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Review

The Dark Knight Rises, But Not Above Impossible Expectations [Spoilers]

by Zoe Chevat | 12:34 pm, July 23rd, 2012


Christopher Nolan is nothing if not an exacting director. Under his guiding hand, the films he’s best known for are idea-laden, exposition-loaded rambles of stark, intense action. They demand sharp intakes of breath from audience members, a certain gripping of armrests. They ask for focus, concentration, and belief. In The Dark Knight Rises, the closing chapter of his Batman trilogy, he delivers, for the most part, what was ordered; a terse, gritty piece about a war-zone struggle. There are ruthless leaders, hopeless negotiations for relief from the outside, and noble heroes in dire peril, striving to save all the lives they can with meager resources. TDKR is an action thriller with goosepimple moments aplenty, something Nolan & Co do well. It almost feels like a shame that, amidst this fantastic setup, they are contractually obligated to include Batman. [Spoilers beyond this point, you have been warned.]

One reason to sign on for a comic movie, from a producing standpoint, is that you’ve got a ready-made property. You’ve got years of canon to draw from, and legions of fans waiting in the wings. (Who are getting their fingers poised for evisceration of critics as I type. That’s the nature of the beast, and exactly who I would bank on if I were an executive producer looking for a record-breaking opening night like the one TDKR just had.) You can make a movie to satisfy those appetites, or at least pay tribute to them. Moreover, you can use some of that canon backlog to make shortcuts. So goes the theory, anyway. We need minimal setup at this point in pop culture history to know who Batman is, and why he’s the Batman. Too bad then, that TDKR ditches its shortcuts, a recognizable playbook, and pretty much any audience aid at the start. Joyously, we get the Dark Knight-style pulse pounding we expected, but we also get a hell of a mess.

For a guy who’s supposed to be the protagonist, TDKR has a habit of losing narrative track of Bats (Christian Bale) for twenty, thirty minutes at a time. The sad, oddly fixable fact here is that he’s the least interesting part of the whole machine. I’ve always felt, since the end of Batman Begins, that the series, whether in writing or direction, had a hard time getting a fix on Bruce Wayne as a character. In TDK, he was wry, worried, and had moments of deeper damage that peeked through the cracks. But as the series has worn on, he’s become even more absent, both physically, and in our expected glances at his psyche. He’s more of an abstraction than a man at this point, an assumption of a character cobbled together from the collective memory. We’re told that seeing Gotham crumble makes him angry enough to escape an inescapable prison, but I just can’t buy it. He so attached to his city… that he’s spent the previous eight years in hiding, presumably not being Batman, yet we’re suddenly expected to believe he cares. It’s another piece of assumptive comic-bookery that doesn’t sit well in this realistic, genre-eviscerating war film.

Without proper groundwork, there’s not much space for the usual psychology or gadgetry in the down-and-dirty dealings of the plot. Just like his opponents (their own motivation a limp callback that I never quite bought), this Batman doesn’t outwit anyone; he just out muscles them. The most impressive Batman-like feat of the movie – Bruce sneaking back into a besieged, seemingly impenetrable Gotham, from India, presumably without monetary funds – is accomplished off-screen, and with no further comment. It’s one of several notable instances of genre and comic-canon trope buttressing that can’t hold anything up in Nolan’s hyper-real universe. The film’s wrap, complete with its clean getaway and re-worked origin story for a major player, makes these choices even more of a puzzle. Why bother to make loyalty come-ons to a comic legacy if you’re going to do what you want anyway?

Bane (Tom Hardy), as a villain, is more fearsome in force than as an individual. He’s physically imposing, for certain, and Hardy does his damnedest skulking and snarling his barely-comprehensible dialogue through his breathing mask. (Though his dialogue was allegedly re-dubbed after early test audiences said they couldn’t understand him, both myself and my screening companion still found ourselves missing two-thirds of his lines.) Canonically, Bane’s physical stature is truly frightening because it’s matched with a ruthless intellect. Where Ledger’s Joker was unpredictable and insane, Bane is played as a fanatic, bound by a cold, calculating sanity. But, beginning with his first appearance on a CIA plane, the foundation isn’t adequately laid for the audience to be afraid of him as a single player. He’s an oddly impotent frontman, and, by the time the eleventh-hour villain is revealed, there’s no time left to care.

