Why Isn’t Post-Isolation Gotham A Mess of Riots?
Generally when a bunch of guys with automatic weapons and Batmobiles are patrolling the streets killing anybody who pisses them off, city populations tend to stay indoors.
The Gotham Police Are Incompetent
Well, yeah. Gordon’s a good cop but he’s still cleaning up a corrupt department that suffered heavy losses during the events of The Dark Knight. Eight years is not a lot of time; some screw-ups are bound to slip through. Also keep in mind that we never see that there are any incompetent cops, just cops who aren’t privy to the same information the audience is and jerk cops.
A Non-Sarcastic Postscript
There’s nothing wrong with disliking (or liking) a movie. No movie fits everybody’s idea of a good time. And The Dark Knight Rises is far from perfect, even if it is an excellent movie. It amuses me that I went through pages of rants by professionals and not one asked, at any time, why Bane didn’t just kill all those cops trapped underground.
My problem with the articles I’ve been seeing is that they try to elevate personal dislike or minor errors into a gross artistic mistake. Just like Jim Emerson’s disgraceful video about how The Dark Knight had, like, totally crappy editing, this isn’t about the movies. It’s about appointing oneself the supreme arbiter of taste above all those disgusting little plebs.
It’s butthurt, pure and simple. Either Nolan isn’t living the artistic life that critics demand he does so they can vicariously live through him, or he didn’t follow up a classic with nearly freakish connections to the American subconscious with another one.
If you don’t like the movie, fine, but at least give it crap on its own merits.
images courtesy Warner Brothers
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Thank you, Dan. I love this.
Seconded. This is great.
Dan, there’s this thing called “girls”. Try meeting a couple in a few years when you hit fourteen.
I’m more surprised that Talia slept with Bruce than Bruce with Talia. She’s been planning his complete destruction for years, hates the man for killing her father, but gives him one last boning for kicks. She already had his trust, since this happened after he showed her the nuclear weapon. I just don’t see what she had to gain. But Bruce…yeah, I get that.
With me, it’s because the movie takes itself so seriously that when something is glossed over, seemingly creating a plot hole, it seems jarring. Nolan just wants you to accept whatever he throws at you without explanation sometimes. Although most of the holes you mentioned weren’t the ones that bothered me.
He still wasn’t showing her the reactor, remember? Anything to gain his trust.
If its like the comics, she wanted his dna to make a perfect kid
I’m pretty sure it was after she had already done her boardroom maneuvering since the power went out when she was at his house and he’d lost all his cash. She had everything she needed at that point. He had shown her the reactor and then she took control in the boardroom as he was kicked out for not being on the board any longer.
I’m surprised he slept with her partly because one of the reasons he was in seclusion for 8 yrs was because he got his girlfriend blown up and once he came out in public he essentially slept with the 2nd woman he has a real conversation with. After she betrays him he creates a new life with the other woman who was busy stealing his dead mothers jewels. Way to recover buddy.
The reason he was in seclusion was because he thought she went to her grave “thinking we would be together”. When Alfred tells him the truth it shakes him from his would-be fairytale dead girlfriend romance allowing him to return both as Batman AND Bruce Wayne.
As for Selina Kyle, he never does a 180 on his feelings there. From the very first scene he’s far more intrigued by her than he is bothered that she stole the jewelry. If you’re going to complain about the Bat and Cat relationship, I’d say the safe bet is going to the part where she leads him into a death trap.
Dan summed it up pretty well in the article, really. If you think a lonely and broken man looking for some female companionship is a flaw in the script, you just might not understand human beings very well.
My problem with the Selina Kyle thing was that, as a character, why would Batman want to start a new life with her? First she lifts his fingerprints to give to Bane to crush the Wayne empire, and then she serves Batman up to Bane to have his back broken? I don’t know, maybe I’m not getting it, but it just seemed like for Bruce to want to create a new life with her so readily was not true to character.
Talia is the progeny of Ras. She feels that Bruce was the son Ras wanted. Ras loved Bruce like a son, so Bruce’s seeming betrayal of Ras stung that much more. Talia adopted her father’s philosophy and world view. In order to complete the revenge on Bruce, it had to be a betrayal equal to that he inflicted upon Ras. Since Talia couldn’t become like a son to Bruce, she did one better….she became a lover to this eminently solitary man. She gained his trust in the most intimate way, then betrayed it. As Ras said “Justice is balance. You burned my house down and left me for dead. Consider us even.”
“Talia al Ghul is a fictional character in the DC Comics universe, the now-estranged daughter of the supervillain Ra’s al Ghul, a love interest of Batman, and the mother of his son Damian Wayne, the fifth Robin.”
Basically if you ever actually read some Batman, this was absolutely no surprise.
Dan, let me tell you what *MY* pet peeve is: idiots who get their panties in a wad when other people have opinions. Apparently, you’ve based your entire sense of self-worth around whether or not other people liked “Dark Knight Rises”. Either your a child, an imbecile, or both.
Furthermore, you don’t appear to understand what the word “sarcastic” means. You apparently think it means “douchebaggy”. It doesn’t. Buy a dictionary. Now, let’s talk about your “guide”, shall we? Your rely on two answers to everything: “it’s perfectly logical and consistent with reality, so shut up” and “It’s a fantasy movie! Anything can happen! Shut up!” Seriously, are you twelve?
You might want to pull your head out of your ass and realize that not everyone in the world is going share your personal tastes. It doesn’t make them “stupid” or “liars who only have different opinions to annoy you”, as you seem to believe.
One could make the argument she did it to give him one last chance to join her. After all, she offered him a chance to get in her plane with her and flee Gotham.
