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Saturday 21 July 2012

The Dark Knight Rises



Right, so I've managed to catch "The Dark Knight Rises" and frankly, I found it a bit disappointing. Spoilers abound.

Let's talk about the basic premise of the film. Batman has been out of action for 8 years ever since the death of Harvey Dent. Personally, my own opinion is that this could never happen because Batman, as a person, is way too driven to just sit around for 8 years. This is a man who trained for god knows how many years just to go around and fight people dressed as a bat, who is haunted and scarred by his parents death and who has vowed to try and prevent it from happening to other people. Of course, I'm a comic book reader as well so my view is a bit biased. 


So anyway, Bane then comes in and wrecks shit in Gotham, forcing Batman to stop him. To be fair, I didn't think much of Bane. His accent was too strange and I kept trying to place it but couldn't. He also tended to mumble some of his dialogue; again probably because of his mask. The last thing I didn't really like about him was really just because I didn't understand why people didn't just SHOOT HIM. Seriously, guy's not wearing armor on most of his extremities and he tends to go around walking out in the open. A sniper shot to the head and boom, your troubles are over. The guy doesn't even bother trying to hide. As a villain, I definitely prefer the Joker from the previous movie. 

Batman tries to stop Bane, fails, gets his back broken and then thrown into a really shitty prison known as the pit, where apparently the only deterrent to stop people from escaping is the fact they have to climb out of the pit, which is said to be impossible. Except Bane did it once. Funny thing is how there are no guards nearby guarding the entrance to the pit and apparently anyone can just go there and drop the rope the guards use to lower new prisoners into the pit and let the prisoners escape. Seriously? WTF. Also, another issue is how they fix Batman's broken back by; and I'm serious here, hoisting him up via a harness and then punching him in the back and letting him lie in the harness until he can stand. CONGRATS! Why didn't all the doctors think of that way? Why bother to heal people when you can just FUCKING PUNCH THEIR MEDICAL PROBLEMS AWAY!?!?


So anyway, Batman "recovers" and then goes back to fight Bane. He wins and a bunch of really predictable plot lines are then resolved with the expected and predictable resolution. 


What didn't I like about the film? The really really shitty writing for one thing. Here's one example, where the cop is telling Bruce Wayne "I know who you really are" and then he goes on to explain how when he was young, he saw Bruce Wayne visit their orphanage and realised he was an angry little orphan on the inside just like him, so he realised Bruce Wayne was Batman from that. WTF?!?! So any angry orphan must be Batman by that logic. Seriously wth. And what is with the sheer number of people who seem to know who Batman is? And let's not forget the "punch you till your back mends back" way of fixing a broken spine. Let's not even get into the fact that for some reason, Ras al'Ghul and his entire frigging family all seem fixated on destroying Gotham. Seriously? Why? I didn't even get it in the first movie and I still don't get it now. What is the big deal with Gotham. Not to mention there are several scenes which are either badly written or badly edited together which makes it seems like Batman can frigging teleport or be in multiple places at once. Like when they cut between two scenes, one with Gordon being forced to walk onto the frozen river and then cut to the young Cop being beaten up and roughed up by thugs. Then they cut to Batman saving Gordon and then cut to the cop being saved by Batman. HTF does that work?!!? If you're going to edit the 2 scenes to be next to each other, I'm going to assume they're taking place at the same time. There's pretty much no way for Batman to suddenly appear in 1 place and then rush to the other place within that short amount of time. 


And the fight scenes aren't much better. Case example 1, where the police march against Bane's army. Both sides have firearms although the police are carrying handpistols and Bane's army are carrying ak-47s apparently. Apparently, the police decide to walk in a huge crowd, like protestors; despite the fact that doing so is suicidal against sprays of bullets and grenades, and instead of shooting from a distance, they decide to run and fight the thugs hand to hand. -_- WTF indeed. 


The fight scenes involving Batman weren't much better. I suggest the fight choreographer for The Dark Knight Rises go and watch the Amazing Spider-man to see how good superhero fight choreography goes. My main issue was that for some reason, Batman keeps jumping in to fight everyone hand to hand. I have no idea why. He jumps head on into a crowd of gun-toting thugs to save catwoman. He goes to fight Bane hand to hand. Dude, he's Batman. He CHEATS. That's the good thing about Batman. He knows he's a mortal. He's not going to just jump into a gang of 10+ thugs and fight them all hand to hand. He's not the karate kid. He'll probably soften them up with same teargas, maybe stun a few of them with taser batarangs etc. Even the fight scene between Bane and Batman was horribly boring. It was like "Oh look, it's 2 guys punching each other...in street brawling style..." Um...kay. There was really nothing special about them fighting, there was no sense that EITHER of them were trained fighters at all. 


I did like the cinematography and the directing of the movie though. A lot of the scenes had visual impact and you could really feel the flow of the movie. It's just that the writing and bad fighting scenes really pulled it down for me. Overall, I just felt that they tried to put too many storylines together, what with Talia, the league of Shadows, Bane, Knightfall, the breaking of the bat etc. I really felt that the entire Knightfall saga could have easily made a good third movie by itself.



6 comments:

  1. It was Talia not Bane that escaped, no?

    What was the rope that he through back into the pit attached to?

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    1. Yeah, but I didn't really want to spoil the whole "the little kid is actually Talia, not bane" twist.
      And I assumed the rope was attached to a foundation or something. It looks like the same rope used to lower Talia's mother into the pit.

