The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

[James Mills]

I'm not sold.

[Tom Hagen]

Sweet, Batman is going to fight some bad guys in the new movie!

[flyonthewall2983]

It' on Apple, but it isn't loading for me.

[J Adams]

yawnsville

the Bane footage they showed before Mission Impossible was a bore as well

[Drucker]

Honestly, looked like a big loud mess. Imploding a football field? I never saw the trailers for BB or Dark Knight, but hopefully they just jammed this thing full of explosions to excite people to bring in money...but I definitely thought the previous (first) trailer looked more promising

[James Mills]

Honestly, looked like a big loud mess. Imploding a football field?

Agreed, this was what bugged me the most visually. It just looks silly and the sporting event-takeover is recycled.

Also, is all we get to know about the "bad guys" is that one of them just likes to do evil shit (how unfamiliar, right?) and the other thinks that Bruce isn't "sharing all his large living" or whatever?

Couple this with the fact that I hated Inception and I'm not really all that excited anymore.

[Drucker]

Honestly, looked like a big loud mess. Imploding a football field?

Agreed, this was what bugged me the most visually. It just looks silly and the sporting event-takeover is recycled.

Also, is all we get to know about the "bad guys" is that one of them just likes to do evil shit (how unfamiliar, right?) and the other thinks that Bruce isn't "sharing all his large living" or whatever?

Couple this with the fact that I hated Inception and I'm not really all that excited anymore.

My girlfriend is a huge Batman fan. Been watching a lot of the Animated Series, and she tells me about the Bane stories from the Comic Books, and there is just so much potential with this beast...but I hope it's not wasted. Making The Joker a man with no background and no real identity outside of the Joker was surely one of the best things about the Dark Knight. In the Animated Series (and I assume most of Batman-lore), Bane is a failed military experiment and really just a mercenary. I hope his character is more than just a big guy that does big ugly things and is so strong he stops Batman.

[knives]

He's far more complex than a mercenary. His back story is actually rather tragic and his end goals more complex than that of Deathstroke (who's a pretty fascinating character in his own right) and the like. Given how Nolan's done things so far I feel pretty comfortable that like with the previous villains he'll at least take them to the logical conclusion of their comic counterpart in how they relate to Batman (that said I hope he scales back the film slightly as the last twenty minutes or so of The Dark Knight lost a lot of energy.

[SpiderBaby]

I just don't care for the fact that they just made Hines Ward (not Hines Ward playing a character, but playing himself) a character in the Batman story. So 2 guys living in Gotham are Bruce Wayne and Hines Ward, making him a fictional character. I don't know if it's just me but I dislike when movies use fake football teams, in a fake city, with a real football player. Especially when said filmmaker has a rep for making these Batman films with "Realism" (you know, can't have Joker's skin white or it wouldn't be believable...), then shows us a huge CGI sports commercial where the 1 football player with the ball outruns a crumbling earth. I was waiting for a Transformer to come out.

[James Mills]

I just don't care for the fact that they just made Hines Ward (not Hines Ward playing a character, but playing himself) a character in the Batman story. So 2 guys living in Gotham are Bruce Wayne and Hines Ward, making him a fictional character. I don't know if it's just me but I dislike when movies use fake football teams, in a fake city, with a real football player. Especially when said filmmaker has a rep for making these Batman films with "Realism" (you know, can't have Joker's skin white or it wouldn't be believable...), then shows us a huge CGI sports commercial where the 1 football player with the ball outruns a crumbling earth. I was waiting for a Transformer to come out.

Shit, I was hoping "Ward" was merely a coincidence...

[SpiderBaby]

I just don't care for the fact that they just made Hines Ward (not Hines Ward playing a character, but playing himself) a character in the Batman story. So 2 guys living in Gotham are Bruce Wayne and Hines Ward, making him a fictional character. I don't know if it's just me but I dislike when movies use fake football teams, in a fake city, with a real football player. Especially when said filmmaker has a rep for making these Batman films with "Realism" (you know, can't have Joker's skin white or it wouldn't be believable...), then shows us a huge CGI sports commercial where the 1 football player with the ball outruns a crumbling earth. I was waiting for a Transformer to come out.

