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TDK, nits, what didn't you like about it?

Flying Spaghetti Monster

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So a long time ago I did a thread like this with Batman Begins..what was not executed right in the film all of that. Here are some examples:

Exposition: The film was so bent on building tension that many pieces of exposition were glossed over, and it was impossible to get until a third viewing, that the viewer is forced to play catchup rahter than being really involved. For example: It took a while to realize the police marked the bills, let alone that they marked them by irradiating them. Then I learn that the mob has agents possibly in both Dent's and gordon's offices, in a converation that is actually badly acted, in which Oldman, normally a great acor, is mumbling dialogue in Den't's office that I can't understnad.

Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker a: got as many guys as he did b) got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown) and c) how he set up all the bombs for his schemes.
 
Well, first off, it's a great movie. But I don't believe in a perfect film, there's always nit picks you can make. From around the time Bruce gets back to Gotham from China up until the final 15-20 minutes, you'll be hard pressed to find a better stretch of movie, in my opinion... Just a superb second act.

The last 15 minutes or so kind of floundered for me. The cellular vision stuff was just... weird.

Oh, and Bale's Bat voice, but that's almost so obvious I shouldn't even have bothered mentioning it.
 
Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker a: got as many guys as he did b) got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown) and c) how he set up all the bombs for his schemes.

a) He posted a want ad on Craig's List

b) Joker copter...Junior Birdman!

c) Carefully
 
Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker [...] got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown)

And why the Joker left rather than tearing up the entire place until either the cops showed up or he found Harvey Dent's hiding spot? I'm not a fan of the end of that sequence in general. Something about the end of it just feels incomplete. And even when factoring in (a) movie physics and (b) that it's a comic book movie, I still don't buy that Rachel could have survived that fall.

Clearly, judging from some of the other threads, Harvey Dent's death remains ambiguous enough that many fans cling to the hope that he's still alive so that they can get more Two-Face in the sequel. Ironically, his fall at the end of the movie looks far more survivable than the aforementioned one that Rachel actually survives.

Gordon's line at the end, "Five dead, two of them cops." I don't get it. First off, I only count 3 people that Two-Face killed-- the crooked cop in that bar, Maroni's driver, and presumably Maroni died in the car crash when his driver was killed. Where are the other 2? Secondly, how does Gordon know this? I can't really picture Two-Face spending a lot of time in that scene monologuing to Gordon about all the other people that he's killed.

At one point in the movie, the Joker collects his half of the mob money and burns it. But I thought that the agreement was for the Joker to be paid half the money for killing Batman, not breaking Lao out of jail so that they could get the money back. He never killed Batman, so why is he collecting his reward?

Isn't it convenient that the bomb that the Joker sets off in the MCU takes out everyone else in the building except for the Joker? Everyone else is incapacitated, yet the Joker doesn't have a scratch on him, and it didn't look like his cover was particularly better than anyone else's.

With so much of his lips & cheek burned off, shouldn't Two-Face have a bit of a speech impediment?

The Joker frames the choice to rescue Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes as an either-or proposition when it really isn't. Gordon was only seconds away from saving Rachel and would have gotten to her in time if traffic had been better.

The crooked cops kidnapping Harvey & Rachel happens off-screen and so quickly that it took me a while to figure out what was going on.
 
Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker [...] got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown)

And why the Joker left rather than tearing up the entire place until either the cops showed up or he found Harvey Dent's hiding spot? I'm not a fan of the end of that sequence in general. Something about the end of it just feels incomplete. And even when factoring in (a) movie physics and (b) that it's a comic book movie, I still don't buy that Rachel could have survived that fall.

Clearly, judging from some of the other threads, Harvey Dent's death remains ambiguous enough that many fans cling to the hope that he's still alive so that they can get more Two-Face in the sequel. Ironically, his fall at the end of the movie looks far more survivable than the aforementioned one that Rachel actually survives.

Gordon's line at the end, "Five dead, two of them cops." I don't get it. First off, I only count 3 people that Two-Face killed-- the crooked cop in that bar, Maroni's driver, and presumably Maroni died in the car crash when his driver was killed. Where are the other 2? Secondly, how does Gordon know this? I can't really picture Two-Face spending a lot of time in that scene monologuing to Gordon about all the other people that he's killed.

At one point in the movie, the Joker collects his half of the mob money and burns it. But I thought that the agreement was for the Joker to be paid half the money for killing Batman, not breaking Lao out of jail so that they could get the money back. He never killed Batman, so why is he collecting his reward?

Isn't it convenient that the bomb that the Joker sets off in the MCU takes out everyone else in the building except for the Joker? Everyone else is incapacitated, yet the Joker doesn't have a scratch on him, and it didn't look like his cover was particularly better than anyone else's.

With so much of his lips & cheek burned off, shouldn't Two-Face have a bit of a speech impediment?

