Rewatching The Dark Knight Trilogy

[The Borgified Corpse]

My main problem with it is that its thesis on human nature is very shallow and specious but presented as something deep and profound.

That's the whole paradox of Hollywood. Most movies are just about entertainment, so whenever a movie comes along and posits ANY sort of deeper idea, it's immediately embraced as being oh so smart, regardless of whether the movie's idea has any validity or is even that profound.

Nolan's movies, more than most, seem to be treated as being much smarter than they really are. In addition to all of the BS in his Batman movies, people seemed to think that Interstellar was some kind of work of genius. But I just rolled my eyes when I realized that the BIG TWIST was that the whole thing was a predestination paradox. Congratulations, you discovered a plot twist that James Cameron used 30 years earlier and his movie also had car chases, killer robots, and one of the greatest catch phrases in movie history. And Inception feels less dreamlike than what Joss Whedon was able to do on a TV budget in the Buffy episode "Restless."

 

[Gaith]

Nolan's movies, more than most, seem to be treated as being much smarter than they really are.

Hear, hear. Want a crime movie with a profound underlying idea? Try Zodiac, which acknowledges that, in a just society which respects civil rights, sometimes prime suspects in cases of horrific crimes will go free. Whereas the big idea underlying Batman Begins is, "what if an awesome billionaire fought a tastefully multi-ethnic ninja cult that's secretly responsible for, like, ruling the world?"

I like all three movies, Rises is definitely the weakest of them

Nah. It may be a bit shorter than Begins, but while both scripts are idiotic, Rises at least has some impressively grandiose direction, far less shaky cam, and Anne Hathaway in that leather catsuit.

 

[Marc]

I like all three movies, Rises is definitely the weakest of them, but I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people do.

not sure the wife has forgiven me for taking her when I saw Rises.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

That's the whole paradox of Hollywood. Most movies are just about entertainment, so whenever a movie comes along and posits ANY sort of deeper idea, it's immediately embraced as being oh so smart, regardless of whether the movie's idea has any validity or is even that profound.

Nolan's movies, more than most, seem to be treated as being much smarter than they really are. In addition to all of the BS in his Batman movies, people seemed to think that Interstellar was some kind of work of genius. But I just rolled my eyes when I realized that the BIG TWIST was that the whole thing was a predestination paradox. Congratulations, you discovered a plot twist that James Cameron used 30 years earlier and his movie also had car chases, killer robots, and one of the greatest catch phrases in movie history. And Inception feels less dreamlike than what Joss Whedon was able to do on a TV budget in the Buffy episode "Restless."

Yeah, it's not that they aren't *smart*, they're just not deep. In D&D terms, high int, low wis. Yeah, anyone can dress up misanthropy as philosophy and impress depressed teenagers, but don't pretend you're doing anything more profound than that.

 

[Anwar]

To say nothing of how the "deep" philosophical stuff they mention in the movies is all full of holes and no one bothers pointing it out. Like Alfred's story of the Bandit stealing rubies being an analogy for nihilism.

Or Dent's "Die a hero or become the villain".

 

[TedShatner10]

A sane Batman can exist in an insane world, like that of the Adam West show or the Burton/Schumaker/Snyder films, but in a grounded, realistic one, he makes no sense (which is why a take that posited him as insane would be fascinating). Begins and Rises fail in large part because they actively try to justify his Batman-ing, and it's just laughable. TDK, on the other hand, succeeds because A) it doesn't attempt to delve deeply into Bruce's decisions to be Batman, he just already is Batman, and, more importantly, B) he quite sanely views his Bat-persona as an awful job he can't wait to be rid of.

Your opinion falls a little flat because A) in Begins he knows his commitment to being Batman shouldn't lead him into the grave, it'd be a symbol and B) in Rises he was a reclusive mess who abstained from his Batman role for many years already, had one last rodeo, then fled overseas with a new life.

The Dark Knight is arguably the best instalment and was a game changer in '08 alongside Iron Man though it needed Begins and Rises as solid bookends on hindsight (and the League of Shadows, dangerous highly trained terrorist group that they were, just mostly thought they ran the world, when their alleged past deeds were too far in the past to be attributed to anyone).

And Henri Ducard was Henri Ducard, there never really was a Ra's al Ghul (like the Mandarin from Iron Man 3), it was more a codeword that was passed on, with Ken Wantanabe's Ra's al Ghul perhaps a bit more than just a decoy (and Bruce Wayne likely intended to be the next Ra'a al Ghul, but he assumed the alter ego of Batman instead).

Batman Begins felt "realistic" only when compared to how neon garish or noir stageshowy the Schumacher and Burton films were respectively, but felt grounded enough to segway into The Dark Knight (which was much more of gripping crime thriller).