Shit, I was hoping "Ward" was merely a coincidence...

They will most likely never advance his character after that so all you might see is "Ward" and never his first name, but they have Steelers players in this film due to the Pittsburgh shooting. The damage is done though. It's clearly Ward and looks like he is in a shoe commercial.

[Tom Hagen]

Honestly, looked like a big loud mess.

And TDK wasn't? I was being a bit too flippant a few posts up, but honestly, I have never understood why this series, and particularly TDK, has been intellectualized with the trappings of thematic profundity by so much of the critical establishment. Vigilantism has a moral price. Who do you save in a lifeboat scenario? Heavy stuff, bro.

Why can't these movies be enjoyed as entertainments and technical achievements? I often enjoy big loud messes.

[hearthesilence]

I forgot that they tried filming around Occupy Wall Street, but just as the previous film was broken down as a commentary on post-9/11 policies/paranoia, it's safe to assume this one will be analyzed as a response to the protests, yes?

[SpiderBaby]

I forgot that they tried filming around Occupy Wall Street, but just as the previous film was broken down as a commentary on post-9/11 policies/paranoia, it's safe to assume this one will be analyzed as a response to the protests, yes?

most likely where the Catwoman character comes into this film. I honestly don't see why they needed her in this story (with all of the spoilers and characters I have read) other than adding a "name" along with Bane, who isn't a household Batman villain name.

[James Mills]

Why can't these movies be enjoyed as entertainments and technical achievements? I often enjoy big loud messes.

I thought that's what they were being enjoyed as from people on these boards...? Anyone who finds profundity in convoluted schemes that simply don't make sense (see: Joker's "plan" of being caught and all the jail crap conveniently going down) or other plot progressions that are attributed merely to "futuristic shit" (see: Morgan Freeman's Hong Kong infiltration and computer hacking crap) probably doesn't even know what the word "profundity" means.

Not that those people don't exist (see: facebook updates announcing that Inception is the BEST movie they've every seen GO SEE IT NOW), but I don't think we should be mentioning our forum in the same breath.

[knives]

Even kitsch can have intelligence to it Mills. Certainly Nolan's Batman films aren't dense political tomes, but if basic movie level contrivances are your big complaint than I have to wonder how you watch any fiction. Also i think it's certainly fair to say that Nolan is putting more thought into the themes and explorations of his films than say The Green Lantern did. His big films aren't The Passanger, but they aren't trying to be and a more apt consideration would be Hitchcock.

[matrixschmatrix]

Yeah, I don't really see where a significant amount of handwaved silliness means anything about whether a movie can be taken seriously- that's like HG Welles' complaints about Metropolis not being realistic enough. I wasn't a fan of Batman Begins, but The Dark Knight is one of those movies like The Matrix: it's not exactly a philosophical treatise, but it raises and argues a fair number of interesting questions in the context of a fun, fast moving action movie, it makes a reasonably serious attempt to have characters and not paper figures who move from setpiece to setpiece, and it's not a horrific right wing fantasy about mowing down brown people (though both have their problems on that front.) Yeah, it's the kind of thing teenagers like, but I like good movies aimed at five year olds- why should I avoid movies aimed at thirteen year olds?

[James Mills]

Certainly Nolan's Batman films aren't dense political tomes, but if basic movie level contrivances are your big complaint than I have to wonder how you watch any fiction.

This is the most overused cop-out on these boards. Yes, fiction does not have to be grounded in reality, but that doesn't mean shoddy writing isn't shoddy. There's ways to connect plots without relying on absurdities that are not in concordance with the world or style of film (realist for Dark Knight) that has already been established.

The two instances I mentioned are unforgivably implausible and purposely meant to be swept under the rug from the viewer; this is something Nolan has become increasingly decadent in doing, as he seems to now think that piling on twists and intricacies to the plot will make most viewers forget about what was already stated or established earlier. For the most part, sadly, he's right, but that doesn't make it any less shoddy.

