The Dark Knight Rises **WITH SPOILERS**

Honestly, I was shocked when my wife wanted to see a Batman movie and a Chris Nolan Batman movie nonetheless. I have never been a huge Batman fan, mostly because of the personality of the character. Either he's a "reckless, selfish playboy" or a brooding recluse. The movie actually got me to do some superficial research. Turns out he did give up in the comics, retiring and handing the cape over to Azreal.I much rather see what I saw than another character arc like Azreal's.

The main thing that really got my wife was the amount of violence in this film, a bit much even for a Chris Nolan film. My brother in law is a retired officer. During the cop scenes, I had to hold my wife's hand, and THAT is a rarity. Not much bothers Lin in movies, but seeing in essence NYC get nearly burned to the ground with no help from the country as cops get slaughtered got her.

I feel the main criticism is that there is too much of one side of Batman in this movie.

I stopped reading Spider Man comics decades ago because I just felt Peter Parker was such a freakin whiner. I have to admit, being more invested in Marvel story lines, I would have been annoyed at more of that being put into the films (and Spiderman 3 had most of that aspect IMHO). Just don't let Chris Nolan touch Spidey (lol)

I saw the movie and liked it as a cinematic experience overall. But the more I think about the film and read, I am beginning to feel slightly cheated in so many ways.

I have two things that really bother me about the film and they are interrelated. Unless I missed the explanations (and yes, a lot can be answered if you watched/listended closely).

1) Why let 5 months pass to blow up Gotham - since nothing was planned with its people or city why not explode it now?

2) Why would Talia and Bane want to die in the explosion? Why didn't they leave Gotham?

Trying to make answer but still can't figure it out. Regarding point 1 - I can see that if they wanted to build a new army, you make the city the way they showed it and its people. But if you planned on blowing it up and its people anyway, what's the point? Why keep Gotham at bay from the rest of the world? To what purpose? I know the League of Nations plays with governments and makes civilization rise and fall - but if nothing was planned with Gotham except to destroy it, why let 5 months go by to do it?

Point 2: If (presumably) the only leaders of the League of Nations are in Gotham, why destroy yourselves and presumably the league itself? I know terrorists like to lay claim to the evil deeds they have done, and even though the League is a super secret organization, why destroy Gotham and yourselves leaving nothing and no one behind to build and continue the organization's work? I saw no reason that these guys would want to suicide themselves to a cause that seems to go against their purpose which is _to continue_ to facilitate and remake civilization as they see fit. And again, why wait 5 months to do it?

These were things that continued to plague my attention while watching the movie. Other issues were easily forgotten or explained or not big enough to bother me while watching (and enjoying) the flick. These questions did.

Other issues, since I'm writing anyway - I would think a damaged Bruce Wayne sitting on his ass for 8 years would develop a pot belly or something that would not make it easy going around in the suit again.

Bane made less impressive when discovered he was not in charge. Really deflated my opinion of him. The strength and confidence he showed just seemed to wither upon the reveal.

Again, there are others. However, I do believe Bruce is alive even if there is some editing cheat going on (though remember before the Batwing went out to sea, a building exploded - that could have been where the "switch" was made and Batman used autopilot to fake his death). Too many things point to his survival: Alfred seeing him and Selena, the bat spotlight being fixed, Blake given coordinates to the batcave, etc.

I agree that the LoS leaders should have had an exit strategy. We see that some members are suicidal, but I can't see Bane or Talia doing it. Why did they wait 3 months? Why didn't those cops comin out of the sewers look all ragged and worn down? I almost wonder if they didn't stretch that time out in editing when it was supposed to be just a week or something.

Talia was shown to be bad from scene one. Every time she is present something went wrong. I knew she was bad from reading speculation but I think they did a pretty good job of telegraphing it if you were paying attention.

I don't think it diminished Bane to say he was working with Talia. He still planned and orchestrated all the missions.

I still think their "Occupy Gotham" movement was silly though.

Delobius wrote: The whole pit scene was boring, because you knew Bruce was going to escape. No tension whatsoever. What did that do for his character? We already know he can do a lot of push-ups and he's super determined and tough. So what?

The pit scenes were where we were given most of Bane and Talia's backstory. That's why they were there.