I like all three movies, Rises is definitely the weakest of them, but I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as a lot of people do.

It's honestly one of my favourite 2nd sequels alongside Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Thor: Ragnarok, and Iron Man 3.

The plane hijacking scene was worth seeing on the big screen alone...

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[The Borgified Corpse]

I first saw the plane sequence on an IMAX screen as a preview attached to the beginning of Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. It is indeed a spectacle to behold. But I'm not sure that it totally makes sense. Bane sacrifices one of his own men in the crash, saying that, "They will be expecting one of us in the wreckage." But it seems pretty clear that the CIA guy was bluffing when he said that he would kill the 2 prisoners that didn't cooperate, so wouldn't they really be expecting 3 extra bodies in the wreckage? Also, who cares how many bodies they found in the wreckage? The fact that the body of the plane crashed several miles past where the wings fell off would be a pretty clear hint that this wasn't a normal plane crash. From a storytelling perspective, it makes sense since it establishes that (1) Bane is ruthless and won't hesitate to sacrifice his own men and (2) his men are zealots who are willing to die for him without hesitation. But it doesn't hold up to any scrutiny.

Anne Hathaway in that leather catsuit.

When you're right, you're right!

To say nothing of how the "deep" philosophical stuff they mention in the movies is all full of holes and no one bothers pointing it out. Like Alfred's story of the Bandit stealing rubies being an analogy for nihilism.

For all his talk of chaos, the Joker's plans mostly seem to consist of presenting people with binary choices. Either Batman turns himself in or I kill more people. You can either save Rachel or Harvey Dent. Kill this guy or I blow up a hospital. Blow up the other boat or I'll kill all of you. Now, maybe his point was supposed to be that, even if people gave into him, he would still do the bad things that he threatened to do because you can't actually trust anyone. But since no one ever did give into him, we never really got a chance to find out.

Also, the stuff on the boats is complete BS. If that really happened, no one would pause long enough to pass out paper ballots and do a vote. It would be complete pandemonium on both of those boats. I figure you'd get about equal sized groups of people either trying to get their hands on the detonator, jumping off the boat to try to save their own skin, or just being paralyzed with indecision.

Or Dent's "Die a hero or become the villain".

It's a great line. I suspect that it may go down as one of the most often quoted movie lines of the 21st century. But I don't know that it's really based in any sort of fact. It's just clever enough that it sounds like it's probably true.

 

[Anwar]

For all his talk of chaos, the Joker's plans mostly seem to consist of presenting people with binary choices. Either Batman turns himself in or I kill more people. You can either save Rachel or Harvey Dent. Kill this guy or I blow up a hospital. Blow up the other boat or I'll kill all of you. Now, maybe his point was supposed to be that, even if people gave into him, he would still do the bad things that he threatened to do because you can't actually trust anyone. But since no one ever did give into him, we never really got a chance to find out.

Also, the stuff on the boats is complete BS. If that really happened, no one would pause long enough to pass out paper ballots and do a vote. It would be complete pandemonium on both of those boats. I figure you'd get about equal sized groups of people either trying to get their hands on the detonator, jumping off the boat to try to save their own skin, or just being paralyzed with indecision.

Alfred's whole story about the Burmese Bandit had a very easy explanation: The Bandit didn't care about the stuff he kept stealing from the British, but he DID care about keeping the Brits from forming better relations with the Natives and interfering with their colonialism.

There, Alfreds' whole story about it being a tale of a nihilist goes down in flames. Logical reasoning.

It's a great line. I suspect that it may go down as one of the most often quoted movie lines of the 21st century. But I don't know that it's really based in any sort of fact. It's just clever enough that it sounds like it's probably true.

It's a line that's pretentious fluff the more you think about it. Look at Cincinnatus, George Washington, Nelson Mandela, etc

 

[JD]

The plane hijacking scene was worth seeing on the big screen alone...

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It still blows my mind that they did all of without any CGI.

 

[suarezguy]

Alfred's story of the Bandit stealing rubies being an analogy for nihilism.

The whole idea that the Joker wasn't motivated by wanting wealth or power felt pretty pretentious.

Or Dent's "Die a hero or become the villain".

That one though blunt did feel pretty meaningful and compelling.

 

[Anwar]

That one though blunt did feel pretty meaningful and compelling.

But still wrong.

That's the problem with Nolan's philosophical stuff. He never challenges any of it and as a result folks who watch it keep thinking he's speaking absolute truth.

 

[suarezguy]

Not *everyone* eventually becomes a villain but a lot of people do, less dramatically even more people do become less widely admired and a lot more controversial.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

The whole idea that the Joker wasn't motivated by wanting wealth or power felt pretty pretentious.

You can get a sociopathic thrill from murdering people without needing some philosophical justification for it.

