The League of Shadows are fanatics, and fanatics can never be proven wrong, because they’re incapable of being wrong. They decided Gotham was corrupt and needed to be purified, and they weren’t about to let facts stand in their way. I actually found this one of the most realistic things in the movie.
My 2 cents.
Nolan/Bale’s Batman really is the most dull and uninteresting Batman of all those put to film. And I find it completely silly that the world’s greatest heist would be committed purely for the sake of some crazy guy really really really deciding that he hated a city.
That said, I enjoyed the film and for the last 15 minutes or so it just kept getting better. Whether Nolan intended it or not, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character was the one real, well-acted, non-comic book character and he got a great ending. If you flash back through the movie in your mind and consider Batman and Gordon to simply be the helping guides to set the Hero on his way (ala Joseph Campbell), giving him the right speeches and incentive to do what is just, then he comes out as the perfect hero of the tale. While I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about Batman in this series, I’m perfectly happy to view it as a Robin movie instead of a Batman movie. And on those terms, it was perfect.
I also loved Catwoman. They didn’t develop her character as much as I’d really want, but Hathaway did a good job of selling it, and at 33 I had my first film crush. She was awesome.
I enjoyed it. I didn’t like it as much as The Dark Knight, but it was still worth my time. Joseph Gordon Levitt was great, and Michael Caine killed it in his few minutes on screen. I wasn’t sure what to expect from Ann Hathaway but I thought she was pretty good as Catwoman.
Did it bother you that in Batman Begins that there was a giant machine that would dry up all the water in pipes that were close by without affecting people? All three films have been more gritty and realistic than other superhero movies, but there’s still definitely comic book science.
Most definately. While I really have enjoyed the Nolan Batman series and think they are the best comic book movie version yet, they just don’t stand up to putting them under a microscope.
I even asked the question about a year ago if Nolan films are better left unanalyzed. I think in the case of the Batman films they are.
Did it bug anyone else that Bane didnt hulk out? In the comics/cartoons, Bane had this stuff, Venom, that made him buff and strong. In the first fight, I kept expecting Bane to roid himself up THEN beat the snot out of Batman.
Honestly I liked that Bane had that mask. It put more focus on his eyes and body language. I always thought the scariest villans were the calmest looking ones- that acted like they had all day to kill you slowly.
But realism or not, I was disappointed Bane wasnt going all Super Sayan and throwing cars at people 
I initially thought the first fight between Batman and Bane was interesting, in that it showed Batman being completely outclassed for once. On later reflection, I do think the fights were a bit disappointing, but here is my partial fanwank:
It was established that Batman was out of the game for eight years. Alfred himself tells Bruce that he’s not who he was and he can’t handle being Batman anymore. I think he really DID forget how to Batman properly and tried to take Bane down with pure strength, and paid for it dearly.
The second time, Batman seems to be going for speed and precision over strength, taking advantage of Bane’s relative slowness and the big glowing weakpoint on his face. He dodges, blocks, or deflects Bane’s attacks while simultaneously going for the mask. He damages the mask, and Bane is all but screwed.
All in all, I thought it was pretty good. Not as good as the first two, but a good send off for the trilogy. Also, I liked how it pretty much was an ending. It’s so rare to see that in a superhero movie, and especially for Batman, as being cursed to protect Gotham instead of living a life is kind of his whole thing. I didn’t think the end scene in Florence was terribly inappropriate (certainly no more cheesy than Bruce just dying in the explosion).
I agree that the nuke timer was odd. They specifically noted that they were jury rigging it as a time bomb, not giving it an actual time trigger. Since the fusion core was designed for energy production and only modified to be a bomb, it doesn’t make sense that it would have built in functions to support its use as a bomb. Also, said magic timer was definitely operating on Dragon Ball Z rules. It seriously took only one minute for Talia to do her exposition, get in the truck and drive off, Catwoman to kill Bane, and Batman to hop in The Bat and find Talia?
I, too, thought the “nuke in the bay” thing was a bit of a premature celebration. I understand from a theatrical standpoint why it had to be “Yay! Gotham is saved!” instead of “Yay! We have time to evacuate now!” but it was a bit of a discontinuity for me. The fallout is going to be a serious problem for someone, as the wind carries it to wherever, and it probably completely screwed the bay’s ecosystem, so I hope Gotham isn’t famous for its crabs or something.
Its not really a “nuclear bomb” though. Its a fictional nuclear reactor that runs off some unspecified future-physics that’s been modified into a bomb. Who knows if it causes nuclear fallout or how much. For all we know, it makes nuclear fall-out that’s good for you (it is a comicbook-movie after all, where nuclear radiation gives people superpowers ten times as often as it hurts them).
The people of Gotham don’t seem to have been to worried about it, so apparently fallout wasn’t a problem.
I thought it might’ve been just my theatre was setup horribly, but after a google search it seems like other people had a hard time hearing the movie too. It wasn’t just Bane (though I can’t even BELIEVE a blockbuster movie would have such a difficult to understand main antagonist), but I couldn’t hear about 15% of the dialogue AT ALL, and about fully 1/3 of the movie was verry DIFFICULT to hear because of how BOOMING the freaking “background” (more like foreground) music was. I swear it was like Nolan was so damn proud of the movie’s score that the dialogue took a backseat or something. The entire speach where Ghul’s daughter made it to the reactor recharge thingy-couldn’t understand a single word of it.
