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Manchu wrote:

rubiksnoob wrote:

Manchu wrote:The guy in that vid does an amazing impression of Christian Bale.

So does my garbage disposal!

Aw, you're so lucky. Mine just does Bane.

Yeah, I only use that setting if something gets stuck.

rubiksnoob wrote:I do believe this is the place to put this:

This is the most amazing thing ever

I less than three this video so much.

It would seem that "Call Me Maybe" is the song that keeps giving and giving.

dæl wrote:I think it would have been more interesting if after breaking his back Bruce had been completely paralysed, and Blake had taken over the role. It would have emphasised the fact that Batman isn't a man but a symbol. He would of course be no match for Bane, but the Bat coming back could have roused the people of Gotham into a revolution against Bane. They could have just not bothered with the Talia thing then too, which would have been for the best. You also wouldn't have to wonder why someone who walked with a cane or robotic exo-leg was absolutely fine a couple of months later.

It will be interesting to see if they continue with the story or just do a reboot.

....I think that would've catapulted the movie from "Pretty damn good" to "unbelievably awesome". Damn!

dæl wrote:

Manchu wrote:

dæl wrote:He would of course be no match for Bane, but the Bat coming back could have roused the people of Gotham into a revolution against Bane.

I gotta say, that sounds like an awesome movie to me.

Thanks, just seems to fit better. Bane talks of revolutions and giving power to the people, it seems apt that would be his undoing. He forces Bruce to watch Gotham as he tortures it, Bruce would see that someone else has risen (no pun intended) to take his place, this makes up for his rather crappy fate of being left to rot in the prison. For three films we are told that a symbol is more than a man, because a man can be destroyed, it would be nice if that actually applied. We also wouldn't have had to have 5 months of sweet fanny adams happening while Bruce recovers from a broken spine (Something my girlfriend suffered a few years ago and after 5 months she wasn't climbing any walls). It would be the opposite of the Dark Knight too, there Batman wins the battle with the Joker but loses the war.

It's something of a shame that Nolan isn't interested in any more films, would love to have seen his take on Edward Nigma.

That would have been a much better idea. Then Batman would have beaten Bane at his own game and showed him he was wrong about everything. Good point about how it contrasts with TDK too.

I was really sad when Bats started punching Bane again. It would certainly have been a better movie if he had used his brain and realized that Bane is a better fighter, and not recovering from a spinal injury, so he'd be much better off World's Greatest Detectiving it up and out-smarting the bad guy. I enjoyed the first two movies so much I really thought Nolan would do this, so that was doubly disappointing.

I also thought Nolan really would kill Batman, and THAT would have been amazing, but in retrospect the clues were there to think that he would/could have fixed the autopilot.

I still do quite like the ending, and Blake taking over. It just wasn't as great as it could/should have been.

Mannahnin wrote:I was really sad when Bats started punching Bane again. It would certainly have been a better movie if he had used his brain and realized that Bane is a better fighter, and not recovering from a spinal injury, so he'd be much better off World's Greatest Detectiving it up and out-smarting the bad guy. I enjoyed the first two movies so much I really thought Nolan would do this, so that was doubly disappointing.

I also thought Nolan really would kill Batman, and THAT would have been amazing, but in retrospect the clues were there to think that he would/could have fixed the autopilot.

I still do quite like the ending, and Blake taking over. It just wasn't as great as it could/should have been.

Once Alfred detailed his vacation plans for the time when Bruce was on walkabout, you knew exactly what was going to happen at the end of this film!

The 'autopilot' fix was just a little extra hint to get you (and Bruce!) there, I guess.

Still, flawed and all, I liked this movie a lot - I especially like a fictional universe in which Bruce finds a way out of the darkness and into the light!

Mannahnin wrote:I was really sad when Bats started punching Bane again. It would certainly have been a better movie if he had used his brain and realized that Bane is a better fighter, and not recovering from a spinal injury, so he'd be much better off World's Greatest Detectiving it up and out-smarting the bad guy.

He didn't have a plan the first time other than just beating him up; the second fight was calculated, and he was better prepared. Batman spent more time guarding blows and waiting for openings to attack the mask, which he now knew was not just theatrics, but was something Bane needed. It was a different fight, and he did use his brain.

Alpharius wrote:
Once Alfred detailed his vacation plans for the time when Bruce was on walkabout, you knew exactly what was going to happen at the end of this film!

The 'autopilot' fix was just a little extra hint to get you (and Bruce!) there, I guess.

Still, flawed and all, I liked this movie a lot - I especially like a fictional universe in which Bruce finds a way out of the darkness and into the light!

Ill tell you what though.. no fething way would Alfred crack his vacation plan just like he told Bruce.

You know... the kid you love like a son, and thought dead, turns round and gives you a wink and you just smile and feth off because you said "You dont speak to me, and I dont speak to you.."

