Rewatching The Dark Knight Trilogy

[TedShatner10]

OK, I relatively recently rewatched the Nolan Dark Knight trilogy earlier this year, on my Blu Ray, and it's still a very cohesive, satisfying trilogy.

The Dark Knight is still a powerhouse all these years later, being a serious action crime thriller disguised as a comic book movie, though Batman Begins gets lost in the shuffle nowadays (despite being as endlessly rewatchable). The late Heath Ledger stole the trilogy as a force of meticulously planned mayhem, though Liam Neeson gave it gravitas and depth, with Tom Hardy capping it off with a mix of high intelligence and extreme strength (also Eric Roberts, Tom Wilkinson, Jg Chin Han, Burn Gorman, and Ben Mendelsohn were underrated as the more "normal" business suited crooks of Gotham).

The Dark Knight Rises is a slightly clunky, but still rousing fantasy cyberpunk version of A Tale Of Two Cities - while Begins is relatively overlooked, Rises gets unfairly bagged on, even it just does not measure up to the first two Nolan instalments (though it's still far better than most other DC films until 2019's Joker).

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Batman Begins is my favorite for 2 main reasons:
1. It's the first Batman movie to really properly put the focus on Batman. Most of the previous movies were all about the villains chewing scenery. The subsequent Nolan films shifted the focus towards Jim Gordon. But Batman Begins puts Bruce Wayne's emotional journey squarely in the center of things. He's in nearly every scene and most of the others are people talking about him.
2. Gotham City is a marvel of production design. It looks grimy & real but also completely unique and not quite like anything we have in the real world. In the sequels, Gotham was just Chicago with a bit of New York geography thrown in.

As the years have gone on, I find myself enjoying The Dark Knight Rises way more than I did when it first came out. I think a lot of that comes down to a fondness for Tom Hardy's Bane voice. "Perhaps he's wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane."

Although, I gotta say, between The Dark Knight Rises and Joker, these movies are becoming a little too prescient for my taste!

 

[TedShatner10]

1. It's the first Batman movie to really properly put the focus on Batman. Most of the previous movies were all about the villains chewing scenery. The subsequent Nolan films shifted the focus towards Jim Gordon. But Batman Begins puts Bruce Wayne's emotional journey squarely in the center of things. He's in nearly every scene and most of the others are people talking about him.

Bale's Batman/Wayne is more of a secondary character in TDK though Bale's performance of sadness and grief is underrated in the wake of the Joker's bombings (and neckbeards make fun of his growly, gravelly Bat voice).

2. Gotham City is a marvel of production design. It looks grimy & real but also completely unique and not quite like anything we have in the real world. In the sequels, Gotham was just Chicago with a bit of New York geography thrown in.

Batman Begins spending time around around the League's mountain lair, the Wayne estate, and the Gotham's Narrows feels more mystical, homely, and grubby (like in SW's ANH) while TDK feels colder, more monolithic, with clean lines of glass and steel everywhere (like SW's TESB or RoboCop 2). Which makes sense.

As the years have gone on, I find myself enjoying The Dark Knight Rises way more than I did when it first came out.

I liked it on the week of its release (it's unfortunate a theatre shooting and widely seen as failing to live up to its predecessors tanked its reputation somewhat). Still voted the film of the 2010s though on a big aonline poll (still a lot of nerds seem to irrationally dislike it like they did with the also decent Iron Man 3).

Although, I gotta say, between The Dark Knight Rises and Joker, these movies are becoming a little too prescient for my taste!

Yeah, and as much as I like the MCU overall, they blow a lot of MCU films out of the water. Other relatively recent DC films that are not awful were Wonder Woman, Shazzam!, and Aquaman.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

But Batman Begins puts Bruce Wayne's emotional journey squarely in the center of things. He's in nearly every scene and most of the others are people talking about him.

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.

