[M] The Dark Knight Rises (SPOILERS) - Page 53

My interpretation about the 'revolution' is that the revolution was never the goal. He went on about how to successfully torture someone you need to give them hope. His plan all along was to 'cleanse' Gotham; the revolution was only to give them hope before he finally kills them. That is how I interpreted it, unless I missed the point entirely.

Tahlia reveal though. It did seem a little tacked on and unnecessary, and that + Bane's quick death sort of cheapened his character. My other main concern is some of the speech was hard to understand.

The scenes with Bruce and Alfred. Almost got me teared up in a few of them.

I found it funny that the movie had to spend a portion of time having to fix the silly decisions made in the last one (people deciding to have Batman be a fall guy made no sense to me at the time, with most the obvious problems that causes coming up in this film).

Similarly to The Dark Knight, this movie does have more than its fair share of stupid to the point of unbelievable plot scenarios... but at least this film gets them out of the way in the first half... leaving the 2nd half of the film to shine as an excellently acted and put together action film / drama.

a nuclear bomb go off within sight of a heavily populated urban area is any cause for celebration. Did anyone think of the radioactive fall out? To be honest the situation was so impossible to save my mind was mentally thinking: when is Superman showing up? but nope he just flies the batplane off the coast and then it's all okay.

I also felt that Bane really do justice to the character. Bane is meant to be the equal of batman in both physique and intellect. While this bane is more cunning than the previous one, the movie ultimately showed him as more of talia's henchman than anything else.

Speaking of talia... what an unbelievable plot twist.

I think the whole league of Shadows plotline and Talia are both incredibly predictable, but other than that Rises was a great film. The symbolism was cool (like R'as hallucination saying he has many forms of immortality while Bruce is in the Lazarus Pit), and so was mirroring BB in so many ways. Action was good but it wasn't as serious as TDK, like the part where Catwoman disappears and Batman goes 'huh, so that's what that feels like'.

ending around when Bane first takes over Gotham and breaks Batman's back

The good: Brawl scenes between Bane and Batman were excellent. I normally don't get much out of these, but I winced at the thwacks and the back-breaking scene. Panoramic shots of Gotham under siege (especially in winter) were epic. As noted above, the Bruce/Alfred exchanges. When Alfred leaves Bruce, holy shit I was on edge. And at the end where Alfred's standing at the grave... Furthermore, Freeman never ceases to amuse. I think Fox is my favorite character in Nolan's Batman universe.

Also, Hans Zimmer.

The bad: John Blake being named "Robin". I mean, come on. I know we're supposed to infer that he becomes Robin, but you don't have to make it his legal name...

The Lazarus Pit... I didn't even recognize it for what it was till near the end of the movie. This plot point, way more than any other, dragged out ceaselessly. Also, how the hell do you fix somebody's back by "hitting a vertebrae back in place."

The stock market part was ludicrous. Yeah okay, BainBane and company bust the stock market, and obviously tamper with it. Next day, the richest man in the world loses all his money? Yeah okay this is believable.

Ms. Tate--I mean, Talia--was way too predictable. And why bother with the whole "I'm giving this city back to the people" when you're going to blow it up anyway? Attempting to inspire false hope is one thing. Having your plot foiled by Batman when you shouldn't have waited 100+ days is another.

And my biggest gripe... Batman staying alive. The bit about autopilot being fixed "6 months prior [to the invasion of Gotham]" is null in that you see that Batman is piloting the Bat when he's dragging the fusion core out... And how can Batman escape a 6-mile blast radius over open water? Obviously, there's some small escape pod attached to the Bat. Yet when the timer shows 10 seconds and you see Batman still in the cockpit of the Bat? That's one fast escape. I'd have rather Batman stayed dead. We already have the replacement--Mr. "Robin" John Blake, and all the loose ends are tied up regarding Bruce's life. I almost want to go along with the fan theory that Alfred at the end was just hallucinating when he saw Bruce and Selina together.

The dragging out of the villains' master plan felt over indulgent like one of those silly Bond movies where the bad guy gives away his whole plot before planning some elaborate death for the hero when he should just fucking shoot him in the head and get shit done. The whole revolution of the people thing seemed pretty pointless to me. I still don't get why they did it. The false hope arc doesn't make sense to me when they really didn't create any false hope in the first place.

Bane's character was built up to be this badass mastermind and then they turned him into a lackey in about 5 mins at the end. Pretty weak.

This entire movie is actually about how Mitt Romney's Bain Capital is a corporate raider that abuses the stock market and destroys the country when he does it. Bane represents everything Bain stands for.

Liked Bane, and his death seemed a little... undeserving for a large focus of the movie.

Didn't like Blake/JGL at first, but he grew on me by the bridge scene. I was afraid the Robin transformation would be shoe-horned in, but thankfully that was left as a tasteful afternote. A well done character/arc.

HATED Bruce's "death". Looking back, I think Nolan intended for Bruce to die, but changed it relatively last minute. Why would Batman tell the people he's with that there was no auto-pilot? Did he just want the kiss from Catwoman or something? It would have been so much more powerful if he actually had to make a sacrifice like that.

Various plotholes, while not horrendous, certainly took me out of it for a bit. One note about the Stock Exchange scene; that would actually leave Wayne Enterprises technically bankrupt pending fraud investigations, and the stock would certainly take a hit knowing the company had enemies like that. But the company could still function, and the power company certainly wouldn't shut down the power/water of Bruce's mansion that quickly.

It's a decent movie on its own, but in context with the other two it's weak.

Suspending disbelief is one thing, a neutron bomb going off over water is a wholly different animal.

Batman should have died. It would have been so appropriate, and finally someone would have broken the taboo of killing off a major superhero in a movie. To me modern movies are battles between art and money, and I thought Nolan had the gumption and the creative authority to go through with it. I was sadly mistaken T_T.

Bane's death was a failure. Two + hours of buildup got destroyed in a second.

And on a more personal note as someone who's injured their back, you don't simply kick a vertebra back into place. I'm sure most people know that, but still -.-.

Funnily enough I realized who Tate was as soon as she came on screen because she looks and sounded so much like Raz Al Ghul's daughter from the cartoon I watched as a kid lol. And this also transitions quite nicely in that her emergence castrated Bain as the villain. Instead of being a calculating and brutally strong villain he becomes the whipped bitch of Raz Al Ghul's brat.

I'm guilty of one thing, that is I expected someone to die in this movie. I mean someone meaningful, either Alfred, or Fox, or Batman. Someone. Instead we get a watered down movie that really feels like a 2 hour and 45 minute introduction to Robin, and Batman's temporary retirement. There was supposed to be closure, finality. Instead we're left with Batman and Catwoman running amok somewhere while Robin suits up. Killing Batman was probably the only way for Nolan to surpass #2, and so I can't necessarily blame him. But still, it's what I wanted and what I expected ;P.

Some things I liked

Bain was awesome, his voice and his demeanor fit for me. And when he said, "Victory has defeated you." I thought that was a very well written line. An extension: the back breaking scene, well done.

Robin's journey, it would have been so much richer if Batman had died.

I momentarily recanted my desire for Batman to die when he showed up on the motorcycle, and the police officer said something like, "oh you're in for a show."