Not being sarcastic at all: I was not aware of the big list o’ criticisms.
The only one I had was about the whol trade scandal and how easy that was for anyone to figure out. But it didn’t ruin the film for me.
I loved the first two films, but can’t say I was a fan of this one. Some of your points I can get on board with, others.. not so much. The back breaking thing was ridiculous for a universe that strives to give a semblance of realism. The review on comicsalliance pointed it out best with “a broken back is fixed with a rope and a swift punch to the spine administered by two prison yodas” who are there, why? These are the only two people we see interact with Bruce down there, and all they do is try to heal and help him, and somehow do? It was too much for a Batman movie.
Speaking of Batman, where was he? The first time he goes down to fight Bane I can understand going in with a level of overconfidence which led to the incredibly underwhelming back breaking scene. What I can’t get behind is that after that, his plan is the exact same. Go in and get in a fist fight with the insane human tank, because that worked so well the first time. Now, after the fastest recovery of a broken back ever, it works. Where is the meticulous planning that makes Batman the fucking Batman? They kind of abandoned that aspect in the second film as well, but that film was all about chaos so it would be impossible to plan. In this one he’s just fighting a really strong person. I would think that he would maybe think of something a little smarter than charging in headfirst.
Bane’s voice was hilarious though, I can’t stop talking like him.
It just seemed like a bit of a slapped together mediocre film to me. It wasn’t a bad movie, but it certainly wasn’t a good movie, in my opinion anyway.
See, my question was for the first time why he didn’t go after the mask. If there was ever a case of “attack its weak point”…
I don’t think it’s slapped together at all, myself. Or if it is I’ve seen much worse.
I was thinking (hoping) that when Bane whupped his ass in the first fight and said “you fight like a young man…” that we would see a climax like Dark Knight Returns.
Bane slowed down by mud or snow or something…and Batman goes all operating table on him.
I, for one, am finished praising/criticizing the Batman Trilogy and I’d like to put it in my rearview mirror.It’s really tearing this country apart. I personally cant wait until we can all come together as one nation and totally lambast the next Adam Sandler movie.
Amen.
This batman, to me, was very similar to rocky III – Rocky v. Clubber Lang = Batman v. Bane.
Rocky goes in gets his ass handed to him and comes back a better fighter after mickey dies.
Batman does same, loses Alfred, and returns to beat Bane round 2.
It’s not exactly an original story, absolutely. Plot hole, not so much, though.
Can I still complain that the pacing of the first half hour was complete shit, or that there wasn’t enough Michael Caine, or that Bruce’s knee gets all magic fixed by a brace, or that Matthew Modine’s character was completely horrible and worthless? Is that whining, even though I enjoyed the film overall but found faults with it? Just curious.
Why wait 8 years to wear the brace?!
And that’s exactly why I saw the spine healing as a plot hole – not because it didn’t jive with the real world but because it broke the logic within the movie itself. Wayne needed a cybernetic knee brace to walk without a cane because he didn’t have cartilage in his knee, but can somehow manage to deal with a broken back just fine a few months later. If you want to do that spine scene, fine, it is kind of badass. But don’t do it after you’ve already established the character’s frailty.
Still a great movie for all its flaws. But the one I still can’t seem to get over is the cops being trapped in the sewers. They’re called man holes ppl. There is one like every block. Also that when they get out, they look as fresh and clean as they did 3 months ago when they went in. As for his injury, I assume its from the end of part two when he falls like 4 stories. Although it was weird that he needed robo legs to walk/fight, but hanging from a special rope got him into perfect shape :S
I thought that John Blake’s conclusion that Bruce Wayne is Batman was meant to mimic Tim Drake figuring out the same in the comics. Albeit, in the movie it was fast-tracked, we know that Blake, after his conversation with Gordon on the rooftop, has had an interest in the identity of Batman after the events of the Dark Knight. While Blake doesn’t go into detail, he could have been investigating, as he had shown a skill for, the identity of Batman for the past 8 years since TDK. Personally, I didn’t mind this part because it had happened in the comics (of course actually reading the comics is a small step that I would wager 70% of TDKR’s audience has never once done, lest they look like a nerd). Same thing with his fling with Talia.
The Marvel Fanboys love to scream about plot holes…have they watched their films?
Obviously. Which is why the Avengers did almost twice the box-office of “Dark Knight Rises.” The sad thing is that you even care.
Also, although numerous times Bane states that he will “break” the Batman it becomes extremely evident that he in fact didn’t snap his back in half. In all honesty, Bane most likely dislocated Bruce’s vertebrae…which “the rope guy” stated when he stood him up…so, 4 months isn’t a stretch.
Not stretch if you’re in a real hospital with real rehab and not a scum of the earth prison that provides bamboo rope traction.
I was thinking the same thing. I don’t think it ever says that his back is broken
I agree with this, it’s a really cool movie, some real pissy reactions out there. It’s going to end up in the On Her Majesty’s Secret Service club of misunderstood sequels, playing air hockey with Temple of Doom.
I think the trade scandal was the smallest hole in the plot. They used a sophisticated program to change the past records, they didn’t make the trades go through on the day of the attack.
It was also stated that this can be proven and undone, but it’s going to take time, something they didn’t have at the moment.
The only thing that really bugged was that they showed Wayne Enterprises clearly had 2 Batwings. At first I wanted to believe that the unpainted one was the one they used for the rest of the film, and they just painted it black. But then at the end Lucius and two other guys are examining the bat (the silver) again? So there is clearly 2, which draws questions like why wouldn’t bane use this Bat to counter Batmans Bat, or just in general as a powerful vehicle? Unless that scene was them looking at scraps from the bat the bat the got nuked—which would be incredible dumb, even for a movie about a guy who dresses as a Bat.
