THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Post-release thread..... - Page 18

It's definitely Sean Connery meets somebody with very vocal and proper diction. 

I don't remember who else may have said this, but he or she best described Bane's accent: he sounds like a homicidal professor from Oxford University.

Him and Hathaway Catwoman are easily the most delightful characters in the entire movie.

I loved hot Levvitt sold his reaction to being called a hot head. It's just a small little look he has in the hospital where he can't quite believe such a stereotypical thing is being said.
 

Went to see this in IMAX last night. I can't remember coming out of a film buzzing as hard as this: probably the walk out of the cinema after watching "Natural Born Killers" onto streets covered with pristine snow lit hellish orange by the streetlights.

It wasn't a masterpiece, but damn if it didn't cap the Batman story Nolan wanted to tell pretty bloody effectively. Kinetic, skillfully manipulative and immersive.

I've still got a lot of thoughts roiling through my head about the film, and haven't yet been able to order them coherently, but one thing that surprises me about the criticisms - not all of which I disagree with - is the argument that Bane was emasculated by the Talia reveal. I just didn't get that at all.

In many ways it gave me a much more rounded sense of his motivation, why he would be driven, and imbued his actions with a degree of pathos that was both unexpected and dramatic. Miranda Tate being Talia and working from the inside also retrospectively explained how Bane knew of Batman's true identity and the location of the Applied Sciences vault without having to demand too great a leap of imagination. The call backs and ties into the first film through Talia, the League and Bruce's imprisonment and escape really worked for me, and made Begins a much better film after the fact.

What I also particularly liked is that I never felt that the turns taken by the plot or characters felt artificial or cliched - even the Rocky-esque comeback or the Robin reveal. From the moment that Selina robs Bruce in front of his eyes, through Alfred quitting, Bane being the one to reveal the lie behind Harvey Dent and Gordon going a little bit Stansfield, I thought Nolan et al made good decisions in sending the story (or sometimes just incidental moments) along paths marginally to the left or right of predictable.

I agree with those who complain about some of the comic book logic being jarring at times, and I did once or twice silently mouth a "WTF" as the passage of time seemed too compressed. Also, and this seems to be an editing choice I notice a lot in modern films, some scenes didn't really feel long enough to breathe. Some of the emotional investment wasn't as substantial as it could have been which affected the pay off at times.

Overall though, a really good way to finish off. As I left the cinema, I felt excited in a way I hadn't since I was a kid. I really wanted to be John Blake.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mcnooj82 

Love Bane.   He was just so fun.  I've been trying to impersonate his voice to myself all day.

 

Truly... the only sequence I found myself thrilled was that first fight between him and Batman.  It was appropriately brutal, but more importantly, I loved the context.  Honestly, Batman's primary ability in Nolan's trilogy was using his fists to pound crime into submission.

 

In TDK, that MO is made useless by the fact that it has no effect on the Joker because he thrives upon it.

 

In TDKR, that MO is completely outmatched by that of Bane's.  To see Batman scream in frustration trying to do the only thing he seems to know how to do was exciting.  Because honestly, watching Batman simply pound criminals with his fists was never exciting for me in Nolan's take on the character.  It was great to see him absolutely helpless.

 

If I go see the movie again, it'll be for that sequence.

Yeah, I definitely dug that first fight with Bane.  Though I didn't mind the second fight, either, in a "want to cheer for the hero" sort of way and seeing Bane's increasing desperation as his mask got more damaged and the painkiller presumably started wearing off.  Was not thrilled that they turned Bane into Talia's lackey, but then again they never made completely clear how much of the plan was hers and how much was Bane's, so he might not be as "demoted" as it seems at first glance...plus he handled 90 percent of the execution like a champ.  Oddly in its' own way it's as though they crammed elements of "Vengeance of Bane, Knightfall, and Vengeance of Bane II" all into one movie, where Bane's character is concerned, and then at the last moment sprinkled a dash of the "villain decay" the character suffered since his introduction at the very end with his unceremonious demise.  I dunno if Nolan really intended to get that "meta" with the character, but as a fan it almost seemed like he did.

I know it's probably sacreligious to say this, but I think I enjoyed Bane more than the Joker. 

I love Hardy's Bane, but Ledger's Joker is one for the ages. There's nothing in RISES that matches the electricity he brings every time he shows up in TDK.
 

Maybe Nolan should shoot an After Creidits Scene showing an Arkham Cell left open?

It took me out of the film every time they not mentioned the Joker, but what are you going to do?
 

