The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

And the Batman we see for the first two thirds of the movie seems to bear little connection with the obsessively determined figure we're familiar with both from the books and the previous movie- it's hard to believe that he would allow foster homes to be defunded etc without even noticing, much less actually stepping out of public life altogether.

Spoiler

It's perfectly consistent for a driven man who loses the object of his drive to become aimless and withdraw into apathy. I think that's the point, without Batman, Bruce Wayne crumbles away.

[matrixschmatrix]

Fair enough- I guess it's a situation where my attachment to the Batman of other media is working against me. It's a place where I can see how it works with the Bats Nolan has established, but that Bats is almost totally disconnected from my picture of him.

[flyonthewall2983]

This movie proved to me, something important that I haven't seen discussed...

Spoiler

That even someone as capable of utter visual spectacle like Nolan is, can't make a nuclear explosion look cool.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

I wish the movie had actually gone the full tragic route it had been heavily hinting at and let Batman actually die. The little coda thing seemed a bit weak to me.

[knives]

Spoiler

From what I've been hearing (haven't seen the movie yet) the film hints that the coda may be in Alfred's mind. That said the series has always been about making a world that does not need Bruce to be Batman.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

I think those people are confusing the movie with Inception

[Alan Smithee]

I have to join in the hate a little here. Though I was a little troubled by the political subtext of The Dark Knight, this film had no idea what it wanted to do with the ideas it was throwing around. At least TDK attempted to dig a little deeper and throw some conflicting but clear ideas against each other. It's ambiguity becoming a strength. As previous posters have said this is completely muddled. Just from a story perspective, I never felt like I really understood what the big Bane masterplan was so the pseudo class struggle storyline just came off as pointless.
I would cut it some slack, take a step away and say it's a good action film but when we're not in these grand, grounded set pieces that are certainly impressive we are just in a room with two talking heads speechifying not at each other but at the audience. Medium Shots. Medium Shots. Medium Shots. So little since of scale when it's not an action piece. I think the Nolans weren't totally sure what they were going for and if they just kept the characters talking they would find it. I think TDK is very close to Heat in a lot of ways. This time around there's none of the clarity and no scene that just gives me goosebumps like when the Joker is speeding through the night in the Ambulance, "Some people just want to watch the world burn." As it is, I was disappointed but respect certain aspects of it. Fifth favorite Bat Film though.

[John Cope]

I have yet to see it but had to post a link to Scott Foundas's review, especially as it includes this extraordinary praise:

In their look and feel, [Nolan's] Batman films have all harked back to an earlier, less attention-deficient cinematic era, the exotic foreign vistas and gang-infested city streets of Batman Begins alternately calling to mind David Lean and the Warner Brothers crime dramas of the Forties and Fifties, The Dark Knight invoking The Naked City and The French Connection in its sense of Gotham as urban jungle. In The Dark Knight Rises, Nolan pulls off an even more impressive feat—a long, elaborate set piece consuming nearly the entire second half of this three-hour movie, that begins with a child singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” ends with a bomb literally bursting in air and, in between, stirs and moves us in ways movies (superhero or otherwise) rarely do. It is, I think, one of the great sustained pieces of action in American movies—a sequence that, in its juxtapositions of sound and image, beauty and horror, calls to mind the baptism/massacre from the end of The Godfather, the wedding party in The Deer Hunter, and a handful of other scenes in other movies that have found, in a single scenario, a vivid metaphor for all that is great and terrible, noble and selfish, tainted and hopeful about we the people.

[Mr Sausage]

That's really well written and sincerely felt, but I think the comparisons are somewhat arbitrary. That scene he mentions, tho', was indeed superbly put together. Maybe not quite one of the great "sustained pieces of action" in American cinema, but definitely the kind of thing you don't usually find in American action films.