If I was Alfred I would go "feth ME RAGGED!!" followed by "You could have phoned you little gakker!" then ..

Ahtman wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:I was really sad when Bats started punching Bane again. It would certainly have been a better movie if he had used his brain and realized that Bane is a better fighter, and not recovering from a spinal injury, so he'd be much better off World's Greatest Detectiving it up and out-smarting the bad guy.

He didn't have a plan the first time other than just beating him up; the second fight was calculated, and he was better prepared. Batman spent more time guarding blows and waiting for openings to attack the mask, which he now knew was not just theatrics, but was something Bane needed. It was a different fight, and he did use his brain.

I guess so, and I get what they were going for with Bruce having (prior to his recovery in the prison) not been properly motivated, and having come out of the pit with renewed focus and desire.

But I still think it would have been much better if (assuming they had to do it as a physical confrontation) he had done it more Wesley/Fezzik-style. Knowing Bane will beat him in a straight fight, and taking a beating on the way in, then going after the mask directly. Getting a grapple and cutting that sucker off with his Batleatherman.

mattyrm wrote:

Alpharius wrote:
Once Alfred detailed his vacation plans for the time when Bruce was on walkabout, you knew exactly what was going to happen at the end of this film!

The 'autopilot' fix was just a little extra hint to get you (and Bruce!) there, I guess.

Still, flawed and all, I liked this movie a lot - I especially like a fictional universe in which Bruce finds a way out of the darkness and into the light!

Ill tell you what though.. no fething way would Alfred crack his vacation plan just like he told Bruce.

You know... the kid you love like a son, and thought dead, turns round and gives you a wink and you just smile and feth off because you said "You dont speak to me, and I dont speak to you.."

If I was Alfred I would go "feth ME RAGGED!!" followed by "You could have phoned you little gakker!" then ..

Now that would have been excellent!

Hopefully that scene will make it on to the DVD extras!

Finally got around to seeing the film. I enjoyed it. The fact Tom Bombadill wasn't in there didn't bother me.

Ahtman wrote:The more I consider the film, the more problems arise.

It has a lot of great individual moments and performances, but together they don't quite add up. The whole is less then the sum of its parts.

Yeah, that's basically it. It's very stylish, has strong performances from a very talented cast, and a fair number of interesting things going on. But it doesn't really come together.

I wonder if maybe one truly great action scene like the Joker's attack on the police convoy carrying Dent would have made the whole thing come together, got us to ignore the film's failings?


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Manchu wrote:In effect, Nolan plays her as a crazy bitch. She's the deluded girl who keys your car for cheating on you even though you guys never even went out. Coupled with Rachel "the Shining Idol of Goodness" Dawes and Selena "Won't Someone Take Me Away From All This?" Kyle, Talia makes me wonder about Nolan's view of women.

Nolan hasn't really ever had a strong, or even a convincing female character in any of his films.


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LordofHats wrote:I wouldn't say the movie lacked a moral compass, but I'd say this film lost the sort of complicated ambiguity of The Dark Knigt. That film kind of begs the question "how far will you go" where as this movie is kind of just "go far" which is so much less interesting...

That's basically it. The previous two movies had philosophical as well as physical contests between the villain and the hero. In this film the debate was purely physical. Bane was obviously a nutter and so the only competition that mattered was stopping him.

The sad thing is I think they had most of the groundwork in place, following on from the last film they had a nice set up for excessive police crackdown. All these street thugs are left with no choice but to start becoming part of Bane's underground army. Forget all the ties to the League of Shadows, and make it about Bane who wants out and out revolution, and Batman, who just wants justice served where it must be.

I was chatting with a good friend over the weekend and he had a very convincing take on the movie: basically, that the whole trilogy is about Bruce trying to create this symbol to stand against all the things that are wrong with the world, the reasons why his parents got murdered on the street. Yeah -- everyone knows that. But the key insight, the eureka moment for me was realizing that Bruce doesn't really understand what those problems are and therefore doesn't really know what kind of symbol he needs to create. I'm so used to thinking he totally understood what Batman was about from the start that it never even occurred to me that Bruce himself might not get it, that the whole thing might be a little bigger than what even he could understand at first. In that light, the resolution of the second movie is actually a huge mistake. They should never have tried to cover it up -- Dent wasn't the hero Gotham needed at all. We don't see a Batman that really "gets" what being Batman is all about until Bruce comes back from Bane's prison.

I have to say, chatting with my buddy about the film made me take a new look at it and I like it much better. The thing I still can't get over is the villains' dumb plot and especially how dumb Talia is.

That makes alot of sense Manchu.

Just saw the flick. I have to say, I'm really confused about what this movie was trying to say about Class Warfare? it is obviously a big "theme" of the film, but it has mixed feelings on the subject.