Both fights were terrific and to me it's why I personally liked Bane as the best villain in the trilogy. Batman is so used to just kicking everyone's ass so having that character that can not just match him physically but overpower him it's no wonder why they chose him as the main baddie. Also If you look at Tom Hardy's career it was like he was born to play this role. He obviously bulked up but the camera angles  that Nolan uses certainly make him even more menacing. Also the fight scenes you really felt the physicality of it all, you really felt the hits that Batman was taking. If you are a fan of Batman and wanted to see Bane done right I don't think you could have asked for more. Yeah the way he goes out is kind of lame but necessary in seeing the film to the finish. I liked how it all connected to the league of shadows and the death of Ra 's al Guhl's character in the first film.

One scene that doesn't get much attention is the "bad guys escaping the stock exchange on mo-peds" scene. I know Micah (or perhaps someone else)  already tore into the logic of:

1) There is a break in at the stock exchange, perpetrated by someone working for Dagget

2) Trades are manipulated to benefit Dagget

3) No one questions or invalidates the trades made during the break in.

But I think the escape by mo-ped thing needs to be addressed as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChipDouglas 

Both fights were terrific and to me it's why I personally liked Bane as the best villain in the trilogy. Batman is so used to just kicking everyone's ass so having that character that can not just match him physically but overpower him it's no wonder why they chose him as the main baddie.

 

Batman had a pretty tough time with his very first villain as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeI 

One scene that doesn't get much attention is the "bad guys escaping the stock exchange on mo-peds" scene. I know Micah (or perhaps someone else)  already tore into the logic of:

 

1) There is a break in at the stock exchange, perpetrated by someone working for Dagget

2) Trades are manipulated to benefit Dagget

3) No one questions or invalidates the trades made during the break in.

 

But I think the escape by mo-ped thing needs to be addressed as well.

That logic chain makes the completely unfounded leap that everyone knows Bane is working for Daggett. Nobody knows except Bane, Daggett and Bruce. They make a point of saying that the break-in will be investigated and fraud charges brought, but until then the trades stand.

Why does the escape by moped "need to be addressed", exactly? They're a group who live in the sewers, having easily disposable yet light and fast transport kind of makes perfect sense.

Were they actually mopeds, or motorcycles? I thought for sure they were motocross-style motorcycles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeI 


I threw the bit about dagget in there as bait. It doesn't matter at all. Someone broke in and tampered with trading. Every trade would be invalidated.
 

Damn this big overblown superhero movie for not having its fictional stock exchange conform to the laws of reality!

Seriously. There's an attack on the stock market, and a few hours later Bruce Wayne makes a number of trades, authorised by his fingerprints, to move stock. On the one hand, suspicious as fuck. On the other hand, crazy recluse panic-gambles with his finances in the wake of an assault on the city's financial bedrock. These nitpicks are really, really silly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

 

Damn this big overblown superhero movie for not having its fictional stock exchange conform to the laws of reality!

 

Seriously. There's an attack on the stock market, and a few hours later Bruce Wayne makes a number of trades, authorised by his fingerprints, to move stock. On the one hand, suspicious as fuck. On the other hand, crazy recluse panic-gambles with his finances in the wake of an assault on the city's financial bedrock. These nitpicks are really, really silly.

I don't know shit about the stock exchange so I guess it worked for me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navidson 

It took me out of the film every time they not mentioned the Joker, but what are you going to do?
 

As I stated before, why is everyone so certain that The Joker is even still in Gotham?  Arkham was a lost cause at the end of Begins, along with the rest of The Narrows, and isn't ever mentioned again.  The Joker is probably in a prison out of state, something that happens ALL THE TIME to criminals.  You don't end up in a prison down the street from where you committed the crime, most of the time.  A legit lunatic isn't going to end up in a standard prison like Blackgate, the place we see in this film.  He's not in the city limits.  Deal with it, guys.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

 

Damn this big overblown superhero movie for not having its fictional stock exchange conform to the laws of reality!

 

Seriously. There's an attack on the stock market, and a few hours later Bruce Wayne makes a number of trades, authorised by his fingerprints, to move stock. On the one hand, suspicious as fuck. On the other hand, crazy recluse panic-gambles with his finances in the wake of an assault on the city's financial bedrock. These nitpicks are really, really silly.

The shut down the NYSE on 9/11 and it wasn't even touched.  You think that exchange would stay open and trading continue after someone broke in and shot up the place?  That's my beef with it, not encrypted trades or the logic of Wayne making them.  The market wouldn't even be open.