Equally strange is Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, who I, in every other respect, very much enjoyed. She’s unsentimental, stealthy, and a worthy adversary with gray morality. Too bad facets of her character’s reasoning make as much sense as those highly-discussed knife-stilettos. (Yeah, they’re as ridiculous as we feared, but, thankfully, little is seen of them.) We’re told that what Selina’s after is a computer program that can wipe her criminal record clean. But this bribery still works to sway her to the Batman’s side even after she’s been living in a decimated Gotham where all criminals have been set free, fighting street thugs for food, for months. Why he asks for help from someone who so clearly betrayed him would have deserved its own headshake, but we were so far into this bizarre realm by then, I think I’d given up.

In fact, throughout TDKR, engaging and pulse pounding as it is, a big problem is that we rarely see emotional logic play out. Instead, we’re told that people are feeling things. Characters are not so much introduced, as they are put on screen with the assumption that the educated audience’s familiarity with them will provide unspoken information. By the same token, events that happen onscreen between these characters are treated as though they have extra significance, not because of anything in the writing or editing that makes us see it. The tension is there, if the viewer is already intimately acquainted with Batman canon and mortars in the gaps for the film. Lazy genre writing is still lazy writing, and it should make you mad even if you can quote the entire Bat-chronology in your sleep.

TDKR is a conclusion to a trilogy, but it doesn’t feel like one. Though it shares thematic, stylistic, and casting nodes with the other two, it’s also a film whose lack of structure and conflicting messages make it feel like the beginning, or even middle of something much larger, a something larger that I find very intriguing. It’s almost as if the story could have been better handled as a year long cross-title comic book event itself, giving room to flesh out emotional arcs, cover small stories set within the movie’s significant chronological sweep of time, and, let it not go unsaid; filling in a not insignificant number of plot holes. It would be fascinating if Nolan had, indeed, and as he seems to have wanted to, made a series of superhero films about the ultimate purposelessness of the legendary vigilante.

TDKR nearly gets there, in a way that makes us hungry for more about any of the characters…except Batman. It sets us up to root for cop John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and his beleaguered superior Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) as they keep morale going, track that elusive neutron bomb, and stand up as best they can in a time when terrorists have seized their hometown. Yet, it is not they who ultimately save the day, but a proper fresh-from-the-printed-page deus ex Batman, who swoops in to rescue the city. Nolan seems to want it both ways; cynical and realistic, but with comic book convention sewn in to patch up any holes. His thoughtful filmmaking style only throws the contrast between subject and depiction into high relief. In a war zone like Nolan’s Gotham, Batman is barely present, and only as the final charge of the cavalry. The heroes of TDKR are the relentless cops and stalwart citizens left behind in a city abandoned by the nation at large. Though our titular hero spends the time repairing himself in a foreign prison, it’s the struggle of Gotham’s people that we feel. It is from their strife that our tension mounts and comes to the forefront. A film explicitly about ordinary people stepping up when a superheroic symbol fails could be a great achievement. Sadly, it’s not one we’ll be seeing any time soon.

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  • http://twitter.com/MarieMJS MarieMJS

    Yes, yes yes. My main problem with the franchise since the end of Batman Begins is the lack of connection with the hero and what the movie should be about. I understand that Bruce Wayne is fucked up and dark, I get it that Nolan means serious bizness and all but by doing so he alienated part of the audience who is trying to care for Bruce, and the Bat. I think the only moment you can actually care for him are through Alfred, because Caine is the emotional anchor. Sadly he’s barely on screen.
    I also though that Bane was terribly disappointing, ridiculous voice, brute force over sublety but not in a good way, I don’t know, I felt let down.
    First hour was excruciating with characters expositions, film felt messy, soundtrack was too much (and so dramatic in places for no reasons at all), and the absolute lack of humor started to become a problem.
    So yeah, impressive display of skills, zero emotional impact on me.

  • http://profiles.google.com/christopherlmartinez Christopher Martinez

    Personally i felt Bane to be the best part of this movie. He was meant to be nothing but hired muscle as it were masquerading as the front man. He did that quite well. His breaking of Batman was a fantastic scene that made the movie. We always get the hero in our comic book movies beat up, but they always quickly recover. This was one of the first times that our hero was completely, overwhelmingly beat and broken. Bravo on that end.

  • http://twitter.com/spartantown spartantown

    While you bring up some valid criticisms, with more clarity than Entertainment Weekly, I do not think they undermined the movie as a whole. As with any comic book movie the audience has to suspend a certain amount of disbelief and considering the scope of the film some ‘shortcuts’ had to be made. None of which ruined it for me. 

  • http://twitter.com/giapet gia manry

    I liked Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle, but I wasn’t that impressed with the character’s role in the story, and Talia was…very meh, all things considered.

    Let me note that I enjoyed Dark Knight Rises, but it still felt like more of a better- and darker-than-average action/adventure/hero flick than like the more astonishing Batman Begins and incredible The Dark Knight. To some extent, Dark Knight Rises suffers more from high expectations than any true failures.