[matrixschmatrix]

You've already established that you have difficulty in getting past things that aren't strictly realistic, James, and I think that's happening here. Your objections are that the technology isn't realistic and the Joker's plans are implausible. Why should it offend you that most people don't care about those things? Who says they don't fit into the world Nolan's established? Certainly, there's nothing as silly in the second movie as basically every single thing about R'as Al-Ghul and his plan in the first one- nor are the plans and gadgets at all out of character for the established Batman mythos. It is a world in which sufficiently determined people can do anything. That's fundamental to every version of Batman I've ever seen, and I don't know that anything you object to doesn't flow from that.

[knives]

How may I ask is The Dark Knight realistic? Certainly it's more grounded than Burton's efforts, but it still works from the Commando school of movie logic. Also I don't see how within the fantasy being portrayed those two examples don't work within the rules that the film sets up within the very first scene. As soon as we meet the Joker the film shows him to be a near omnipotent planner which the jail stuff clearly fits into (his goal all along being to get the squealer accountant). There are easier ways of achieving that goal certainly, but again the film sets up the character in a way where he won't go the easy route. It wouldn't be funny that way. Also I don't understand how as you call it 'futuristic shit' is beyond the fantasy of a film where a vilgilante in a bat suit fights a guy in clown make up. Films have been making up technology for years and what's presented in the film and in particular your example isn't all that unbelievable (and in fact most of it is based on real technology). If you want to complain about actual problems with the plot (the much insulted dinner scene for example) than sure you have a point that it has 'horrible' plot holes (how scary), but your examples work within the logic of the film.

[James Mills]

You've already established that you have difficulty in getting past things that aren't strictly realistic, James, and I think that's happening here. Your objections are that the technology isn't realistic and the Joker's plans are implausible. Why should it offend you that most people don't care about those things? Who says they don't fit into the world Nolan's established? Certainly, there's nothing as silly in the second movie as basically every single thing about R'as Al-Ghul and his plan in the first one- nor are the plans and gadgets at all out of character for the established Batman mythos. It is a world in which sufficiently determined people can do anything. That's fundamental to every version of Batman I've ever seen, and I don't know that anything you object to doesn't flow from that.

It's a world that we are made to believe is like our own. Its dialect is of a realist film's and so are its conflicts, and every other scheme or plan is somewhat logical (the character's motivations, their reactions to other character's motivations, etc.).

I can at least entertain arguments in support of the glib defining of "these contraptions can do everything" for the Hong Kong mumbo, but Joker's "plan" is just ridiculous and, as I said earlier, purposely meant to be forgotten or not recognized as plausible for the audience. At least the Hong Kong scene tries to explain how it's possible, therefore not denying the fact that it even exists. I don't see how anyone can give a director a pass on trying to duck the logical reasoning behind something happening.

And keep in mind that I throughly enjoyed TDK, it even made it inside the top 30 on my fav films of the decade list; so assuming that I disliked the film for its lack of realism is inaccurate. I'm just saying that searching for profundity is not the right viewing for this film (unless you want to make facebook updates).

[matrixschmatrix]

My fundamental question is why your objections matter- they obviously didn't stop you enjoying the movie, so who cares? I absolutely agree that the Joker's plan makes no sense, and it's definitely a Nolan trait to pile things up so quickly you don't notice how many of them don't actually fit together- that certainly happened in Inception- but again, why is that important?

[James Mills]

They matter simply because of the context of the discussion: whether or not we should be viewing this trilogy with "profundity" in mind. They are merely arguments for why we should not.

knives: as usual, we are seemingly on entirely different wavelengths so let's save each other's time (and other members' patiences) and just agree to disagree.

[knives]

knives: as usual, we are seemingly on entirely different wavelengths so let's save each other's time (and other members' patiences) and just agree to disagree.

Which is an other way of saying you have no where to defend your position with and don't wish to concede the point. All I ask is how is the film any more 'realist' than your average action movie and what about your examples breaks with the internal logic of the movie's universe.

[mfunk9786]

*sits back*

*lights a cigar*