Now THIS is a movie I can get behind!!!!
I saw the preview before the 3D IMAX Avengers flick, and I have a theory....
And it brought to mind Gargamel's cat.
Please return with a fair, honest review.
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Also Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the most obscure Batman supporting character ever.
Saw it early tonight. Came in with high expectations.
I guessed three MAJOR plot points by the first 40 minutes into the movie, but even then I was still very happy with the way it all played out, ANY comic book fan, even non hard core followers of Batman, will guess at least two of them because of the clues, one of them I guessed even before I got into the theater because of the obscure comic character reference played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.
Again even with those plot points practically given away it was still an epic film!
There were two parts/instances in the film I did not like but I can forgive them that and can suspend my belief just long enough that they were only worth mention because they were the ONLY times I thought to myself, "well, it's just a movie" but aside from those two the whole was a spectacular and fitting end to the Myth of the Dark Knight Trilogy, GO WATCH IT!
This is excellent news. I can only hope that it will shatter records at the box office.
Please return with a fair, honest review.
Like your Whedon ones?
This is excellent news. I can only hope that it will shatter records at the box office.
Like Whedon's recent film?
;-)
Please return with a fair, honest review.Like your Whedon ones?
This is excellent news. I can only hope that it will shatter records at the box office.Like Whedon's recent film?
;-)
I felt my review of mr. Whedon's most recent work was quite fair. I gave him what props were due, and pointed out problems that existed. And I can only hope that the last part of this trilogy meets or exceeds the benchmark set by the Avengers.
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And I can only hope that the last part of this trilogy meets or exceeds the benchmark set by the Avengers.
My dear friend, the movie will exceed the benchmark set by the yet unmade Avengers taking on Thanos.
Go into an IMAX theater with high expectations, witness even that ceiling shattered. I'll be happy to go with you and bring the popcorn.
It was great, up through the ending. I felt the same way about The Dark Knight though, for example. The 2-3 minutes after Harvey Dent's scene just fell a little flat for me. The final battle had a couple meh moments as well. Overall though, the movie was great, I'll probably see it again sometime this next week.
I do want to hear like 3 more hours of Bane dialogue though. Just the sound and cadence of his voice was awesome.
Great movie! Finally an accurate portrayal of Bane as a character.
A spectacular finale to a trilogy that understood that the best Batman stories aren't about focusing on Batman exclusively, but that it's the characters and their inter-personal dynamics with each other that are an equal share of Batman's mythos & appeal.
I also give extensive props to the number of instances of Batman-lore from the comics that are given homage in one form or another throughout the film.
And while I had my reservations about Hatthaway as Catwoman, the lady nailed it. THAT'S the best Selina Kyle I've seen outside of the comics (& Arkham City), period.
I just saw it.
It was good and I enjoyed it quite a bit.
But it is easily my least favorite of the Batman trilogy.
It doesnt hold a candle to The Avengers...and even Amazing Spiderman was better than Dark Knight Rises.....but dont get me wrong it was still an awesome movie and definitly worth seeing.
I thought it was great. Easily better than Amazing Spider-Man on all levels. Not as much fun as The Avengers, but far more thought-provoking and ultimately rewarding.
It handwaved a few things that I would have preferred they explore: how did he get back to and into Gotham from Where-the-hell-istan? How did Bane figure out his identity - and Blake, for that matter? How did Batman know to go to bail out Catwoman from the corrupt CEO? Why was Alfred doing the research, and where was he getting his info?
Man, did Anne Hathaway look hot! I usually don't like her that much, but she was as perfect for the role of Selina Kyle as Heath Ledger was for the Joker.
Saw it, loved it. Not hugely surprising, since Bane is one of my favorite comics villains/anti-heroes and this is the first adaptation I've seen to really do some justice. The fact that the whole movie was basically a mash-up of Knightfall and No Man's Land was an extra bonus.
