movie thoughts: The Dark Knight Rises
Aug. 10th, 2012 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
orangerfulOMG time has gotten away from me! I meant to type this up on Saturday night after I saw this movie but it did not happen. Well, let's see if I can channel all the ideas I had in to this one blog post!
Short Version: Dark Knight Rises -- it was good. It could have been great. But it was good. Dark Knight is still the best, this was on par with Batman Begins.
The movie spans an insane amount of time (9 years since Dark Knight? Then another 5 months of "waiting"?) which explains why it's almost 3 hours long. The acting is solid, the action is good...the flaws are all in the script.
And now, for the long spoilery rant for those of you that have seen the movie
So, at first I was fine with the idea of Bruce Wayne dying. I thought "good, it's done, Bale is out, now it's permanent". Then I saw Alfred crying and was like "well, that's a shitty way to end the trilogy" so I was happy for that.
But, really, should Batman have a Super-Mega-Happy-Ending? Because this one did and it just did not quite sit right with me...
Here's the thing, the mantra for the series, and for Batman, is that Gotham is not all bad and that ANYONE can be a hero. So when I saw Bane BREAK BRUCE'S BACK, I assumed he was out of the game. I was unaware that punching someone's vertabrae back into place and letting them dangle from a rope for a few months would restore their ability to walk, let alone to kick-ass. But in the Nolan-verse, it does.
Here's what I would have preferred: Blake had already told Bruce he knew his idenity. We had several moments where Nolan set up Blake as the next Batman (the big one being when he realizes what a mistake it was to use his gun, even when he had no intention of harming anyone). When Bane took Bruce to the prison, thinking he was free of Batman (BECAUSE HE BROKE HIS BACK!), Blake should have gone looking for Bruce, found the Batman stuff, and started training. Instead of focusing on Bruce working out, we should have seen Blake honing his skills as a fighter and becoming Batman. Then we he ROSE to fight Bane, Bane would be all "WTF?!" and Blake/Batman could do the whole "anyone can be a hero". This would, of course, be seen by Bruce in his prison cell, and it would let him know that his life's mission, to help Gotham help itself, was finally done, that someone else had taken up the mantle of Batman and he was free...if he could escape (so we can have the stupid prison climbing thing). Blake could have *still* used the autopilot trick to survive at the end. Heck, he could have still pretended to be Bruce and somehow convinced Gordon that he was Bruce (all we needed was for Bruce to mention something to Blake during their one scene together) and VOILA!
But no one asked me. It's like Harry Potter Book 7 all over again.
I feel bad for Anne Hathaway, who is apparently getting a lot of criticism for her role. Catwoman was not necissary at ALL, BUT I felt she did a great job in the part. She carried herself well and she pulled it off for me. Yeah, we probably didn't need her, except for Nolan's desire to give Bruce a lady-friend to retire with (though I thought she was a lesbian for the first half of the movie...guess she was just bi).
And then there is Bane. Who was built up the entire movie, only to be turned into a joke at the end. Why? I did not like being M. Night Shymalan'd in my Batman movie. What a twist! Not really.
Someone said the movie needed to either be shorter or longer, but at it's current length, it's just okay. Clocking in at almost 3 hours, I wish it had been tighter. I think that script could have been cleaned up and streamlined a bit more. Less of Bane, more character development for Selena and Ms. Al Guul (I can't remember her name now...oh well, she was played by super pretty Marion Cotillard).
So...yeah, at least it's done. It was good. I probably won't watch it again. I don't feel like the themes are quite as timeless as Dark Knight. There's a reason the Joker is Batman's arch - he doesn't require any special set-up or plot twist to work. He is chaos. He is madness. Bane represented something else...or, at least, I thought he did, but then we got bait-and-switched at the end, so now I'm not quite sure if he was meant to do anything but distract us.
Short Version: Dark Knight Rises -- it was good. It could have been great. But it was good. Dark Knight is still the best, this was on par with Batman Begins.
The movie spans an insane amount of time (9 years since Dark Knight? Then another 5 months of "waiting"?) which explains why it's almost 3 hours long. The acting is solid, the action is good...the flaws are all in the script.
And now, for the long spoilery rant for those of you that have seen the movie
So, at first I was fine with the idea of Bruce Wayne dying. I thought "good, it's done, Bale is out, now it's permanent". Then I saw Alfred crying and was like "well, that's a shitty way to end the trilogy" so I was happy for that.
But, really, should Batman have a Super-Mega-Happy-Ending? Because this one did and it just did not quite sit right with me...
Here's the thing, the mantra for the series, and for Batman, is that Gotham is not all bad and that ANYONE can be a hero. So when I saw Bane BREAK BRUCE'S BACK, I assumed he was out of the game. I was unaware that punching someone's vertabrae back into place and letting them dangle from a rope for a few months would restore their ability to walk, let alone to kick-ass. But in the Nolan-verse, it does.
Here's what I would have preferred: Blake had already told Bruce he knew his idenity. We had several moments where Nolan set up Blake as the next Batman (the big one being when he realizes what a mistake it was to use his gun, even when he had no intention of harming anyone). When Bane took Bruce to the prison, thinking he was free of Batman (BECAUSE HE BROKE HIS BACK!), Blake should have gone looking for Bruce, found the Batman stuff, and started training. Instead of focusing on Bruce working out, we should have seen Blake honing his skills as a fighter and becoming Batman. Then we he ROSE to fight Bane, Bane would be all "WTF?!" and Blake/Batman could do the whole "anyone can be a hero". This would, of course, be seen by Bruce in his prison cell, and it would let him know that his life's mission, to help Gotham help itself, was finally done, that someone else had taken up the mantle of Batman and he was free...if he could escape (so we can have the stupid prison climbing thing). Blake could have *still* used the autopilot trick to survive at the end. Heck, he could have still pretended to be Bruce and somehow convinced Gordon that he was Bruce (all we needed was for Bruce to mention something to Blake during their one scene together) and VOILA!
But no one asked me. It's like Harry Potter Book 7 all over again.
I feel bad for Anne Hathaway, who is apparently getting a lot of criticism for her role. Catwoman was not necissary at ALL, BUT I felt she did a great job in the part. She carried herself well and she pulled it off for me. Yeah, we probably didn't need her, except for Nolan's desire to give Bruce a lady-friend to retire with (though I thought she was a lesbian for the first half of the movie...guess she was just bi).
And then there is Bane. Who was built up the entire movie, only to be turned into a joke at the end. Why? I did not like being M. Night Shymalan'd in my Batman movie. What a twist! Not really.
Someone said the movie needed to either be shorter or longer, but at it's current length, it's just okay. Clocking in at almost 3 hours, I wish it had been tighter. I think that script could have been cleaned up and streamlined a bit more. Less of Bane, more character development for Selena and Ms. Al Guul (I can't remember her name now...oh well, she was played by super pretty Marion Cotillard).
So...yeah, at least it's done. It was good. I probably won't watch it again. I don't feel like the themes are quite as timeless as Dark Knight. There's a reason the Joker is Batman's arch - he doesn't require any special set-up or plot twist to work. He is chaos. He is madness. Bane represented something else...or, at least, I thought he did, but then we got bait-and-switched at the end, so now I'm not quite sure if he was meant to do anything but distract us.