^ dumb as my typos—-just woke up peopleeeeeeeeeeeeee
On the cops buried underground: Bane seemed to want the people of Gotham to be in control, which is why his thugs usually don’t outright kill people and instead send them to the tribunals. He seemed to be intentionally keeping the cops trapped to keep them out of the way without overexerting his power and destroying the whole populist illusion thing. That’s how I saw it, at least.
What got me was how they handled the bomb. The Bat had to get a minimum of 6 miles (the blast radius) outside of Gotham in the 1 minute before the bomb exploded, so roughly 360 miles per hour assuming it starts at the coast and has already accelerated to that speed (which doesn’t look like it was the case in the film, but who knows). That’s feasible, but how strong does that cable have to be to not tear off while dragging a giant bomb below it? Is the outside of the bomb treated with some material that can take that kind of wind resistance? And what about fallout?
Then again, there are also howitzer bikes and fusion reactors. The movie was great, regardless of the minor quibbles.
I was enjoying this until you used the word “butthurt”.
Seriously?
You’re nitpicking a rant about nitpicks?
Seriously?
What’s wrong with “butthurt?”
Love the trilogy, loved this movie, and I agree with pretty much everything you said, but one thing is still bothering me: how old is Bane supposed to be? Talia/Miranda looks to be about 8 when Bane helps her escape from that prison. Actress Marion Cotillard is 36, assuming that Talia/Miranda is supposed to be somewhere around the age of the actress playing her, that would have made her escape from the prison about 28 years before the beginning of DKR, right? Bane in the flashbacks looks to be a grown ass man (and by that I mean well into his 20s). Is he supposed to be in his 50s?
I refuse to believe batman got his ass whooped by some 50 year old guy.
My biggest disappointment was the first fight between Batman and Bane. Just seemed that he yelled and flailed away at Bane, tossed a pathetic little smoke bomb-thingy and not much else. I would have liked it better if he had been more Batman-like: overconfident to be sure – he IS the Goddamned Batman after all – but he came across to me as an amateur. Think it would have been more powerful if it was Batman at his best, and still been beaten.
Overall I enjoyed the movie a lot, and think it caps off a damned good trilogy (Jesus, thanks for reminding me about that asshat and his look-at-me-I-went-to-film-school-so-I’m-a-smug-douche video. If anyone deserves to be punched in the head for the sound of his voice, he earns it).
I have to wonder if Heath Ledger had lived how his Joker might have figured into the movie. That might have been a fun bit of chaos Bane couldn’t predict or plan for…
Well, he seemed less like an amateur to me and more like a guy who had been out of the game for 8 years, which is what they were trying to drive home. Even after an 8 year absence he was able to dismantle any thugs he encountered and escape the police, so when he found himself backed against a wall he went toe-to-toe with Bane like he did with every other villain in the franchise. I agree that it would have been interesting to see Batman lose even when doing everything right, but part of Bane’s thing is that he isn’t just a brawler. In the comics and in the film, Bane catches Batman off guard and exhausted and uses that to ensure his own easy victory. He tests Batman mentally and physically. If Batman went into the fight and did absolutely everything right and still lost, then Bane would just be a boring invincible villain. He was already pretty close to that as it is.
Perhaps – I mean I get that he was rusty and not in top form. Just seemed the yelling and all was a bit much for me.
I guess once Gotham fell it all felt too rushed for me. That whole sequence could have been a movie unto itself, I think.
I assume the yelling was playing up the point that Batman thought Bane was just another League goon and was way wrong. You’re supposed to exhale when you throw a punch and some people yell to do that thinking there may be a psychological advantage. I saw this as just another thing Batman thought to try to intimidate Bane, like the flash bang and cutting out the lights.
Fox told Bruce Wayne that in time they could prove that losing his money was fraud, but in the mean time Bruce was going to be broke.
Two things: I said before and I will say again – you can’t have super serious grimdark movies, and include the “catch a punch” move in a fight. That is the most unrealistic thing in the whole movie.
Also, Batman Begins is the best movie of the 3.
Why, sir, my wife quit hitting me when I finally caught one of her punches and stared her down. Unrealistic indeed!
It’s nice to see someone else hated that Dark Knight video too. Or this is just the first time I’ve come across anyone writing about it since I first saw it.
Either way, very nice. I like you. We should drink and fight sometime.
Your response to question the 2nd question really doesn’t answer the actual issue. Its just being bitchy.
And maybe Blake just put 2 and 2 together. Batman appeared soon after Bruce Wayne came back from the dead. Duh.
Clarity: Are you referring to the second entry on the list, or Blake?
Because I think asking why you can suspend disbelief for all that but not a spinal problem seems pretty valid.
1st part was the 2nd entry. I didn’t suspend disbelief. Those would be other issues too. But I figured all that stuff would mean its the future!
Also knowing people with enough back issues that they had major surgery to heal and still walk like Yosemite Sam. It still comes off kind of … weird.
Dan, I could debunk most of your explanations. Let me know if you’re interested, as it would take a lot of time, and I don’t wanna put in the effort if it’s a lost cause.
Has anyone explained how Bane/Talia knew of the secret bunker that held the extra tumblers and other tech? Did I miss how they found out, because it was explicitly stated that only Lucius and Bruce knew of it.
Because Bruce put Talia in charge of Wayne Enterprises like a chump, and I would assume she was then privy to some of that info. Also, The league of shadows could have easily been looking into all this stuff while Bruce was away for eight fucking years being a little bitch.