 

[TedShatner10]

.lInteresting how the fan opinions have shifted regarding Iron Man 3. I remember kinda hating it when it first came out but it seemed to me like a lot of fans really enjoyed it. At the very least, it seemed like everyone else felt that it was a huge improvement over Iron Man 2 (which is my pick for most underrated Marvel sequel). But, much like with The Dark Knight Rises, my opinion of Iron Man 3 has improved substantially over the years.

People love bagging on Iron Man 2 in recent years (and the first two Thor films to a similar extent) when I find it's like watching a pilot episode to a hit TV show nowadays - Iron Man 2's unrefined, full of many trials and errors, it's hit 'n miss, but still a very important building block for the better MCU movies to follow (and we'd have no Thor: Ragnarok if we didn't have Thor 1 and 2 for contrast, backdrop, the maturing of the co-stars' chemistry, and character/setting development, etc). A lot fans and critics far too easily forget all that.

And I've just seen The Dark Knight on the big screen and damn, isn't that movie that is immune to being endlessly rewatched (like Begins alongside it and even Rises to a similar extent). I think the Nolan Bat Trilogy is going through a "Seinfeld is Unfunny" phase (now that it's aged alongside the late 80s/90s Batman films) and Rises just suffers from a touch of The Return Of The Jedi-itus (I still liked it last time I watched it).

 

[Phoenix219]

True, but I'd argue they somehow managed to do this while disserving the character. In Begins he had no urgency of his own, Bruce was basically a cypher there to do what every other character, good and bad, told him to do. In a movie called Batman, he's sadly not even the hero of the movie, he's just a tool where all heroic qualities fall on to Rachel Dawes primarily, with Gordon, Alfred, Lucius after that. Bruce just does what they tell him to do throughout the movie (even what the antagonists tell him to do, Falcone and Ra's!) as they course correct his poorly thought out and inept decisions. He may be in every scene, but it's certainly not to build him up as the hero he's supposed to be. Rachel, on the other hand, deserved the title in the movie.

The Dark Knight is still a superb movie.

The Dark Knight Rises I still find to be pretty much awful, where the only really redeeming part of the movie is the genius (it's my only way to reconcile this) of Bruce flying the bomb through the city is meant to homage Adam West running around comically with the bomb in his hands in his movie. Every other plot point happens because it has to, not because it flows naturally from the story.

Thats how I feel about Batman and Robin; if you look at it as an update to the Adam West Batman, it becomes more watchable. I wish someone would fanedit some BANG! POW! etc into it.

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

And I've just seen The Dark Knight on the big screen and damn, isn't that movie that is immune to being endlessly rewatched

For both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, I saw them twice on opening day. I'd see them once myself. Then, later in the day I'd meet up with some friends, just hanging out, and it would be like, "Oh, you haven't seen it yet? What's wrong with you?! We need to get to the theater right now!" I've never done that for any other movie. (I wanted to see The Avengers twice on opening day but the tickets were all sold out.)

 

[TedShatner10]

I felt Rises was the best Nolan Bat movie as a big screen experience (even though BB and TDK had stronger screenplays)

Thats how I feel about Batman and Robin; if you look at it as an update to the Adam West Batman, it becomes more watchable. I wish someone would fanedit some BANG! POW! etc into it.

Joel Schumacher seemed to treat his Bat material as high camp (his films felt much more heavily corporatised and artificial too) when ironically his "Dfense" anti-hero from 1993's Falling Down (played by Michael Douglas) had much more in common with Joquin Phoenix's Joker and Aaron Eckhart's Twoface on hindsight ("It's not about what I want!" *flying into grief and rage* "It's about what's FAIR!!!").

 

[Turtletrekker]

Batman Begins was a strong, solid Batman movie. Extremely enjoyable and highly rewatchable. The Dark Knight is arguably one of the best, some would say the best, superhero movie in its respective genre. The Dark Knight Rises was sadly the weakest of the three. In that, I rank them very similar to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and the first X-Men trilogy. The first being solid and watchable, the second being the best of the bunch and the third being a disappointment.

 

[Marc]

Batman Begins was a strong, solid Batman movie. Extremely enjoyable and highly rewatchable. The Dark Knight is arguably one of the best, some would say the best, superhero movie in its respective genre. The Dark Knight Rises was sadly the weakest of the three. In that, I rank them very similar to the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies and the first X-Men trilogy. The first being solid and watchable, the second being the best of the bunch and the third being a disappointment.

Could it have been better if Risers had been just been based only Knightfall? (I''ve only read the novel version of No Man's Land so don't know how much more was in the comics but it might have been a bit too Batman lite to work as a movie).

 

[Kor]

The whole world of cinematic Batman adaptations thematically came full circle in TDKR, as Batman had to go off by himself with that explosive device to spare everybody else. "Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!"

Kor