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

[tighr]

OdoWanKenobi wrote:

---

Considering that this is what that little boy looks like eight years later, I'm gonna say no

That's not a valid reason for thinking the characters aren't supposed to be the same.

Counter-argument: Edward Furlong, Nick Stahl, Christian Bale.
Shoot, how about: Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, Daniel Craig.

Counter-counter-argument: There's no evidence to suggest the kid is supposed to be Blake, either.

[Locutus of Bored]

I would think if that kid was Blake he would have mentioned that Batman had saved his life and that he overheard Rachel calling Batman "Bruce" on the rooftop in the Narrows in Begins and that that was how he put two and two together about Batman's identity.

When I was tossing out theories about how Blake made his wild ass guess earlier in the thread, I postulated that that kid was later orphaned and he was living in the same boy's home as Blake, and that he shared his story about meeting Batman years earlier and overhearing his name. Blake then later made the connection between Bruce and Batman. It's more plausible than "I saw your anger about your parent's death and boom, I knew you were Batman."

[JarodRussell]

Blake is a detective. He had a hunch, that's all. He confronted Wayne with that hunch and waited for his reaction. That's standard detective work in 100 years of film history. Horatio Caine does it on a daily basis. No evidence, but just confront the suspect with it, and then it turns out to be true.

[Donald Draper]

That blonde kid was not meant to be Robin or Blake. They probably had no intentions or plans for a third film when BB was made.

I don't see what it adds to Blake to think he was that kid. Regardless of what the police thought of Batman a lot of kids would have seen him as a hero. Some may have been crushed and disillusioned to be told he was a murderer. But Blake continued to believe in him.

[Locutus of Bored]

JarodRussell wrote:

---

Blake is a detective. He had a hunch, that's all. He confronted Wayne with that hunch and waited for his reaction. That's standard detective work in 100 years of film history. Horatio Caine does it on a daily basis. No evidence, but just confront the suspect with it, and then it turns out to be true.

The cop show trope where they pull five different people into the interrogation room and accuse them of committing the crime with little or no evidence to gauge their reaction is not a hunch, it's throwing shit against the wall to see what sticks, and it's a path to harassment lawsuits if it was so commonplace in real life. I get why the shows do it, though (for dramatic purposes, misdirection, and often to introduce the real killer early-on without definitively pointing the finger at them, so the killer is not introduced only at the last minute, which is a bit of a cop-out).

Usually what they call a hunch is an educated guess honed by the available evidence, training, and experience. Blake had little of that at the time (he was a rookie and a detective for all of a day), and if we believe what he said, he guessed Batman's identity as a teen before he had any of those things solely based off his tingling orphan-sense. Even hunches are usually based on something a little more substantial than "I saw the thousand-yard stare in your eyes and suddenly I knew you were Batman."

Now, if he was extremely intuitive and empathic (not in the Deanna Troi sense), understood that Batman would probably have to be someone wealthy with lots of free time and motivated by a past trauma, AND he was given a little hint in the right direction by a younger kid in the boy's home (the blond-haired kid from Begins, for instance) saying he overheard that Batman's name was Bruce, then suddenly putting together those pieces becomes a lot more believable.

[Captaindemotion]

^Apart from the fact that he explained why he knew Bruce was Batman and didn't mention that incident, which one would have expected him to, had he been that boy. Plus the fact that he looks nothing like that kid.

[Locutus of Bored]

Captaindemotion wrote:

---

^Apart from the fact that he explained why he knew Bruce was Batman and didn't mention that incident, which one would have expected him to, had he been that boy. Plus the fact that he looks nothing like that kid.

Read my post over again. Or the one three posts above it, for that matter.

[Captaindemotion]

^I have. And I'm still not convinced.

Don't get me wrong, it would have been a nice bit of continuity had they connected the characters. But I didn't for one second ever think that they were meant to be one and the same.

[Locutus of Bored]

Captaindemotion wrote:

---

^I have. And I'm still not convinced.

Don't get me wrong, it would have been a nice bit of continuity had they connected the characters. But I didn't for one second ever think that they were meant to be one and the same.

No, obviously you either haven't read my posts or are just glossing over them to see what you want to see.

I'm not saying that Blake is the blond-haired kid from Begins at all. I'm not even saying the blond-haired kid appeared in TDKR. I'm saying --as an out of left field Timo-like theory-- that perhaps Blake met that much younger blond-haired kid when he lived in the boy's home, perhaps that kid relayed his story about meeting Batman and about Batman's name being Bruce while they were all sharing Batman stories, and perhaps Blake later put two and two together along with his own insights into Bruce's personality.

[Captaindemotion]

^Okay. Understood. Still doesn't work for me. It's just too complicated and small-world-ish. Satisfied?

[Locutus of Bored]

That's fine. Like I said, it's a silly theory meant to explain what's really a non-existent problem. I just like to have fun explaining stuff and connecting things.

[Captaindemotion]

^No problem. I tend to invent the odd theory like that myself on occasion.

