Batman: The Dark Knight Rises

[Chux]

This movie suffered from trying to be too many storylines.

Knightfall, No Man's Land, and Son of the Demon

[bbobb]

I didn't hate it. But I also didn't really love it either.

I did like Bane a lot though

[Diff-chan]

Batman takes place in Gotham City, not New York City. Would it have killed Nolan to scrub out some of the more recognizable buildings? Perhaps it was supposed to make the movie feel more realistic and current. But it just felt lazy.

It's a pretty stunning contrast with Tim Burton's Gotham, which felt like a dark, gritty comic book came to life.

People said the same thing about TDK, but wasn't it Chicago?

[Andrew]

People said the same thing about TDK, but wasn't it Chicago?

It was. But at least Chicago can look like Generic City X to the average person, so long as you scrub out the Sears Tower. NYC has the most recognizable layout and skyline on Earth.

[Advocate]

Gotham City even in the comic is based on NYC. As a fan of Batman most if not all know this, but here ...

Writer Bill Finger, on the naming of the city and the reason for changing Batman's locale from New York City to a fictional city said, "Originally I was going to call Gotham City 'Civic City'. Then I tried 'Capital City', then 'Coast City'. Then I flipped through the New York City phone book and spotted the name 'Gotham Jewelers' and said, 'That's it,' Gotham City. We didn't call it New York because we wanted anybody in any city to identify with it."[2]"Gotham" had long been a well-known nickname for New York City even prior to Batman's 1939 introduction,[3] which explains why "Gotham Jewelers" and many other businesses in New York City have the word "Gotham" in them.

point I'm trying to make. I didn't have an issue with it.

[Changeling]

Burton did all of this so much better.

Also, Michael Keaton will always be the real movie batman for me.

[Mr-K]

I didn’t want to spoiler tag anything so… watch out.

Part of me wants to say that this is the best of Nolan's Batman trilogy, but... that's only because I rather enjoy big chaotic messes that sacrifice form in favor of trying something new.
On a base thrill level, Rises is on par with the other two, surpassing them in most respects, really
.
I like that Nolan's fight scenes have mellowed out since Begins, making them easier to follow (his fights with Bane were incredible), but the action has gotten a lot bigger too. It's so LOUD! So loud I could feel it pumping in my chest. (Begins was loud too, I remember seeing it in theaters and being worried that my water was going to shake off the table).

Aside from that visceral level, though, I liked that Nolan let his villains get away with dismantling and breaking down a city, only letting them fail in completely destroying it--Pretty gutsy, really. An X-Men movie would have ended with the heroes thwarting Bane's plan when the football field exploded. I admire that.

Where things start to bug me, though, is in its structure. I really don't like how Gotham City's landscape has shifted over the three movies, going from a Gotham molded on Chicago to just New York City. The new World Trade Center is everywhere--Hell, it could practically be a tourist video for the thing it gets so much screen time. Shifting the cities like this makes the trilogy seem messy--it's just like having to recast Rachel because of Holmes's insaneo marriage, or having to totally ignore the Joker in Rises to avoid addressing Ledger's death. Gotham is kind of like a character in this story too, and simply making it New York just made it seem like they were sharing a set with the Avengers.

The Joker thing is an issue too. Joker and Bane share a similar kind of anarchist vision, though I guess Bane wanted more control than Joker. If Ledger hadn't died, I'd be curious how Nolan would handle a destructive force like the Joker in Bane's little fascist world. And because he’s never mentioned, it just makes you wonder where they locked him away to keep him under control or if he’s dead or what.

It also makes large parts of the second movie seem irrelevant to the overall arc of the trilogy. The fallout from Dent plays a big part in the setup in the movie, but kind of falls to the wayside once Bane and the League of Shadows stuff gets going. It makes the song and dance with Dent and Joker in TDK seem like a side-show to the main story. It’s not cohesive.

In any case, I had a blast with it, I’m going to see it again on Monday after I re-watch Begins.

Other thoughts

I totally got duped by the fucking Talia thing. During the whole “You’re Raz Al’Guul’s son” reveal, it never set an alarm off in my head of “wait, that’s not right” and it never DID until Bats gets the knife in his ribs. Ugh! Fuck! Felt so dumb. I was just thinking that her character seemed rather flimsy and pointless too. God damnit, stupid Kris.

The Bat fucking rules. Best gadget of the trilogy by far.

I like the way they handled Robin in this, making him just as resourceful and troubled as Batman then becoming disenfranchised with the “clean” side of the law. I got the impression with the end, though, that Wayne chose him to carry on the mantle of Batman as he goes off and enjoys his rebooted life with Selina rather than them teaming up. Maybe he would jump straight to Nitewing or whatever. Irrelevant, really.

Selina Kyle. My admiration of Anne Hathaway has declined over the past couple of years. She’s beautiful and has a real talent, but you can really FEEL her acting in this one. Her dropping the sweet and innocent routine to go all femme fatale when she first meets Wayne made me groan a bit. She just does it with such flourish, it had the subtlety of a… something that isn’t subtle. A space rocket… bomb with streamers on it and a fire paint job or something. But, I kind of settled into a groove with her by the middle of the movie and came around to it. It’s a good performance, I just think she might have hammed it up a bit too much.

[Chux]

I want to feel her, pls

[Shin Johnpv]

*Spoilers abound*

I left the theater really disappointed by this one. I'm not saying it was bad, cause it was alright, it just felt like a let down to me. I knew we were coming in 8 years after the last one, so I figured we would be seeing a Batman at his prime, not limp with a cane, recluse Bruce Wayne. Which I feel makes the whole Bane breaking him thing have much less of an impact. He's just come back, he's just getting back into the swing of things, of course Bane was going to beat him, it just felt hollow. If this had been a Batman that's now been doing this for 9 - 10 years and was just at his peak, and Bane broke him it just would have meant so much more.

Bruce Wayne losing all his cash, also felt really dumb. In the movie they say, we may be able to prove fraud. Come the fuck on, you have every cop in Gotham at the stock exchange, you can see when the transactions happened. It should take about 30 seconds for them to go, yup that's fraud we'll transfer back your cash. It just felt so dumb. It also leads to questions where do Bruce and Selina get the money to start a new life, whose going to be supporting Blake as he takes over the mantle of the Bat? How the hell did Bruce get back from across the world with no money? The story just felt rushed all around. A lot of things just felt like what a coincidence. Like Bruce coming back into Gotham right where Selina is.

The fights definitely were better, specially the ones with Bane. It was nice actually being able to see what Batman was doing. The movies as a whole though just didn't stand up to the first two. I still say Begins is the best one of the series.

I hope when they reboot the series we get a combination of The Animated Series Batman, and this Batman. My biggest complaint about this series was not enough Detective Batman action, which was something I thought the Animated Series did really well.

[Mr-K]

It's basically Rocky 3. But Bane broke the Bat in the comics when he wasn't at his prime too, he was sick and just beat the shit out of all of Arkham basically. He was just going to go home and go the fuck to bed when Bane shows up and snaps him in half.

I also want the next Batman series to be campy as FUCK.