On one hand, it outright shows us that any attempt to remove the wealth inequality is doomed to failure and demagogery. In essence, the little people need the rich to sustain a working society. If you remove them, the whole thing falls apart.

However, to be rich is a huge burden. Wayne is very rich. However all of his welath does NOTHING to help him. In fact, it only brings him anger, pain, and personal loss. At the end, devoid of his riches, he is finally able to connect to others as a real human being, and presumably is allowed to start over without the burdens of wealth.

So, this seems like a pretty big love letter to the 1%, but being part of that 1% is a curse and not a gift. Confusing.

I think I will love to hate this movie, just like TDK.

Easy E wrote:So, this seems like a pretty big love letter to the 1%, but being part of that 1% is a curse and not a gift. Confusing.

No contradiction there -- the "burdens of wealth" is part of the fantasy of the rich. G. K Chesterton once remarked that the poor are often rebels but never anarchists. They object to be governed poorly but it is the rich who object to being governed at all. If Gotham was really so well off thanks to the Dent Act then why did the poor of Gotham resent them so much? Or did they even resent them? Exactly who -- whether Gotham's poor or Bane's storm troopers or the released Blackgate convicts -- was looting the houses of the rich was very confusing. And keep in mind that it was Jonathan Crane who headed up the Revolutionary Court and he's hardly representative of the underprivileged.

So it seems to me that it's mostly likely the Blackgate prisoners who are responsible for the chaos. They are the ones who have really suffered thanks to the Dent Act, with their parole denied and their way of life eradicated. (Although we can't take the movie seriously about stamping out organized crime with mob boss qua industrialist John Daggett mixing explosives in the concrete all over Gotham -- is business the new organized crime?) But in this way, it seems the movie is playing a fast one on us. In real life, which Nolan's films are so eager to evoke, violent criminals are often poor people. Is this Nolan doing a little sleight of hand -- showing us criminals as the symbol of poor people? Where's the middle class anyway?

The middle class is represented by Commissioner Gordon and Deputy Commissioner Foley. Notice that both characters are swept up into the machinations of the rich and powerful, tearing them apart. The congressmen Selina snookers tells Foley that Gordon is a dinosaur on his way out at the mayor's swank party honoring Dent. And later on, Foley holes up in his house and does nothing while the city falls apart -- i.e., the middle class abdicates its leadership in society, its role as a social stabilizer, out of fear and impotence. Remember how Gordon chides him for having his wife answer the door for him? Pretty emasculating. And Gordon yells at Foley "the answer has to come from inside the city!" when Foley says the government will deal with it, eventually.

Nosing through some of the novelisation t'other day.

In that I noted that the Dent Act not only removed parole but also prevented them getting off on an insanity plea, which is of course what they'd been doing back in film 1.

So, presumably, some of the people locked up in Blackgate were the crazies released in film 2.

.. IIRC there's a line about how Arkham asylum is closed down....

.. although there are persistent rumours that it is still open, with the Joker being the sole inmate.

.. with regards to the class warfare angle..

I took it as saying that in essence it is pointless. We are, after all, all in this together, no one class can survive without the other. And people should be very careful when following revolutionaries or the like, as you may well find that what they've said or claim to be doing is often vastly different than what their actual goal or plan is.

Enjoyed the film immensely, looking forwards to the DVD a lot.

.... I do wonder a little bit if Alfred really did see Bruce in... Italy ..? .. or wherever at the end. Given how recognisable Bruce Wayne was/is/would be , especially given his death... well.. wasn't much of a disguise was it ? That said, i think he deserves his happy ending, so I'll let it slide.

... also wonder if, perhaps only a wee bit, the whole bomb disposable thing was something of a hat tip to Adam West's Batman and the meme of the same.

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

reds8n wrote:.. with regards to the class warfare angle.. I took it as saying that in essence it is pointless.

Could very well be. Problem is, the movie is too confusing on this point. It gives us the impression of class warfare with very heavy references to the French Revolution. But it never gives an account of how or why this is the case, of what's actually going on in Gotham during this five month period. It's weird to have five months of social chaos on screen without any coherent account of what is going on, especially in the wake of the Financial Crisis and the Occupy Movements. The movie gives no similar impression of the tyranny of wealth, just some street walking thief making vindictive jabs ("a storm is coming" &etc) at a rich guy who the audience knows doesn't deserve it. Pretty one-sided stuff, I'm afraid.

hmm.. possibly.

( i do think there's a director's cut screaming to be let out, but that's etc etc.. ).

I would suggest though there are hints that things aren't all that for a lot of people --

orphanages are being closed down, there's a growing number of homeless people sheltering/finding work in a ( literal) underground....

.. mainly, it would seem, as the beneficial aspects of capitalism have failed/gone away/hiding in Wayne Manor.

