Should Dark Knight Rises Have Been A Two Parter?

[Mr Light]

FULL MOVIE SPOILERS OF COURSE!

I just saw Dark Knight Rises today, and walking out of the movie the number one thing I thought was "this should have been two movies".

They took two year long comic book stories, Knightfall and No Man's Land, severely truncated them and shmushed them into one 2h45m flick. I think it's great that they did those two stories, but I felt it could have used a little more time to breathe.

I think the story would have worked better as a trilogy (where Dark Knight is part one, and Begins is the Hobbit). It basically felt like two movies, anyway.

Movie One ends with Bane breaking the Bat and taking over Gotham.

Movie Two opens with Bruce in prison and Bane ruling Gotham.

I felt that Bruce's injury was glossed over way too quickly. It was a spinal injury, and he just needed a chiropractor to pop something back in? I would have like some surgeries and some recuperating time...

And it would have been nice to spend more time with No Man's Land, having block wars between the criminals and the cops like in the comics. Maybe have the Bat impersonators from Dark Knight be a gang as well.

Besides, all finales are broken up nowadays. Harry Potter. Twilight. Hunger Games. You coulda cashed in, Warner Brothers!

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Yes. It felt like two movies smashed together and neither one had any time to breathe and grow.

 

[Gepard]

I think it would have been better with a different story entirely. What we got didn't make much sense. No amount of extra material would have helped Bane's "I'll liberate them, then blow them up!" shtick.

 

[Gryffindorian]

Not necessary. We've already had a number of two-parters like HP: Deathly Hallows, Breaking Dawn, and now The Hobbit. Sometimes, the story calls for it, but not in this case. The Dark Knight conclusion has been told in over 2.5 hours; what more could possibly be elaborated on?

 

[sidious618]

I thought it was the length it needed to be. It had an epic quality that wouldn't have worked as well if it was two films. Plus, it would just stick out in the overall series, not to mention it not being something that seems like Nolan's style.

 

[Mr Light]

I initially complained about Bane's actions as well but I guess the explanation is he wanted to offer them hope before destroying them. Still...

 

[Relayer1]

Nope - one was enough thank you !

 

[Warped9]

I usually dislike cliffhanger films.

 

[Warp Coil]

I think that the new Hollywood trend of making the last film installment in a series a two-parter is just taking things overboard. Sometimes I understand it. When adapting material from a book, it can be difficult to fit the story into one 2-hour film. To properly service the story, the characters and the audience, you need more time and so you need an extra film to wrap everything up. HP is a good example of this. I genuinely believed that last book needed to be split into two movies. And I think the result was great. However, not every series needs to end this way. And in the case of The Dark Knight Rises, the story wasn't a straight adaptation of a specific source. Sure, it borrows heavily from various comic elements, but it's an original story that Nolan came up with. And given the film's 2:45 run time, that's long enough to craft a strong finale. I don't think this film rushed through anything. I didn't feel like there needed to be an extra hour of material to flesh things out. I thought it worked just fine. If anything, splitting this story into two films probably would have screwed up the pacing.

 

[roliver]

but I guess the explanation is he wanted to offer them hope before destroying them. Still...

There is no guessing here. This is stated outright in the film. (Not that I could fault anyone for not being able to understand Bane, though.)

 

[Gotham Central]

Just a thought...but people keep saying that Nolan smashed together Knightfall and No Man's Land...both of which were year long stories.

However it seems to me that actually what he did was more of an adaptation of Batman: The Cult

From Wikipedia on Deacon Blackfire:

Deacon Blackfire is the main antagonist in the four-issue miniseries, Batman: The Cult. Blackfire is a conman and cult leader who may be over 100 years old. He forms an army in the sewers beneath Gotham City, largely composed of the homeless. Blackfire uses this army to begin a violent war on crime, which escalates into him taking over the entire city, resulting in it being isolated from the rest of the country. Blackfire captures and brainwashes Batman, temporarily making the Caped Crusader a member of Blackfire's cult. Batman eventually breaks his conditioning, but its aftereffects make it difficult for him to capture Blackfire. After a brutal search through the sewers, Batman confronts Blackfire, who demands that Batman kill him, making him a martyr. Batman refuses, and instead savagely beats Blackfire in front of his army. Blackfire's army turns on him and kills him.

Its worth noting that one of the early rumors about this movie was that the villain was in fact going to be Deacon Blackfire. That The Dark Knight Rises takes its themes and story from this older work makes more sense than any connection to No Man's Land given that Nolan and Co have tended to favor older Batman stories from the 80s as their source material. NML, being from 1999 seems a bit outside of their research period. Of course even most fans don't remember The Cult.

 

[Mr Light]

I'd never even heard of that story before How old is it?

 

[Gotham Central]

I'd never even heard of that story before How old is it?

Late 80s...1988 I think.

 

[JarodRussell]

I remember similar discussions about The Dark Knight, when people thought the first part should have been about The Joker, and the second part about Two Face.

 

[Mr Light]

First time I saw Dark Knight I thought the ending with Two Face was extremely rushed and tacked on. Watching it again a couple days ago, it felt just right. Two Face is not a good enough villain to sustain an entire movie, particularly in the context of this movie. He went nuts, went on a spree, the end. The movie was about the Joker's attempts to corrupt Batman and Harvey Dent, so the Two Face story exists as an ending to the Joker story, not it's own entity.