[bdsweeney]

I have yet to see it but had to post a link to Scott Foundas's review, especially as it includes this extraordinary praise:

calling to mind David Lean and the Warner Brothers crime dramas of the Forties and Fifties,

Just for your interest, the films Nolan screened for his crew (and maybe cast) prior to filming were Doctor Zhivago, Battle of Algiers ('especially inspirational') and Prince of the City.

[flyonthewall2983]

I love hearing about stuff like that. One of my favorite moments from a making-of segment is Paul Thomas Anderson talking about Network before screening it to his crew for Magnolia.

[hearthesilence]

Didn't Nolan screen Blade Runner for his Batman Begins crew? (He said something along the lines of "This is the movie I want to make.")

With Anderson, I loved his anecdote about watching Treasure of the Sierra Madre every night before going to bed while writing There Will Be Blood. I'm not sure if he fell asleep to it, but it's also charming on another level - like a fan who was trying to absorb the film through osmosis.

[flyonthewall2983]

According to IMDB, he did. They also listed several movies (Heat, Cat People, Citizen Kane, King Kong, Batman Begins, Black Sunday, A Clockwork Orange, Stalag 17) he showed to the crew before The Dark Knight.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

I'd like to see it again, but so far it feels like the weakest part of the trilogy. The exposition heavy dialogue and the set pieces put up a lot of emotional distance. All the time weaving together the thematic threads worked intellectually, but it was a lot to sit through. Nolan acquits himself well, but much of it feels perfunctory. It was enjoyable to watch, but more on the level of seeing everything put together for the cumulative big picture. I'll still see it again if I can.

Spoiler

For me, a big problem is the structure. (Maybe "written by Abed Nadir and Troy Barnes" would have been ideal writing credit?) Like I said, weaving together all the themes is worked well into the narrative, but it's all at the price of expository dialogue that's too often on the nose. And for two and half hours? Yikes. The set pieces are fun, but they feel like a big distraction from the themes the film wants to address. And then when it does address them, it's done with only the missing element of a red button flashing "thematic exposition alert!" I wish that the film had shorn some of its running time by making the revelation of Cotillard closer to the climax of the film rather than so late in the game. Cotillard does a great job as an action villain and I wish there was more of her as Talia. Regardless of that, her role comes so late in the game that it feels arbitrary. As much as it pains me to say this as Hathaway was superb, but the film could have lost Selina to focus more on Talia and Bane. As a powerful, threatening pair, I believe they could have occupied the film while streamlining the narrative better. Tom Hardy gets the thankless job of being Bain, sadly. Hardy's a good actor so how could he mess up being the big, strong angry guy? No way, but that's all he does. Kudos to his little character touches, though. I wouldn't have noticed the way he held his coat had Sausage not pointed it out. By the way, did anyone else think that he sounded like Baron Underbheit from Venture Brothers? Ditching JGL also would have helped. This may be the Gary Oldman fanboy talking, but sidelining him really baffled me. He played the character so well that despite being older and in recovery from those wounds, I still felt that he had the resources to be the man he was in the earlier two films. Unless that escape really knocked the shit out of him. Sure, JGL does a lot of legwork and earns his keep, but it only makes Oldman's role in the latter half of the film feel redundant. I did love Oldman working to disarm the bomb and found it a good throwback to his similar work at the end of Batman Begins to destroy the bridge. But at the end of it, I could only wonder at all the streets of plot and exposition they took to move everything forward.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it still remaining. Maybe a second viewing will help me see the film better now that I know what's coming.

[matrixschmatrix]

Thinking back on it, it's the missed opportunities that bother me more than anything.

Spoiler

It feels to me as if we never really get the feeling either for the peacetime Gotham before Bane or of revolutionary Gotham afterwards- certainly, we never see what anyone who isn't a cop, a crook, or an ultrarich person feels about much of anything. Bane's strategy makes little sense- what exactly is he after with the conquest of Gotham? Is it all just to make Batman feel bad? If not, what's the point if it's all just going to be blown up anyway?