    Still, the film feels considerably more plot-driven this time around, more like a truly grown-up version of past Batman movies than like its more character-driven predecessors. I’m not one of those people who thinks that “plot-driven” is an insult, but when noticed, it does pull one out of the film a little bit.

    Overall, Dark Knight Rises stands confidently on its own along with Avengers and other solid superhero/comic and related action flicks; it brings the trilogy somewhat full-circle and is entertaining and attractive…but it doesn’t rise above the rest of the genre the way the first two films in the trilogy did.

  • John Wao

    I think you review is spot on.

  • http://twitter.com/LJo83 Lindsay Beaton

    Thank you, you have managed to articulate the bulk of what I’ve been feeling about this movie but couldn’t quite say. Yes, to all of this.

    My favorite characters in this installment were Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, and John Blake. For all that the title demands, I had a hard time caring if Batman rose or not by the end–I was rooting for the side players whole-heartedly, because they were the only ones making any sense, and they were certainly the most interesting to me. I couldn’t help but think this was a case of trying to shove too much expectation on screen.

    Bane just baffled me, beginning to end. I guess I should have read up on him or something, because I didn’t understand his motivations or his character at all. And it’s hard to take someone seriously when you only understand 2/3 of what he’s saying.

    Ah, well. I never expected it to live up to The Dark Knight, anyway, so my expectations weren’t too disappointed.

  • Anonymous

    Pretty much agree with everything here. I feel like Nolan’s editor (and Nolan himself) have lost a sense of how to make a film make chronological sense, even when it compresses the span of 8 month into almost-three-hours. There’ll be two or three minute scenes interspersed in Bane’s speeches that, when we come back to Bane, we find he’s picking up where he last left off. 2 months of Wayne living in an underground prisoner pass in the span of one cut, and the only clue we have to that is the fact that they SAY two months passed.

    You mean to tell me that 3000 cops living in a cave for almost 8 months, during a winter so cold it freezes all the water around Gotham City, are able to just run out of that cave no worse for wear? Or that a crippling back injury, the likes of which are fairly difficult to overcome even in our modern world, is not only healed in a cesspit of a prison but Bruce is in such great shape afterwards that he can survive two more back injuries and walk out of the prison without the use of his cane OR knee brace that he explicitly has to use throughout the majority of the movie.
    Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoyed the movie, but there are so many glaring issues with it it frustrated me.

    After TDK I figured that we’d get a more realistic vision of whatever Bane had planned for Gotham, not a fusion reactor bomb that basically exists just to serve as a MacGuffin for the entire movie.

    And how the hell does Batman survive a nuclear explosion? Even if he jumps out before the plane explodes, he’d have to jump out over land to miss the blast radius, and I highly doubt that absolutely no one would notice him.

    Honestly, if it had been me, I would have just done a straighter version of No Man’s Land, with Bane filling the void left when the world abandons Gotham. The nuclear bomb plot just didn’t fit, and tying the League of Shadows into Bane was just frustrating.

    And don’t get me started on what John Blake’s real name is.

  • Jen Roberts

    It kind of feels to me like Christopher Nolan wanted to make a movie about XYZ and then was told, “That’s great, now add Batman.” Like others, I cared more about every other character in the movie than I cared about Batman. And the ending…that is the most un-Batman ending ever. I mean, he set it up with the whole “Anyone can be Batman” thing he throws around, and I felt kind of happy at the end **for Alfred’s sake** (Alfred made me cry so much in this), but even in continuities where Bruce Wayne is physically incapable of being Batman, he still sort of backseat-batmans. He never really STOPS being Batman, and he clearly doesn’t ever WANT to.

    There was a lot I liked about the movie, but it’s very much Christopher Nolan saying, “If *I* had my way, this is what Batman would be like.” But, I admit, my inner fangirl kind of squealed for Blake’s real name and the implications of it. And then I went off into mental fantasy land. That being said, I hope Nolan sticks to this being his last Batman movie; I’d rather imagine it from here. Please go make more movies like Inception, Mr. Nolan.

  • Anonymous

    Mostly agree with everything here. The only place where I differ is that I was more interested in Bruce Wayne than any other character. My bond with the character was good enough after Batman Begins than even though he was less of a focus in The Dark Knight, it wasn’t bad enough to not let it fly once. In TDKR though, it’s a bigger problem. Christian Bale has some really good moments but the character doesn’t always deliver for him.

    I don’t understand why he stopped being Batman for 8 years. He had trained 7 years to fight crime and was Batman for only 2 years before the last film.