The movie was excellent and this article just caused more butthurt among the whiners. Cough Marios Robles Cough.
lol
“It amuses me that I went through pages of rants by professionals and not one asked, at any time, why Bane didn’t just kill all those cops trapped underground.”
How about his whole “hope as a weapon” speech? Bane’s treatment of the cops basically = vaguely Middle Eastern underground jail where he sent Bruce. Watch the movie, bro. Connect some dots and you’ll be streets ahead.
Or in your words, “Cuz they had to lead a WWI charge in the third act of the movie! Stop whinin’ ya dummies!”
You see, I’d buy that if he was in charge. He wasn’t. There have been a few decent ideas I’ve seen knocking around, but it is a wee bit baffling.
But Dan, he was the visual figurehead of the whole thing. He wasn’t in control fully but they certainly created the illusion that he was. So it’s not that difficult to buy it.
Bruce leaves Gotham and trains around the world for like 6 years. He comes back and between Begins and TDK he is Batman for maybe one year. Then he says “fuck it” and quits for 8 years. out of almost 16 years, Bruce is Batman for less than one. and then he fakes his death so he can quit being Batman again. That’s one of the biggest problems with this movie. Bruce is a bitch.
Also, the last time he was Batman was during Dent’s death, which the public think Batman cause. The public thinks Batman murdered Dent, yet they also look up to him and see him as some symbol of hope. That makes no sense. And there is no way a 13 year old kid is going to know who Batman is and look up to him, considering the kid was 5 when Bruce punked out. 5 years old’s are dumb and can’t remember shit.
Actually, five year-olds, and young children in generally, are remarkably capable and intelligent if they’re not beaten and brainwashed. Chilrden’s brains are sponges.
Then those kids, at five years old, would only hear about Batman being a Murderer through the media and their parents. My point still stands.
And you’ve hit on my biggest problem with this movie. I love the movie, and the trilogy, but as a lifelong Batman fanboy….
Bruce Wayne would NOT make a vow to avenge his parents’ murder; spend his teens and twenties perfecting his mind and body; sacrifice his life, relationships, happiness, and chance with “Rachel,” just to walk away from it all….TWICE.
Again, this is not a referendum on these movies. I love the trilogy (Begins rules), as I love all Christopher Nolan’s movies. It was just disappointing, maybe BECAUSE of how much I tend to like the psychological aspects of Nolan’s movies. In Begins, Nolan really seemed to show a strong understanding of Bruce Wayne, and of the obsession that drives him. But then in this movie, Bruce has walked away for 8 years, albeit for a pretty good reason. It serves a purpose, so I can live with that. But to give up so he can “run away” from it all…that is NOT the Bruce Wayne that I grew up with.
I understand this is Nolan’s world, and Nolan’s version of Bruce Wayne. But since Nolan talked so much about obsession, I just hoped he would key in on the fact that Bruce simply could NEVER walk away from the Batman, even if he wanted to. Which, of course, he does not really want to.
I would argue that in the comics, Batman is so driven as to be a borderline psychopath, with an inhuman obsession rivaling that of his enemies.
Nolan’s Batman is certainly driven, but more grounded and human.
Porky, agreed. That’s part of what makes Batman so riveting, for me. Is he really any better than his rogues? Is his obsession really all that different than what drives Joker, Riddler, and their ilk? After all, Bruces obsession is what drove him to travel the globe for the better part of a decade, trainng himself to “human perfection” Nolan seemed headed down this road several times. Alfred’s warning in BB that Bruce is “getting lost inside this monster”. Joker’s taunt that he and Batman should share a padded cell at Arkham. The whole theme of Batman’s very existence causing escalation from “crazies”.
I think this is why the Joker has always been such a great foil. For all of Bruce’s high and mighty moralism, Joker often asks Bats if either of them is “more sane” than the other.
Owing along with the Tim Drake talk, “A lonely Place of Dying” could have been a good launching off point for another story….where Bruce’s obsession becomes so complete that Batman is not the true face, but largely the only one, and Bruce is truly becoming lost inside Batman.
/apologies for lack of coherent train of thought
/scotchy scotch scotch
An entire police force trapped in the sewers emerges unscathed, clean shaven, well fed and ready to fight an army of mercernaries and criminals that are armed to the teeth. Really? Thats really what they’re going with?
Regarding the stock scheme, there’s basically no chance this would ever work. Trading will stop in a certain stock if the price drops suddenly for no reason; if a bunch of dudes stormed the building with machine guns they would suspend all trades that took place after the break-in happened.
People who are talking about plot holes that are unrealistic….. get a grip! its a goddamn comic book movie about a bat man! The only thing that bothered me about the movie, was everything after Talia revealed herself, up until the bomb went off……. And its not because they were unrealistic things, its that they were incredibly lame cliches that really didn’t need to be done. IMO Talia should have been left out completely, there just wasnt enough time to develop her character, and she basically ruined Banes character when she revealed it was her all along. I cringed when Gordon was fumbling with the reactor core, and actually dropped it only to put it back in place at the last second. Then Batman decides to fly the bomb out, and that is the perfect time for a KISS! Not to mention the whole scene supposedly took place in 11 minutes. Again, I can set aside realism, that doesn’t bother me. It just bothers me that all of those things could have been avoided. Having said that, the ending completely redeemed that dreadfully cliched scene.
and when I say the cliches could have been avoided, I mean with some better writing/directing. The likes of which we have come to expect with any movie Christopher Nolan is involved in.
i like man bat if you are referring to batman in a way that describes what he is.
much like the legendary Manbearpig
It wasn’t a bad fillmore, but probably the poorest of the trilogy IMO.