If Bane had a real goal with Gotham- a fascist dictatorship, where we got a real feeling both for the hopes that drove people to support the revolution (despite its horrifically violent inception) and the ways in which Bane undermined and betrayed them, and in which Bane could produce or rule or generate something to make the conquest worthwhile for him (a hellhole city in which to form an elite fighting force, as in Dune, maybe) while keeping the rest of the world out with the threat of the bomb- that would make sense. The revelation that the bomb would destroy his work, and that his whole purpose was to punish Bruce, when Talia reveals herself- that would make sense for both characters, and nicely mean that Bane himself was a pawn in ways he did not understand as so many had been to him.

As it is, so much of it feels undercooked or arbitrary that it's hard to feel all that strongly about it except on the sort of visceral level, a Mission Impossible 4 like movie of set pieces strung together. I like that kind of movie well enough, but I think The Dark Knight and Inception both managed to be more than that- and as such, this is something of step back.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

Bane explained his point while Batman was in the hole: to make human beings truly despair, you don't take hope away, you give them the semblance of it, keep them striving, hoping, and then take everything from them. Like a hole that you think you can climb out of but never will. So your spirit isn't broken once, but repeatedly. That's what he's doing to Gotham (and Batman), making them think they can forestall nuclear destruction and try to make some sort of life inside this hellish fascist dictatorship (or, in Batman's case, think he can stop things) when all the while they are doomed and there is nothing they can do. They hope for salvation, are slapped back down, hope again, suffer again, hope, suffer and then are destroyed. I don't know if this idea is true or even coherent, but Bane thinks it is, and that's all that matters

[matrixschmatrix]

Spoiler

Hmm, I can see that- if the idea is to force people to scramble to survive on the shifting surface, only to kill them all anyway after they've thrown away their self respect- but if that's what the idea was, it really could have been better developed. As I said, we never get any real feeling for what it's like in Gotham after Bane's ascent- there's the kangaroo court, the kid about to get beaten for stealing the apple, the trapped cops, and Matthew Modine afraid to go out in the streets. That's about it, aside from the direct throughline of the plot. No real feeling for how people were reacting to the new status quo, how they felt about it, how they were surviving under it.

[Mr Sausage]

Spoiler

I think the scramblings of the police to save gotham or their trapped bethren and their being repeatedly foiled show the kind of thing Bane was going for. But you're right, in general it should've had a more comprehensive depiction. The movie is just so packed that things don't quite get the depiction they deserve. There's really two movies in here, and what's there is interesting enough that I can't say I'd want to lose any of it. But even so, it was all fun to watch. At no point was I not entertained, so I can't complain too much. That's all I wanted from the film anyway.

[SpiderBaby]

Spoiler

As much as it pains me to say this as Hathaway was superb, but the film could have lost Selina to focus more on Talia and Bane. As a powerful, threatening pair, I believe they could have occupied the film while streamlining the narrative better.

Ditching JGL also would have helped. This may be the Gary Oldman fanboy talking, but sidelining him really baffled me. He played the character so well that despite being older and in recovery from those wounds, I still felt that he had the resources to be the man he was in the earlier two films.

Spoiler

I would have liked to seen this film ditch the Selina and Blake characters too, but it's obvious "Catwoman" was here to sell this film, in the same way the studio wanted The Riddler. I doubt they thought the end of the trilogy could sell on the Bane name alone with Talia being a surprise.

Also I don't think it's the Oldman fanboy talking at all. I feel this trilogy was as much of Gordon's story as it was of Bruce Wayne. Dropping the Blake character I think would have gave the Gordon character a true chance to shine as he did in TDK. Dropping these 2 characters (Selina and Blake) would have helped not cluster the last chapter of a trilogy that "needed" to introduce 5 new characters. A film revolving around Bane and Talia (introducing her turn as Talia earlier) while ending the story of Wayne and Gordon would have saved time to get more into things like the Talia/Wayne relationship (and why he cared so much when she turned on him, the shock on his face before she introduced herself as Talia), etc.

[matrixschmatrix]

At no point was I not entertained, so I can't complain too much. That's all I wanted from the film anyway.

