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

[Obiwanshinobi]

This is the Inception dradle spinning all over again.

[Trekker4747]

Obiwanshinobi wrote:

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This is the Inception dradle spinning all over again.

Dradle? Ummm. Do you mean top?

[RoJoHen]

Maybe all the Nolan Batman films are part of the Inception-verse. Joseph Gordon Levitt incepted Bruce Wayne. He made Bruce dream that he had retired so that he could gain access to the Batcave in his mind!

[Yminale]

Obiwanshinobi wrote:

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This is the Inception dradle spinning all over again.

I like films with ambiguity. It annoys me when some sequel explains everything or the director decides to reinterpret his movie (*cough* Blade Runner *cough*)

[Yminale]

RoJoHen wrote:

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Maybe all the Nolan Batman films are part of the Inception-verse. Joseph Gordon Levitt incepted Bruce Wayne. He made Bruce dream that he had retired so that he could gain access to the Batcave in his mind!

I like the idea that the entire movie existed in Bruce Wayne's head. Bane represented his dark side, the person he would have become if he surrendered to the League of Shadows. Blake represents Bruce Wayne positive side, the man he would have become if hadn't become Batman. Miranda Tate is really Rachel who Bruce believes betrayed him and wants to punish. Bruce loses everything he sees as a burden, his money, being Batman, the city itself. Selina Kyle is actually Bruce's mother, the only women Bruce believes both abandoned him and won't leave him. That's why she wears the pearls.

[Lapis Exilis]

CaptainCanada wrote:

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He's Batman? Honestly, I have a hard time seeing why people get so stuck on that first part.

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!

[Agenda]

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.

[Set Harth]

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.

[Guartho]

Set Harth wrote:

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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.

No! That's impossible!

[Donald Draper]

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

[NCC1701]

DrEvil wrote:

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Three days since I've seen this movie and everyday I'm more disappointed in what I saw...and I was already pretty disappointed coming out of the theater. What nobody seems to have said in this thread is that the movie was just plain boring most of the time. Yes, there were some good moments but took so long to get to them in between long stretches of nothing that hard for me to say much positive about this film.

And I'm sad because I was defending Batman movies vs. Marvel movies to various people during the day and had to eat my own words later when I didn't enjoy much about Rises. I'm a long-time defender of DC vs. Marvel in terms of comics and movies, yet I know when it's time to throw in the towel.

I love long movies, but in this case the time just seemed to drag on and on. Bane was nearly incomprehensible in some scenes (at least in the theater I was in), Batman was seriously lacking (and yes, there was lots of Bruce angst/sulking/probing emotional depths but when I go see a Batman movie I actually would like to see some Batman), and too many sub-plots and characters I really just didn't care about. How many times did Bruce really need to try to climb out of the Pit anyway?

I guess in the end I just didn't expect a movie like this to be so ponderously boring.

..and yes, I do imagine that I will get blasted for this, but it's only my opinion :-)

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

[Mr. Adventure]

Guartho wrote:

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No! That's impossible!

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

[trekkiebaggio]

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.

[Guartho]

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.

[LaxScrutiny]

Greg Cox wrote:

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But consider: Bruce is having a really bad day. He's lost his fortune, Alfred has abandoned him, Gordon has been shot up, Bane is causing havoc. He's standing in the rain, locked out of his own lonely mansion, having lost pretty much everything and everyone in his life . . . is it really surprising that he would welcome whatever comfort Miranda offered? She caught him at a really vulnerable moment, on a rainy night in front of a warm fireplace..

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.