The thing that annoyed me the most was that with about 1:30 left on the clock before the fusion reactor exploded batman and cat woman decided to waste about half that time making out. She’s hot and everything buti think that’s a tad irresponsible. Similar things have happened in several movies and it always pisses me off. There’s plenty of time for that after you save the city, keep your mind on the task at hand. Also how did batman survive that blast? Was the helicopter thing lined with a few inches of lead? And if so how did it fly?
He wasn’t in the batcopter…he had fixed the autopilot…they even showed Fox talking to the techs about it.
*film
Well said. I just plain enjoyed the film and that is enough for me.
The reason this movie sucked isn’t because of the plot holes or expository dialogue or bad acting, it’s because Batman isn’t the one that saved the day, it was the villains ego/laziness that did.
If Talia had decided not to torture Gotham at all, Batman would have lost.
If the half-life on the reactor core had been 4 months, Batman would have lost.
If Talia hadn’t decided to hang out at a bonfire with Lucius Fox for 5 months instead decided, “Eh, three months of torture is plenty, let’s blow this place and get Chic-Fil-A” then Batman would have lost.
If Lucius hadn’t just happened to make the Bat and keep it in his U-Stor-It until Bruce got bored enough to be Batman again, then Batman would have lost.
If Catwoman hadn’t decided to prove Batman’s gun stance as ineffective, then Bane would have killed Batman at the end, and he would have lose.
If Talia, after pretending to be Miranda Tate and eating bonfire takeout for five months, had flipped out when Catwoman dumped Bruce Fucking Wayne in front of her and just shot his ass the moment she saw him and their plan was instantly in danger, Batman would have lost.
This movie sucks because Batman only saved the day after everyone around him waffled every opportunity they had to win with laziness and ego and downright stupidity.
To be fair, Batman did very little more than react to the other characters the entirety of The Dark Knight, and that movie was great.
See, and I’d argue against Dark Knight being “great,” too. You pull Ledger’s performance out of that movie, replace him with Hardy’s Bane or Murphy’s Scarecrow and I don’t think the movie holds up, either.
Ledger’s performance is so brilliant it elevates everything around it, perhaps unfairly.
It’s this overly passive, “accidental” Batman that has kept me from loving any of these movies. At best, I’d call them “good movies, but lousy *Batman* movies.”
I’m still waiting to see a great depiction of Batman on screen, where Batman is the most interesting and compelling character in the movie.
I actually like the movies quite a bit because they’re about working as a unit. One of the points of this movie is that no Batman is an island.
That said I am working on an overarching Bat-Trilogy review that will address a few of these complaints.
“You pull Ledger’s performance out of that movie, replace him with … Murphy’s Scarecrow and I don’t think the movie holds up, either.”
I would love to see something like that. I have an irrational love for Murphy as Scarecrow, and his cameo in TDKR was just perfect.
It’s like all the defensiveness from “The Phantom Menace” and the Matrix Sequels merged into one “I’m not listening, you’re just too stupid too get it” super defense. Well done!
“This movie sucks because Batman only saved the day after everyone around him waffled every opportunity they had to win with laziness and ego and downright stupidity.”
The core criticism of “Crystal Skull.”
he is a billionaire ninja… dressed as a bat, with flying vehicles and talks like a tranny….
plotholes?
its a comic book movie….
My biggest gripe with the movie was how sanitised the violence was. This also applied to the language. The nearest thing we had to a swearword was Talia mouthing the word “Shit” whilst being harassed by the Bat during the chase. The Dark Knight was a comic book movie as thriller for grown ups. This was just a comic book movie. A good one though.
The only question on this list that made me think twice was Blake knowing who Batman was. He’s the only orphan in Gotham who has ever seen Bruce Wayne’s fake smile? I thought maybe he could have done some detective work or SOMETHING. Put forth some effort, you know? But it didn’t ruin anything for me, my reaction was more like, “Wait, whaaaaat? …ok, whatever.”
I liked the movie a lot, but my biggest problem was actually with Alfred, who gestured up the stairs in the Wayne mansion in reference to Bruce having been born in that house. Ummm… they may have rebuilt, but the house Bruce was born in was burned to the ground. Bruce wasn’t born in the new house, even if it looks like the old one. That bugged me.
It also bugged me that none of the cops who were finally released from the underground said anything to Batman as they passed him. How did they know he was no longer police enemy #1? If they did know, why didn’t they say things of support as they went by? Or say things filled with lingering doubts?
I liked the movie, but those were the two things that bugged me.
“you like to see homos naked”
home is where you make it
can someone please tell me how Bruce Wayne dies? Not how Batman dies but how Bruce Wayne dies. thank you.
Well, he’s broke, he disappears completely, and he doesn’t come back. At some point during that process they declare you legally dead. Actually happened in the first movie.
Well said Dan. HE’S F’n BATMAN!!!! ALL ARGUMENTS ARE NOW INVALID! This might be my favorite of the trilogy.
“Even worse are the retroactive whiners, the people who desperately want to tear a movie down because everybody likes it and we all know that what everyone likes can’t be of any real quality.” THANK YOU. Nolan whips up one of the best trilogies in cinema HISTORY, and these assholes have to tear it down because it gives them attention. and let’s face it, EVERYONE LIKES ATTENTION RIGHT? YAY I HAVE SOMETHING TO PUT ON FACEBOOK AND PEOPLE WILL PAY ATTENTION TO ME BECAUSE I’M SAYING SOMETHING SHOCKING! people like this should be banned from theaters. You don’t get anything cool anymore because you can’t appreciate it. Sorry. Mommy just took the cake away from you because you were throwing it at people instead of eating it and savoring it.