    I don’t understand why he would let Alfred go for such a petty reason. He’s known him his entire life!

    And why does he want to leave everything, after it was so clear the city needed him?

    I have many other issues with the film. It was not a bad film but Nolan is so much better than “not bad”.

  • http://www.facebook.com/aaron.treat.75 Aaron Treat

    Well I pretty much disagree with everything here. Apparently we didn’t watch the same movie. Christian Bale was the center of this film. Very warm, human and even funny. His relationship with Selina was handled beautifully as was her characterization. I also had no trouble understanding Bane’s dialogue. It wasn’t The Dark Knight, but it was still awesome and very enjoyable. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/aaron.treat.75 Aaron Treat

    Also, no matter what the critical consensus is (which happens to be extremely favorable) audiences are giving the movie an average rating of A which is spectacular. So obviously Nolan did his job very well.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G4EU7GLSNC6XT4UE6IJCFYY7UQ Will

    As hired muscle, he sure is chatty, and sure gives a lot of exposition.  But of course he does, it’s a Nolan movie.

    I would be more impressed with our hero being broken, if he hadn’t already been broken by the plot contrivances that opened the movie (being Batman for a year and change is harder on the body than being Muhammad Ali or Rocky Balboa for decades).

  • http://twitter.com/FroWillis Sarah

    Was Bane really that difficult to understand? I actually had no problem understanding him at all. I think this review needs to add that Michael Caine was just heartbreakingly perfect as Alfred. His scenes were the ones that made me cry. I would have left the theater with dry eyes if it wasn’t for his Alfred. 

  • Joanna Frankel

    Me too! I love Selina Kyle in general, and liked Hathaway’s performance, but I still felt as if a good portion of problems could have been fixed if she was removed and her role was split between Talia, and some of the other characters. I think the biggest problem with Talia’s reveal, was that, as an audience, we didn’t have any indication whatsoever, except for one very quick instance where Bane pulls her aside. Next thing you know, she’s the big bad, and we’re all trying to play catch-up, even if you know the comics. If she had been the Bat’s liaison to Bane from the beginning, and she was seen as a “lackey” to him, then i think it would have made a much better impact and story.

  • http://twitter.com/GirlsAreGeeks Girls Are Geeks

    As someone who felt about the same as the reviewer about this movie, I want to say that I love the readers of the Mary Sue because the comments here are actually articulate and on various sides of the issue, and that’s been rare around the internet, so thanks y’all!

  • Anonymous

    “Even if he jumps out before the plane explodes, he’d have to jump out over land to miss the blast radius, and I highly doubt that absolutely no one would notice him.”

    That bothered me too. A lot. It’s later established that Bruce Wayne patched the autopilot, so he could have sent the bomb on its merry way. But getting out unnoticed? Nope. But the person I saw the movie with reminded me about that explosion at the cityline, the one that Blake thought was the bomb going off when he saw/heard it from the bridge. Misdirection, smoke, distraction – we figure Batman made his exit while potential witnesses were dodging debris. It would’ve been a whole lot smarter than getting into another fistfight with Bane, so I’m going with it.

    We were unable to explain the remarkably unbearded police officers who emerged from the sewers, or how Bruce Wayne getting dragged around on the way to the pit then lowered on a rope didn’t leave him paralyzed. Still enjoyed it as spectacle, though.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=742530231 Amanda Jean Carroll

    Sure, if you prefer mob consensus to knowledge or understanding. Or if you simply believe that his job is to make money, which is a fair point. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=742530231 Amanda Jean Carroll

    The whole movie seemed very dumbed-down to me. And lazy too — so much telling rather than showing, no comic book-y details to relish, no moments of surprising joy. Batman was strangely uncool, un-smart, un-obsessed. The idea that he would ever, EVER stop being Batman willingly is absurd and awful and shows that this film was made not only without adequate knowledge of Batman, but also without adequate love.
     As a person who loves Batman’s world and loves comic books, my frustration while watching this movie seemed never ending. You wanted to see Robin? Oh, we’ll GIVE you Robin! Ha ha! Also, Batman gets closure and a happy ending! That’s what you get for loving stupid, childish comic books! 
    On the other hand, if they left out Batman entirely, I could watch Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman run around being awesome cops all day. 

  • http://www.facebook.com/aaron.treat.75 Aaron Treat

    Critics can sit at their computers and argue film theory all they want. They can pick something apart and expound on what “works” and what doesn’t, but in the end what matters is if the audience likes the thing or not. The music critics of the day ripped apart the Beatles too you know.

