Improve the Dark Knight Rises

Cafe Society
21

I thought the whole structure of the movie was screwed up. Plot threads are introduced, and dropped; characters do random things for no reason; the timeline is all over the place.

Here’s what I’d do.

  1. Start the movie with Batman still being active, having become over-confident. He is so successful against witless goons that he’s started buying his own hype. Right there we now have a hero with a fatal flaw: hubris.

  2. If you’re going to have Talia, introduce her right away, and for god’s sake give her some motivation. Movie-Talia is all over the place: “Daddy abandoned me and my mother to die, but I still tracked him down to become his loyal follower. Then he excommunicated my best friend and protector, and I hated him for it, but then you killed him so I hate Batman even though that happened two movies ago and like nine years in-universe.”

Probably what I’d do is have Talia as the natural successor to her father’s empire, searching for a man worthy of ruling by her side. She sets her sights on Batman, but her second-in-command, Bane, wants the job.

  1. That naturally leads to Bane’s motivation: he loves Talia and not only does he want to win her from Bruce, he wants to win Gotham from Batman. I’d set his encounter with Batman in the first act.

  2. The first act ends with Batman vastly underestimating Bane, and Bane breaking Batman’s back. Now, the movie has tension. Bruce has to come back from his debilitating injury and prove that he isn’t just someone who can beat up thugs: he is the hero that Gotham deserves.

  3. I’d either modify, or more likely, simply jetison the bomb storyline. Everything about it is muddled. Why do Bane and Talia have to wait 3 months for the bomb to go off? If they want to kill everyone in Gotham, why not do it right away? You could probably keep some of the themes of No Man’s Land, with Bane and Talia’s supporters mobbing the city and Gotham being cut off from the rest of the country.

  4. Sad to say, I’d probably leave out Catwoman. Her characterization never seems to go anywhere, and Hathaway and Bale have NO chemistry.

  5. Although she’s on ‘top of the world’, Talia should be torn about her feelings for Bane and Bruce. She recognizes that Bruce is a cut above anyone else she’s ever known once he comes back from his spinal injury and begins retaking Gotham from her and Bane. But Bane’s loyalty to her is absolute. In a curious role reversal, from Talia’s point of view, Batman is the Veronica to Bane’s Betty.

  6. I could go any number of ways in the climax. Obviously, Batman saves the day. Getting the girl is another story. If Rachel was the good girl he never could get, Talia is the bad girl he shouldn’t want. Perhaps Bane ultimately sacrifices himself to allow Talia to escape, even knowing she would never choose him over Bruce. Or perhaps Batman brings in both Talia and Bane, remaining conflicted over his feelings for her, but ultimately honoring justice above romantic feelings.

22

Or even if Batman wasn’t too sure of himself, he might simply not realize the kind of threat Bane poses. Batman can certainly be fooled, and he may disciount the kind of existential threat Bane intends to create.

Similarly, This is a good idea just to give the movie an actual arc. Tanbarkie suggested focusing on a single character arc. I suggest actually having one. One huge issue is that the movie starts with Bruce broken already. That could be a good movie, but having Bane win so thoroughly stops the arc dead. With the movie as it is, it would have infinitely more impact if Batman wasn’t a depressed cripple hiding his misery from the world. This gives him a much more defined arc.

(Seriously? BATMAN, of all people, gets depressed and hides from the world? Screw you, Nolan! I can understand him doing so for a while; I believe he took a 6-month hiatus from being Batman once or twice. But more or less the one defining essence of Batman’s character is that’s mentally strong. His spirit will not break.)

23

I liked the latest game (Arkham City) way more than I liked this movie.

The theme was Batman as the instigator of violence. violence begets violence, and, like natural selection, his street brand of justice has bred a more powerful, more destructive criminal.

“Would the Joker even exist, if it wasn’t for you, Batman?”