The entire movie was like people were mumbling on the bus while some idiot had a boombox out.
edit: I’m 27 and have normal hearing, I can’t even IMAGINE how much more I would’ve missed if I was older. If I wasn’t with friends I would’ve walked out and demanded my money back since I couldn’t understand so much of what was being said, so I could rent it and turn subtitles on. This is the ONLY movie I have ever had this problem in, and I am NOT PLEASED I spent $15 on an imax ticket and had to strain to even understand what was being said.
YES. I thought that they were intentionally not showing Bane hulking out in the trailers so that it could be a big reveal during the movie of how it would look with him hulking out… CG or special effects? That is the coolest thing ABOUT Bane, it was super lame.
Agreed … kinda. My post above was in answer to a question about how nuclear bombs worked in general. However, they pretty clearly state the parameters of what kind of bomb it gets turned into: a four-megaton neutron bomb. I wish they’d been vague, because when lazy screenwriters get specific, it jars me out of the movie.
Luckily, it was so jarring I didn’t realize at first that the Bat-Copter-Thing somehow was retrieved after the blast and was fine?!
Somebody please tell me there was mention of a duplicate Bat-Copter-Thing, because I don’t know that I’ve ever heard of a more ridiculous plot-hole.
I enjoyed it. I wasn’t surprised by much, as I’ve read nearly ever comic that made up the last movie. There were two things I was expecting that we didn’t get to see.
I assumed Barbara would leave Gordon and he would start seeing Sarah. Barbara did leave him, but they never mentioned Sarah.
Since this movie followed the Dark Knight Returns pretty closely, I thought there was a slight chance we would see Superman fly off with the bomb, especially since Nolan has a hand in the Superman movie that is coming out. That would have helped start up the Justice League movie they want to make. I’m glad he didn’t show up though.
I figured there would be a Robin, since Dark Victory was the logical step after The Long Halloween. I wouldn’t necessarily call him Robin though, just giving us a little nod. If they did continue this series with JGL, he would either have to become Knightwing or a Batman Beyond character. Neither of those would please their fans though, as they would want to see Dick or Terry, not a John Blake guy that came out of nowhere. Besides, “John Blake” sounds like Tim Drake and he’s like a mixure of Tim and Dick.
I personally think a Batman Beyond move would be AWESOME.
I really liked it, the plot holes were not nearly as gaping as the first two. The criminal’s motivation was much more realistic than the second one. Catwoman was great. Robin was great. It was one of the few action movies were I never knew what was going to happen next. It was deep without being preachy at all. It could have used more action, but the action it did have was well done and meaningful.
The only problem with it was it could have used more Batman. It felt like a Bruce Wayne movie.
I am told by a friend who saw the movie twice that the Bat-Copter-Thing at the end was a different one, with a different paint job, so at least that wasn’t horrible.
I don’t know what happened for you, but I could hear things fine. I missed some of the dialogue, but it was maybe around 1%, not 15%. And I don’t remember anything being drowned out by the score. It’s true that maybe the sound could have been clearer, but I think there was a problem with your theater. I’m not trying to minimize your complaints, I just think it might have been the theater because there have been several times it has happened to me.
I’ve been to several movies over the years where the sound was messed up, and either the dialogue would be almost drowned out by the background noise, or it sounded like the actors were talking underwater, or it seemed like only some of the speakers were working, or various other things. I go to a lot of movies so this might have happened to me more than some other moviegoers. Sometimes the theater will get it fixed part way through after some complaints. One time the theater manager explained they couldn’t fix it because of the digital projection which didn’t make sense to me. I went to Magic Mike last week, and the sound was really weird and it was really hard to hear the dialogue over the background noise. They restarted the movie and it still didn’t fix the sound, and then later they improved it somehow but it still wasn’t great, but for our troubles they gave everyone free movie passes so I wasn’t too upset.
Nothing too important to say other than my audio was fine.
While I could hear everything fine some of the vocals seemed to be a bit off or like they were dubbed in later.
When we first see Bane in the airplane the other characters voices sound fine like they are echoing properly and are muffled enough by the enclosed space of an airplane cabin. But Bane’s voice sounded like someone doing voice over narration.
Then in the first seen of Bruce Wayne in the batcave talking to Alfred, it must have been one of the first scenes shot, or shot later, or dubbed later as Christian Bale had a very odd accent going on.
I had a hard time understanding some of Bane’s vocals; the rest was mostly OK.
Honestly, I think it’s only a matter of time. The same with a “Gotham Central” TV show.
“Some men just want to watch the world burn” was an unrealistic motivation? I guess we’ll just have to disagree.
I think there were two explanations - 1) that Gotham was fixed on the basis of a lie, which was used and 2) that Gotham was “fixed” but only by turning into a fascist state and ignoring the corruption among the rich and the police. The first is squarely put forth in the movie, but I don’t think it makes a good argument - who cares if they made a false idol to get the Dent Act through, if it was a good thing? - whereas the second was left more to a few lines with Catwoman. I think it would’ve been a much stronger argument to have someone argue to Bane “but Gotham is good now” and have him launch back with something like “it’s only fixed to you, Batman, a billionaire, who can’t understand how those in power with their money have taken hold over the common man.” YMMV of course.
And turning Gotham into a psuedo-anarchist/mob-rule state only to blow up everything, including themselves, is just stupid no matter how fanatic.
Out of curiosity, did you see this at a “real” IMAX or a “LieMax” digital IMAX theater?