The Joker frames the choice to rescue Harvey Dent or Rachel Dawes as an either-or proposition when it really isn't. Gordon was only seconds away from saving Rachel and would have gotten to her in time if traffic had been better.

The crooked cops kidnapping Harvey & Rachel happens off-screen and so quickly that it took me a while to figure out what was going on.

I agree with your points. Just remind me is MCU the hospital?
 
What I didn't care for:
-Bale's voice as Batman. Totally overdone.
-Dent's transformation into Two Face. I thought the fire leaping out and hitting him like, esp. so neatly right down the side of his face was a stretch. I thought it would've been better if that liquid that poured on half of his face when he was thrown to the ground was acid.
-Batman didn't have to take the fall, but at least it sets up an interesting plot for the next movie.
 
I hated the people talking in the cinema when I am trying to watch my 2nd favourite movie of all time though when on DVD I might give it top spot.
 
Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker a: got as many guys as he did ... and how he set up all the bombs for his schemes.

With $68 million, you can do pretty much whatever you want, hiring as many criminals as you need (Gotham has no shortage of those).

Furthermore, a lot of the escaped crazies from Arkham were hired by the Joker (several hundred were never found and we see an example of one in the assassin Dent interrogates). They'd be even MORE willing than most to do crazy stuff for money.

(Aside from the small clues in dialog, a lot of this is supported by the background story in the viral marketing that took place over the course of the last year).

b) got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown)

There was a deleted scene featuring this, but it was cut - presumably because it doesn't do much to further the plot in an already dense, long movie (most viewers simply assume correctly that Joker is forced to leave, as the police are inevitably on their way).

The Borgified Corpose said:
At one point in the movie, the Joker collects his half of the mob money and burns it. But I thought that the agreement was for the Joker to be paid half the money for killing Batman, not breaking Lao out of jail so that they could get the money back. He never killed Batman, so why is he collecting his reward?

The Joker's a liar and doesn't play by the rules. Furthermore, he changes his game halfway through - from hunting Batman for the mob, to simply causing chaos in Gotham and taking over the underworld to prove a point.
 
I'm annoyed that they killed off Two-Face so quickly after only a few brief moments, but other then that I loved the movie.
 
The more I thought it, the more conflicted I was about the Joker. Great acting but I am split on the back story. I do like how the Joker made up how he became the Joker but to me, the Joker is everything that Batman is not. He is essentially one of the greatest villains in all of comics simply because of the parallel between Batman and him.
 
I remember BB as where Batman was able to hold his own against numerous highly-trained ninja assassins, whereas in TDK he gets slapped around by nothing more than off the street, untrained hoodlums.

On the other hand, the latter is probably more *realistic*, but I still saw it as a discrepancy between the two films. Maybe he got soft from a year of going after smalltime crooks.
 
^ Batman was also set on fire and nearly killed by Scarecrow and his untrained goons in BB, don't forget.
 
So a long time ago I did a thread like this with Batman Begins..what was not executed right in the film all of that. Here are some examples:

Exposition: The film was so bent on building tension that many pieces of exposition were glossed over, and it was impossible to get until a third viewing, that the viewer is forced to play catchup rahter than being really involved. For example: It took a while to realize the police marked the bills, let alone that they marked them by irradiating them. Then I learn that the mob has agents possibly in both Dent's and gordon's offices, in a converation that is actually badly acted, in which Oldman, normally a great acor, is mumbling dialogue in Den't's office that I can't understnad.

I didn't have any problems with understanding Oldman, but Nolan was a little too in love with the rapidly circling camera, both in this scene and the set-up scene in the bunker between Bruce and Alfred. I've never gotten motion sickness in my life, and those two scenes practically gave me vertigo.

My biggest nit in the whole movie though is - you don't shoot Batman in full light EVER. It's stylistically wrong, and exposes how silly a guy in that suit can look. The scene in the parking garage, the bank vault, and the rooftop confab between Gordon, Dent and Batman all had way too much ambient light. In every scene where Batman was in a shadowy space, he looked great. In every scene where there was too much light, things looked hideously awkward. Sadly, I think we have only fanboys to blame for the parking garage - everyone bitching about how they couldn't see the cool fight moves. As a result TDK lost a little of the "badass, mysterious, scary Batman" feel that BBegins took such trouble to establish.

Then of course,I can't figure out how the Joker a: got as many guys as he did b) got out of the penthouse (that should have been shown) and c) how he set up all the bombs for his schemes.

For all the incessant "realism" praise, there's nothing realistic about Nolan's Batman movies - nor should there be, even if the narrative and visual style are naturalistic. Joker can, does and always should be able to pull off impossibly huge schemes. It's a convention of the genre, right up there with the way Batman's cape never gets in his way while he's fighting. You just have to go with it.
 
Actually, the scene where he is REALLY fully-lit..the interrogation scene, is actually effective as hell. I knew it was coming, but on opening night, when the Gordon went for coffee and that light came on, people gasped.

I liked the scenes you referred to better than the strobe scene with Maroni
 
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