Says Dr. Strange, and that gave me pause.
I would have preferred a similar theme in the movie. Have Bane tell the people about Dent, explain the lie and make his fall Batman’s fault. So the government lies to you, the Batman is the reason for the Joker, for Dent, rise up People of Gotham! Rise up against the tyranny of the corrupt elite and of the remorseless vigilante!

Get rid of Rash’s daughter. Completely out of left field in a very Deus ex Machina sort of way, IMHO.

And a little more backstory with catwoman to explain why Batman would trust her.

24

Some humor would have been nice.

25

If we’re only going to make relatively minor changes, I’d have liked to have seen less of the prison stuff and more actual Batman being Batman. I thought the whole charging cop thing was silly and that, though I liked the character, John Blake just had too much screen time.

I also felt like the whole thing between Miranda Tate and Bruce Wayne thing didn’t really work right. I’m okay with her secretly being Talia, but I always felt that what makes her character really compelling is that she really loves Batman but that their goals are diametrically opposed. Just having them sleep together once just doesn’t really play up to that.

I liked Catwoman in the movie and I thought Anne Hathaway did a good job with the role, but I also felt like the character was sort of shoehorned in and they could have done essentially the same movie without her in it. I also felt like it added a little bit of confusion since he more or less had two love interests in the film, and though he spends the whole time flirting with Catwoman and ends up with her, he randomly sleeps with Talia and it kinda hurts both. If they weren’t really going to play up the love relationship between Talia and Bruce, they should have just left that part out and had the whole taboo love thing with Catwoman and it probably would have been fine.
Now, if we’re going to make major changes, I thought they kind of wasted the ending of Dark Knight. I expected that, when Bane was going to be the villain, that they’d have spent some time pursuing Batman and failed, so there would be some backroom deal made to hire the mercenary Bane to defeat Batman. We still get the arc where Batman is defeated by him and then sort of semi-retires, sort of a combination of where the movie actually started and the whole prison part. Meanwhile, after defeating Batman, Bane turns his minions against the city. If they wanted to, they could even still have the whole Talia part in the film and have it later revealed that she was the one that helped engineer the hiring of Bane and that, like her father using Crane before her, she was just using him as a means to remove Batman as an obstacle and show the city tear itself apart.

26

This is outragingly funny to me.

So in this thread and the other Batman thread (which I’ve just now read because I’m late to the party), several people stated the ending would have been better had they not panned to Batman/Wayne. Correct, but I think a bunch of children would have whined about it had they not actually shown his face, and we don’t lose much by that tiny reduction of subtlety, so eh. My other complaint: uhm, not to be Captain Obvious here, but where the fuck was Batman? I wanted more of Batman doing Bat stuff.

I had other complaints that I got over, but I can’t deal with a Batman movie with only something like two and a half scenes of him badasssing. Yes, Talia’s death was kitschy. Yes, the script had too many faux-clever lines. No, I couldn’t understand wtf Bane was saying half the time. Yes, enough with the fucking pit already.

Also, I liked Catwoman. I should point out, I suppose, that I absolutely am in love with Anne Hathaway, so maybe I’m biased.

27

It would have been a nice nod to the older Batman fans!

But I have a fever, and the only cure is MORE Catwoman! Meoooooooooow!

28

(spoilers, natch)
Biggest improvement from the smallest change: that last (or almost last) scene, with Alfred in Italy, at his traditional restaurant table, catching a glimpse of Bruce and Selena, as per his stated fantasy earlier?

The camera never cuts away from Alfred, this time—just focuses on his face staring, shocked and happy at the camera before he walks away.

v1.2: Hathaway’s Selina walks across the frame, in the foreground, out of focus, towards what Alfred’s staring at. Perhaps not entirely obvious unless you freeze-frame the DVD, and/or hear the actors’ confirmation.

v1.3 (Schmaltz mod 1): She’s carrying a little bundle.

v1.3.1 (Schmaltz mod/sequel bait v2): Almost inaudible, but listening closely to the soundtrack reveals that she cooing at “Helena.”