Also, does anyone wonder what the Joker's cameo would have been like had Ledger not died? I half expect he'd have been the judge rather than Scarecrow.

Octavian wrote: Also, does anyone wonder what the Joker's cameo would have been like had Ledger not died? I half expect he'd have been the judge rather than Scarecrow.

Scarecrow was already a minion of the League of Shadows so it made sense to me he was there. Joker wasn't a follower or team player.

jason10mm wrote:
Talia was shown to be bad from scene one. Every time she is present something went wrong. I knew she was bad from reading speculation but I think they did a pretty good job of telegraphing it if you were paying attention.

***A lot of comments seemed to miss the fact that Bane said he came out of the pit a man for the first time. So he could not have been that child. He didn't sound like he was being figurative when saying it either (He said he was born in darkness and first saw the light as a man - though the pit was open and he always got to see the light, but still ,a good line. Even better line is "You adapted to the darkness. I was born in it.")

jason10mm wrote: I don't think it diminished Bane to say he was working with Talia. He still planned and orchestrated all the missions.

***Maybe he did and maybe not. But he all of sudden became a sad puppy dog in my eyes when the reveal was made. Up to that point - well prior to the months of Gotham being isolated, he was a visceral force to be reckoned with.

1) Why let 5 months pass to blow up Gotham - since nothing was planned with its people or city why not explode it now?

You get 5 months to watch Gotham tear itself apart. The last two pictures actually did a pretty good job establishing the fact that the battle is, indeed, over the soul of Gotham city. The one theme that's constant throughout the series is that the bad guys don't have self-serving motives, really. They want to see Gotham completely, utterly destroyed, but by its own hand.

In the first movie, you had Scarecrow trying to drive everyone insane with his weird drug. Strip away everything but the darkest recesses of the human mind, and Gotham will destroy itself. In TDK, all of Joker's schemes revolved around pitting humankind's morality against its base instinct to survive. Different tactic, but the same expected result; remove the "veneer" of civil society, and men become little more than snarling beasts.

In the first two movies, that was easy. The idea that humans ultimately look out for Number One is hard to refute. It's not impossible, but it's hard. We have plenty of evidence that adversity actually binds people together, and stimulates them to great levels of achievement, but they tend to be the exception, not the rule.

Now, in the third film, Nolan tries to attack this conceit from a much more challenging perspective; what we see here is Bane attempting to spur Gotham's destruction by inciting class warfare. And by "class warfare," we of course don't simply mean rich against poor, but essentially anything that divides the powerless against the powerful. We see this with the prison break scene.

This is where the film had the opportunity to get very deep and challenging, but didn't quite make it. Are the Catwomans of Gotham City justified in their belief that the rich don't deserve to have as much as they do while "leaving so little for the rest of us"? After all, it is the richest guy in Gotham who's down in the dirt, trying to eliminate the deeply rooted corruption and decay that plagues the city. Are the rabble outside of the prison really right to condemn the sort of hard nosed law enforcement practices Harvey Dent's legacy left behind? The system is completely corrupt; every two-bit crook in the city has learned how to game it for his own ends.

But it is also consistent through the series that the corporate cocksuckers on the board of Wayne Enterprises are bad_guys; the kind of guys that will leap into bed with mass murderers if it will make them money, even if it's obvious these psychos have every intention of unleashing death and destruction on a massive scale right in the suits' backyards. And as far as the people of Gotham go, we've seen time and again that they're too lazy and spineless to stand up to evil if their little comfort zones are even remotely in jeopardy.

And, I guess these things are all there, but I think your question here nicely illustrates that there was rich subtextual, I suppose philosophical ground to cover, but it didn't really do it.

I don't think it diminished Bane to say he was working with Talia. He still planned and orchestrated all the missions.

Well, for a movie series so preoccupied with the main characters' motivations, it does. Ultimately, Bane does what he does because he loves Talia. There are a few lines about him seeing that love as being somehow redemptive, but it's not really explained further than that he's a murdering bastard because he loves this girl.

In that case, he's a lapdog. A very tough, intelligent, capable lapdog, but still a lapdog.