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Meh. Overly long. Drug in quite a few places. Action/fight scenes are NOT Nolan's strong suit. I found it amusing that after all the crowing about how we were finally getting a mastermind Bane that lived up to the comics, he was ultimately still someone's henchman. Hathaway was the bright spot in the film.
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The only thing I like about Batman is he's got a few good rogues. I saw Batman Begins because I like Ra's Al Ghul (coulda been handled better,) I skipped The Dark Knight for several years because I hate The Joker (Ledger did a good job, but I still hate Joker) and I only saw this movie for Bane. I only seemed to care what was happening when he was on-screen and sort of wish the movie had ended with him drinking chai out of Batman's skull through a specially designed curly straw while air conducting an imaginary orchestra as bombs went off around him.
It was a good movie, but it didn't do anything to make me like Batman and I still think Bale's Bat-Growl is ridiculous. Definitely nowhere near as satisfying as The Avengers.
I coulda sworn when Bane talked that Patrick Stewart was the one voicing him.
Well....At San Diego Comic Con DC Comics anounced that they want a Justice League movie out in 2015.
So the new Batman will be the JL Batman.
DC said they were going to do these movies like Avengers in reverse. They will start with the team movie and then do movies based on individual heroes later.
I have a question for those who said that they did an accurate portrayal of the Bane character for once. (This is a tiny bit spoilery but not really.)
I havent read comics...but I have played the Arkham video games and watched animated shows and movies.
The Bane I know is a Latino, he uses a chemical called Venom to make his muscles grow and he hulks out, and he has no connection to Ras'al Goul or the League of Shadows.
Movie Bane is a white guy. He wears a mask to feed him pain killers because he was badly injured, and he was once a member of Ras'al Goul's League of Shadows.
I thought movie Bane was Bane in name only. I liked the character...but it wasnt Bane. What is he like in the comics that made you feel the movie did the character justice?
What Bane would you rather have? The Dark Knight Rises Bane or the Bane from the movie with Posion Ivy?
Oh easily Dark Knight Rises Bane is SOOOO much better. Batman & Robin Bane wasnt even able to speak. He was pretty much Ivy's robot.
But the point is that neither of them were Comic Book Bane. At least Batman & Robin Bane was from South America and used Venom.
The villian in Dark Knight Rises was awesome...but seemed to me to be Bane in name only.
The Bane I know is a Latino, he uses a chemical called Venom to make his muscles grow and he hulks out, and he has no connection to Ras'al Goul or the League of Shadows.
Movie Bane is a white guy. He wears a mask to feed him pain killers because he was badly injured, and he was once a member of Ras'al Goul's League of Shadows.
In the comics, Bane used venom in his first appearances. After he was defeated, he dropped the venom, went through withdrawal, and went through most of the next 20 years of comic book appearances without it. He's an immensely strong man without venom and can outthink Batman when he needs to.
The painkillers thing is a totally new angle not in the comic. The connection to Ra's al Ghul does have its roots in the comics, where Bane became al Ghul's heir for a time before having a falling out with him that sent them on their separate ways. Bane's connection to a life in prison, while not entirely like the comics, is fairly close.
Those referring to Bane being done accurately are talking about the fact that he's not shown as dumb muscle who relies solely on steroids to get an advantage. He's not exactly like he was in the comics, but none of the villains in this trilogy have been - Ra's al Ghul wasn't Arabic and immortal, the Joker didn't have bleached white skin, and so on. But he has a lot of connection to his comics origins and is the first time to my knowledge that the character has been treated with some degree of respect in an adaptation.
The Bane I know is a Latino, Movie Bane is a white guy.
According to Wikipedia, Bane in the comics is the son of Sir Edmund Dorrance, a British national (i.e., a white guy). In some of the art, Dorrance is even blond. Bane's "from South America" because mommy was in a South American prison at the time of his birth, I guess.
Reading further, the Wikipedia article says, "eventually Bane impresses Ra's al Ghul so much that he chooses Bane as his heir (an "honor" he had previously bestowed on Batman)."
