I really don't recommend doing that
"The Dark Knight Rises" Review and Discussion Thread (spoilers)
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Finally saw this last week, and I thought it was fantastic. I didn't have a problem with Bane's voice, found him quite easy to understand. Probably not quite as enjoyable as The Dark Knight, but then Rises didn't have anything on the epic level of Ledger's performance. But Hardy was a damn solid bad guy, and managed to bring a surprising level of emotiveness considering you can't see most of his face.
Though the cafe scene at the end was a minor cop out. Otherwise, great
Though the cafe scene at the end was a minor cop out. Otherwise, great
A lot of people are holding The Dark Knight up as the best movie of the bunch, but I preferred Rises. It adapted some of the biggest and most pivotal Batman stories, it had a great balance between drama and action, and it gave us something we've never seen on film... The end of Batman, or at least Bruce as Batman. I was blown away by The Dark Knight in 2008 and still consider it an excellent film, but for whatever reason, that excitement is gone and the movie comes off as overly talky and political when I look at it now. I also think Ledger's performance is overrated. Not bad by any means, he was great, but I'm convinced that almost anyone can do a good job with the part. It's the nature of the character.
Moving along, I was thinking lately... How old is Bane? He was an adult when Talia was a baby, so that could put him in his mid 40s or mid 50s, or even 60ish. Anyone try to do the math?
Moving along, I was thinking lately... How old is Bane? He was an adult when Talia was a baby, so that could put him in his mid 40s or mid 50s, or even 60ish. Anyone try to do the math?
As with so many aspects of the film, that was done far better by the original Batman in The Mask of Zorro.
Assuming that Talia/Miranda is the same age as her actor (37), assuming that young Talia was around 7 when she escaped frm the Pit, and assuming that Bane was at least 15 when he saved young Talia from death? That means that Talia's escape would have been about 30 years before the events of the film, and thus that would make Bane around 45 during his takeover of Gotham City.
Of course, Marion Cotillard could pass for someone in her early 30s, too, which would put Bane somewhere in his late 30s or early 40s.
ETA:
As with so many aspects of the film, that was done far better by the original Batman in The Mask of Zorro.
I do not understand how you could possibly argue that The Mask of Zorro is in any respect superior to The Dark Knight Rises. The Mask of Zorro is a piece of popcorn action fluff; The Dark Knight Rises may not be an arthouse film, but it's a deeper and more sophisticated work than Masks on every level.
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Yeah, that was a pretty good Batman film.As with so many aspects of the film, that was done far better by the original Batman in The Mask of Zorro.
Late 30s is a stretch, but I suppose it could work if you put Talia in her late 20s and Bane in his mid to late teens. I thought... hey, Bane could be really old, but then again, maybe he isn't. With the mask though, I could still believe that he's in his 50s or older if need be.
I finnally saw Rises yesterday. I am one who loved Ledger's performance of the Joker but over all the Dark Knight was not my favorite of the trilogy. I do like all of the movies but I do think that Rises was better than the Dark Knight.
I think Batman Begins is my favorite of the bunch. It is a tighter well crafted story. Sceond place for me is Rises. I guess I liked the story better than Dark Night and it had more suspense and I really got interested in all of the characters.
Blake was incorruptible, which is a good start. Though some ninja training would not be remiss before he steps out into the night.
I really dug the ending and found it to be a very satisfying conclusion to Nolan's interpretation of Batman. To have Blake literally rising in the final shot was fantastic. I'm just sad that we'll never see Blake as Batman.
Yes, and there was never any such thing as a "letter of transit." How dare anyone suggest Casablanca is a wonderful film when it has such an inaccurate depiction of international wartime travel!
Certainly there's suspension of disbelief; this is inherent to the superheroic genre. This is not mean that it can't have quite a bit of depth and sophistication.
It adapted those comic stories (No Man's Land and Knightfall) in a hacked screenplay that had no story to tell on it's own, rather than being inspired by other material the way The Long Halloween inspired aspects and images for Batman Begins.
The screenplay for Rises was a mess. It's the only film where he hcouldn't even shoot every bit of it, as he did with the others, and over an hour had to be cut out. But, in spite the length, I believe he just wanted out of the franchise, but he needed a lot of narrative to throw his paper-thin story behind, so he used those comic books, along with a lot of thin new characters and an awful lor of magical contrivances to create an utter disaster.
But he's a good filmmaker, one good enough to sue tricky layering of plot threads and editing to cover a myriad of sins, and even using those comic books to make it seem like this thin story had any real weight to it.
Four, actually. No Man's Land, Knightfall, Tales of the Demon, and The Dark Knight Returns.
Your statement is both incorrect and vague enough it could be thrown at the other Nolan films. The Dark Knight, for instance, shares many broad story beats with The Long Halloween: both detail the fall of traditional organized crime syndicates in Gotham City and the rise of costumed supervillains like the Joker, and both culminate in the turning of Harvey Dent into Two-Face.
Of course, when looked at in any detail, those similarities are just that -- broad similarities. The Long Halloween is a neo-noir crime thriller that is itself largely inspired by Mafia films like The Godfather; The Dark Knight, on the other hand, is in essence a story about how societies choose to cope with asymmetrical threats like terrorism when they are tempted to abandon the social compact and resort to authoritarianism, and about how that temptation can corrupt the soul. (It is also, by the way, in large part inspired by The Killing Joke.)