 

[MoonlightSinatra]

I feel TDK trilogy are elite films, and elevate beyond the “comic book movie” form.
The first two films are outstanding, especially The Dark Knight, but Rises is in my opinion Nolan’s sloppiest film. Not just of the trilogy, but of his entire career. There is shoddy story work, bad special effects (the full then empty then full football stadium), the weird bomb plot, some odd performances (why does Oldman sound different in each movie?), and less than terrific editing and stunt choreography.
But... that ending. It’s just awesome.
And somehow 5ft 8in Tom Hardy looks large and menacing. He is terrific- every bit as good as Ledger was.

And Christian Bale was the best Batman/Bruce Wayne ever.

 

[TedShatner10]

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.

It doesn't make him a hollow cypher, it makes him a more realistic, grounded, and vulnerable character who struggles with finding himself and finds inspiration from others, even from very bad, deluded zealots like Henri Ducard (and his strong connection to Rachel is what sets him up with his ultimate, tragic downfall in TDK and estrangement with Alfred in Rises).

You're a comic purist, aren't you?

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.

Wow, you've got insanely ridiculous, unrealistically high standards. Dent's corruption has a major, organic input on the main events of Rises, to begin with (ie. Gordon's written confession, the false draconian peace with the so-called Dent Act, etc).

As about shoddy SFX - I don't see any problems with the stadium scene for the most part (with yellow seats and yellow clad fans causing a optical illusion, though the CGI bomb crater in the pitch never looked great - mind you the SFX scene of Bane's men storming the breached Wayne Corp. armoury is still seamless and miraculous all these years later).

Begins had somewhat shoddy fight scenes in close up, while the camera pulled out with fight scenes in Rises (so you see a couple of sloppy staged fights with the henchmen - but on the flip side Bane's beatdown of Bruce was always a treat).

 

[Sketcher]

One of my friends speculated that everything after Bane breaks Batman's back is a dream/hallucination of Bruce's. That would explain why suddenly Bruce is in a prison on other side of the world (and Bane, briefly), the travel time, how the US lets Bane simply take control of a city, as well as the energy bomb plot. While Nolan does have a tendency to play into the abstract and surreal, I doubt this was his intent. Still, it does offer an interesting take on Rises more outlandish plot compared to the previous two entries in the series.

 

[TedShatner10]

Eh, it's also called "speed of plot" and Bruce being in a coma after his injury (I speculate the prison pit next to the old palatial complex was Bane's and Talia's main headquarters for their League of Shadows splinter group, with abandoned training grounds and airfield etc, because everybody was in Gotham).

The Dark Knight and Begins are sharper films but have their strange bits as well (with the water evaporator device a bit weirder than the more straight forward bomb - both Wayne Corp. projects, mind you. And Bruce Wayne's side quest in Hong Kong not putting nations on the brink of WW3, etc).

 

[Marc]

(with the water evaporator device a bit weirder than the more straight forward bomb

to spread the fear gas through Gotham would have taken lots of bombs so far easier to dump in the water supply then turn that into gas

 

[TedShatner10]

to spread the fear gas through Gotham would have taken lots of bombs so far easier to dump in the water supply then turn that into gas

But it was poured into Gotham's water supply for weeks and why didn't the infused water combust into crazy gas when it got boiled in water kettles, etc?

Doesn't stop Batman Begins from arguably being my favourite of the whole Trilogy and provided the solid groundwork for The Dark Knight being a smash hit sequel that was the 2000s version of Aliens and Terminator 2 (and Dunkirk may be a better film than Rises, with less gaffes, etc, but Rises was more fun and rewatchable to me).

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

It doesn't make him a hollow cypher, it makes him a more realistic, grounded, and vulnerable character who struggles with finding himself and finds inspiration from others, even from very bad, deluded zealots like Henri Ducard (and his strong connection to Rachel is what sets him up with his ultimate, tragic downfall in TDK and estrangement with Alfred in Rises).

You're a comic purist, aren't you?

I want Bruce to be highly intelligent, not necessarily like the comics of late, but at least something to warrant the "detective" part of his nickname. Bruce in Begins was dumb and needed to be told by every other character (literally) what to do. Grounded or not, it didn't work for me at all. The man is more important than the suit for these movies and they didn't give me a man that showed me what being a superhero was all about.

And I'd say Batman: The Animated Series was a bigger influence on me than the comics (of which I only have a handful of runs).