Anyway, real comics fans can hopefully correct me if this stuff is far off, but it seems to me that criticizing the character in the movie because he doesn't follow a video game spin-off character is a bit off the mark, especially since he seems to follow some of the comics incarnations pretty closely.
I saw it today, great movie, still liked Dark Knight better, but still a good ending to this incarnation.
I've been mulling over my response to this film since Friday, and this is as good a forum to share it as any.
What I Liked:
Individual actor performances (all of them except Marion Cotillard, actually).
Blake (presumably) taking on the mantle of the Bat.
The reference to Dark Knight Returns when the old cop and rookie cop see Batman return to crimefighting during a police chase.
What I Disliked:
The plot (it was a convoluted mess)
The lack of Batman-centrism (and the lack of Batman-ness even when we were focused on him)
What they did to Jim Gordon's character
What they ultimately reveal about Bane
The Talia plot/reveal
Going into this, I made a point of modulating my expectations. Nothing could top TDK, so I didn't expect Nolan to totally blow me away - I did expect that he would at least match the first film, if not exceed it (he did neither, in my opinion).
So the plot: so many things did not seem to make sense for me, particularly, what happens to Bruce after the last film. His girlfriend dies, so he just suddenly GIVES UP on being Batman? This makes no sense for the character - we're talking about someone who, the last time criminals murdered his loved ones, devoted his life to fighting crime in the scariest, most painful way possible. Now the love of his life gets blown to smithereens by a crook and his response is to throw in the towel? Sorry, that doesn't work for me.
I didn't like the gloss of the "Dent Act," either. Gotham City, for the past two films, has been the most corrupt and crime-ridden city in human history. Now suddenly the city appears magically crime-free, without any of the poverty or corruption that were constantly on display before? Oh sure, there's a line here or there that tries to invoke some kind of class tension, but it's VISUALLY absent - the audience never sees the dirty part of Gotham in this movie, unlike in BB and TDK. That's just lazy film-making right there; you're supposed to show, not tell. It also plain doesn't make sense in a broader narrative sense - Batman only really fits in a city that is deeply, deeply messed up. What makes Batman distinct from other superheroes (like, say, Superman) is that Batman is an imperfect solution to a problem that's gotten out of hand; in a city where the cops and politicians are all in bed with the criminals, you need a vigilante to break the laws (and quite a few faces). That is to say, Batman's real foe is Gotham City and the conditions for crime that it fosters, not any particular super-villain. By changing Gotham so drastically, the film creates a setting that doesn't really fit Batman.
Next, for a Batman film, there's surprisingly little screen time for the hero, and even when he IS on screen, he's not doing a lot of Batmanning, so to speak. By this I mean he's not beating the ever-loving snot out of criminals and terrifying them (like he does in BB and TDK). Instead, Batman becomes some kind of heroic rebel leader against the bad guys (I HATED the line where he says, "You've given me an army." Batman's natural impulse is to do things on his own, not enlist allies).
There were a few moments where some of the old thrills returned and I started getting psyched - Batman's return to action on the Batpod, the rooftop fight with Catwoman, and the initial approach to Bane (round 1) all had some good Batmanning, but there were much longer chunks of the movie where there was very little going on besides exposition (or rehashing plot points from earlier movies), and this made things really drag.
On a character level, Jim Gordon was totally mismanaged. I loved him in the earlier two flicks - an honest cop who's doing his best in a bad situation. In this film, he seems like he's become a doddering old man: half of the main cast knows Batman's secret identity at least halfway through the film, including a kid who's only met him ONCE, but Gordon has to practically have it spelled out for him before he figures it out, despite being one of Batman's closest allies. And when Gordon does come to this realization, it has almost no impact on the audience, because SO many other people have figured it out that it doesn't seem particularly meaningful that Bruce reveals himself to Jim.
