The Dark Knight Rises The TDKR General Discussion Thread - - Part 151

[JackWhite]

Interesting parallels to say the least. I watched BB again yesterday. First time this year actually. The movie is still fresh after almost 10 years of existence.

 

[Shikamaru]

Agreed. Did you see Elysium? I find Blomkamp tends to stuff the message down our throats. Liked that movie but didn't love it for that reason.

Haven't seen it, but I had Iron Man 3 on my mind while I was writing that.

 

[BatLobster]

Fantastic posts James H. TDKR indeed asks some pretty dark questions that sadly, do pertain to the here and now of our society.

I'm glad that Nolan is setting his eyes towards the future for Interstellar and seems to be raising some important, but ultimately more optimistic and inspiring questions.

Not that TDKR didn't have some optimism at its core, it was just buried under a quite a few layers of bleakness.

 

[XtremelyBaneful]

bane without his mask

 

[Bruce Malone]

bane without his mask

It's crazy how most people still don't know that the mask was actually cgi'd in in post only.

 

[XtremelyBaneful]

It's crazy how most people still don't know that the mask was actually cgi'd in in post only.

wat?

 

[shauner111]

Do people not see that red face as sarcasm? It's literally the face of sarcasm. It's like the third person ive seen today that goes HUH? after someone adds a

 

[starwolf_oakley]

I've posted various times about "improvement" I would make to TDKR. Mostly how more female characters were needed. This time, there are some things about minor characters.

1. Deputy Commissioner Foley: I once said I thought that character should have been replaced by Sarah Essen. Now, I'm wondering if he should have stood up for himself more when Gordon went to his house.

Gordon: Something has to be done.
Foley: You sure talk tough, given you let a guy in a Bat costume do your policing for you!

2. Phillip Stryver. Maybe it's seeing Burn Gorman in other roles in Pacific Rim and Game of Thrones, but renaming him Roman Sionis and having him stick around to the end of the move would have worked. He's never actually called Black Mask, but he grabs a black mask at a certain point in the movie.

I've wondered if TDKR needed an "And the adventure continues" ending, to show why Gotham City would still need Batman, even if it wasn't Bruce Wayne. Roman taking over some of Gotham in the aftermath of Bane's occupation shows some things.

3. I thought about this the first time I saw the movie: Talia's motivations are a lot like
Simon's motivations in Die Hard With A Vengeance.

Batman: You just said you didn't like your father!
Talia: There's a difference between not liking one's father, and not caring when some billionaire in a cape lets him die in a crashing train.

 

[shauner111]

The end with Bruce Wayne was their conclusion and real ending. But Blake getting the keys to the cave so to speak, was their "and the adventure continues" ending. You dont need to hype up a new villain in order to do that. And doing so would have been way too much of a setup for a 4th film, that if they didnt do the fourth it would feel like a cheat. The Blake ending, like it or not, was about carrying on the theme of Batman continuing. You dont need a villain setup to accomplish that.

Replacing Foley with Essen may have been a good idea but at the same time no. It would have dumbed down Essen. The reason behind Foley was to have a character who is jaded and egotistical, fine with how Gotham is at the moment, a coward. In contrast to Blake who is questioning things in the city and wants something to change.

Ive heard a lot of people say that Stryver should have been Sionis. I find that interesting..

 

[DACrowe]

I don't know if Nolan is making a message or not. He says that he is interested in "the things that worry us". What I find interesting is that a lot of the news after TDKR reminds me of certain events in the film.

Nolan had written the script before the whole Occupy Wall Street movement happened. This is what Bale said:

"There's something quite uncanny that happened during 'The Dark Knight Rises' and I think you'll see that there's a correlation in the Occupy Wall Street movement and some themes within the movie here."

"I turned to Chris [Nolan] and I said, 'How did that happen? I read the script long before Occupy Wall street and Occupy anything existed, but look at that!' It's become more and more topical, the more that we continued filming. He manages to do that - just to take a superhero but actually make it mean something to our time right now."

Then we have the Snowden situation, with all the talk of a Bane-esque mid-flight skyjacking of the plane which Snowden was on.

Obama has said: "Russia’s actions are a problem. They don’t pose the No. 1 national security threat to the United States. I continue to be much more concerned when it comes to our security with the prospect of a nuclear weapon going off in Manhattan."

He has said nuclear terrorism is "the single most important national security threat that we face."

Very recently, we have seen that ISIS are getting volunteers by emptying Iraq's prisons (remind anyone of a certain masked man and Blackgate?).

I wonder if members of Hamas watched The Dark Knight Rises...hey, if Bruce Wayne can watch television in a Middle-Eastern underground pit...

Like I said I don't know if Nolan is making a political message or not.
The very first image of The Dark Knight Rises shows us cracking - the bat symbol cracking. I think Nolan in The Dark Knight Rises is showing cracks within society - how they appear and how certain people/events can cause further cracks or repair the cracks. He just understands cities, urban settings, how they work, how they manipulate, and how they can be manipulated. In a way he is playing with Gotham City in The Dark Knight Rises, on the largest possible scale (as he cuts it off from the rest of the world), similar to how he was playing with and folding cities in Inception. He is asking "What if...?" questions. I don't know if he is providing answers to us in the film, but he certainly raises interesting questions.

Some events in the news have reminded me of certain scenes in Nolan's films. Nolan can't predict the future, but I'd still keep an eye on the advances in space exploration/physics in the coming years, as Interstellar is out this year...

I do not think TDKR has any real particular political message. If it does, it is a small-C Burkian conservative message that essentially boils down to "mobs are bad," which has been the American position in reaction to such social revolutions going back to the French in the 1790s.