  • Anonymous

     Absolutely! I am sure that all the doctors in the audience were happy to find out that we’ve been doing modern medicine wrong all along, and that all we need to do to repair a vertebrae that is *protruding from someone’s back* is string them up on a rope and hit them really hard, and they’ll be right as rain.

    The moment that truly lost me, though, was when Wayne is grunting in pain… to the cadence of the soundtrack that they’re playing throughout. Oh, I get what you’re doing Nolan, but isn’t that a little much? Really?

  • Carmen Sandiego

     I liked Bane better the second time (yes, I’ve seen the movie twice already).  His physicality was SCARY and the most realistic, quickest, example of brute strength I have EVER seen without CGI.  Serious props to Hardy for appearing like a force of nature.  I also felt that Hardy was able to express more the deeper into the movie we got, though he wasn’t nearly as riveting, complicated, or fully-fleshed out as Joker and Two-Face in The Dark Knight.  He was difficult to understand.  Even after the second viewing there are three pieces of dialogue I know I missed entirely.

  • Carmen Sandiego

     ”On the other hand, if they left out Batman entirely, I could watch
    Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Gary Oldman run around being awesome cops all
    day. ”

    This! :)

  • Anonymous

     I agree.  I was really surprised to hear people complaining about Bane’s mask-talk, because I never missed a word.  Clearly, you and I should form a team of super-hero-hearers and save the word from…evil…sound-stealing…bad guy-types.

  • Anonymous

    Idk, it didn’t really seem petty to me.  He went into hiding because he couldn’t deal with the fact that Rachel had died, and he felt like he was to blame for it, and that without her, his life had no meaning.  (Granted, I do think 8 years is a bit long.  Seriously, dude.)  However, all of that was based on the thought that he and Rachel would live happily ever after and she would change him.  But knowing now that that would never have happened anyway – Alfred just took away the reason for the last 8 years of his life.  He might have gotten over it faster, he might have stayed Batman and none of this would have started, he might have given up the mantle and moved on with a normal life, anything could have happened.  So, it is a bit petty that he blames Alfred for what he’s chosen to make of the last 8 years, but I can see why he’d be so upset about it.

  • Anonymous

    It’s never closed off that he stops being Batman.  Sure, he and Catwoman run away together, they probably have a daughter, and at some point, it breaks up.  He goes back to Batmanning, or back-seat batmanning.  If he can take one 8 year break, he can take another, I suppose.

  • Anonymous

    Yeah, that was my major issue with the end.  He flew over 6 miles (and if he didn’t auto-pilot, 12 miles) in a minute and a half.

  • Anonymous

    This article is on the money.

  • Anonymous

     I literally squealed when they said Blake’s real name! Other people in the theater started CLAPPING. We were geeking out so hard lol

  • Anonymous

    Oddly enough, the “too much story” thing is what I liked about Nolan’s trilogy. It’s jam-packed with story. As one of my friends said after we saw The Dark Knight, it’s a 6 hour story squeezed into 2. So there are moments when you have to suspend reality (which was not easy when Bruce shows up in Gotham after Selina saves the kid; I was like, ‘HOW in the actual fuck did he get back to the city, put on some regular clothes, shave and find her in such a timely fashion?’ I really had no idea how much time had passed after the first hour of the film, which is just poor screenwriting all around). However, I greatly prefer a story with a lot of themes and layers as opposed to one that’s underwhelming. I don’t mind being overwhelmed if I’m being overwhelmed with great characters. TDKR delivers with its crazy smorgasbord of delicious characters. They test your ability to keep up. They make you think. It’s what sets this series apart from other action films that dumb it down with their stereotypical women and unmotivated men. Besides, I love character analysis. I live for it! And this one installment alone gave me enough to chew on for weeks. I already want to see it again! I was incredibly happy with the optimistic ending (which I think gives the audience the very hope of a brighter future that several characters talked about to each other in the film). I think it’s one of the best Batman movies ever made.

    Although I understand the problem with plot holes, villains that aren’t fully realized and impossible escapes, but it is a superhero movie. You’re going to have typical fails like the eleventh-hour villain who comes from out of nowhere and the weak one-night stand and the forgotten explanations and whatnot. You have to roll with it. It’s an incredibly ambitious project and it’s not going to be perfect. To make it interesting to a new generation, Nolan had to tweak some of the canon. I found that there was enough that remained (like Bruce and Selina) that pleased me enough to let go of the inaccuracies. As for your beef with Batman not being “there,” the hero is never really there until you need him. Blake and Gordon did everything they could (which was a whole damn lot in the grand scheme of things and I can see how people ended up more invested in them than Bruce and his solitary struggles/injuries), but when they needed a hero to step in and accomplish what they couldn’t, in the end the Batman was there. THAT’S WHAT HEROES DO. That’s all that really matters and I don’t care what anyone says =D

    If that scene with Blake and the little orphan boys in the school bus cheering as Batman carries the bomb out of the city didn’t melt your heart, then you are just not human!! I know this probably won’t happen, but now I want a Robin or a Batman Beyond trilogy XD 

  • Anonymous

    Seriously! “Oh noes! It’s 90 seconds to detonation – let’s kiss like we have all the time in the world!”