“How Does Bruce Wayne Get Back to Gotham With No Resources?”
You find it hard to believe an American billionaire would have money stashed in foreign countries?
On top of that, we already know Batman will work outside of Gotham. It is not out of the realm of possibility that he has safe houses and bank accounts and fake IDs all over the place.
can someone tell me why batman has a helicopter the size of a buiding and also what does he have in there that he doesnt have flares when they shoot him with missels
“He’s the f***ing Batman. Seriously, if any fictional character could pull this one off, it’s the f***ing Batman. Stop whining.”
This isn’t an explanation this is an excuse. Just because Batman has had resources before it’s been made clear he no longer does yet he still gets back to Gotham. I don’t have a problem with the suspension of disbelief that he may have had money stashed away somewhere else or someone gave him a loan to get back to Gotham but if that’s the case then show that happening don’t leave that plot hole there.
OK, he’s a highly trained ninja with a tendency to be ridiculously overprepared for any situation who we’ve seen travel the entire world with no resources whatsoever in the first movie and who at this point is still a key member of a globe-spanning corporate empire with lots of resources he can access with a touch.
In other words: the fucking Batman.
Honestly, the only one that bothered me was the stock market complaint, and mainly because everyone was like “Oh look, Bruce Wayne was dumb and lost a ton of money on the stock market” the same day that a terrorist highjacked Gotham’s version of Wall Street. How does no one put two-and-two together there? Wouldn’t the cops wonder what Bane’s plan was when he marched into Wall Street with an army of thugs and then just drove away on a motorcycle? Or did they think he was dumb and could steal cash there and then ran away when he realized he couldn’t?
The whole point was that it was engineered to look like Wayne made a lot of bad bets on futures way before the stock market thing even happened.
Yea, I guess that makes sense. I’m just surprised someone at GPD didn’t see the “Wayne Loses Billions!” news story and think that it just miiiiiight have something to do with the attempted attack at the stock market the day before.
Am I the only one who had a train of thought like “Bane wasn’t Bane”
I mean the bane I remember from whatever comics and animated shows was a South Amercian strong man born in some war torn country who used Venom to make himself almost invincible and wore a wrestler’s mask
Tom Hardy’s bane was a white strong dude with a messed up face, and wore a type of gas mask.
I just think they kinda took the name bane, kept the minimal parts of the character, and inserted a wholly new sociopath.
Not complaining, I though this bane was cool enough, but it feels more like an original creation rather than a batman character, granted one who whose only been around for 20 years
this is kind of a weak argument though, because we’re talking about Nolan’s trilogy here. Not much of the original “canon” works because of his uber-realistic take on the universe. Look at scarecrow for instance – he’s not a grown man that actually dresses like a scarecrow, but a psychologist who wears a mask and drugs his victims with a “fear” hallucinogenic. Catwoman doesn’t dress like a cat, just a thief. Joker was the most literal translation of the actual villian, and yet he still wasn’t campy, his scenes were void of levity. the chemically-induced “smile” that Nicholson’s Joker had was replaced with scars that were essentially Ledger’s “smile.”
The Batmobile is a Wayne Technologies surplus armed vehicle that looks nothing like the past Batmobiles, very ultra-modern and realistic. There are just some details of super hero universes that just don’t work in modern movies. I think they did the best they could with BANE without making him into the campy and ridiculous brute that they showed in that terrible Schumacher film. Imagine if they did a Justice League movie and literally had Wonder Woman having an invisible jet, with a lasso that makes you tell the truth? there are just some aspects that won’t work on film.
If no one knew batman was bruce wayne, how was the death of Bruce Wayne explained to the public? what was his cause of death? like how batman and Bruce Wayne vanished from the public eye at the same time after the dark knight. god and the fact that the stock exchange can be hijacked, with someone doing some stuff on a high tech computer thingy and leave on motorbikes on the same day as bruce wayne buying shares in myspace NOT BE LINKED?
The ending is also a bit off, he was seen in the bat like 2 seconds before the detonation AND was seen still seated after the explosion that people on the net seem to think he used as smokescreen to escape. part of me wants to think he had another bat plane conveniently hidden somewhere close and just switched during the bombing of those buildings, hence we see him still in one 2 seconds before the detonation.. but i just want to know bruce waynes cause of death, i dont think that was ever mentioned
Gotham was pretty much put through the wringer, and the Wayne Enterprises board in particular got a shit end of the stick. Pretty much ANYONE in Gotham who wanted to fake their death after the occupation would have an easy out.
Bane didnt kill the cops because of the same reason he didnt kill batman. Remember the thing about “giving hope before destroying”?
Bain knew Batman was Bruce Wayne because Talia’s father knew who he was.
Did the garbage men & public utility workers keep going into work? At one point, you can see a doorman pulling some old bitch out of her building. Did that guy get his job back? Or did all the old rich people die under the icey? In 5 months they must have sentenced thousands to death.
None of it made any sense. It’s not nitpicking the many plot holes, it’s just a dumb story (well acted though) and worse, it’s a bad Batman story. It’s an okay Die Hard.
apologist.
I really liked the movie. I mean REALLY liked the movie. My only question was – Batman disappears for 8 years and so does Bruce Wayne. Nobody puts that together? The only guy that could afford the crazy car and motorcycle that plenty of people have seen Batman driving around is gone and so is the “murderous” Batman? Does being a “recluse” that no one has seen in 8 years cover that? If people say “he’s a recluse”, does that mean he must be there in his mansion, and couldn’t possibly be Batman?