However, what he did very well is to pick at the types of social collapses or upheavals that overthrows the status quo, usually at the cost of blood running through the streets. And he imagines how such timeless terrors can happen in the early 21st century. Sometimes his solutions are fanciful or "comic booky" (Bane holding the US government hostage with a bomb), but much of it comes from a visceral level.

Ra's Al Ghul is a bearded extremist from a foreign mountain that wants to destroy an American city to send a political message. The Joker is the lone killer on the streets that inexplicably and horrifyingly slaughters without reason or cause (though for cinematic and comic book grandeur, it is all part of an unlikely calculation to spread maximum chaos throughout society). And Bane is the social dissident (which doesn't have to be liberal like OWS or conservative like the Tea Party), who whips social unrest up in a frenzy for his own ends through the pretense of a bad economy and social inequality--especially with a growing income gap.

Some of their tools also are scarily believable. Bane having a band of fanatics who hide underground and are organized enough to take over small communities seems absurd in the U.S. But we see it all the time around the world, including right now in Northern Iraq and parts of Syria.

Nolan just has the artistic license in a superhero movie to do something unbelievable--say they take over a major American city?--but he'll present it in a way that seems uncomfortably familiar.

It is a big reason why the villains of this trilogy are so much more memorable and disturbing than what Marvel cranks out on a yearly basis.

 

[AnneFan]

Check this out - Piano Guys play the 60s, Burton and Nolan themes against Batmobile backdrops. Definitely worth a look.

http://io9.com/epic-batman-film-score-mashup-is-the-perfect-weekend-so-1640035027

 

[BatLobster]

Very cool musical mashup. Thanks for posting Annefan.

 

[BlueLightning]

It was jaw dropping! I saw it in the weekend! Great stuff!

 

[Victarion]

I do not think TDKR has any real particular political message. If it does, it is a small-C Burkian conservative message that essentially boils down to "mobs are bad," which has been the American position in reaction to such social revolutions going back to the French in the 1790s.

However, what he did very well is to pick at the types of social collapses or upheavals that overthrows the status quo, usually at the cost of blood running through the streets. And he imagines how such timeless terrors can happen in the early 21st century. Sometimes his solutions are fanciful or "comic booky" (Bane holding the US government hostage with a bomb), but much of it comes from a visceral level.

Ra's Al Ghul is a bearded extremist from a foreign mountain that wants to destroy an American city to send a political message. The Joker is the lone killer on the streets that inexplicably and horrifyingly slaughters without reason or cause (though for cinematic and comic book grandeur, it is all part of an unlikely calculation to spread maximum chaos throughout society). And Bane is the social dissident (which doesn't have to be liberal like OWS or conservative like the Tea Party), who whips social unrest up in a frenzy for his own ends through the pretense of a bad economy and social inequality--especially with a growing income gap.

Some of their tools also are scarily believable. Bane having a band of fanatics who hide underground and are organized enough to take over small communities seems absurd in the U.S. But we see it all the time around the world, including right now in Northern Iraq and parts of Syria.

Nolan just has the artistic license in a superhero movie to do something unbelievable--say they take over a major American city?--but he'll present it in a way that seems uncomfortably familiar.

It is a big reason why the villains of this trilogy are so much more memorable and disturbing than what Marvel cranks out on a yearly basis.

We can even find meaning in Bane's using the bomb. Bruce poured himself into the bomb, seeking the help Gotham without being the Batman. Bane uses that instrument to tear down everything Bruce worked for, and hoped for.

 

[Victarion]

Ive heard a lot of people say that Stryver should have been Sionis. I find that interesting..

One "fake synopsis" involved Talia, Black Mask, and a vehicle similar to The Bat. It may be the source of that sentiment.

 

[ShadowBoxer]

I can't sit through this movie anymore. I find it to be incredibly boring and a lackluster conclusion to the Nolan bat trilogy. I am not saying it's horrible, it's a good/ decent flick but on a scale to 1-10 for me it gets a 7/10. Begins and Dark Knight are superior in every way in my opinion. BB I give an 8/10 and Dark Knight I give a 9/10.

 

[batfreakforever]

Has anybody played the Dark Knight Rises Mobile Game?
I'm playing it and it fills in some gaps in the story and also makes Batman do more to save the city.
I also have the book of screenplays and the Rises script has some lines that expands on some scenes that I wished they kept.

 

[Travesty]

Does it show how he survived the nuclear blast?

 

[The Shape]

Yes -- editing.

 

[Kane52630]

Simple

 

[Victarion]

Does it show how he survived the nuclear blast?

He will die a slow death of radiation poisoning while living out his days with Selina.

 

[Alex Logan]

Does it show how he survived the nuclear blast?

He will die a slow death of radiation poisoning while living out his days with Selina.

Given his location at the time of the blast it wouldn't have been very hard to survive and come away without radiation poisoning.

Water is natural barrier, that is if he was even in the Bat when the bomb went off.

 

[craigdbfan]

I thought this conversation was over. He ejected before the Bat goes through that building within Gotham when everyone is pointing and eying the Bat as it heads out into the bay. Nolan using non linear plotting/editing isn't anything new.

 

[titansupes]

I thought this conversation was over. He ejected before the Bat goes through that building within Gotham when everyone is pointing and eying the Bat as it heads out into the bay. Nolan using non linear plotting/editing isn't anything new.

That would be a very, very bizarre edit.

For me, he ejected over the water after we see his close-up. The Bat continued on for however many seconds, and by the time the bomb went off he was in the water.

 

[Travesty]