Wow, you've got insanely ridiculous, unrealistically high standards.

Only the standards created by Nolan himself previously. It's like saying someone has insanely high standards for not liking Raimi's Spider-Man 3. Some times the quality of these movies simply drop off a cliff after their high note.

Very little worked for me in Rises. I did NOT buy the city turning on itself because a faceless mumbler told them to be bad. I did NOT buy the really dumb idea to send every cop, off-duty or not, into a sewer to find one man. I did NOT buy the government leaving a city for a whole month in the hands of terrorists. I did not buy Bruce's double miraculous recovery in a single movie (magic leg brace or not). Nor giving up on the city initially. I didn't buy him getting BACK into the city after his second recovery. Nor setting up the fire batsignal on the bridge. Nor the city allowing a fusion reactor to be built in the heart of the city. Nor turning that into a weapon (it's literally impossible for a fusion reactor if such a reactor were ever to be really created). Nor a NUCLEAR BOMB at the end carelessly being slammed around like it was a toy on a string. Nor... there's just a lot, especially for a franchise that started off pretending to be grounded in the real world (which was always just hype anyways), it just went bonkers in that last movie with what it asked the audience to believe.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I feel TDK trilogy are elite films, and elevate beyond the “comic book movie” form.

..and most superhero films produced at the same time and since have utterly failed to come close to the brilliance...the excellence of this comic book-inspired trilogy.

Nolan set the gold standard for superhero movies, hence their impact and neverending celebration by moviegoers around the world long after they left the theatres.

 

[USS Firefly]

Batman Begins is good
The dark knight is great!
The dark knight rises for me was not good, Just a dumb movie. Too many stupid decisions kept me out of the movie.

 

[TedShatner10]

I want Bruce to be highly intelligent, not necessarily like the comics of late, but at least something to warrant the "detective" part of his nickname. Bruce in Begins was dumb and needed to be told by every other character (literally) what to do.

This was supposed to be a very young, more vulnerable Bruce Wayne that was basically subjected to Rachel and Alfred threatened with assassination when he confronted Falcone, the de facto ruler of Gotham at that time. Bruce on his own decided to skip town and immerse himself amongst the crooks of the world, but eventually coming a cropper and ending up in a Chinese gulag.

And once at his lowest point, Ducard/Ra's saw great potential in the roving, angry youth, and tried to win him over (and the rest is history). Alfred was really his surrogate dad and Fox was more his enabler (rather than boss). Begins got a good emotional core to it.

Which is why I personally prefer Begins to the smash hit The Dark Knight (a lot of characters/dialogue lacked self-awareness, Gotham and Hong Kong felt soulless) and the solid Rises (more of the same, a bit more pompous and strained in tone).

And Rises still comes up on top of SpiderMan 3, IMO. Rises' fusion/fisson device is of course silly, but still probably more rooted in reality than the Microwave Emitter (why didn't that explode water based human people?!), that weird gatlin cannon thingy that replicated how a bullet got lodged in a apartment wall, and the sona scanning network that turned normal cellphones into X-ray machines apparently (but then there'd be no films).

And the fusion core's housing facility was located in the city because it was all presented as highly secret, even highly illicit (when it was underground/underwater, with its lift entrance disguised as something else entirely).

 

[The Borgified Corpse]

Bale's Batman/Wayne is more of a secondary character in TDK though Bale's performance of sadness and grief is underrated in the wake of the Joker's bombings (and neckbeards make fun of his growly, gravelly Bat voice).

Yeah. The Dark Knight kinda felt like Nolan really just wanted to make a gritty crime drama about Jim Gordon & Harvey Dent trying to take down the Joker. Batman mostly just shows up for the requisite action scenes, although Bale's performance is great when he does get the spotlight.

I also credit The Dark Knight for being one of the funniest comic book movies ever and Bale's comic timing is very underrated.

"Really? You're into ballet?"

"Accomplice? I'm gonna tell them the whole thing was your idea."

