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The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
#601
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
Probably the biggest thing that bothered me about this movie was the scale. I mean, in the comics, it's not so apparent at times, but you'd think the US government would be pretty concerned about a masked vigilante who used high-tech gear like Batman did operating in a major city. The president is going on TV and there's a nuclear weapon in Gotham... I mean... at some point, Batman sorta looks really unrealistic in this world.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
Probably the biggest thing that bothered me about this movie was the scale. I mean, in the comics, it's not so apparent at times, but you'd think the US government would be pretty concerned about a masked vigilante who used high-tech gear like Batman did operating in a major city. The president is going on TV and there's a nuclear weapon in Gotham... I mean... at some point, Batman sorta looks really unrealistic in this world.
Just because Nolan has made it "more realistic", does not automatically make it The Godfather. It is a fantasy. I don't have a problem with it, but goddamn, a lot of you do seem to.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
like on Breaking Bad, which is said to exist an a hyper-reality, anything goes, but it still needs to be grounded in a shred of reason.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
Right, because most laptops come with solid state drives.
I do agree that the Occupy theme was undercooked. All we really got was Bane speechifying, intercut with people partying and a kangaroo court. If I were a member of the Occupy movement and some guy used tanks to blow open a prison and give all the prisoners guns, I'd be scared shitless. I would not be partying.
I do agree that the Occupy theme was undercooked. All we really got was Bane speechifying, intercut with people partying and a kangaroo court. If I were a member of the Occupy movement and some guy used tanks to blow open a prison and give all the prisoners guns, I'd be scared shitless. I would not be partying.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I do agree that the Occupy theme was undercooked. All we really got was Bane speechifying, intercut with people partying and a kangaroo court. If I were a member of the Occupy movement and some guy used tanks to blow open a prison and give all the prisoners guns, I'd be scared shitless. I would not be partying.
This film's story was finished before there was an Occupy movement.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
<iframe width="853" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TgGCT6Ag4kk" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
I love Mark Hamill.
I love Mark Hamill.
#611
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
It could have been a big hunk of plastic that said "laptop" on it. The particular brand wasn't important, nor the particular model. That's not necessarily true of some of the issues this film has.
#612
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I dont see how anyone can watch TDK then TDKR and think they are the same caliber. TDK is world class filmmaking full of moral gray areas, intricate plotting and batman action... TDKR feels like the cheesy 60s TV show by comparison. Can't even believe it is the same director.
#613
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I went in to this expecting it to love it and think it the best of the series, but was pretty disappointed. The wife and I watched the first two last week to prep for it and it wasn't even close to as good as either of them. That's not to say it was a terrible movie, just a substantial step down from the previous two.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I went in to this expecting it to love it and think it the best of the series, but was pretty disappointed. The wife and I watched the first two last week to prep for it and it wasn't even close to as good as either of them. That's not to say it was a terrible movie, just a substantial step down from the previous two.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
I do not suggest that "Rise" is anywhere near as bad as those two films, but there are just too many problems with the script to ignore. As much as I love Nolan taking the saga in his own direction, he just took the saga to too many different avenues here. We could have cut the Modine, Levitt plots and handed the crucial plot elements to Gordan (who is MIA for most of the film). Too many subplots, too many characters.
I could forgive those if the film truly had heart to it. But I left feeling cold and underwhelmed. I hate being negative (I love, love the first two). But I can't deny what I felt in my gut once the credits ran.
At least my wife felt the exact same way. She'll have to be my shield against any fan-boy wrath!
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#615
DVD Talk Legend
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
Saw it twice over the weekend and really enjoyed it. TDK is my fav out of the 3, but still a wonderful trilogy.
A few thoughts, I don't know if they have been addressed yet. According to the Joker in TDK a year has passed since Batman Begins. TDK looks like it takes place over a couple of weeks, and then Batman goes into hiding. Did he operate any, without being seen, or really go into retirement? Was he only active for roughly a year total? In Rises its mentioned several times he was active for years.
The flaw that stands out for me is, if he was inactive for 8 years, why does the sudden mention of Bane bring him out? Technically Bane had not done much in Gotham yet.
Also can I assume Bruce injured his leg in the fall with Harvey?
A few thoughts, I don't know if they have been addressed yet. According to the Joker in TDK a year has passed since Batman Begins. TDK looks like it takes place over a couple of weeks, and then Batman goes into hiding. Did he operate any, without being seen, or really go into retirement? Was he only active for roughly a year total? In Rises its mentioned several times he was active for years.
The flaw that stands out for me is, if he was inactive for 8 years, why does the sudden mention of Bane bring him out? Technically Bane had not done much in Gotham yet.
Also can I assume Bruce injured his leg in the fall with Harvey?
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I went in to this expecting it to love it and think it the best of the series, but was pretty disappointed. The wife and I watched the first two last week to prep for it and it wasn't even close to as good as either of them. That's not to say it was a terrible movie, just a substantial step down from the previous two.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
But after watching the movie I don't need the bootleg or dvd.
#618
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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
LUCIUS FOX
Now, there is a tradeoff: the spread of the plates gives you more weak spots. You'll be more vulnerable to knives and gunfire.
BRUCE WAYNE
We wouldn't want things getting too easy now, would we? [picks up the suit] How will it hold up against dogs?
Now, there is a tradeoff: the spread of the plates gives you more weak spots. You'll be more vulnerable to knives and gunfire.
BRUCE WAYNE
We wouldn't want things getting too easy now, would we? [picks up the suit] How will it hold up against dogs?
Last edited by chess; 07-23-12 at 08:29 AM.
