Agreed, because I still have an interest in revisiting the Nolan trilogy and watching all three Batman films again. The same goes for Man of Steel. Sometime in the future I'm planning to get surgery and got to take several days off afterwards taking it easy. I'm already planning on watching these...AGAIN. Now the MCU, not so much. Though I have been itching to watch GOTG again and I did just watch Winter Soldier for a third time (first two was in theaters) but all the others no. Hell, I gave IM2 to a friend and said don't bother giving it back. The Nolan films feel like actual stand alone films that just happen to be using the Batman license. They deal with complex, deep themes, intriguing characters with possible debating material. Is Ra's vision of justice better? Was Bruce wrong to want to kill Joe Chill? Does the Joker have a point on "these civilized people?" With Batman gone, crime down and the Dent Act was Bane & Talia right that Gotham still isn't redeemable?
Honestly, I think this whole anti-Nolan thing is just the new cool thing to do.
I watch TDK once a week or so, but I've been meaning to sit down and watch the whole trilogy (although work, wife, dogs and life in general keep getting in the way). While I think that TDKR is the weakest chapter, and has the least re-watch value (plus some of the lines just come across as awkward, and I disliked the whole Bane Voice thing, if he'd just let Hardy deliver those lines without the ridiculous Darth Vader sound, they'd have been awesome), it still has a satisfying (if ludicrous) last act and ending - but this is more than made up for by the first two chapters.
While there does seem to be a strong anti-Nolan sentiment that runs through a lot of these threads, I still think he's the man. He did something which was always going to be incredibly difficult, resurrect Batman as a film character after Joel Schumacher pretty much destroyed him. Not only did he take Batman in a 180 degree direction, he seamlessly knitted a guy in a black bat costume into everyday reality ( well, in BB Gotham is a bit stylized, in terms of the Narrows, but in TDK it's pretty much just Chicago. And somehow Batman doesn't feel totally out of place).
Best of all, like you said, Nolan questions the whole point of Batman himself -whether he really is an effective response to crime, or does he actually make things worse. If anything TDK is almost an anti-superhero movie because while Batman does eventually take down the Joker, along the way Harvey Dent (who, is arguably a better man than either Gordon or Batman) is utterly destroyed, Rachel dies, the city endures a mass panic and Batman himself is driven into hiding. So not the best solution.
The other moral of the Dark Knight films is that Alfred is always right.
In TDKR if Batman had just listened to Alfred at the beginning (and passed on his information to the cops) they probably would have been able to take out Bane and his Thugs, before they took over the city and freed everyone in Blackgate. Maybe if he'd listened to Alfred and taken Bane seriously before trying to take him on man to man, he'd have brought along some actually effective Bat-gadgets (like the Bat knockout darts) rather than fight him hand to hand ( why on earth does Batman believe in fighting fair ? ).
I'm sure that Nolan made the films as stand-alones, because I remember him being interviewed and saying that he had planned a beginning, middle and end of the story. This was awesome, because realistically Batman couldnt' go on forever, and up until this point only Frank Miller (and this was young, super talented, not so crazy Frank Miller) had the balls to write the tale of Batman's ending.
Sorry, this turned into a bit of a diversion. Anyway, what I was trying to say
was yes, the Nolan trilogy took a different look at the whole Batman mythos and it was an engaging and original approach, so don't believe the haters.
Ahem, not the movie ... the netflix show ...
