.....Do I want to start this? Why not!
I cannot argue with a thing about how brilliantly the spirit of those characters was captured right there, or the bulk of the first 2 movies really, but I have major gripes with the end of Knight movie that have nothing to do with aesthetics.
I loved/love the first 99% of this movie. Far more than Begins. That was good, but had some story issues for me too, mainly limited to the origin though.
Once Bruce left Gotham, it was pretty solid. Apart from the emitter. That device and they way it was used doesn't hold up to the slightest bit of scientific scrutiny.
I really loved the twist of his mentee relationship to Rha's and the use of Scarecrow's fear gas as a justification for the criminal elements, and Arkham escapees in particular, terror of the Bat.
Knight is justifiably the gold ribbon standard for DCEU to be held to.
An exceptional movie. Ledger was utterly mesmerising as the Joker.
I was on board for the whole ride, thinking finally, I have the perfect Batman movie, or as close as reasonably possible-Until, for me, the very end where it seems to go
Bat-**** crazy, which unfortunately carried through to most of Rises (for me, anyway).
The idea of Batman forcing himself into retirement by taking the blame for Harvey's crimes is, to me, utterly inconsistent not only with Batman's character from the comics, but also within the Nolanverse - up to that point, at least.
It makes no logical sense. Is there never going to be any more crime? Will the Joker never return? Will no other criminal ever Rise (in retrospect, how boring is Nolan's Gotham? Bat-Bale only encountered 7 of his villains in his entire career - only 4 before his first retirement).
What of Batman's legacy? In one moment, Gotham loses both of its heroes instead of just one and that is better?
Bear with me.
Picture this:
A father wakes in the night to find his wife not in the bed. He goes to check on the new baby and finds the crib empty. He wakes the live in Nanny and they look around the house quietly, trying not to wake the other children. They notice the back door is open. Venturing outside, finds his wife standing on the lawn over the youngest of their 7 children, lost in murderous intent from post-natal depression. She raises a knife.
He leaps to defend his child, struggling with his wife.
In the attempt to disarm and subdue her, she falls, fatally injuring her head on the concrete edge of the pool.
He turns and then both he and the nanny realise the other children have woken up and seen the tail end of the struggle, their parents fighting, the death of their mother, but not what has gone before.
The father turns to the nanny and instructs her, the only witness to the truth, to call the police and tell them it was he who tried to kill the child and his wife died trying to stop him. Then leaps over the back fence, never to be seen again.
Leaving behind his confused children, who have the dead body of one parent and the mistaken belief, supported by the only witness, that their fugitive father tried to kill not only the youngest, but did kill their mother.
Does that make any sense? To deprive your dependents of both role models in an attempt to preserve the memory of the one that can't be saved?
Would it not be better to stay, tell the truth and try to help those left behind understand that they can still honour the memory of what was, continuing to protect them as he has always felt compelled to do?
Or abandon them utterly, in the attempt to protect their memory of a corpse, whilst utterly destroying their memory of him?
Which act makes more sense? Which act is in the best long term interest of his children?
I find the justification for his martyrdom laughable and insulting.
Did America buckle after Kennedy? After 2 Kennedy's?
Did New York fall after 9/11?
Name one major city in human history that turned in on itself after a popular civil servant was found to have been corrupt or gone bad.
If Tom Brady got horribly disfigured after being kidnapped by a lunatic (or if Marky Mark and his Teddy had had a terrible accident during his home invasion), then was later killed by police during his attempted murder of the child of a team mate he blamed, would Boston cease to exist?
I don't think so (apologies to Tom, he was the best example I could think of as a favourite son who's popularity far exceeds the mythical Harvey Dent - I couldn't think of a popular civil servant where the example would have any significant impact on an entire population).
The idea that Harvey was somehow so special and significant to each and every law abiding person in Gotham that his corruption could plunge into deep clinical depression literally millions of people - those who didn't just quit their jobs and abandon the city en masse in disgust or fear - is the antithesis of grounded or realistic.
Which pretty much describes 90% of Rises to me.
Rises was an amazingly bad sequel. It's financial success traded on the goodwill of it's mostly brilliant predecessor.
The plot holes were immense. The characterisations repeatedly were massively inconsistent.
There were entire sequences of dialogue that literally made no sense at all.
It is every bit as bad to me as BvS in many ways, possibly worse, because of how it fares compares to it's predecessors; by comparison, BvS gets held to MoS, so it definitely has the advantage there.
Make no mistake, I'm a big fan of the first 1.9 films, but i believe if Begins had the story and characterisations issues of Rises, we'd be talking about Nolan's Bat-film. Singular.