Good God, this is such a stupid thing to get hung up on. Maybe they retrofitted the hack so that the trades were recorded as being made just minutes before the assault. WHO THE FUCK CARES. This is like complaining that the science on Ra's al Ghul's giant vaporizer doesn't add up.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by jhp1608 

Went to see this in IMAX last night. I can't remember coming out of a film buzzing as hard as this: probably the walk out of the cinema after watching "Natural Born Killers" onto streets covered with pristine snow lit hellish orange by the streetlights.

.

I went yesterday and I just came out bored.  I loved the plane escape but it was downhill from there.  The leaps in logic, that I'm sure were talked about already, were just too much to overcome.

Gordon always carried the note?  The stock exchange with Bruce going bankrupt & repoed in a day was laughable.  The delay of the bomb, I assume to make Bruce suffer, was just odd.

I think Christopher Nolan went to the Sorkin school of stupid(Newsroom) for this script.

Get different villians in the reboot and don't start with an origin story. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

Good God, this is such a stupid thing to get hung up on. Maybe they retrofitted the hack so that the trades were recorded as being made just minutes before the assault. WHO THE FUCK CARES. This is like complaining that the science on Ra's al Ghul's giant vaporizer doesn't add up.
 

It's not a stupid thing to get hung up on, because the entire plot of getting Miranda on the board of Wayne's company hinges on him being bankrupt.  It's a huge plot element set in motion by a lazy contrivance.

Isn't she already on the board at that time? 

You're applying real-world logic of when and how and why a stock exchange might close to a fictional city in a heightened comic book adaptation. You're asking for a "I've ordered ten thousand pointy ears from China and ten thousand helmets from Australia" type explanation of how this thing unfolds. There's no betrayal of internal logic in how Bruce gets bankrupted - the film lays it out for you just fine. It doesn't jibe with what you expect in a real-world setting, but that's on you, not the film.
 

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

Isn't she already on the board at that time? 

You're right, but it IS what convinces him to show her the reactor.

And yeah, maybe it's a nitpick, but it just seems like an unnecessarily complicated and inelegant way to go about what it brought about.

It was the ultimate revenge from the League of Shadows. Everything was designed for Bruce Wayne/Batman's defeat and soul crushing. The trigger was with the leader the whole time. It was going to go off no matter what. Everyone including the villains were going to die, just like Taliban Terrorists. This was all ideological agenda run amok. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by Anyawatchin Angel 

I went yesterday and I just came out bored.  I loved the plane escape but it was downhill from there.  The leaps in logic, that I'm sure were talked about already, were just too much to overcome.

 

Gordon always carried the note?  The stock exchange with Bruce going bankrupt & repoed in a day was laughable.  The delay of the bomb, I assume to make Bruce suffer, was just odd.

 

I think Christopher Nolan went to the Sorkin school of stupid(Newsroom) for this script.

 

Get different villians in the reboot and don't start with an origin story. 

Gordon went straight from the Harvey Dent Event to the crime scene where he got caught by Bane's men. I guess he decided not to stop by his office to lock away that letter. NOT a plot hole.

The bomb started to decay as soon as they took it out of the reactor. It was not set.

The Stock market thing...yeah that is just dumb.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

And yeah, maybe it's a nitpick, but it just seems like an unnecessarily complicated and inelegant way to go about what it brought about.

Sure, but what do you think the opening scene was?  Faking Pavil's death was a way to try and calm Bruce so that he'll use the reactor.  It was Pavil's paper on turning reactors into weapons that caused Bruce to shut down the project in the first place.

That plan didn't work so they needed another one (one that isn't quite as complicated as you're claiming -- it wasn't about Bruce showing off the reactor, it was about Fox.  He was already going to show it to her after the market heist, he just wanted Bruce to come along).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andrew Merriweather 

Good God, this is such a stupid thing to get hung up on. Maybe they retrofitted the hack so that the trades were recorded as being made just minutes before the assault. WHO THE FUCK CARES. This is like complaining that the science on Ra's al Ghul's giant vaporizer doesn't add up.
 

Seriously.  The stock exchange scene is actually quite plausible.

There have been massive trading errors in the NASDAQ and NYSE recently, and it took a couple of hours to shut down trading when those occurred.  It takes months to correct mistakes caused by malfunctions and it's terribly difficult to correct fraudulent trades.

Granted, if someone broke into the NYSE, trading would shut down, but I doubt it'd be instantaneous.  It would take at least a couple of minutes for news to filter through the system and for trades to stop coming in.  With electronic trading, things happen so quickly that it's virtually impossible to install so-called "circuit breakers" on the big exchanges to shut down trading instantaneously.  I don't recall Bane and his thugs being in the Gotham exchange more than 15-20 minutes.  That's well within the window of a realistic time frame to exact some havoc on a financial system.