Similarly, the Talia reveal just did NOT work for me. It could have been a really great plot element if it had been at all developed, but neither of Bruce's love interests got to spend much time with him in this film, so the emotional impact of her betrayal was severely blunted. Heck, the romance in general didn't make much sense to me - earlier in the film, Bruce is so distraught about having lost Rachel that he's become a recluse and hung up the cowl, but moments (in film time) later he's hooking up with some rich girl he has no real history with. Now, he did have some decent chemistry with Catwoman, but they got so little screen time together I felt like their eventual pairing up felt a little forced.
One other thing about Talia: Ra's Al Ghul's daughter should be WAY more badass.
As for Bane? I grew up reading Knightfall, and as a kid, he terrified me. As I got older, though, I've liked him less and less, but I always liked how much he valued Gotham as a symbol - he wanted it to be HIS city, which meant taking it away from Batman. Bane had an appreciation for symbols and theatricality that matched Batman's, and he employs those elements just as well as the caped crusader. Here, though, Bane is just another stooge for a different villain, and in such a way that it really detracts from the character (I was totally willing to buy him as being Ra's successor; he has all of the smarts, ruthlessness, and general badassery for it. Talia adds nothing to the equation). We find out he's not the boogeyman at all, which totally deflates him as an antagonist (a point illustrated by how quickly and comically he's disposed of moments after we find out he's just a glorified lackey).
And his plot? I really don't get it. I don't see why they have to wait for a month to blow up Gotham, since Ra's basic plan in the first movie was to destroy the city in one fell swoop. What do they gain from their little Occupy Gotham show? And what was up with the passage of time? It was hard to track the transition from week to week during the countdown; so much so that it felt like Batman suddenly recovered from a broken back in a matter of days.
I really wanted to like this flick, and I think it was all the more disappointing to me because all of the pieces were in place for a really awesome movie (JGL's character in particular had me excited, and I was glad to see what they did with him at the end. I would probably even watch a fourth movie with him as the lead). I think the overall arc wasn't even necessarily bad; I like the idea of Bruce passing the torch to a successor and finally growing into a different person. I just don't think Nolan managed to execute things successfully on this one. This film needed a tighter, more Bruce-centric plot; they probably should've omitted Talia entirely, and scaled the nefarious scheme down a lot more, made it more personal.
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Just got home from the movie. Like the previous one, well made but not a flick I want to see a second time. Far too grim, a bit longer than necessary, and not enough Bruce Wayne/Batman. Anne Hathaway was great as Catwoman, and the ending was satisfying, but I can't say that I really liked the film overall. Still waiting for a Batman movie that equals what Bruce Timm did in the '90s with the character...
Still waiting for a Batman movie that equals what Bruce Timm did in the '90s with the character...This may sound overly snarky (and I apologize in advance if it does) but what you are seeking is never going to happen in a single movie, and it's going to be a very tall order for even a trilogy of movies. Timm had 109 1/2 hour episodes to work with, 5 crossover episodes with the Superman animated series, 3 feature length animated films, 91 episodes of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited, 52 episodes of Batman Beyond, which also had it's own feature length animated film. Oh, and 4 episodes of Static Shock too.
Don't forget Young Justice.
I'm going to give it a go, but what I'v heard from friends, (some of which loved the first 2) is this movie was absolute garbage. We will see. . .
I think after #2, it is a little bit of a let down. It hits a lot of pitfalls common in movies trying too hard to be epic. If you go in expecting the epic that defines the decade, you will be disappointed. If you go just to have a good time, it satisfies.
My other major complaint... sometimes the music/noise is too loud. They actually drown out dialogue with the score once or twice.
Saw batman last night (Finally!). Easily not as good as Avengers. Entertaining, yes. I came out of the movie feeling very underwhelmed.
Spoilery goodness for the review for those that haven't seen it.
