Saturday, July 21, 2012

The Dark Knight Rises

Don't read a blog about this movie; go and see it instead.

Okay, fine. Read a blog about it.

So, I know I talk a lot of crap about Anne Hathaway, but in this movie I not only didn't mind her... I kind of liked her. Now, I still don't want her playing Fantine, but she can continue to be in movies as long as her whining days are at an end, and her kicking butt days resume.

I heard a lot of flack about Tom Hardy's Bane voice. It was an unusual pick, but who the heck cares? It's about time Bane gets more respect than the comedic role he had in the DREADFUL Batman and Robin... though, honestly, he was the best part of that movie. "Bomb... Bomb... Bomb...." Hilarious.

There are things I predicted, but there are things I didn't. And if there wasn't a little bit of predictability, it would be one of those movies that's all over the place... and we can't have that, can we.

I was pleased that Scarecrow made it in to all three movies. If you didn't recognize him you should hang your head in shame. You call yourself a Batman fan?

I was also pleased there was no mention of the Joker. It seemed respectful. Plus, it had been 8 years since his arrest; we can probably safely assume the lack of Joker was due to capital punishment, yet tastefully, we needn't speak of the Joker's death.


You gotta love a movie about hope AND revenge. You gotta!

5 comments:

  1. I agree with your assesment of Anne Hathaway's performance. This movie changes my opinion of her. It also seems that, though we no longer have the official "code", dictating the outcome of movies, we have an un-official code. We can trust Hollywood not to end a film before all is set right, letting us all predict at least certain aspects of the film.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I enjoyed how Christopher Nolan put his own spin on Batman and his world. He stayed as close to the comics as possible, the only media outside comics to do so being the animated series and newer Arkham video games. Being an occasional rabid cannonist I'm hoping Tim Burton is feeling really embarrassed right about now.

    This was a great movie. Comics fans will recognize Nolan went to the "classics" for his epic Batman-ending movie as this movie was a mash up of excellent Batman stories: The Dark Knight Returns and Knightfall with a little Bride of the Demon thrown in for good measure. It was also refreshing to have seen an actual ending to the Batman saga, so nobody else can come along and make a Nolan Batman clone. I'm not saying Hollywood won't, I'm just hoping they will have good enough sense to leave it alone.

    My biggest gripes:
    For a movie about Batman, with Batman's name right there in the title, there was a surprisingly small amount of Batman. You can argue its about the symbol of the bat or whatever, but he's hardly in it.
    The time jumping felt rushed. bomb goes off in 6 months! Wait, 2 months left! Hang on now, 2 more weeks! Oh crap we've got 12 hours! Etc. It just felt rushed. I guess they needed time for Bruce Wayne to complete his spinal therapy and comeback montage.

    Catwoman was all right. She was much more believable and likable than Michelle Pfiefferrz.
    And I said before I saw this movie that if anybody can bring in a Robin character and make him not lame, Nolan was the guy. He could have plugged Bat-Mite in there and I'd be A-OK.

    I'm waving my huge nerd flag with this post but I'd just like to say, for those of us HUGE BATMAN NERDS who have been reading the comics for a long LONG time, it was predictable. Right down to the moment of betrayal along with the revelation of her name. We were screaming at the screen: "Ra'as Al Ghoul never had a son! Sheesh!"

    ReplyDelete
  3. But we loved it anyways. Thanks Mr. Nolan!

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Ra'as Al Ghoul never had a son!" See, I KNEW this! And even in Batman Begins I was like, "Oh. They didn't mention Talia. Oh well." But I still didn't see the ending coming! Looking back, it's so obvious! But other things I saw coming. I was still pretty annoying I didn't figure that one out. Side note: I knew a woman who wanted to name her baby girl Talia, but then someone told her that she's a Batman villain. I told this woman that she'd better not not name her daughter Talia because she also happens to be a Batman villain. First of all, she's rad, villain or no, second of all, hardly anybody would draw the connection, and even those of us who know about Talia, wouldn't hear the name and think, "Wow. You're a hard-core Batman nerd."

    ReplyDelete
  5. And even if you ARE a hard-core Batman nerd, there's nothing, NOTHING, wrong with that.

    ReplyDelete