The Dark Knight Rises Anticipation Station

The Dark Knight is one of the most rewatchable films I've seen. I've never rewatched any other comic book film that I can recall.

 

The new one is even longer. I presume there'll be people sleeping in the theater like there were in Inception.

 

Totally agreed. And as was pointed out by someone upthread, the scenes that are drawn out and suspensful on the first watch simply become long upon repeat viewings.

 

look here!

 

Hopefully these reviewers are not just a bunch of paid Warner shills...

 

You know, I'm sure the movie will rock.... but this idea of crime in Gotham being virtually wiped out for 8 years still seems awfully odd to me.

This isn't supposed to be Seattle or something, that just had a small little outbreak of crime for a while. It's freakin Gotham City-- the most wretched, corrupt, and crime-filled city in the entire DC universe. I can't really see how Harvey's death would possibly change that, or affect the behavior of all the petty, desperate, small-time criminals out there.

In fact, in the comics anytime Batman was out of the picture the crime rate would shoot through the roof.

I'm hoping Nolan will do a proper job explaining how this all happened, and it's not something we have to "just accept" from the outset.

 

What's so hard to understand? Dent basically murdered the biggest criminals in Gotham (which I believe Batman wound up taking the "credit" for, so as not to tarnish Dent's image), Commissioner Gordon likely got a free hand to "clean up the city," and all you really have to do to eliminate organized crime is make it an unprofitable enterprise. With organized crime gone, you're left with the more petty stuff, which a typical police force can handle well. It's conceivable that they'd end up with a violent crime rate more typical of a New England city, rather than a Southern one--that is to say, very low.

 

And with no Batman maybe real loonies aren't drawn to Gotham and go elswhere.

 

If you add that Nolan insists that an idealized hero is needed to inspire the worthless masses, I'd say you've correctly explained the thematic climax of DKR, and how it continues into this movie. It's a lot of foolishness. Killing the leaders doesn't stop institutions, and organized crime is an institution. Corruption takes place in nice quiet offices and over dinner and drinks and is a part of politics. Vigilantism doesn't touch that. The notion that the police could clean up crime if they had a free hand verges on fascist thinking. The real source of law and order is a healthy society and the police are just one part of that, not the Scourge of God striking down the Mob that always lurks in the proletariat. And "terrorism" is no more a legitimate threat to society than "chaos" as a person. It's a bugaboo, a lurid fantasy, a mean-spirited nightmare projected onto a scapegoat.

Look, you can try to suspend disbelief for this BS, but there are limits. Piling it higher and deeper doesn't credential it as smart.

 

Ignoring Heath Ledgers death.

I'm surprised Joker didn't break out a few hours/weeks after events of "The Dark Knight"

He's supposed to be Batman greatest foe but apparently he didn't cause anymore trouble for 8 years.

 

Yeah with Batman gone I can understand there not being a bunch of crazy supervillains running around, but the image of Gotham painted in the first two movies was one where corruption was everywhere and criminal activity was off the charts.

Unless they was also able to magically wipe out poverty and drug addiction, and remove every corrupt polititian or judge or cop in the city, it's hard to imagine new crime bosses not rising up immediately to take advantage of that market.

 

Well, I was trying to explain it within the thematic framework established by TDK. Obviously, nothing is that simple and straightforward in the real world. You have rightly pointed out that Nolan's Gotham isn't nearly as realistic and clever as it thinks it is. It just has the veneer of gritty realism to lend itself greater credibility as a "realistic" portrayal of superhero vigilantism.

I liked BB and TDK, although I found both to be overlong (typical of Nolan's films) and I don't think the praise heaped on them is entirely deserved. But I expect TDKR to be fun, nonetheless.

 

I think Nolan's Batman films have a lot of Capraesque idealism in them. Think... Mr. Wayne Goes to Gotham, but grittier. Sure the scenario Nolan's laid out for TDKR is pretty naive in real world terms but... Goddamn, I wish life was like a Frank Capra picture!

But then... I think that's the point.

 

Gotham doesn't have to become a paradise after TDK. Anything less than what it was would be considered a huge improvement. One could say the overall situation simply became more tolerable. One could still have a level of street crime and corruption without the city going completely to hell. Indeed a lot of otherwise decent cities in the real world are pretty much like that.

Gotham always struck me as something like Chicago or New York of the 1920s. And that mightn't be far from what was originally intended when Bob Kane got started with all this. The 1920s and '30s were a notorious time for crime and corruption, and a time when gangsters were even romanticized. Or perhaps think of New York in the 1970s. Any movement away from that kind of situation and you'd think you were in a garden of paradise in comparison.

 

His first three films (Following, Memento, and Insomnia) all clock in at under two hours, and The Prestige is just ten minutes over that mark.

As he's been given more money to spend, though, his films seem to have gotten longer and longer. I wish he'd tackle a smaller project again; he really seemed to shine on that scale. The Prestige is really the only film to come close to that, and it's no surprise to me that it's the shortest of his last five films.

I don't mean to suggest that I dislike his more recent output, but I do miss early Nolan.

 

Maybe that's the problem. I hadn't seen his earlier work. I also liked Inception but it probably could've been a good 30 minutes shorter and still as effective.

 

So Gotham finally repealed Prohibition?

 

Inception was original. I can forgive a lot for that. Nolan screwed up the climax but so many movies are variations. Cleverness in variation has its satisfactions of course, but something more creative is never to be sneered at.

As to Nolan's Batman, the repeated insistence that his Batman is realistic keeps driving me to expect, well, realism, and the sharp disappointment tends to color whatever else the viewing experience has to offer. Aside from that, the cognitive dissonance when reading about realism and Batman's Nolan is very wearing. (Which also colors ones' anticipation of the viewing experience.) The only poster I've noticed before who seems to genuinely think Nolan isn't realistic in any ordinary sense is Lapis Exilis.

One thing I will note about the themes in the Batman movies is that they are very similar to Insomnia. For instance, the insistence that discrediting the man who put so many people away will result in villains on the street up to no ends of mischief. The thing is, none of the weaknesses in Insomnia (if you had to pin it down to just one thing, indulgence in hysteria as being "serious) are addressed in the Batman movies.

The Prestige addressed obsession, but none of the Batman movies really do anything different in Wayne's character. People seem to find plot points from various runs in Batman (all after my time reading the comics,) but personally I don't find anything from Nolan he didn't do just as well but more believably and entertainingly in Insomnia and The Prestige.

PS Yes, I own Insomnia and The Prestige but don't own any Nolan Batman. Indeed, I've only seen DKR the one time, in the theater. BB I've seen twice, the second time to see the Tom Wilkinson's speech as Maroni to Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne. I hallucinated that Maroni was being played by Denzel Washington and Bruce Wayne by Russell Crowe and that Nolan had spliced in outtakes from American Gangster just to mess with our heads.

 

No, it wasn't.



On the discussion about Dent... how did Wayne prevent The Joker from telling the truth about Harvey Dent? Being in jail and going through the whole trial process would give him so much media attention, and there would be a lot of people who'd say "He's crazy, but I believe him."

 

Awesome.