    The audience doesn’t know the autopilot has been patched, so there would’ve been ample suspense (and arguably time for that lip lock) if there’d been, say, 4 minutes left on the countdown. Crazy-short countdowns push my overused-cliche button. This one may have broken it. (But I’ll go see it again.)

  • Anonymous

    I wanted to show him how to walk with a cane effectively. No wonder he was in pain. No physical therapy until he went to that nice prison spa.

  • Anonymous

    I really hated that Bruce had major angst over Rachel. That’s so uncharacteristic for a Batman movie and it felt out of place.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Adrienne-Reynolds/1206258456 Adrienne Reynolds

    I basically think that the Clean Slate macguffin was the way to fix the garbage that Miller did to the character after grafting the prostitute backrgound on to her as was also referenced by her young friend. She didn’t care about her criminal record but she was trying to erase the prostitution record. Frankly I loved the third movie because it fixed everything I hated from Miller forward with DC’s Batman. 

    Selena also referenced it in the dance scene but vaguely – it was a PG-13 superhero movie after all. Frankly I wish the DC comics were written the way Nolan did it. In my head Nolanverse is now canon and I’m ignoring everything in the Nu-52

  • Anonymous

    I’m an occupational therapist with lots of experience working with spinal cord injuries.  The moment the “doctor” in the prison karate chopped the vertebra into place I accidently let out a loud & inappropriate HA!  I had to clap my hand over my mouth as I realized no one else saw the humor and  I was the inappropriately laughing jerk in the theater. >_<

  • Anonymous

    The Rachel angst would have been more convincing if Rachel had been a more convincing character in the first place. Nolan never made any effort to make us care about her — casting Katie Holmes, her terrible dialogue and general uselessness, her inevitable fridging. You can’t telegraph to the audience that Rachel is a throwaway character, and then expect to build some sort of meaningful emotional crisis on her later. It felt like Bruce was being dishonest and narcissistic — having a little 8-year pity party for himself, not for Rachel.

  • Anonymous

    You give a pretty good explanation to how he must have felt so maybe I’m unfair when I’m calling it “petty”. I think it bothers me the most if you put it in relationship with the 8 years. I would understand Alfred keeping the secret for some time but I don’t think he would have held that long seeing Bruce deperish like that. And I would understand if Bruce felt bad about Rachel’s death at first but considering he was not to blame for it, his reaction is too excessive. A man who saw his parents murdered before him builds a better resistance than that. At least, a batman does.

  • http://twitter.com/equustel Ali Miller

    He stopped being Batman because the Dent Act had ushered Gotham into a virtually crime-free peacetime for 8 years. He also stopped because Batman took the fall for Harvey’s death at the end of TDK, and was therefore a fugitive from the law. 

    As for Alfred… I don’t think it was a petty reason he let him leave – it was an emotional reason, and one that Bruce clearly regretted. As evidenced by the fact that the very next morning, when the doorbell rings, his first hopeful reaction is: “Alfred?”

    I am also more interested in Bruce than the other characters, and loved Begins because it was so focused on what made him tick. I missed that focus in TDK; he felt like a stranger. Here, I finally felt pulled back into his personal conflict. 

    IMO, he left Gotham at the end because he’d finally found his peace. Moving past fear and anger as motivating factors was a big part of the whole prison sequence (“making the jump”). I’m glad he finally got to have the life Alfred envisioned for him – the life the comics never let him have. We don’t have the luxury of conclusions in the comic book world – but in a film trilogy, we do. I’m happy Nolan took that opportunity and ran with it.

  • http://twitter.com/equustel Ali Miller

    He would never stop being Batman willingly in the comics, but this is a film world. Conclusions are possible here. With the luxury of an ending, Nolan & Goyer constructed a different, but still coherent, character arc for Bruce. Yes, he’s not quite the Bruce Wayne I know and love from the comic canon, but this a different medium with different parameters and I accept and even enjoy the differences. 