In fact, that’s what I might have worked into the story as a whole—more of the “Bat family.” Or, rather, hints that they’re starting to rise up, independently of Bruce, inspired by him, his absence, and the needs of Gotham. The Dark Knight might be gone, but the heroes aren’t—and they can come from anywhere. “The People” of Gotham are rising up, not as a blind mob out for destruction, but to protect and defend each other.

It doesn’t have to be a full line of costumed heroes lining up like the Mercury 7 in the final battle with Bane—probably no one in a costume at all, and never actually meeting. Just little flashes here and there, and more in the epilogue montage. Have Barbara Gordon moving back with her father in Gotham to attend college—and show an unusual selection of Batman-related books and equipment as she unpacks. Jean-Paul Valley is shown helping Gordon’s resistance earlier. Carrie Kelly shows up at some point—stuff like that.

In other words, show that the Dark Knight doesn’t just rise up—Batman begins something, more than a single man.

Oh, and more snow during the police battle towards the end. At least a small flurry. :smiley:

29

Ehh… I’m not sure that adding more Bat-trivia would “improve” the movie in any measurable way. As it was, the Robin and Talia al Ghul stuff, which were obviously intended as nods to the fan audience, hurt the movie badly. Part of it was the clunky execution of these elements, yes, but I would argue (as I did above) that the film would’ve been improved by stripping these things out entirely.

Focus the narrative, dammit! These aren’t Schumacher’s films - hell, they aren’t even Raimi’s or Whedon’s more overtly comic-booky (but also excellent) takes on their respective material. This is Nolan’s Batverse, in which story and theme and character should come first - waaaay ahead of gimmicky fanservice that creates no emotional context for audience members not “in the know.” Fix Batman, fix Bane, drop Talia, maybe even drop Catwoman, and presto: you’ve got yourself a lean, propulsive story, rather than an incoherent mishmash of ideas.

Edited to add: I should note that I’m not actually against the idea of a “Rise of the Bat-family” arc - it’s just that’s so obviously not what Nolan was going for here. He could probably have made a great movie focused on that arc, but it wouldn’t bear any resemblance to this one. Adding a Bat-family arc to the existing plot would just muddle the thematic drive of the movie even further.

30

Give Bane his Venom! I wanted to see hin roid out. He fights Batman, looks like Batman has the upper hand, then Bane juices up and beats the tar out of him.

What made Bane scary in the comics/cartoons was that he was the best of both worlds- smart and strong.

31

Have John Blake be a witness protection name for Tim Drake or something. I don’t like the ending being left open with the possiblility that Blake will take over as Batman or become Robin or Nightwing or anything else. Being Tim Drake would make it better, but cops aren’t trained to fight several ninjas at one time and just putting on the suit will likely get him killed.

32

It doesn’t really matter because that movie will never be made.

33

"[Bane]s ambition turns to destroying Batman, about whom he had heard stories while an inmate. He is fascinated with Gotham City because, like the prison, it is a place where fear rules—but in Gotham, it is the fear of Batman. Bane is convinced that the demonic bat that haunted his dreams since childhood is a representation of the Batman. Therefore, he also believes that fate has placed the two on a collision course.

Aware that a direct assault on Batman would be foolish, Bane instead destroys the walls of Arkham Asylum – allowing its deranged inmates (including the Joker, Two-Face, Mr Freeze, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, the Mad Hatter, the Ventriloquist, Firefly, Poison Ivy, Cornelius Stirk, Film Freak and Victor Zsasz) to escape into Gotham City. Consequently, Batman is forced to recapture the escapees, a mission that takes him three months. Having run himself to exhaustion in the process of completing this mission, Batman returns to Wayne Manor where Bane ambushes him (having previously determined his secret identity). Bane attacks Batman in the Batcave, defeats him, and delivers the final blow: breaking Batman’s back, leaving him a paraplegic. Bane thus becomes the only man to have “Broken the Bat”."