"That was a brave thing you did."
"What? Trying to catch the light?"
"You mean you weren't protecting the van?"
"Why? Who's in it? Shouldn't I go to a hospital?"
"You don't watch a lot of news, do you, Mr. Wayne?"

I liked it on the week of its release (it's unfortunate a theater shooting and widely seen as failing to live up to its predecessors tanked its reputation somewhat). Still voted the film of the 2010s though on a big online poll (still a lot of nerds seem to irrationally dislike it like they did with the also decent Iron Man 3).

I don't think that the Aurora shooting had that much of an effect on the movie's fan reception. It might have brought down the opening weekend box office a smidge but that's about it.

Interesting 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.

why does Oldman sound different in each movie?

I never noticed. But probably because he doesn't care enough to keep things perfectly consistent from one movie to the next. I recall an interview where he basically said that he hates doing movies like this and only does them because the paychecks pay the bills while he then goes off and does the little indie projects that he really wants to do. Personally, I think he's excellent in all 3 movies. If this is what he looks like when he's phoning it in, then he's even better than Brando!

And Bruce Wayne's side quest in Hong Kong not putting nations on the brink of WW3, etc).

I'm guessing that Lao had just enough friends within the Chinese Communist Party that they wouldn't extradite him to a foreign country but just enough enemies that no one would care too much if he did rot in an American prison.

I did NOT buy the city turning on itself because a faceless mumbler told them to be bad.

For me, that has more to do with the fact that I think that the ending of The Dark Knight is BS. You're telling me that the ONLY reason why the people of Gotham would approve of harsh prosecutions of mafia criminals is because they believed that Harvey Dent had a spotless reputation? I didn't believe that back in 2008 and it seems ridiculously naive now. Oh yes, public officials with impeccable personal moral character that is beyond reproach; that's what American voters go for!

I did NOT buy the government leaving a city for a whole month in the hands of terrorists.

Never underestimate the capacity for government dithering.

Personally, the part of The Dark Knight Rises that strains my credulity the most is that they have such precise measurements about the radioactive decay within the reactor that they can time down to the second when it will explode. I know that screenwriters love the "ticking clock" but this is ridiculous. I'm not sure whether this is better or worse than the microwave emitter not boiling all of the fluids in the bodies of every person unfortunate enough to get near it.

Also, when the truck crashes, Talia, who was in the cab, suffers fatal injuries while Gordon, who was getting jostled around in the back, emerges without a scratch.

Actually, that scene has an even bigger problem. I just rewatched it to check and see if Talia was wearing a seatbelt. (She wasn't.) Then I realized that there's some REALLY SLOPPY editing in that sequence. Watch it for yourself and pay attention to whether Talia is in the driver's seat or the passenger seat of the truck and whether there's someone else driving the truck. I feel like I have to retroactively deduct half a point from every single one of Nolan's movies for a blunder like that.

Also, I'm really annoyed by the way that the blu-rays of The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises keep switching aspect ratios. I wish that they would just crop the IMAX shots into the letterbox format like they do for the theatrical & DVD releases.

 

[Gaith]

It doesn't make him a hollow cypher, it makes him a more realistic, grounded, and vulnerable character

But that's just it - Bruce Wayne is an inherently unrealistic and bonkers character. There's nothing "grounded" about a billionaire deciding to fight crime by using all his resources to beat up muggers and other petty criminals by night. To wit:

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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.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I have a hard time going back to it though I enjoyed them the first time. My main problem with it is that its thesis on human nature is very shallow and specious but presented as something deep and profound.

 

[Ovation]

Also, I'm really annoyed by the way that the blu-rays of The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises keep switching aspect ratios. I wish that they would just crop the IMAX shots into the letterbox format like they do for the theatrical & DVD releases.

I bought those Blu-rays precisely BECAUSE they reproduce the variable aspect ratios. It's the only way to have that (all the streaming/download/DVD versions lack it). Oh well.

 

[Anwar]

I feel TDK trilogy are elite films, and elevate beyond the “comic book movie” form.

Beh, the whole idea of "transcending" the CBM genre is wrong-headed IMO. The movies should be more about making the CBM genre itself more respected and appreciated for what it is.

 

[JD]

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.