Note how they joke that even after he's lost everything... Bruce -- the idle rich -- gets to keep the big house.. as the rich look after their own.

I think there'a a whole riff about how the Police/forces of order are only able to succeed once they've, so to speak, seen how the other half live and also have nothing to lose. Whilst Bruce/Bats ( and by default everyone else) is saved by a drug addict and criminals who live in a hellhole, yet, somehow, still manage to maintain a small sliver of decentness.

I think that the fact that Gotham didn't look or seem all that different in the x months of unrest was again suggesting or showing that there's no difference, ultimately, between the way things were and the way they will be/would be after the glorious revolution .... the guys holding the guns/bombs/wealth/etc still run things...

.. time is against me now, alas...

Good point about the poor having to find work underground -- so what happened to them? They exist as a clue for Blake and Gordon to follow and then ... disappear. It's pretty clear in the few shots we have of them that they are not on the side of the League. Even the League is not on its own side, with Bane killing two of his own loyal men in that scene (in contrast to the cultist-like dupe who accepts death in the opening set piece). There's a sense of leveling during the five months, with the formerly rich and powerful being knocked down quite a few pegs to the humble condition of the impoverished -- you've got CEOs and board members huddling around campfires in corporate headquarters. (Remember the middle class, however, is comfortable enough hiding at home.) We even get Selina's little friend throwing her previous words in her face as the erstwhile cat burglar ponders whether the rich suffering along with the poor is really better than the poor suffering alone. The movie comes off to me as confusing and ambivalent in its details but pretty sympathetic to the moneyed elite overall. When Batman "rises" it is not as a pauper. He still has what Jack Nicholson memorably called "those wonderful toys" even if all of his furniture (which he doesn't even care about) has been repossessed.

Here is another random thought.... if the Society of Shadows was all down on people, basically Hobsian in nature and focusing on peoples core selfishness and corruption; then would Batman be an anti-Randian symbol or perhaps a Lockian symbol of the power of "people" to do good things for each other?

I don't think the DKR LoS had much of anything to do with the BB LoS. Nothing they did in DKR made any sense to me.

Possibly because the BB LoS was shattered and broken at the end of BB?

Maybe the DKR LoS was a...shadow of itself, reduced from its previous grand designs to a petty revenge scheme against the man who ruined them?

Maybe - or maybe we're looking deeper into this film than Nolan thought anyone would?

Alpharius wrote:Maybe - or maybe we're looking deeper into this film than Nolan thought anyone would?

I very much doubt it. I daresay there is nothing whatsoever about these films to suggest they're solely meant to be fluffy entertainment.


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Alpharius wrote:reduced from its previous grand designs to a petty revenge scheme against the man who ruined them?

Well, that is exactly what it turns out to be. But doesn't that kind of suck? Imagine if you were that dude from the beginning. You're waiting around in Hell and suddenly Talia shows up:

Witless Dupe: Mistress! Did the plans work? Is the corrupt world punished?
Talia: Fool! I just wanted to hurt my boyfriend!
Witless Dupe: You mean Bane?
Talia: Silence, slave! Of course, I don't mean Bane. I mean the Batman.
Witless Dupe: Uhhhh ... but you never dated Batman ...
Talia: SILENCE!!!
Witless Dupe: Man, this is what I died for???

After watching it, I still don't get the crazy airplane thing> It just seemed really stupid. I have no idea why the CIA plane didn't.... I don't know.... turn when the other one came up on it?

I also think Nolan and his Btamna team still can't film a decent craftsman like action scenes.

As I said before there was a bit off the "Occupy" movement happening and being taken to the extreme but when Bane's plan devolves into blowing up Gotham with a ticking time bomb the movie stopped being about anything deep and goes into generic super-villian mode.

In the gritty world of Chris Nolan, there can be no generic super villainy. Instead, the best we can say about the Bane/Talia plan is that it is insanity born of emotional immaturity -- and that's being generous. Even the Joker's plans made more sense.

The Joker on DKR: "And they say I'm the crazy one!"

Christian Bale gave an interesting answer to the overdone "is Batman or Bruce Wayne the secret identity?" question. I'm told he said that it was neither -- they're both personas for an 8-year-old kid that stopped growing up when his parents were murdered in front of him. I guess something similar could have happened to Talia at an even younger age. It would explain her infantile motives if not the complexity of her plans.

Manchu wrote:In the gritty world of Chris Nolan, there can be no generic super villainy.

In the gritty world of Chris Nolan, there shouldn't be any generic super villainy. Unfortunately, there is.

I blame Bane's voice. Once they made Bane start talking like that he had to blow up a city with cliched time bomb that gets thwarted at the last second. He just had too.

The voice came after the script. One suspects Tom hardy read the script and said "oh feth it, I'll do my worst Sean Connery impression, this is crap anyway."