You could almost argue that it happens again at the end, but the point is there will still be a Batman in Gotham, just not Bruce Wayne. Say Wayne died in any number of explosions during the take-over of Gotham. Whatever. He being gone as long as J.G.-Levitt is flying around afterward in a Batman costume doesn’t connect Wayne to Batman. It’s just the first circumstance, really. Truly, my biggest issue is that the best detective in town, Jim Gordon, isn’t the one that puts it together. It’s, like, EVERYBODY ELSE. The guy that’s been face-to-face with the Batman on several occasions – he can’t figure it out, when clearly plenty of other people can?
Ah, well. if Jim Gordon can’t figure that out, then escaping a nuclear blast in 5 seconds is cake. Right?
That’s kinda what I want to say to people who question Blake figuring out Bruce is Batman. It’s like how didn’t anyone else figure that out? At the very least the Batman was being financed by someone extremely wealthy. I guess we just have to go off of how Bruce acted in public in the first two movies. “That drunken billionaire with the two chicks all over him and who burned down his family’s mansion is Batman? SUUURRRRRE”
And Gordon just hadn’t cared who Batman was. “I knew who he was. He was the Batman.” It wasn’t until the end when he was going to risk his life for the city that Gordon thought, “Wait, the people of Gotham need to know who you were”
But Gordon didn’t want to figure it out. Like when Blake says aren’t you curious who the Batman is? His response is that he is the Batman. Gordon respects that Batman wants his identity protected and understands just how much Batman has done for the city even though it isn’t his responsibility. If all he asks in return is keeping his identity a secret, Gordon becomes willingly ignorant of who the Batman is.
The only plot hole I had a problem with and apparently no one else did was the very ending. Ok I’ll let it slide that he survived a nuclear blast, after all, Indian Jones survived one in a refrigerator but here is the most famous billionaire in the world who is supposedly dead and wants to keep it that way yet is sitting out a cafe and no one will recognize him? Even in the first movie Ra told him even in some hell hole prison in wherever that Bruce Wayne couldn’t hide.
Dan, I might not agree with your position, but don’t respond to comments. As the author of the article, stay above this fray.
Conversation is as much my job as writing, really. Besides, what’s the fun of a movie if we can’t argue about it?
Bruce Wayne Doesn’t Do Background Checks
In both cases: titties.
It’s also worth noting that Tim Drake, one of the comics’ Robins, was able to deduce the identity of Batman – and Batman then said Drake would surpass him as the “world’s greatest detective” one day, although his combat skills were lacking. It’s possible Blake was modeled after him.
One thing that distracted me was the idea that the police could be trapped under the city. If they were in the train tunnels or the sewers there should be exits all over the place. Unless they were directly under the river. Or unless they weren’t in the sewers or subway, and they were in some mysterious Gotham City tunnel that only has one entrance and one exit.
Not like I let that ruin the movie for me though.
Fanboy damage control: The article
Asides from massive gaps in basic human understanding of events and logic, you’ve only addressed the tip of the iceberg.
The Fanboy Rage in this thread is overwhelming. Guess what, guys: your penis size isn’t proportional to how many other people like a movie you liked. The fact that you’re all freaking out over any criticism whatsoever of “Rises” is a fairly good explaination of why you never get laid.
OK, here are a couple of real plot holes for you:
How come Bane had his crews working for months lacing the underground tunnels with explosives to trap Gotham’s entire police force underground, when he had NO IDEA Gordon would enter the tunnels, get shot, get captured, be brought to him, dive into the sewer outflow, and SURVIVE all that to spur the search for Bane that brought all the police into the tunnels in the first place?
And after Bruce jumped out of the Bat-hover-OMG-it’s-so-cool-mobile into the water, ditched his Bat-suit, swam to shore, and somehow made his way to Europe, how did he hook up with Selina again, considering that he led her to believe he’d die in the explosion, so she had no reason to not almost immediately use the software HE GAVE HER to wipe her identity with?
Oh, and while I’m at it, for Batman to fly a bomb with probably a minute left on the timer (after wasting time with final kisses and pithy statements) and a six-mile blast radius out far enough to the point where the blast had no apparent detrimental effect on the city, how fast did the Bat-Nergasm-Mobile have to be flying, and how could Batman survive impact with the water at that speed?
Am i the only one who is reminded of the movie Galaxy Quest where the scifi nerds have blue prints to the ship based on their insane attention to detail. Get a fucking life , watch the movie enjoy or don’t. Nobody cares that in real life you couldnt cove that amount of distance in that amount of time. I go to the movies to suspend belief not fucking ruin everyone else experience by telling them how a great movie has its facts wrong. Hell watch Fox news and do the same and i might actually care.
My big issue in this was the cops – Imagine Modine’s character saying: “Hey, let’s all assemble en mass on a single street with handguns, and run straight ahead – without cover – towards a bunch of guys with automatic weapons! Then when we get close enough to shoot them, we’ll put away our pistols and fight hand to hand.” Nice police training.
Loved the movie, but actually saying “Robin” out loud at the end was totally unnecessary and retarded and I hated it.
Leave Britney alone!
I haven’t seen the thing that bothered me the most on here yet: why didn’t he need the electronic leg brace thing in the prison? Did the guy in the prison punch his knee, too?
How. The. Fuck. Did Catwoman NOT know that Bruce Wayne was Batman? The “my powerful friend” exchanges they had bordered on parody.