DAMN YOU NOLAN AND YOUR VERISIMILITUDE!

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeI 


I threw the bit about dagget in there as bait. It doesn't matter at all. Someone broke in and tampered with trading. Every trade would be invalidated.

You can play that game all day, though.  There's no way that Batman could reverse-engineer a fingerprint in TDK from a shattered bullet that had been fired into a wall.  For that matter, I think you have to take a detective's exam to be promoted to detective, contrary to Gordon's promoting Blake.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rfahey 

 

You can play that game all day, though.  There's no way that Batman could reverse-engineer a fingerprint in TDK from a shattered bullet that had been fired into a wall.  For that matter, I think you have to take a detective's exam to be promoted to detective, contrary to Gordon's promoting Blake.

When this movie is in ashes you have my permission to stop liking it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by rfahey 

 

You can play that game all day, though.  There's no way that Batman could reverse-engineer a fingerprint in TDK from a shattered bullet that had been fired into a wall.  For that matter, I think you have to take a detective's exam to be promoted to detective, contrary to Gordon's promoting Blake.

But Batman never took an exam and he's the world's greatest detective.............

Quote:

Originally Posted by MikeI 

The movie does work better if you ignore the plot. It just becomes a morality tale. You can ignore all the loose threads and plot conveniences. Because the themes of the mOvie are fine and clear, it's just how the themes are conveyed that is terribly sloppy.

I'll give you that this movie, much like all of Nolan's work (and perhaps the modern blockbuster?) is more impressionistic in the sense that, from far away, it looks incredible.  No one can deny that the movie looks like a million bucks.  The cinematography is gorgeous, nothing looks cheap, the world looks lived in.  Batman and his gadgets look great.  But if you get closer, you start to see the stitches--like Nooj's point about the disorienting and unnecessarily tight editing.  Get too close, and it's just a bunch of broad barely intelligible brushstrokes, which is why the movie needs to have unrelenting forward momentum.  Think too much about it, and things start to fall apart. 

I don't think The Avengers is immune to this criticism either.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

The Stock market thing...yeah that is just dumb.

They should have just hacked into Wayne's TD Ameritrade account. Seems a lot easier. Probably would not have looked as cool filmed with an IMAX camera though.

Actually, I liked the stock market scene. The outcome was kind of silly, I agree. I think my biggest problem with that scene and with much of the movie, was the strange time lapse that occurs. From daylight to dark in minutes. Or was it meant to be longer? They went through the underpass/garage and bam, darkness. Maybe Gotham's SE doesn't close at 4PM EST?

I don't know, when does TDKR take place for that scene?  If the market closes at 4, and sunset during winter in New York can be at 4:30, if the whole thing spans an hour, it could be pretty dark by then.  Though it's still compressed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by whiskaz 

 

They should have just hacked into Wayne's TD Ameritrade account. Seems a lot easier. Probably would not have looked as cool filmed with an IMAX camera though.

 

Actually, I liked the stock market scene. The outcome was kind of silly, I agree. I think my biggest problem with that scene and with much of the movie, was the strange time lapse that occurs. From daylight to dark in minutes. Or was it meant to be longer? They went through the underpass/garage and bam, darkness. Maybe Gotham's SE doesn't close at 4PM EST?

That would have allowed for another awesome Bane one-liner, with opportunity for product placement:

"Have you talked to Chuck, lately, Mr. Wayne?"

Quote:

Originally Posted by neoolong 

I don't know, when does TDKR take place for that scene?  If the market closes at 4, and sunset during winter in New York can be at 4:30, if the whole thing spans an hour, it could be pretty dark by then.  Though it's still compressed.

I didn't even notice when watching the movie, so I guess... Nolan succeeds again.

How many of you guys were bitching about the 8 minute day during the first Transformers movie?

My personal theory is that the whole thing is actually Arthur's dream.  That's why Blake is such a central character and the movie has so much dream logic in its editing.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JMulder 

Yeah, on a second viewing I hated this. Totally inert and lifeless, and insulting in its disregard for narrative logic. The Pit doesn't even make sense -- how can nobody have ever thought just to attach a rock or hook or something onto a rope and throw it up over the edge of the well? How about digging some stone or metal pegs into the wall and just climbing out? I mean, people go rock climbing all the time on sheer vertical surfaces, and normally it doesn't inspire some kind of deep subconscious journey into the depths of one's despair in order to do so. Nolan just treats the place with such a heavily symbolic hand that it's basically impervious to the demands of realism, and the audience understands it more as a figurative abstraction than an actual location -- thus not raising any objections to its obvious ridiculousness.