    I also disagree that there were no comic-book-esque details to relish – on the contrary, I thought there were more here than in the other two films. Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman was spot on, and her blonde friend/partner-in-crime is straight out of Batman: Year One. Her banter with Batman (and them actually kissing in-costume!) made the whole thing feel *more* like a comic book movie to me. Along with Bane’s over-the-top voice, the Breaking the Bat moment, Talia’s inclusion, Ra’s popping up as a figment of Bruce’s imagination and taunting him with “I always told you I was immortal” – nods to the fans were everywhere.

  • http://twitter.com/equustel Ali Miller

    I heartily endorse this comment! And SO MUCH YES about Batman Beyond – I’ve been waiting on a live-action film of that for ages!

  • Anonymous

    When I watch a film, I don’t care about what everybody else thinks, it’s about how I personnally feel when I watch the film. Because a movie is liked by a majority of people doesn’t mean it’s not okay for people who don’t feel the same way to talk about what they thought didn’t work in the film.

  • http://www.facebook.com/aaron.treat.75 Aaron Treat

    I never said it wasn’t okay. I was reacting to the snobbish comment about “mob consensus”.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G4EU7GLSNC6XT4UE6IJCFYY7UQ Will

    “He stopped being Batman because the Dent Act had ushered Gotham into a virtually crime-free peacetime for 8 years. He also stopped because Batman took the fall for Harvey’s death at the end of TDK, and was therefore a fugitive from the law.”

    Which is contrivance built on contrivance.  Not only because it ignores the basic conceit of Gotham being a crime ridden city, but also is in no way connected to reality.  No American city is going to be cured so easily by law enforcement,  no matter how nice Aaron Eckhart’s chin might be.  Nor would the organized crime vacuum stand.  We have to basically believe the the League of Bond Villains works not only every institution in Gotham, but held all crime at bay.

  • Anonymous

    I get that but you’re the one who brought up the critical and audience consensus in the first place, as if it changes anything. I’m very glad you and other people liked it. The reviewer didn’t like it so much, as did other people.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

    I’ve got a lot to comment on. But right now…Bruce’s motivation for escaping. He was absent as Batman BUT the streets were getting cleaned up! Gotham wasn’t in peril.  They didn’t need Batman. That’s the difference between that and sitting in a prison while Gotham is gonna get blown to hell along with everyone you care about (cept alfred).

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

     Yeah, total agreement.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

     You know why Bruce can stop being batman in the movies? Because they would NEVER let their main character retire in the comics book world. Ever. They make too much money to do that. So stop acting like it’s part of the character. It’s a DC business decision.

  • Stephanie A

    Wow, that’s exactly what I was thinking. Man, these comments are articulate and competent. So refreshing.

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

    Do you even know what “contrivance” means or are you just using it for what you think it means? DC would never let Gotham be in peace. It’s always crime ridden in the comics for a reason. MONEY. Also, just because they finally arrested and crushed all these organized crime syndicates, doesn’t mean one won’t come back in a few months. It’s just during this time, Gotham is without organized crime.  If you look at history during the Prohibition era, they were able to take them all down for a time. So yes, it is connected to reality. Are there still murders, robberies, and so on? I’m sure there are, but I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot better than it used to be. The question you should be asking is if Talia wanted to finish her father’s work, and her father’s work was based on Gotham being beyond saving, and now Gotham IS being saved…why is she still going through with it?

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

    The death of Rachel wasn’t just a death of a loved one. She also represented his only chance at a life after Batman. She was his happy ending. Rachel told him not to make her that, but he did anyway. So after that’s taken away, what does he have now?

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_G4EU7GLSNC6XT4UE6IJCFYY7UQ Will

    Wow, do you know what unnecessary cattiness means?   What the actual hell?  I’m so sorry for upsetting you, sir.  Can I please have some more of your knowledge thrust into me?

    Yes, they took down the various factions of the mafia at one time (that’s reasonably established in TDK, as well as here).  But what is to keep that gap from being filled over the EIGHT YEAR time span?  So there’s just no organized crime in Gotham for TWO Presidential Terms?  There was no Chicago or New York or Metropolis mafia to fill the gaps?  And the magic solution is no parole and Jim Gordon’s steady hand?   Contrived.  In other words, it was an artificial and ridiculous set of developments to put Batman in the position of Howard Hughes-ing it for the good part of a decade.  For a director who clearly loves the Wire, Nolan sure seems to have a lot of faith in institutions regarding this particular moment in Gotham history (later, not so much).

    It is undeniably questionable why the League of Shadows still want to heal the fixed city, particularly since Bane doesn’t know about “The Lie” until later.  (I think an even better questions is: how does this city heal after the League is gone?)  But I’m not committing myself to discuss every PLOT CONTRIVANCE that this movie offers. 

