The Dark Knight Rises The Dark Knight Rises Plot Holes

[Legion]

I don't think it's really plot holes people are complaining about, but legitimate reasons why they do not like the film overall or think it is the weakest of the trilogy.

-The cell mate healing Bruce and allowing him to climb a pit 3 times, make a return journey to Gotham, and fight Bane again after just being hit in the back.
-Bruce, with no money or resources it appears, being able to get back into Gotham somehow (I believe the main problem with this is that it would have been nice to see a quick 10 second montage of Bruce getting on a plane or ship or something)
-Talia's death scene
-Blake knowing Bruce is Batman by looking at him one day
-Knowing what Bane wants to do, but not really why he wants to do it

These are just some reasons I have seen written on the boards. Now, just because some people see nothing wrong with these, or other, examples doesn't mean they are not a problem. Of course, just because people do see something wrong with these scenes doesn't necessarily mean they are a problem.

But, even if you find nothing wrong with some of the complaints I think they are still valid enough for people to understand why a viewer didn't like the film overall, or why they are still being discussed.

And please, before people say "Well how come people don't complain about Joker doing this, or in BB when this happened..." I think more of TDKR complaints are valid reasons why someone doesn't like the film, compared to TDK where I think it is hard to find people not liking the film because they didn't see how Joker rigged the hospital to blow or whatever.

I just believe some of these examples take away from the overall experience of TDKR for some.

Just my opinion.

So you don't think people should bring up narrative flaws/plot holes from the previous films which may of been over looked due to {insert reason} just because it's your opinion that the flaws are more valid in TKDR?

 

[Uroboric Forms]

See I wouldn't call this a plot hole. It's illogical sure the way that people are struggling on the ice then Batman walks along in heavy armour with zero trouble but it affects the plot in no way.

The only plot hole I've seen that makes sense is the fact tha Bruce with no money or supplies is able to just appear in Gotham. Seeing as the plot is built around how Gotham is blocked off and being monitored at every angle it doesn't make sense for Bruce to just wonder in but this can be put down to other things (sneak in via the supply truck etc...)

This is one part that we don't need to see. It's already established that Gotham isn't impenetrable, since the special agents get it. Plus Bruce has the underground railroad system that connects to the Batcave so that's one option, as for getting from Morocco or wherever the pit was, even without money, Bruce Wayne would still have friends in high places. Plus he spent a great deal of time traveling the world, so him being savvy in moving long distances with no money makes sense.

 

[Schrute]

What?

Bring up whatever flaws you want. But when people talk about why they didn't like TDKR and point to specific scenes, I think those scenes truly take away from the experience of the film.

I understand people wanna defend this film and say "well how about what happened in..", but do many of those scenes from BB and TDK really cause that much of a divide as the scenes being discussed in length in TDKR?

 

[The Guard]

It would be much easier if people would just say "flaws" instead of "plot holes".

 

[redfirebird2008]

Aren't there already enough threads on this?

 

[Baramos]

Plot hole is kind of a vague/generic term. It can cover Deus Ex Machina (like Blake just somehow knowing that Bruce is Batman), continuity errors, leaps of logic, improbabilities/impossibilities, etc. This movie has some of all of those, I'm sure.

But it's hard to find movies that don't have some problems in them.

 

[Legion]

What?

Bring up whatever flaws you want. But when people talk about why they didn't like TDKR and point to specific scenes, I think those scenes truly take away from the experience of the film.

I understand people wanna defend this film and say "well how about what happened in..", but do many of those scenes from BB and TDK really cause that much of a divide as the scenes being discussed in length in TDKR?

What "divide" are you talking about? The TDKR is 88% fresh on rotten tomatoes and 92% of viewers liked it. It's only users on this forum and forums like it that are letting the so called "flaws" ruin the movie for them.

People didn't obsess over the flaws of the TDK because there was more excitement and hype surrounding the release of that film. Long before the TDKR went into production people decided that it was impossible for a third film to surpass the greatness of TDK.