The Dark Knight Rises is clearly inspired by those four storylines, but it's its own entity. The Dark Knight Rises is in essence a story about the danger of extreme inequality -- about how it gives rise to government-condoned corruption on one hand and enables tyrannical pseudo-populist movements on the other, and about the obligations of those with power to share their power and help their fellows. It is a film about how elite fear and disconnect harms others, about how formal structures can become just as tyrannical as the anarchy they seek to oppose, and about how one must accept and them move past fear of loss in order to create and preserve a society worth having. It is about the necessity of sacrifice.
I'm sorry you didn't see that, but it all seemed pretty obvious to me.
Since when is anarchy tyrannical?
Interesting side-note:
You can basically list the different Batman arcs that have influenced the Nolan films.
Batman Begins - Year One; Tales of the Demon; The Long Halloween; Detective Comics #27 (1939); "The Batman: Who He Is and How He Came to Be" (Batman #1 [1940]); "The Man Who Falls"
The Dark Knight - The Long Halloween; The Killing Joke; Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth; Batman #1 (1940)
The Dark Knight Rises - The Dark Knight Returns; Knightfall; No Man's Land; Tales of the Demon
You can basically list the different Batman arcs that have influenced the Nolan films.
Batman Begins - Year One; Tales of the Demon; The Long Halloween; Detective Comics #27 (1939); "The Batman: Who He Is and How He Came to Be" (Batman #1 [1940]); "The Man Who Falls"
The Dark Knight - The Long Halloween; The Killing Joke; Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth; Batman #1 (1940)
The Dark Knight Rises - The Dark Knight Returns; Knightfall; No Man's Land; Tales of the Demon
When it leads to people's rights being violated, obviously. If you get shot walking down the street because there's no government to stop it, that's tyrannical.
Anarchy can be just as tyrannical as totalitarianism. A lack of governance is just as big a threat to freedom as too much government.
well, I agree with that.
But anarchy is still not tyrannical. It's simply bad word choice
The film can have whatever themes it wants...it's all about execution, and having the theme evolve naturally from the story... or have them work together in concert.
That's not what has happened here. Nolan constructed a complex narrative, but the story underneath it all is paper thin. And the themes of economy were not well-realized. If he really wanted to tackle the inequality issue, he would have had Bruce Wayne be the villain, and would have had people rise up against people like him. Imagine that. Bruce Wayne is the villain and the hero. But, he took the easy was, tip-toeing on these themes rather than confronting them.
That
But anarchy is still not tyrannical. It's simply bad word choice
The film can have whatever themes it wants...it's all about execution, and having the theme evolve naturally from the story... or have them work together in concert.
That's not what has happened here. Nolan constructed a complex narrative, but the story underneath it all is paper thin. And the themes of economy were not well-realized. If he really wanted to tackle the inequality issue, he would have had Bruce Wayne be the villain, and would have had people rise up against people like him. Imagine that. Bruce Wayne is the villain and the hero. But, he took the easy was, tip-toeing on these themes rather than confronting them.
That
He wasn't "tackling" the issues, just using them as a backdrop without really taking sides in the political controversy. The film condemns both sides: those who "live so large and leave so little for the rest of us," and also the mob of class warriors who do the Cultural Revolution thing of "exiling" the wealthy for the crime of being wealthy.
Yes, it is. "Tyranny" does not refer exclusively to governmental overreach. It refers to any situation in which a person's rights are being violated.
You keep repeating this, but you never explain what it means.
That's one way of dealing with the issue, sure. But that's not the only way of doing it that's creatively valid.
I think it's silly to pretend there are only two sides you can take.
All you had to do was ask.
First, let's cut to the ends of the three films, and in each case there's a bit of dialogue that occurs when the philosophical differences between the hero reach an impass. In the first film, Ra's Al Ghul states that if anyone stands in the way of true justice, you simply walk up behind them and stab them in the back, while Bruce says that the people in the city are still worht saving. This is where the divide happens. In the second film, Joker says that everyone is or can be just as cruel and nasty as he is, if they are just given a push, while Bruce says that the city proved otherwise. In the last film, Bane says (cue awful Bane voice): "So you've come to die with your city???!!" To which, Batman responds: "Noooo.... I came to stop you!!!"
But let's go deeper. None of the films are perfect. However, the first film dealt with quite a few complicated themes such as the nature of fear, and whether vengeance is the same as justice. It had a teacher and student who agree on many things save for their way of going about it. The action might encompass an entire city, but the real battle was something that was very personal, and came down to a philosophical difference.
The second film dealt with the idea that things in the city were going to get worse before they got better. The film had many more stories and a complex narrative of events - but these things never eclipsed and actually enhanced a sense of paranoia that everyone felt through the whole film: everyone from the characters to the audience. It ran much deeper, stringing together what was at times a complex and what could be called a convoluted narrative. That much of what happened was unlikely in hindsight, this sense of a paranoia was heightened with every scene as the film went on, and the audience hadn't much like it before.
The narrative, meaning that all these stories and characters and interactions, was just as complex in the third film, but the story - the very basic foundation upon which they were built on - was very simple. There was no sense of paranoia that was felt equally by the audience and the characters. Instead, there's a lot of new characters, and a lot of chance meetings and contrivances so only the main characters meet up with other main characters so that plot points could all connect and resolve, and the viewer (when he or she is trying not to figure out what Bane is saying or what his motivations are) is wondering why everything is so needlessly convoluted.
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