The opening scenes with Bruce using a cane, then using some sort of brace on his leg to make his movements easier. Okay, I can suspend disbelief there. What happened after that when he lost that in the pit of where-in-the-hellistan? He didn't have that later to my knowledge as he walked back into Gotham.
The battle with the police. Seriously, the guys with SMG's and full machine guns were firing at the police's feet? Really? Fun fight, but it was, essentially, a riot.
Bane knew who Bruce was? WTF?! Did it make him more engaging, yes. Hell, he actually did a good job overall with that. The voiceover thing though was disconcerting and not well done as I would expect with a movie of this caliber.
The end scenes with Catwoman and the bomb as the cable got hooked to it. The timer said something like 2 minutes left and they have time for a 3-minute exposition and to make out?! Okay, action movie trope. It sucks.
There were several scenes where the suspension of disbelief was not really possible. When that happened, I rolled my eyes. It was not as engaging as I had hoped. Not nearly as engaging as the Avengers, and, really, set it up for a sequel that will likely be very underwhelming.
thejeff, Kthulhu: more of that should be spoilered.
I think it would have left a lot of things unresolved, but seriously ending the movie with Alfred crying over the grave would have been better than the trite pile of stuff that followed after that.
I've been mulling over my response to this film since Friday, and this is as good a forum to share it as any.
I think this pretty much sums up my feelings about the movie. For an action movie, it wasn't bad good, but I was there to watch the sequel to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight.
Aside from Anne Hathaway's performance (which was very good) I didn't really "get" Catwoman's role in the movie at all. She just kinda shows up, does some stuff, and ends up happily ever after with Bruce. I think they should have shaved off a bunch of the overly convoluted plot and perhaps explored a bit more of Catwoman's (I'm not sure we can even call her that) backstory, and maybe even give her a purpose. Or, alternatively, just cut her out of the movie entirely.
Where is she from? How did she become a ninja? Why did she become a ninja? Why did she decide to stop? What's up with her friend? (They seemed really close, at one point. Did she just dump her for Bruce, or something?)
Lots of stuff they could have explored. I think this is where Whedon beat Nolan in the Avengers vs. DKR showdown. The Avengers manages to introduce a large number of very significant characters over relatively little screen time, to the point where you can relate to the characters (without necessarily having seen the previous origin movies). DKR only has four or so significant characters, completely fails to explain anything about two of them, and only mostly gives screentime to one of them. Nolan can (and has) do better.
Finally saw this tonight. Im with theJeff and Kthulhu on this. Not enough Batman and Gotham was too sunny this whole movie. The scenes should have been done at night at the very least.
Now onward to my own rant...
The only people who will get maximum enjoyment of this movie are the ones that have not read any of the comic books. Does it pass for an action movie? Barely.
How did DC agree to sign off on the script? I know hollywood tends to destroy canon when it come to superhero adaptations, but on this level?
And the worst by far, one of the last lines in the movie with the Officer Blake character (which killed it for me the most), "I like your real name better... Robin." Really? Robin was his real name? Not Dick, Jason or Tim?
The first two movies were great IMHO, This was crap, not as bad as the second Ghost Rider movie but crap on a massively bigger budget.
The ONLY good things about this movie were...
1) Talia's appearance despite the butchering of the Bane Origin.
2) Catwoman. I'm sorry, I know people didn't want Anne Hathaway in this role but she 'effin nailed it. If youve ever read Catwoman comics (current or the Jim Balent days) you would know this. I wouldn't be surprised if she read the actual comics to brush up on the role herself.
Call it nerd rage if you want, I don't care. Batman is still my favorite comic book hero along with the rest of Gothams personalities. This was a canon massacre.
Finally saw this tonight. Im with theJeff and Kthulhu on this. Not enough Batman and Gotham was too sunny this whole movie. The scenes should have been done at night at the very least.
That also bothered me. Gotham City went from being this dystopic, and most importantly gothic, version of New York city, to just being panoramic shots of Manhattan. It seemed... lazy.