[Claudia]

Just caught up in that most recent speculation - and I thought exactly the same thing (and wrote it down in my review in my blog the day after I watched the movie *lol*). Why should Blake make the connection, and nobody else? What's so special about him to see beyond everything in a way no one else does? That's actually one of my pet-peeves with this movie. If not show Blake as that blond boy (and I share the sentiment that he'd be to young), then why not mention some connection here that would have given Blake the final piece of the puzzle?

Given all the things that come out of the left field in this movie, Blake, Miranda's relationship with Bruce, Miranda getting power over Wayne Enterprises (why not Fox? Somehow must have missed something there), Catwoman's story that's more or less stand alone... and yes, the similarities to BB in terms of let's burn down Gotham City... And I won't even talk about Bruce's still mourning Rachel, his physical appearance at the beginning, the way his broken back just healed without further damage, and I don't quite know what to make of Alfred in this movie, either.

Somehow, it seemed to me as if TPTB tried to cram too many new details into that movie but somehow failed to actually put a new twist on it. I loved Bruce's story, and honestly, I'd have been perfectly happy if that had been the only focus of the movie.

[Locutus of Bored]

Claudia wrote:

---

Just caught up in that most recent speculation - and I thought exactly the same thing (and wrote it down in my review in my blog the day after I watched the movie *lol*). Why should Blake make the connection, and nobody else? What's so special about him to see beyond everything in a way no one else does?

Honestly, the movies really don't reflect well on Gordon's abilities as a cop, especially when supercop Blake puts things together in one step instead of the multiple hints Gordon was given.

Gordon doesn't have Blake's little orphan insight into Bruce's/Batman's psyche, but he does know Bruce Wayne was orphaned as a young boy and that he comforted him at the station, so it would make sense for Wayne to build on that connection later in life by teaming with Gordon again and for him to be motivated to fight crime based on his childhood trauma.

He knows Bruce's parents were murdered by a man who was murdered by Carmine Falcone, the first crime boss Batman went after.

He knows Bruce disappeared right after the Joe Chill shooting and reappeared years later at the same time Batman first started fighting crime.

He knows Bruce heavily supported Harvey Dent and held fundraisers for him, and that Batman shared his respect for Dent.

He knows Bruce saved Coleman Reese's life (the man who was about to reveal Batman's identity). All you'd have to do was check who Reese worked for as an accountant (Wayne Enterprises) or just ask him some questions. At that point Reese didn't want to give up Bruce's name and Gordon doesn't want to out him, but just for curiosity's sake, you'd think he'd follow up. Plus, even with all the chaos following the Joker's terrorism, did no other cops follow up on this; not even Matthew Modine? I guess Gordon suppressed the investigation, which would look suspicious in and of itself.

He knows that Bruce disappeared into a secret chamber in his penthouse a minute before Batman showed up without any apparent entry, he knows that Batman dove out a window to save the daughter of Bruce Wayne's former housekeeper and someone who the press would see he was close to, and he knows that Batman called her "Rachel" by name and raced to save her instead of Harvey Dent, not knowing that Joker had pulled a switcheroo.

He knows that Batman stopped operating at the same time Bruce Wayne became a crippled recluse.

He knows that all those gadgets and vehicles would have to come from a company with military contracts and that Batman would have to be someone wealthy with lots of free time on his hands.

He knows that the Tumbler and the Bat-Pod were always heading in a certain direction when the police lost track of them (first toward Wayne Manor, and later toward the Wayne Enterprises lot at the Gotham docks).

Gordon's no Columbo, that's for sure. And that's before I add on the fact that he sent almost the entire Gotham police force into an underground trap, that he sent the only two DAs working on the largest case against the mob home with the two cops he had been told before by Dent were working for the mob themselves, that he partnered with someone who was a mob enforcer that he saw getting paid off right in front of him (yeah, he excused it by saying if he didn't work with corrupt cops he'd work alone, but that's pretty bad), and that he participated in a coverup and conspiracy. Harvey had every right to be pissed at him, even if he went about it in the completely wrong way (and Harvey wasn't a great guy even before going crazy either consider he was willing to torture to get a confession). Gordon's not a good cop in either ethics or ability, it's just that everyone else was so lousy he floated above the rest of the riffraff.

[Sci]

I mean, if we're gonna talk realistically, it's implausible that Bruce ever managed to keep his secret identity. When you have police helicopters and half the police squad after you as Bruce did during the car chase in Batman Begins, it's next to impossible to lose them. Even if you did, they'd almost certainly backtrack and track the Batmobile, and figure out that it had flown into the waterfall -- at which point there would likely be a search of the property the waterfall is on.

And that's not mentioning how unlikely it is that no one from the Pentagon would have noticed how similar the Batmobile on the news was to those proposed vehicle designs from Wayne Enterprises. Or that no other accountants would notice all those acts of embezzlement being committed by Bruce and Fox. Or that Wayne Enterprises would be allowed to build a nuclear energy source in the middle of downtown Gotham City.

Bottom line: Even for a director like Christopher Nolan, who values verisimilitude, there's a point where we have to suspend our disbelief.

Or to assume that Lucius Fox was bribing a lot of people to keep quiet.