1) The comment that there was no tension in the pit scenes because you knew Wayne would eventually escape is a bit silly. Of course he would escape. Do you expect the Avengers not to beat Loki? Does that mean there was no tension in that movie? Do you expect the crew of Firefly to be defeated? Is there no tension in the series? C'mon man, it's a super hero movie and Wayne is the hero. Naturally he will triumph but how is the question.

2) Bane only becomes a "lapdog" after Batman beats him and smashes his mask. It's Bane's first taste of defeat, ever. Naturally he's all kinds of fucked up. He is like Batman at the beginning of the movie.

3) Why wait four months to destroy the city. Because the true nature of humanity must be displayed to the world. Isn't that the whole philosophy behind the League of Shadows? That humanity is too corrupt to live and must be cleansed? They want to showcase this. Let it be on the news every night. Let it be transmitted to the world.

4) Why no exit plan? This one is iffy but my rationalization for it would be this. They don't want to survive. They worship death. They want to be martyrs and "start the fire" just as the one dude they leave on the plane at the beginning of the film does. Once ignited it will be impossible to quench or so they believe.

repoman wrote: 1) The comment that there was no tension in the pit scenes because you knew Wayne would eventually escape is a bit silly. Of course he would escape. Do you expect the Avengers not to beat Loki? Does that mean there was no tension in that movie? Do you expect the crew of Firefly to be defeated? Is there no tension in the series? C'mon man, it's a super hero movie and Wayne is the hero. Naturally he will triumph but how is the question.

But that's the thing - the "how" was never going to be interesting. It's not like the Bat-chopper was going to fly down on remote control and blow up the whole pit, or he was going to lead a revolution and form a human pyramid and climb everyone outta there. Nope, Bruce was going to get tough, get serious, and oh, big surprise, he was going to be the second person EVER to climb out. The sequence just didn't do anything for Wayne as a character, or the movement of the plot, IMO.

As an aside, the pit didn't even look that bad - there were some pretty ripped dudes in there (the guy handling the rope was MASSIVE) - and Bruce obviously made a full recovery, so they must be feeding people pretty well. It could become the new workout hotspot!

repoman wrote:
3) Why wait four months to destroy the city. Because the true nature of humanity must be displayed to the world. Isn't that the whole philosophy behind the League of Shadows? That humanity is too corrupt to live and must be cleansed? They want to showcase this. Let it be on the news every night. Let it be transmitted to the world.

You and mjl said the same thing and I can agree to a point. However, after a few weeks, things settled down mighty fast and living the way they were was routine except for the occasional raids. So 5 months was waaaay longer than needed to have Gotham destroy themselves by their own hand. And I don't think it did anything to the rest of the world in teaching a lesson.

And I still don't buy why they would want themselves killed in the process. Seemed way pointless. An organization hundreds of years old I think that old) to fulfill their destiny by the destruction of one city in a world of hundreds of cities with no follow up whatsoever? Pretty lame to me.

The more I think about the film, the less I will remember it as anything special. It was a nice flick while watching (and I will probably get it on dvd) but it will not be remembered by me as anything special. I liked the Avengers way more, yet is still forgettable beyond the moment.

This review nails how I feel about the film.

www.aintitcool.com/node/57109

There may be an unintended effect to this movie.

Overall, there have been very few if any complaints about production. The Batman novices seem to like the movie for production value alone. For this reason, noobs seem to like The Dark Knight Rises more than hardcore Batman fans in general. Could this movie be a catalyst to get casual fans or complete noobs interested in Batman?

And how can he have the fraking Pittsburg Steelers and Hines Ward play for the Gothem Football team. Now that really pissed me off. I hate the Steelers. But Catwomen gave me a total boner. She saved the movie for me. Banes was cool but I'd totally see this Dark Knight Rises again to see Catwomen.

There haven't been any complaints about production because it's fantastic. The action scenes are fantastic. The acting is fantastic. The movie is fantastic.

If there is a divide between Batman fans and noobs it is the same one that appeared when the Lord of the Rings trilogies were released. "They aren't like the books", "That guy wasn't there" blah blah blah.

We can dissect the plot until the cows come home looking for holes or things we didn't like. If that is what you are searching for that is what you will find in this or any movie. I still say this movie is great, will be long remembered, and the trilogy as a whole is the best ever made. Better than Lord of the Rings, better than the Godfather, better even than Star Wars.