forever.

    By all means, this was a *logical* point, and Nolan is skipping ahead to the END of this Batman, sort of like The Dark Knight Returns, in which Batman is kind of old for this.

    So it wasn't a rip-roaring feel-good movie like Amazing Spiderman, Batman Begins, or The Dark Knight.....but he was skipping ahead to Batman's Ragnarok. He really can't physically keep doing this for so long.

    So my overall feeling is that this was depressing, but I understand *why* they did it.

    And it really does feel like Act 3 of a coherent storyarc formed by the entire trilogy; it ties in well with BB and TDK, and gets back to why he made Batman in the first place; people need legends to believe in, anyone can be Batman with the mask, but then Bane reveals the lie about Harvey Dent.

    So it was "good" indeed "fitting", though on a lazy afternoon I'll be rewatching The Dark Knight, not TDKR.

    As I said before, Bane is *scary* in this, but he's just a hulking bruiser. This is exactly as he was in the comics though; no tricks, no gimmicks, just a hulking brute (who is nonetheless quite articulate). And that kind of makes him more scary, because he's just there to HURT Gotham, to physically destroy swaths of it. Not as psychological as the Joker.

    But this is much as it was in the comics: the Joker threatens Batman's very soul, by taunting him that there is no justice and all is chaos, and Batman cannot easily disprove this, even if he can physically overpower him. Bane, on the other hand, is a threat to Batman's body....more than the Joker, you get the real sense that he could *kill* Batman and *destroy* Gotham in this, I mean within the first act this is a real possibility. You never got that from the Joker. But ultimately, the Joker's psychological challenge to everything Batman stands for is more intriguing and has more lasting impact. But that's as it was in the comics.
     
  13. sonak

    sonak Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I've never heard of TDK being described as a "feel-good movie" before. I thought it was dark and downbeat, and it ends on a much more depressing note than DKR does.
     
  14. Agent Richard07

    Agent Richard07 Admiral Admiral

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    Bane had his gimmicks in the comic. In addition to being smart, knowing several languages and having hightened mental control through meditation, he was hooked on venom. And this time around, they made him dependent on a mask that numbed his pain.
     
  15. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    No, they never called it that, because that's not what it is, other than perhaps in a metaphorical sense specific to Wayne.

    Yeah... I feel like the people treating TDK as some kind of cinematic godhead while simultaneously giving TDKR a grade of "D" or "terrible" need to stare really hard at TDK again. The believability factor aside, pretty much everything you don't like in TDKR was already there in TDK, just maybe at a slightly less obvious level. The "seeds" of these issues were already planted. In this sense the alleged gulf in quality between the two films is largely exaggerated.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2012
  16. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    Totally random observation:

    I'm currently rewatching "Batman Begins," as TDKR made a lot of references to it that I didn't quite remember. Christian Bale's Batman voice is so much less over the top in BB than it is in TDK or TDKR, but it is still quite distinctive from his Bruce Wayne voice. I wish he had stuck with it in the sequels.
     
  17. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    While I don't think TDK is quite the masterpiece others do-- it really only becomes brilliant when Ledger's Joker is on the screen-- I do still think it's a much more solid, focused, and well-constructed movie than DKR. By a long shot.

    The story flows a lot better, the various subplots come together better, the movie's themes are a lot clearer, and there's far fewer silly plot contrivances (like the entire police force getting trapped underground, or crime being magically wiped out so as to make Batman no longer necessary, or Bruce having just enough time to heal from his serious back injury and get back to Gotham before the bomb goes off).

    It's still more crime drama than Batman movie for my taste, but it's such a damn GOOD crime drama that I don't really mind.
     
  18. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    While I enjoyed the movie, I agree with these criticisms. Honestly, I think it tried to be too epic. The story in TDKR is so huge, and it takes place over such a long period of time that I honestly feel like it could have been split into its own trilogy (or even better, a season of TV). For a 3-hour movie, many of the plot points seemed rushed.
     
  19. Set Harth

    Set Harth Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Silly plot contrivances? You mean like nobody in a hospital noticing a nurse that conspicuously looks like the Joker in drag? Like all the various criminal groups uniting under a "United Colors of Benetton of Organized Crime" banner? Like a school bus driving out of a hole in the side of a bank and conveniently fitting into a handy gap in a procession of other buses, like nothing about that is in the least bit suspicious? Like literally everything going on with Two-Face?
     
  20. Samurai8472

    Samurai8472 Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Nolan says goodbye


    http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=92842&offset=20