Any negativity directed at TDKR is a direct result from the success of TDK. People were ready to scrutinize and find flaws before the movie was even released.

 

[JackWhite]

What "divide" are you talking about? The TDKR is 88% fresh on rotten tomatoes and 92% of viewers liked it. It's only users on this forum and forums like it that are letting the so called "flaws" ruin the movie for them.

People didn't obsess over the flaws of the TDK because there was more excitement and hype surrounding the release of that film. Long before the TDKR went into production people decided that it was impossible for a third film to surpass the greatness of TDK.

Any negativity directed at TDKR is a direct result from the success of TDK. People were ready to scrutinize and find flaws before the movie was even released.

87%

 

[storyteller]

Well lets go through it all.

Batman walking along the ice. Well we don't exactly see him sprinting. One can assume that the ice is good to hold him at the spot he's standing, but one certainly can't walk across. Gordon and his men aren't exactly falling through. I know the armor adds extra weight but he's not like 400 pounds heavy. I assume 50?

Bruce sneaking into Gotham? Batman begins was all about how Bruce becomes a ninja. He learns how to sneak in and out of places without being seen. He doesn't need the suit to do that. Also I would assume Bruce is smart enough to have a lot of money off the books invested in other places and in foreign bank accounts. Worse case scenario he uses his ninja skills to get onto planes and stuff. I mean sure you and me would probably be screwed but they spent years showing how he was a ninja. Batman Begins even establishes how members of the league integrate themselves into Gotham. They establish that Bane could get back to Gotham in under a day. Why can't Bruce?

Blake knowing Bruce secret. I think people are putting too much weight on his evidence. People may suspect Bruce is Batman but the way he acts makes people question that. That man got drunk and burned down his house. The man acts like a fool ........this guy can't be THE BATMAN. Now Blake has an idea and has the balls to go to Bruce Wayne and say what he thinks. Bruce see's something in this guy and doesn't deny it. Bruce probably could have dissuaded Blake but human emotion and stuff. So basically Blake had no evidence and Bruce didn't care.

Okay the Dagget thing had me a stumped after the first viewing. Basically Alfred informs Bruce that Bane does merc work for Dagget. So Bruce decides to pay our boy a visit.

Bruce Wayne: You checked that name? Bane?
Alfred: He's a mercenary. No other known names. Him and his men were behind a coup in West Africa that secured mining operations for our friend John Daggett.
Bruce Wayne: Now Daggett's brought them here.

That's why Bruce pays him a visit. Now as to the cops? Bruce booked it out of there and found another roof. Maybe he pulled the lights off trick.

Batmans fight with Bane. Well the mines would probably kill Bane. But honestly Bruce was getting his head knocked around. There was also a pride issue at play. In hindsight he could have tried other tricks but that's what we are observers get. In most conflicts we see, Batman is in control. Bane is taking everything Batman dishes and returns it harder. In the mean time Bane's trash talk and head punches are slowing Batman down. Bruce mistake was underestimating his opponent and he paid the price. Also the nature of the cage was that Batman could not escape.

I don't get the prison argument. There were cops(and the prison guards) around but the bulk were trapped. I don't think most cities have a lot of prisons. Sure there are stations where people get booked. But Blackgate and Arkham are the only major prisons. We can just assume it was all broken up. Just no point in seeing it.

Now as the Joker, that man committed terrorist acts. They probably took him to some state run federal prison not in Gotham. Unlike the comic books, you don't just get sent to the local jailhouse to serve your sentence.

Talia and Bane. Actually I think Banes reaction is that not only is Bruce back but he was able to pull what he did off. The man wasn't physically/mentally defeated. As to why not blow the bomb? Talia wanted Bruce to utterly fail. so she gave him the rest of the time(barring a few minutes at the end). Again pride thing at work here.

Yeah, automatics work best with non moving targets not throwing gas grenades. Their am pretty much hits the ground and seconds later the distance is too close for those weapons to be effective. Many of Banes guys are not trained mercs but are inmates.