#619
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
Saw this in a real 70mm IMAX theater today, and was blown away. Those 2 hours and 45 minutes fly by. I recommend anyone see it in true IMAX if they can instead of digital IMAX. Fortunately we have 1 real IMAX theater playing it in St. Louis. I wish it was a flat screen and not a dome Omnimax, but at least I saw it in the best resolution possible.
#620
DVD Talk Hero
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
I went in to this expecting it to love it and think it the best of the series, but was pretty disappointed. The wife and I watched the first two last week to prep for it and it wasn't even close to as good as either of them. That's not to say it was a terrible movie, just a substantial step down from the previous two.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
First, the good. The performances across the board were great. Hathaway nailed it. Joseph Gordon Levitt was solid. Hardy made a menacing Bane. Caine & Bale gave their best performances of the trilogy and Oldman was as good as he normally is. Cotillard wasn't particularly great, but she wasn't bad either.
Also, the overall story was a nice way to conclude the characters. It did a good job with their arcs and brought things to a satisfying end. That said, a lot of the film just didn't work for me. Some of my complaints are large and some are small, but they all took me out of the film.
- Bane/Talia's prison was stupid. First, Bane repeatedly barks about how he was raised in darkness and never saw light until he was a man and blah blah blah. Then he drops Bruce off there and it's basically a well with blinding sunlight pouring down from above, enough to light up the whole place. In flashbacks, they even show Bane, in the light, helping Talia escape. Not to mention, why in the hell did they take Bruce to the prison, other than the fact that Nolan thought it'd be a neat place to film and obviously liked using it to force Bruce to 'grow' to be able to get back and help Gotham? It made zero sense to fly him halfway around the world to force him watch what was happening where he originally had been and it made his return to Gotham just feel silly.
- The bat jet or whatever it's being called completely shattered the illusion that Batman's gear was hypothetically possible in Nolan's world. No way that thing's getting off the ground. Might as well have given him a jet powered dirigible. It looked silly as hell every time it was on screen with it's underbody rotors. Same goes for the bat pod, which went from being a crazy-ass, heavy duty, but could-possibly-exist-in-the-real-world motorcycle to something that looked like a cartoon with rotating tires.
- Bane/Talia's plan was horribly executed while Bruce was in the pit. They went to all this trouble to rile people up, pitting the haves against the have nots. Bane tells Bruce that he's going to have to watch as the people of his city tear each other apart. Then what do they do? Impose strict order through marshal law, execute the handful of people who violate it or are cops that aren't in the sewers and maintain public services. Both Batman Begins & The Dark Knight had much better versions of Gotham tearing itself apart. This one was pretty much just keep everyone scared and placid until we nuke them.
- The idea that an orphan saw Bruce once and somehow knew he was Batman and hadn't killed Dent and so on was just silly and completely unearned. "I could tell because you had that look that I have." Well, are you sure you're not the fucking Batman then?
- What the fuck was the Scarecrow doing with Bane? I mean, he was manipulated and used by the League of Shadows in the first movie. Then he's a minor crime figure in the second. Then, in this, Bane/Talia come back to avenge Ra's and decide to look up some random guy he tricked and put him in charge of a court that basically served no purpose as no one knew what was going on there except for the people executed? I know Nolan loves Murphy and I think he's a great actor, but his role in this was forced to the point of nonsense. And the making people walk onto the ice? Silly, not particularly creative or scary and pretty much in the movie to allow Murphy to say 'death by exile'. Not to mention that scene itself.
Gordon: "I'd rather be killed now than die by falling through ice."
Scarecrow: "You're sentenced to death by falling through ice. Now go out there and do it or we'll kill you now."
Gordon: "Awww shit, ok. Guess falling through ice it is, since I couldn't just fight back and force you to shoot me because it doesn't serve the narrative."
- Blake as Batman? Well, I guess it's good they set up that the mantle can be handed off, because he's not going to last long. Wayne had years of training and the job still beat the hell out of him. Blake will be dead or a cripple within months.
- The nuke's going off in hours. We've got to get everyone out of the city. By everyone, I mean a small bus of orphans.
- The city's cops are free, what's our plan? Why don't we just charge into incredibly superior firepower and hope our heart wins the day? Sounds good to me.
There are other story-ish foibles, but that's enough to make the point. The film was the most poorly paced/edited of the three as well. It did a really poor job at indicating the passage of time, to the point that characters repeatedly had to basically look into the camera and state how many hours/days/months/years had elapsed. It's one of the few movies I've seen where it felt like it was simultaneously 30 minutes too long and 30 minutes too short. Oh well. Again, it did a nice job at bringing character arcs to their conclusion and was a serviceable end to the trilogy, but I don't know how it had the same writers as the last two and it was drastically below it's potential.
Deception.
#621
DVD Talk Hero
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
It looked like a Samsung Series 3 laptop to me (definitely wasn't a 5, 7 or 9), which is their lower end model that only comes with hdd. Not that it matters.
#623
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
The only way I can figure this word would be applicable to the paragraph you bolded is if you mean Bane's exaggerating his past to intimidate Bruce, which doesn't make sense in how the action plays out and would seem an ineffectual approach given the line you pointed out about deception not working on the initiated.
#624
DVD Talk Hero
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
The only way I can figure this word would be applicable to the paragraph you bolded is if you mean Bane's exaggerating his past to intimidate Bruce, which doesn't make sense in how the action plays out and would seem an ineffectual approach given the line you pointed out about deception not working on the initiated.
On a one on one yes. But it was never just Bane against Batman. It was Bane AND Talia. It was a one two punch of theatricality AND deception. You could even call it foreshadowing if you want. Foreshadowing with words as opposed to footage.
I was paraphrasing.
#625
Moderator
Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Nolan, 2012) — The Reviews Thread
One thing my wife pointed out...if they wanted to hide the fact that the kid climbing out of the well was a girl, why did they cast a recognizable actress?