The Dark Knight Rises **WITH SPOILERS**

I like over analyzing the piss out of a movie, especially one I really like. When someone translates words into something visual on a stage or screen, that translation almost always gets me talking. It's probably the English Lit major in me.

Especially when it comes to pop culture, there is often an expectation to stay "true to the characters." Probably the angriest I ever got while watching a film was watching the first Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movie. Cruise turned what I knew as MI completely on its head, and I felt cheated. Interestingly enough, I begrudgingly watched Ghost Protocol with no expectations whatsoever and enjoyed the movie.

When you watch a movie, you enter into an unspoken contract to buy into what the filmmakers want you to see. Filmmaking is a very fascistic art form. You direct the eye and frame what YOU think is important for someone to see. Movies are like keyholes, and everything you see and hear in that keyhole is selected for you. When you watch a movie, you enter into an unspoken contract to accept what the filmmakers are showing you through that keyhole.

I do understand you guys that are saying that there are points at which you were taken out of the contract. I get it, and I can nod and say "sure, I can see that". But some of it is more a personal issue than an issue with the craft of the film.

It's important to distinguish between critical failing and personal dislikes. There are PLENTY of things in any film the size, scope, and scale of DKR that fall into either or both categories.

For example, at a script level, I thought the writing was actually quite crap in a couple of spots. The arrangement of the reveal that Bane was the protector in the pit was a mess. The dude explaning EVERYTHING about the Clean Slate in the middle of a fight was unbelievably amateurish. The Clean Slate thing was a TERRIBLE motivation for Selina anyway. The writers of all three of these films can't write a one-liner worth a smirk (apart from the "like a submarine, Mr. Wayne" line, that I love). The passage of time should have been more evident. Some contrivances strained against normal dramatic conventions. These things are both critical failures and personal dislikes. The lines are blurry.

But those kinds of issues aren't the "why did" and "why didn't" things that I have an issue with. Sure, if you check out of a film's fictive environment because of something that's a problem...but if it's a personal issue and not a critical issue that changes the dynamic.

Michael Barnes wrote: The dude explaning EVERYTHING about the Clean Slate in the middle of a fight was unbelievably amateurish. The Clean Slate thing was a TERRIBLE motivation for Selina anyway.

I understand the difference between personal taste and plot flaws, and I am not invested enough in Batman culture to pick it apart like some. But sometimes the movie did seem to contradict itself. The Clean Slate thing drove me nuts. ESPECIALLY when Blake just plops down a War and Peace type criminal folder right in front of Selina Kyle. How the hell would wiping the computer files clean help in that case?

Michael Barnes wrote: When you watch a movie, you enter into an unspoken contract to buy into what the filmmakers want you to see.

Sure. And their side of the contract is to maintain that. We're both out on a tightrope together.

But those kinds of issues aren't the "why did" and "why didn't" things that I have an issue with. Sure, if you check out of a film's fictive environment because of something that's a problem...but if it's a personal issue and not a critical issue that changes the dynamic.

I agree that stuff like the rope jump is nit-pickery. I certainly get the point of that scene. That didn't bug me in the theater at all, and in truth it still doesn't.

I don't think the cops in the sewers or the total lack of motivation to stand around in Gotham for five months holding a bomb trigger when the bomb is counting down is a personal issue. I think that's a serious writing gaffe. There is simply no reason for that, other than it would have been even less believable for Batman to regrow his spine in five days instead of five months.

That's a serious structural plot flaw to me, not a minor quibble. Can anyone give a remotely plausible explanation of Bane's and (obviously, because she pulls the strings) Talia's reasoning there? I don't think even typical villain hubris can be maintained for that long. They make some speeches, then five months go by. You want to blow up Gotham? Blow it up. You want to escape and then blow it up? Sure, do that. Why wait five months for a suicide bombing? There's no sense there. No motivation, no explanation, no nothing. Exit illusion.

It all builds on one bad script decision. Why are the cops impossibly trapped for five months? Because that's how long the story arc is. Why is it that long? Because Batman is fucked up. What do the villains do during that time? Basically nothing. Why is this bullshit still in the plot? Because some guy with a luchador mask and the same name did something in a comic twenty years ago, so we'll tank the entire movie's plausibility to name-check it for geek cred.

I'm sure it was some horrible committee mandated choice.

They should have written out the back-breaking along with the luchador mask and the Venom super-steroid drip to the brain, the movie might have clipped right along.

NotSure wins the thread. The cops in the sewer is extremely convenient and easy. It's lazy writing. It breaks suspension of disbelief for SOME.

Suspension of Disbelief is a finicky beast. It's amazing how cars turning into robots does not break suspension of disbelief for me (I'm totally buying that this is actually happening in front of me, no joke) but the second one of those robots starts breakdancing, I am sitting in a movie theatre wondering what else I could have done tonite.