I think some of these flaws weren't flaws to me but maybe could have been tackled more explicitly because some people are like that. Maybe Nolan needed a montage of Bruce getting back into the city for slow people who forgot that Bruce was a ninja. Maybe people didn't notice how the pride of quite a few people form the story.

 

[Hicksatpd]

Was the emp canon attached to the Bat at that point? I forget.

I think that thing was toast because the young cop shot it in the tunnels as Batman pursued Bane and his men, right?

Still, that doesn't mean it had to be the only copy, I suppose. But then again, I don't think an emp would do anything to a gun, so it's moot.

 

[xii22_loop]

- early in the film, Alfred comes down to Bruce in the Batcave and tells him what he has found out about Bane. How was it so easy to research Bane and discover he was trained and exiled by Ra's Al Ghul. Uhhhhhh, is League of Shadows knowledge that accessible? You'd think Bane being part of the League of Shadows or the League's 'past members' isn't something you can't easily find wikipedia information on.

- Talia and Bane's plan. So they themselves would have died in the nuclear blast. What the hell, how will the League of Shadows continue on then? Ra's Al Ghul's original assault on Gotham wasn't a suicide mission, it was to do the League's job of resorting balance, and he and his men wouldn't have died in that process.

 

[zmystico]

To me, the whole "using stolen fingerprints to falsify stock trades by a group of men with guns" was plot hole; it just seemed illogical that ANY trades that day would be accepted, I mean the building is surrounded by cops and filled with armed men...and a billionaire decides at that point to make a bunch of really bad stock decisions?

 

[Hawkeye70000000]

Alfred telling Bruce about who bane was could have came from military intelligence. Remember it the beginning the CIA knew about bane. Bane was excommunicated and therefore didn't have the secrecy of the LoS. The LoS will always exist, but it might not be called the league of shadows. While Ra's might have lead the attack on Gotham and been there leader doesn't mean that they didn't have multiple plans and people set aside to lead a new wave of LoS.

The forged fingerprints and stock market thing was never going to last but in the moment of the certain stock trades were altered, it wasn't everyone's. Stopping the trade market and all its transactions would have been an economic nightmare for the city and country. The authorities could sort out what bane did after the fact. Also, they did try to shut it down, but not before bane was able to complete his plan and upload his program.

 

[Tequilla]

- early in the film, Alfred comes down to Bruce in the Batcave and tells him what he has found out about Bane. How was it so easy to research Bane and discover he was trained and exiled by Ra's Al Ghul. Uhhhhhh, is League of Shadows knowledge that accessible? You'd think Bane being part of the League of Shadows or the League's 'past members' isn't something you can't easily find wikipedia information on.

Alfred has always been a resourceful chap . In TDK we even discover he had some military background. We also know CIA has information about Bane. He has Bruce's resources at his disposable. Bruce asks him to investigate Bane further. He did.

 

[Polaris23]

Bruce gets back to Gotham the same way King Kong is brought to New York

 

[TheHeatKitchen]

Bruce gets back to Gotham the same way King Kong is brought to New York

Like the T-Rex in The Lost World? Chained up on a giant ship? Sounds good to me.

 

[Kazuki]

I'll preface this by saying up front that a lot of the so-called plot holes people complain about aren't really plot holes upon further examination, and I overall like this movie quite a bit.

That having been said, I still have questions and issues (some of which aren't necessarily plot holes, either):

1. How does Blake really know who Batman is? While Blake's backstory explains why the two would feel a sort of kinship and bond easily, and also why Bruce would see him as a worthy successor, it does nothing to explain how Blake figured out he was Batman. Sure, WE know as the audience to associate being Batman with being an orphan, BUT THE PEOPLE IN THE MOVIE DON'T KNOW THAT CONNECTION! How does he know whether or not Batman is an orphan? HE DOESN'T!

2. Batman coming upon Selina Kyle just as she's surrounded by Bane's mercenaries at Dagget's place. Bruce JUST escaped from the police. Wouldn't he want to lay low from police or press helicopters just after that scrap? And did he even know that Dagget needed to be looked into at that point? I thought he only learned his connection to Bane later on? And even if I have that part wrong, he didn't yet know it was Bane who attacked the stock market; he only saw him with the bike helmet on, hiding his face/mask.