However much I complain, I do agree with this- and I hope that at this point that's going to be the minimum we can expect from any Nolan film going forwards. If a flawed, overcrowded and overburdened script that runs close to three hours can still feel propulsive and reasonably tight, as this does, it's hard to imagine that he could go too far wrong from here forwards.

[Mr Sausage]

All of Nolan's best films are the ones he makes between Batmans anyway. I think he uses these Batmans to make the studio enough money so they'll leave him alone to pursue his more imaginative projects. So while these films are not his best work he still puts in enough energy and skill to make them very watchable, whatever their flaws. Rises is a movie that's easy to pick at, so much so that one can easily lose sight of how slick and amusing it is. Compared to the turgid and overburdened (yet still empty) Transformers films, something like Rises more easily seems like the superb entertainment it really is. Like you say, way too packed and yet unflagging and tight. That's commendable.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Spoiler

As much as it pains me to say this as Hathaway was superb, but the film could have lost Selina to focus more on Talia and Bane. As a powerful, threatening pair, I believe they could have occupied the film while streamlining the narrative better.

Ditching JGL also would have helped. This may be the Gary Oldman fanboy talking, but sidelining him really baffled me. He played the character so well that despite being older and in recovery from those wounds, I still felt that he had the resources to be the man he was in the earlier two films.

Spoiler

I would have liked to seen this film ditch the Selina and Blake characters too, but it's obvious "Catwoman" was here to sell this film, in the same way the studio wanted The Riddler. I doubt they thought the end of the trilogy could sell on the Bane name alone with Talia being a surprise.

Also I don't think it's the Oldman fanboy talking at all. I feel this trilogy was as much of Gordon's story as it was of Bruce Wayne. Dropping the Blake character I think would have gave the Gordon character a true chance to shine as he did in TDK. Dropping these 2 characters (Selina and Blake) would have helped not cluster the last chapter of a trilogy that "needed" to introduce 5 new characters. A film revolving around Bane and Talia (introducing her turn as Talia earlier) while ending the story of Wayne and Gordon would have saved time to get more into things like the Talia/Wayne relationship (and why he cared so much when she turned on him, the shock on his face before she introduced herself as Talia), etc.

Spoiler

Ha! If only Selina was added to be the bigger selling point of the film. I know a lot of people who were excited that Bane was the baddie. That's a great point about the films being as much Gordon's story as Batman's. That makes me even more disappointed that Gordon was reined in so much for the movie. He was capable enough planning and jumping onto the truck to work on the bomb. There wasn't even a lot of emotional resonance provided for his relationship to Blake. The narrative provides his impetus for being Robin, but there's nothing at the end to indicate really how we should feel about him standing in the cave. "OMG! Robin movie starring JGL!" is a great reaction to end on (said the marketing team and all JGL fans), but come one - what's been invested in him to make the audience turn out for that movie?

[SpiderBaby]

Spoiler

Ha! If only Selina was added to be the bigger selling point of the film. I know a lot of people who were excited that Bane was the baddie. That's a great point about the films being as much Gordon's story as Batman's. That makes me even more disappointed that Gordon was reined in so much for the movie. He was capable enough planning and jumping onto the truck to work on the bomb. There wasn't even a lot of emotional resonance provided for his relationship to Blake. The narrative provides his impetus for being Robin, but there's nothing at the end to indicate really how we should feel about him standing in the cave. "OMG! Robin movie starring JGL!" is a great reaction to end on (said the marketing team and all JGL fans), but come one - what's been invested in him to make the audience turn out for that movie?

Spoiler

Reading this and looking back just makes me feel they spent more than half of this film introducing a character that might not even get a follow up film. Why would you waste that time of your highly praised trilogy to not focus on your 2 main characters (Bruce and Gordon) and end the story that you have told the past 2. It just makes me feel he spent all of Blake's time to give a wink to the audience that "it will go on". Now I feel sorry for a fictional character in Gordon that didn't really get the ending to this trilogy I thought he would after TDK. Fun film and had some great things that I loved, just was expecting more for the characters that was built through the past 2 films. It felt like they pushed them aside and had the Inception team and Anne take the trilogy over.