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/7TELVJHZFNF5EC5WKBW5ISYHYA Ben

    Also, anybody that argues that DKR isn’t about Batman: Every single event in this movie is connected/affects Bruce Wayne and Batman.  They break Bruce Wayne financially, then they break Batman physically. Then they make him suffer by making him watch Gotham die. Everything in the movie relates to this. I don’t know how anybody can think it wasn’t about him. 

  • Anonymous

    Seriously, where is the love for Batman Beyond? A sci-fi Gotham would win all the awards.

  • Anonymous

    I couldn’t get on with that fight, actually, since it was like Bats didn’t prepare at all to fight Bane. Surely he knew, even without Catwoman’s deception, that it’d come down to him and Bane having a punch-up, and Bane is a huge dude. So bring some of your special Bat toys, you have ten million of them.

    Presumably the idea is that he’s got something of a deat hwish at that point, but it comes through rather muddy and confusing, like a lot of the messages the film tries to portray. 

  • Anonymous

    I had problems with it, yeah. When it was him and Batman talking, between his mask and that atrocious Batvoice I had real trouble.

  • Anonymous

    I really hated the unsubtly of the ‘real name’ reveal. I was honestly surprised by the Talia reveal, and enjoyed it a lot, then they decided to be subtle like a truck to the face at the end there. ‘Oh haha you’re Robin’. Yeah, I got that thanks, I just sat through nearly 3 hours of you telling me this.

  • Anonymous

    Oh thank god, it wasn’t just me who felt like I was missing some vital pamphlet on just what the fuck Bane’s ideals were. The movie certainly showed he had a philosophy, but fucked if I know what said philosophy was.

  • http://twitter.com/Super_Widget Joanna

    I liked that he was broken.  Shows that Batman is breakable.  He may be a super hero but at the end of the day he’s only human.

  • Anonymous

    I get the feeling that Nolan worked in Batman’s ultimate goal: inspiring ordinary people to be heroes, to stand together and fight for what they believe in. There’s still room for the solitary figure, however, as Batman warns Blake: “If you go in alone, wear a mask”.

  • http://twitter.com/Super_Widget Joanna

    While I agree we see little of Batman, I think that Nolan’s adaptation is more setting driven than character driven.  Batman is more like a symbol of hope for the people of Gotham and a symbol of fear to the criminals that threaten the peace. 

     I felt this was pretty much established in the first film when Bruce Wayne was explaining that he wanted to not just be a vigilante but a symbol to Gotham.  We pretty much saw that in TDKR with the little kids drawing the bat symbol with chalk and things like that.  It’s why, towards the end, Batman lit up his big fiery bat.  It made Bane go “Oh crap!”, while simultaneously all the cops go “Yay!” and start charging towards all the tanks.  At least that’s what I took from it all =o

  • Jennifer Vetere

     I agree with this.  She was his salvation and the Joker took her away from him — by choosing to save Rachel over Harvey, he had to deal with not only allowing his salvation to die, but also the fact that he created Two-Face (in addition to the internal struggle over creating the Joker) from someone who was the ‘white knight’ of the city he loves.

    I think what many people forget is that Bruce Wayne isn’t a normal person, with a normal psyche and normal reactions… He’s an incredibly damaged person and, in many ways, still a little boy.  He’s lost his mother and father, he’s lost his best friend from childhood and (to him) future wife/salvation…  dealing with all of that, dealing with the concept that HE created the escalation of criminals (by replacing the typical criminal bosses with the Joker)… it broke him.   I don’t think the 8 year hiatus was just about Rachel, it was a combination of everything (including the fact that Gotham didn’t seem to need the Batman anymore when, perhaps, he might have still needed the Batman as an escape mechanism) breaking him at once.

    Honestly, I really liked this movie.  Was it as good as TDK?  Probably not, but only because the Joker wasn’t in it… but it was still a damn good Batman movie.

  • http://twitter.com/thelambandtea The Lamb

    It’s sounding like the ability to understand Bane is a theater-to-theater issue. I could hear him pretty well, but the sound at the theater I went to was cranked up so much that every time the chanting theme started, it was accompanied by the sound of some of the speakers audibly vibrating.

  • Anonymous

    Very true. When Batman told him to wear a mask, I knew for a fact it was him right then and there. Some people are dense though, so I give them a pass for being blunt at the end.

  • http://melancholywise.tumblr.com/ Sophie

    Well, I think that Nolan is entitled to his own version of the character, –the comic books are hardly consistent in this regard– but also I think it’s worth considering that business decisions still affect characters. The ‘Batman never retires’ thing may be based on profit, but it’s been part of the story for such a long time that it’s become part of the character (as he is depicted in the comic books).

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