The movie establishes how hard it is to get out of the pit. It is not obligated to run through every possible escape scenario to your satisfaction, it has a fucking story to get on with. This is egregious fault-finding. You should skip fiction; it's clearly not for you.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

Gordon went straight from the Harvey Dent Event to the crime scene where he got caught by Bane's men. I guess he decided not to stop by his office to lock away that letter. NOT a plot hole.

 

The bomb started to decay as soon as they took it out of the reactor. It was not set.

 

The Stock market thing...yeah that is just dumb.

 Talia had a trigger to set the bomb off at any time though.

I'll check it out on HBO in a few months.  I just assumed some time had passed and Gordon didn't go directly from a charity event to work.  Still I wouldn't have had to write a speech like that-it would hav came from the heart. 

Still boring movie though

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cylon Baby 

Gordon went straight from the Harvey Dent Event to the crime scene where he got caught by Bane's men. I guess he decided not to stop by his office to lock away that letter. NOT a plot hole.

I am fairly sure this is wrong. Didn't we hear, via a newscast on a TV, that the Senator had been missing for a few days - i.e., it had been a few days since the benefit at Wayne Manor? He was in different clothes and sloppy drunk to boot, but those are not ironclad arguments for it being a different evening.

I am absolutely fine with Gordon's speech being in his jacket, both from a plot convenience standpoint and willing suspension of disbelief POV.

Will likely see this one more time, hopefully in true IMAX, before it leaves theaters. Very interested to see if the "even better" experience of viewing #2 holds up.

Oh christ, the nitpickers have descended.

Look, the movie has problems. Why not talk about the things that are real flaws, like the odd time compression of giving the bomb a 5 month ticking clock, or how Alfred fucks off for most of the movie for no good reason, or why we spend any time with Mathew Modine, or how Catwoman barely serves the story other than to provide humor, swagger and sex appeal? The nitpicking about how the Gotham Stock exchange is dealt with or how hard it is to get out of the pit are not film flaws, they're you the viewer trying to convince yourself that you're smarter than the movie. News flash: you're not. The movie addresses these things and gets on with it in order to tell the story it is trying to the tell. This is your problem, not the movie's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

 

I am fairly sure this is wrong. Didn't we hear, via a newscast on a TV, that the Senator had been missing for a few days - i.e., it had been a few days since the benefit at Wayne Manor? He was in different clothes and sloppy drunk to boot, but those are not ironclad arguments for it being a different evening.

 

I am absolutely fine with Gordon's speech being in his jacket, both from a plot convenience standpoint and willing suspension of disbelief POV.

 

Will likely see this one more time, hopefully in true IMAX, before it leaves theaters. Very interested to see if the "even better" experience of viewing #2 holds up.

It was definitely a different day.  I think Gordon may have had different clothes on but the same overcoat.  Who doesn't leave papers in one's overcoat all the time?  Especially papers revealing the ugly truth about a deep, dark, institutional coverup?

It didn't bug me that much as I was watching the movie, but it did actually disorient me a bit in terms of how much time had elapsed since the party at Wayne manor.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelM 

 

I am fairly sure this is wrong. Didn't we hear, via a newscast on a TV, that the Senator had been missing for a few days - i.e., it had been a few days since the benefit at Wayne Manor? He was in different clothes and sloppy drunk to boot, but those are not ironclad arguments for it being a different evening.

 

I am absolutely fine with Gordon's speech being in his jacket, both from a plot convenience standpoint and willing suspension of disbelief POV.

 

Will likely see this one more time, hopefully in true IMAX, before it leaves theaters. Very interested to see if the "even better" experience of viewing #2 holds up.

"Man, Gordon kept his car keys in his coat for days?! WHAT A FUCKING STUPID MOVIE."

It's hardly implausible to think he'd always keep it on his person, as it's a document containing the truth about Dent and all of the ramifications it would bring about. The impression I got right off the bat was Gordon was basically ready-and-willing to let the truth out at any moment but couldn't find the appropriately opportune time.

Bring it on, nitpickers. You can't dampen my enjoyment of this. Hopefully the next incarnation has a bunch of POW!'s and WHAM!'s and I can drive home how stupid it is because the plausibility of an actual graphic appearing during battle is totally illogical. Oh, but it won't be so "serious" and "dour" so it gets a bit more of an easier pass.

You guys deserve every Daredevil and Fantastic Four you get.