[LipsMahoney]

Spoiler

The film has many problems. Principally, it lacks the emotional tugs of both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. It felt, by the end, as though I had been watching a series of vignettes in a film that needed more traditional narrative drive a la Godfather Pt. 2. I never felt myself grappling with Bruce Wayne's struggle to escape Bane's prison, nor did I feel an adrenaline fuelled sense of redemptive catharsis at Batman's return to Gotham. Bruce climbs his way out of the hole and suddenly he's found Selina Kyle on the streets of Gotham a moment later. Few could predict that Wayne, I guess, has the psychic power to locate one person in a city of 30 million. Instead, we should have been with Bruce on his long, arduous, and emotional journey back to Gotham. We should have had a greater sense of his struggle in prison, watching Gotham crumble. When he says "I'm not afraid. I'm angry" we should have felt the same.

Bane's tactics were weak and his introduction to the story off-kilter. Alfred seems privy to "the rumors about Bane" while the Gotham PD is calling it all "nonsense." And why would Batman - the world's greatest detective - need Selina Kyle's help in locating an army of mercenaries squatting in the sewers? I never felt like Bane had much of a point. I was expecting him to be the bizarro doppelganger to Batman - in other words, poor boy born in prison who escapes and is trained by Ras Al Ghul. He now wishes for Gotham's demise as heir to Al Ghul's leadership of the League of Shadows. As a previous poster suggested, we never got a sense of Bane's revolution and the affects it had on the citizens of Gotham. I also found it totally unbelievable that, after the football stadium explodes (which was done cheaply and had zero resonance emotionally) Gotham's citizens instantly take to the streets and pillage the city like a bunch of brainwashed, heartless mongoloids. Where was the resistance to Bane's 'revolution'? And I'm not talking the cops

Miranda Tate and Wayne had absolutely no chemistry. Bruce reclaims his place in society, we see him meet Tate to discuss this hokey bomb-contraption, and suddenly she appears at Wayne Manor and the two of them have cheesy sex by the fireplace. While nobody could fault Bruce for, um, acting fast, once again there was little leading up to the romance and even less a sense of anguish at her betrayal at the end. It's not as though we ever got the sense that Bruce was missing her whilst imprisoned, certainly.

Foley was also a meaningless presence whose death was as pointless as Charlize Theron's in Prometheus.

And way to make Alfred out to be some poor, old crackpot who's deluding himself at the end of the film that he's seeing Bruce and Selina enjoying a cup of coffee. He deserved a more dignified treatment. Clearly the ending wasn't as ambiguous as some are making it out to be. Batman obviously couldn't have gotten out of the blast radius in time and we then see Alfred having a private breakdown by Bruce's grave - in other words, he wasn't 'putting on' for the sake of anybody. His knowing, unsurprised nod to Bruce at the cafe is concrete proof that he's been reduced to a sad, old failure forever living in another time and place.

No, I'm sorry, but on the whole this was an epic failure. Both Batman Begins as well as The Dark Knight provided much more emotion and narrative clarity than this one did. In Batman Begins I felt a rush when Ras Al Ghul's plans are foiled by a desperately swooping and gliding Batman, Gordon destroying the bridge and fist-pumping "yes!" In The Dark Knight I felt the gloom of it all as The Joker breaks out of prison, Dent scarred and Rachel dead, all "part of the plan." In Rises I felt nothing, even after Batman's back breaks and a nuclear bomb blows him to smithereens.

[matrixschmatrix]

Spoiler

There really isn't any in-movie reason to believe the ending should be taken at anything but face value- if we're going by the laws of physics, there's uh a whole lot in the movie that must have been a dream sequence, and we're given several pieces of corroborative evidence to support the idea that Bats really did survive. Not every Nolan movie ends with Michael Caine fantasizing.