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  2. No one guards the pit because no one knows where the pit is located. Remember, no one escapes...

    So a villain isn't very good because he's bold enough to walk out in the open? balllllsssssssss

    How else is Bruce's back going to heal? In a burst of telekinetic energy as in the original comic? Come on. That's fucking lame compared to this.

    Blake's (the cop) conversation with Bruce prioritizes theme over reality. It establishes a character who has a deep psychological similarity to Bruce Wayne. It is no accident, of course, that Blake's character represents the form of hope that Bruce Wayne seeks to inspire. Bane, on the other hand, seeks to inspire hope so that people will become decadent animals before they are obliterated.

    The function of the League of Shadows is to wipe out decadent civilizations. This is called "fiction." I know it can be difficult, but it helps to try working with some imagination.

    The two scenes in which Batman comes to the rescue apparently simultaneously? Obviously you don't know much about Batman or narrative. The scenes are intercut in order to build tension, but they are resolved in a manner that reveals their sequential nature. Also, he's the fucking Batman. He's a fictional character whoi can do cool shit.

    If you watch the war scene carefully, some police officers do have guns and are using them against Bane's army. That is precisely the explanation for later scenes following Bane's fight with Batmanin which many police officers are shot in close-up shooting guns. Also, froma visual and dramatic standpoint, it is far better cinema to have two opposing armies collide. Protracted guerrilla conflict in the streets is not as dramatic.

    I do agree that the fight scenes aren't as visceral or kinetic as they could be, though the first Bane/Batman fight has some pretty nice moments, including wonderful banter.

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  3. The pit is located right outside a city. When people escape from it, the viewers can see a nice walled city in the background.

    Balls are good but so is not getting shot in the face by a sniper. Everyone likes to say this a realistic depiction of batman but no one ever seems to shoot the main heroes/villains in the face

    Telekinetic healing vs Punching for medicine....Hmm, I prefer the former because at least with the former, you can go "its magic...or similar" but punching for medicine makes less sense.

    Blake's conversation is one of the huge WTF moments of TDR. It's seriously wtf. Thematically it may work but seriously, there are probably a LOT of angry orphans out there in Gotham. Being an angry orphan should not give you +20 to spotting who batman is.

    The issue I have is 'Why Gotham?'. I don't even think they're doing this out of any twisted sense of logic anymore but more of a 'my daddy failed to do this so I'm going to' kind of thing. Talia's death btw? Sucked.

    There's no way to tell which came first. They both take place at night, and they both occur on screen at the same time. Batman can do a lot of shit but he can't be in 2 places at once, unless Dick is posing as him again.

    If you watch the war scene carefully, you'll notice the police walking in a huge square block towards Bane's men. Most of whom are armed with what look to be ak-47s and tanks. Seriously, that's a suicide march.

    I'm reminded of a really old film. 3 Kings starring George Clooney, where this ragtag group of people had to hold out against an army and did so with guerilla conflict in the streets. There was more visual and dramatic tension in that fight scene than there was in the clash of the police and thugs in TDR.

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  4. when i first saw the movie in theaters i liked it because i am a batman as well as nolan fan. TDKR is a good film with a lot of holes in it for sure, too much of this not enough of that. But i just wanted to point out 3 solid errors that really caught my attention but i feel caught almost nobody else's. I have the movie now so I've confirmed these errors and they are obvious when pointed out. Don't worry they aren't nit picky just HARRIBLE!

    1st
    i noticed this in the theater when i went to go see it for the first time. @ 2:27:00 in the movie batman kills a man. Straight up kills him maybe not on purpose because he is kinda shooting randomly, maybe its necessary but as any batman fan knows batman doesn't kill. Thats it! look at that scene and tell me otherwise, you know he's dead because he disappears after the truck fell and crashed. Only miranda is left.( in the front, btw isn't an atomic bomb highly unstable? ok thats not the point lol)

    2nd
    This horrific tragedy starts @00:53:30 but start watching closely around 00:53:20. This is a fight scene with catwoman fighting with batman on a rooftop against banes men. watch the bad guy to the left in the background @00:53:30 he freaking falls for no reason like he got punched but nobody touched him. This is a clear indication that the choreography was poorly planned because the camera angles are showing bad guys faking being punched. I get it its a movie but its been done correctly in the past as well as in other movies, don't screw us with horribly planned fight sequences.

    3rd
    Ok, i'll admit this is deja vue but you have to check out this super bad fight scene later in the movie, lol. lets jump to 2:08:00 but the error actually happens @ 2:08:05, check out my man (bad guy with gun) closes to camera on the left. WTF i mean seriously, whyyyy, why are these angles so poorly edited, no one clearly even touches him, i mean come on man. Then as the fight proceeds the gun men have clear shooting angles on batman. The point i'm trying to make is, i know batman isn't going to be gunned down in his own movie but just try to make the angles a little less.... ("oop yeah he defeniatly could of be shot there, oh and there too") give us a little more of the paul greengrass close up Jason bourne fast as shit hand to hand, trust me it will help you guys out. lol and thats it. you can email me if you want collegep88@gmail.com

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    1. Well, I don't have the DVD or bluray with me, but will have to check it out when I do. In general, the fight scenes were just really bad. I have no idea why everyone thinks it's great

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