3. When Batman first fights Bane, what happened to the rest of his arsenal? Why not use the grappling gun? Why not use one of his mine/grenades you see him use later when he shows Blake how to use one? If you want to get really nerdy... how about using that device in the heal of his boot to call the bats back in like in Begins? I think even Bane and his crew would have struggled with that long enough for him to get away and regroup, right? I basically just chalk this one up to plot necessity, but it still somewhat bothers me.

4. Are we supposed to believe that in a Gotham city virtually devoid of any police, with at least Blackgate prison being freed immediately, that no other prisons were freed during those months? I mean did they just let them all starve in their cells? Because if not, there's the elephant in the room of the fact that Joker didn't die in TDK and he likely would have been in the middle of all of that anarchy while Bruce was stuck in the pit.

5. As soon as Talia knew Bruce was back in Gotham... why the hell not tell Bane, #1, and then why the hell not go ahead and push the detonator before he has a chance to **** up their plan at the last minute?

6. When the police rush Bane's mercenaries in the streets, why the hell didn't the automatic weapons the mercs had kill at least 4 times as many as the 'whopping' handful of cops that dropped dead? That made no sense.

1- Why do you think everything in a movie has to be explained? Are you a 5 year old kid? We don´t know how he knows who Batman is. He just does. The better question would be: Why the rest of Ghotham can´t figure that out?

2- He obviously was after Selina so he could discover what was the deal with her stealing Bruce´s finger prints.

3- That´s like watching a UFC fight and ask: Why didn´t he kick him? Why didn´t he take him down? That´s up to the fighter. He makes his own decisions and not everyone of them can be right. Batman chose to fight Bane empty handed because he thought he could actually beat him in a fight. Could he have killed him with his arsenal? Maybe. He chose not to do it. Nothing wrong with that. He failed. He was broke mentally even before the fight, so you can´t expect him to do the best he would have done in his prime days.

4- The Joker? Maybe he was in the middle of "the anarchy" and kept a low profile. Maybe he was killed by someone. Maybe he was hidden. Who knows? He is obviously not in the movie, so he is not addressed. The same happens in comics. Villains disappear without we know exaclty where they are, what they´re doing, and why they don´t show up. Once again, we don´t have to know everything. Does Bruce Wayne ****s? If so, why didn´t that appear in the movie? It must be a plot hole!!

5- Maybe she liked him? Maybe she wanted to get closer to him so the vegeance could be sweeter to her? Who knows? You´re obviously not Talia, so you don´t thing like her and your logic is not her logic. She did what she thought was wiser to do. Her being wrong is not a plot hole. It´s just bad judgement from a character.

6- Maybe they didn´t want to spend their bullets with unarmed cops? Maybe not all of the inmates are cold assassins? Who knows.

See, the problem is this: You think that because a character doesn´t follow YOUR PERSONAL logic, it´s a plot hole. The reality is that it isn´t. Not everyone thinks like you, and things don´t have to happen in the way you think they SHOULD happen.

Bring me some real plot holes and we will discuss them.

I´m not saying the movie is perfect and has no plot holes. The problem is that the level of nitpicking with this movie is just ridiculous! Seriously! I rarely see this with any other movie. It´s like some people are desperate to find a reason to bash the movie.

Nit picking can be done with ANY movie. The same list of non sense that you made with this movie, i can made with ANY other movie. I can just start "why didn´t he do this?", "why didn´t he do that?". Don´t you understand? THE SAME EXACT thing can be done with any movie. ANY! Tell me what´s your favorite movie, and i will come up with even more "plot holes" than you did for TDKR

 

[milost]

Actually, we do know how Blake knows that Bruce Wayne is Batman. He saw him when Bruce visited the orphanage in his lambo with hot girls hanging off his shoulders.