Having loved The Dark Knight Rises I agree with everything here except the part about the back injury. The things you mention all work because they are part of the movie’s internal logic. It is a world where these things are possible. But unlike unknown technology or an unprecedented terrorist takeover both of which we as an audience don’t really have a frame of reference, a severe back injury is something all too real to us. And she know what it takes to heal one: Lots of surgery and years of therapy.
Of course my answer for the back injury healing is simply this: They could have shown Bruce Wayne taking a year to fix himself. Showing how technology unavailable to anyone but Lucious Fox saved him… Blah blah blah. But who wants to sit through that crap? I wanna see Batman Kick Bane’s ass.
And now for the REAL answers written by somebody other than a “butthurt” Nolan apologist.
How Did Blake Know Bruce Wayne Was Batman?
In retrospect, it’s pretty obvious that a well-funded vigilante with advanced toys would have something to do with the local trillionaire. Something so obvious that fucking everyone in Gotham should’ve figured it out. But in a city of 6 million people, only a lone hot-headed cop is smart enough to see through the rich playboy facade… makes sense.
Batman Heals A Broken Back Too Quickly
You’re right, if we as the audience are stupid enough to believe that a billionaire can buy an insane helicopter or a bike with mounted cannons, then we’re just plain snobs if we don’t swallow some BS about how a broken spine can be popped back into shape with a well-placed kick and some prison pushups. Hey, since realism is for chumps, let’s just bring back Batman skysurfing away from an exploding rocket Schumacher-style.
Why Would Bane Ship Batman To That Prison?
Because it’s an American hero film and the bad guy is obliged to perform Austin Powers-level supervillain stupidity when dealing with your greatest threat. Yeah, letting Bruce Wayne live was totally stupid of Miranda Tate’s father to do when he had the chance to kill him in the first movie — that in no way came back to bite him in the ass, so let’s just do something similar again. It’s just too bad there were no sharks with lasers in that prison.
Why Isn’t Post-Isolation Gotham A Mess of Riots?
Any attempted excuses here are pathetic. Frankly, creating the world of Gotham in TDKR was just flat-out lazy. In BB, they more or less built Gotham from scratch. In TDK, they filmed Chicago, but avoided landmarks and called it Gotham. In TDKR, they just straight-up shot New York City, the goddamn Brooklyn Bridge, and the new WORLD TRADE CENTER and said “Eh, there you go — Gotham! Ta da!”
What’s amazing is seeing people bend over backwards to excuse this kind of laziness before being willing to admit that maybe Nolan is just not the cinematic genius we thought.
Love it all except for Bruce getting back to Gotham with no resources, I STILL want an answer goddamnit!! He wasn’t the batman at the time and there was no entrance to the city!! Would happily take a ridiculous excuse right now just to get it out of my head.
Oh, were you looking for a four hour film?
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I would really love a ” SARCASTIC GUIDE… PART 2! ”
Because , Dan, you forgot to sarcastically belittle a helluva lot more nagging questions…
And you forgot to mention the most pressing question of all.. Where the F**K is the F*****G Joker?
Nolan had almost enough footage for another movie and he didn’t put in 30 sec’s of ” where the hell the joker was when everyone was released from jail ”
This to me was why this movie actually failed.. they didn’t address the biggest question mark left by its predecessor … i know Heath died… all the more reason to give him a tip of the cap in the sequel that followed his finest performance .. and perhaps THE finest performance..
Nolan failed at giving the fans the sequel we all deserved…
I don’t think it’s a plot hole………..but was anyone else wondering what Scarecrow was doing handing out sentences to people? Hilarious.
I don’t think people really understood why Batman lost his first fight with Bane. It was not so much that he was rusty from 8 years of inactivity (though it did not help to be sure). He lost because, as Alfred pointed out, he doesn’t care about his own life. He does not fear death because he feels he’s lost everything, and on top of that he feels that fear makes him weak. The prison scenes were important for Bruce as a character because he realizes, finally, that fear is not always a weakness but a driving force to excel, as he did in his last fight with Bane. He feared for his life and fought harder for it.
People seemed to think Bruce gained a lot of physical strength in a few months and was able to overcome Bane because of it but it is a misconception that even Bruce made the mistake of making. “My body makes the jump,” he says, but it is not his body that sets him free, it is his fear.
I am NOT reading the entier comment section on this one but I will say this: None of the “plot holes” that are here are the ones that bugged me.
There is the fact that all the cops had guns and NONE of the use them and instead they charge at the terrorist like they have swords or something. Thats something that anybody can figure out even I you are not a huge movie fan.
Still I think the 2 big problems with this movie are:
That its got to much new characters that need development in VERY little time, I mean the movie its 2hours and 46minutes long and it lacks a lot of character delvelopment.
And Heath Ledger’s death destroyed the original idea of the Joker fighting Batman for eternity like The Dark Knight hints at the end.
There are a ton of plotholes in this movie that left me shaking my head as I was leaving the theater (in-universe continuity?), especially in a world built to be ostensibly mired in reality as Nolan’s, but one thing just bothers me:
HOW do you get “nuclear bomb” from (judging by its size only) a {cold} fusion reactor?
What bothers me the most is the Catwoman. Her character wasn’t developed at all. I hated the close ups on her bike while riding the bike. It was so cheesy. I wanted them to explain WHY she is such a great thief. It’s not enough to just say so. Also, half the conversations were pathetic. It feels like the movie was done in a rush and a lot of things were skipped. I’m not going to say the movie sucked, but it was certainly far from greatness. TDK left me breathless and still in my seat 5 minutes after the movie was over. I have waited so long for a great movie like that one, and I thought I’d find it in the sequel. Unfortunately, like so many times this year, I was disappointed. Of course, this is merely my opinion.
*butt
Butt while riding the bike. haha