Dark Knight Rises didn't break suspension of disbelief for me and I don't know why. But I can totally understand how some people can't swallow what I managed to that night.

If interested more on DKR issues.

www.zergnet.com/news/27052/15-things-tha...he-dark-knight-rises

NOTE: While it never happened before on this site page 3 of that article triggered as a possible attack page. I think Firefox decided the page was harmful, not my AV software.

ZMan wrote: If interested more on DKR issues.

www.zergnet.com/news/27052/15-things-tha...he-dark-knight-rises

NOTE: While it never happened before on this site page 3 of that article triggered as a possible attack page. I think Firefox decided the page was harmful, not my AV software.

Chrome is telling me the whole slashfilm site that most of those links go to is a very bad idea.

Shame, as I wouldn't mind reading the article.

I think Talia was planning to escape all along. She tells Bane he'll have to stay behind to make sure Batman dies...until then, I'm pretty sure they were going to escape together at the last minute. That's how I took it, anyway.

As for why waiting, it seemed to me their plan was terror. Turn a major city into a chaotic anarch state with "hang 'em high" justice performed by the criminal and the insane, while the poor loot, beat up, and kill the rich. One of the largest cities in the world totally in the hands of this group of terrorists. "Make one move, and we blow it up."

Parade the city's terror and chaos on the nightly news for five months. Then, once that becomes the normalcy, you blow it up anyway, just for another level of terror and power. And if they can hold Gotham--a massive city with a self-appointed protector--for five months in the palm of their hands and then blow it up on a whim, they can do it to any city, any time.

When you watch a movie, you enter into an unspoken contract to buy into what the filmmakers want you to see. Filmmaking is a very fascistic art form. You direct the eye and frame what YOU think is important for someone to see. Movies are like keyholes, and everything you see and hear in that keyhole is selected for you. When you watch a movie, you enter into an unspoken contract to accept what the filmmakers are showing you through that keyhole.

I enter into a contract to treat the movie with the exact level of seriousness that the filmmakers do. Nolan takes his vision of Batman seriously, so if he does something silly, or too far-fetched, no passes will be issued on the basis of "Dude, it's a movie about a guy in a bat suit."

It's important to distinguish between critical failing and personal dislikes. There are PLENTY of things in any film the size, scope, and scale of DKR that fall into either or both categories... But those kinds of issues aren't the "why did" and "why didn't" things that I have an issue with. Sure, if you check out of a film's fictive environment because of something that's a problem...but if it's a personal issue and not a critical issue that changes the dynamic.

Except those issues are critical failings.

To be sure, TDK was filled to the gills with ridiculous contrivances that strain the limits of credulity. The Joker was one lucky motherfucker throughout that movie, because there are a million ways any of his schemes could have gone wrong, and a billion easier ways to accomplish what he was after.

But, he was The Joker, and pulling off these meticulously planned, and almost comically circuitous capers is a big part of what that character is. We don't have to ask "why not," and "what if," because we expect that character to go out of his way to make things as needlessly convoluted as possible.

Bane is not The Joker. There is no reason whatsoever for his master plan to be as roundabout as it is. What does Bane need to accomplish his aims? A nuclear bomb. OK, so just give him a damn nuclear bomb. No, instead we have to have Bruce Wayne build a fusion power... thing, introduce a bit character just so he can turn this thing into a bomb, have the bad guys steal all of Wayne's money, take over his company, kidnap the scientist guy, and make the bomb.

That's a lot of expository scenes, and at least two action sequences, that it takes just to get this fantastical gadget to turn into a thoroughly mundane one. This is something you'd expect to see in a James Bond picture, where the entire script is just an excuse to fling the hero around the globe, fighting bad guys and wooing chicks, not in something that's asking to be taken as seriously as this series is.

Even the real film critics, almost all of whom have given the film very favorable reviews, have taken the movie to task for having too much exposition, and not enough Batman. That kind of needlessly complicated plot is what bloated the movie out so much. It is a critical failure.

The reason their plan is so convoluted is because they want to ruin Wayne as well as break Batman. He becomes the engineer of Gotham's demise. They rope-a-dope him with someone he can allegedly trust only to have that person twist the knife and betray him.

Though the League of Shadows wanted Gotham to burn to the ground, their crusade against Bruce Wayne was personal and vindictive. Just showing up and blowing up everything wouldn't do.

And hey, if *you* can get one of the world's wealthiest men and alleged protector of Gotham to spend all that money on building the very thing that will blow Gotham up, hey, fuck it, why not? Icing on the cake.

Which, y'know, all of this shit is actually in the movie.