A better question, or even a plot hole if you will would be, why would Bruce Wayne visit an orphanage? That's a little out of character for the guy that buys hotels, insults District Attorneys, acts like he owns restaurants and buys them out. Visiting orphanages is the last thing Bruce would ever do. So that doesn't fly at all. That's more glaring than Blake just KNOWING from seeing eyes and feeling it in his bones.

 

[Anno_Domini]

He visits an orphanage that the Wayne Foundation helps.

That's not much of a reach there. And it even sticks by what the facade Bruce Wayne is about when he goes there with a woman on his arm.

 

[milost]

Why? He's a billionaire playboy, Wayne Enterprises would do their own thing. That's why he let Lucius be in charge, that's why he sleeps through his own meetings.


Bruce would never let the city let on that he cares. The persona he makes in Begins and Dark Knight would never be caught dead at some hokey kid's orphanage, no matter how much he actually cares.


Funding them without seeing them in person, sure. Making a big old public appearance in your lambo and hot models? Picture that in your head for a second. That's just stupid.

 

[Anno_Domini]

He's Bruce WAYNE. Why wouldn't he go to the places that his company supports, especially something that would most likely mean something to him?

And your example is one business meeting he didn't care about except for going through Lau's books. And your other example is saying he doesn't want his city to care? Then explain why he actually cared about Harvey Dent and had a party for him?

 

[milost]

He's Bruce WAYNE. Why wouldn't he go to the places that his company supports, especially something that would most likely mean something to him?

And your example is one business meeting he didn't care about except for going through Lau's books. And your other example is saying he doesn't want his city to care? Then explain why he actually cared about Harvey Dent and had a party for him?

Hmm, I seem to recall Coleman Reese being sickened and insulted by the very sight of him. I don't think that happens over one business meeting. Even Lau was disgusted with his incompetence.

The guy buys hotels, goes to restaurants, buys people out, acts like an arrogant *****e, throws insults in DA faces, drives around the city as fast as he can, it's his whole image.

Why would a conceited prick who doesn't care about his company (as part of an act of course) go visit an orphanage full of kids showing care and remembrance of his orphan roots? He wouldn't, that would go against his act. Why would Bruce want people seeing, that "awww, he really does care".


That would be like Batman swooping down in the city in his Bat announcing, "citizens, don't be alarmed, we can take back our city". It goes against that persona.

 

[Anno_Domini]

Lol, Coleman Reese being sickened by Bruce's appearance doesn't mean or add anything. As because I already said, Bruce didn't care about the meeting with a criminal. He only wanted the meeting just so he could get into Lau's books beforehand.

As much as you would love to make it seem as a plot hole, it isn't one. Bruce Wayne has an image to uphold as being this prick of a man, but it's natural to see Bruce visiting a place that would actually mean something to him as much as Burton's films showed a caring Bruce going to Crime Alley to pay respects to his dead parents. Also, as I brought up, look at Bruce Wayne actually caring for what Harvey Dent means and had a party for him, having this idea just moments after making an insult to the DA.

 

[Monicabbm]

John Blake was a fan of Bruce Wayne. He says he and the children of the orphanage liked to talk stories about Bruce.

He said he realized that all the playboy image was actually an act. What should have raised questions as: why he do it? Blake may have begun collecting articles about Wayne. Bruce disappears for seven years, and when he comes back, we have the first appearances of the bat. But I think he find out when he joined the police.
Batman decided to save Rachel instead Harvey Dent. Who was connected to Rachel? it was known that Bruce was in love with Rachel.
Blake might have asked why Batman killed Harvey after saving him from the explosion, and someone may have said that Batman chose to save Rachel, not Harvey.
Or he may have watched the recording of the interrogation. Joker tells Batman has something with the Harvey's little bunny. Batman and Rachel?

 

[Monicabbm]

Appear in an orphanage with two girls means he arrived there with the press. It's all part of his show.
There is nothing wrong with that. He may have arrived pretending a fake smile, so everyone thinks Bruce is pretending to care.
And as mentioned above, he had a party for Harvey Dent. Ah, he arrived in helicopter with three girls.