The Dark Knight Rises The TDKR General Discussion Thread - - - - Part 153

[JackWhite]

For Batman kicking goon ass in the Nolan trilogy, nothing tops the scene where he takes out Scarecrows men in Arkham. What a badass scene. Formally, the way it was shot, is a happy medium between the incomprehensible noise and flashes of images of the docks scene, and the pulled back, steady shots that would fill TDK and TDKR.

The buildup really sets the tone for that fight. The way Cillian says "The Batman" with glee and psychotic anticipation.

My second favorite is Batman flat out plowing through Maroni's men in the night club. I know some don't like it because of the neon lights, but man, the way the goons are reacting to Batman and just how Batman himself is just a ball of fury and rage was really something straight out of the comics.

 

[titansupes]

^ Agreed.

 

[The Joker]

Yeah the Maroni club fight was great. Felt really brutal, too, with smashing beer bottles, and thugs being thrown down the stairs etc. Of course the big pay off is Maroni getting his ankles broken.

Batman was pissed off that night.

 

[Bruce Malone]

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this but the Daredevil show takes so many cues from the Nolan trilogy.

Despite being in the MCU technically it honestly feels like the spiritual successor to what Nolan was doing with the super-hero genre, than anything else Marvel is doing.

 

[shauner111]

For sure. And it's awesome.

 

[Shikamaru]

Daredevil was ******* amazing. Marvel's best product hands down.

 

[Ryan]

The stakes never felt higher in TDKR for me, simply because the movie jumped ahead for most of the siege. We never really saw how it affected the city, other than deserted streets, and a few people hiding in their houses. Even the revelation of the big Dent cover up never had any noticeable consequences other than Blake giving Gordon a flowery speech about morality.

In TDK, when Joker popped up and caused trouble, the tension always rose, and the **** always hit the fan. For example the build up to Joker crashing Bruce's penthouse party where we see Loeb get poisoned, the judge's car get blown up, Bruce choke holding Dent, that was proper edge of the seat stuff. You could almost see Nolan cranking up the tension meter when he was putting those scenes together with Zimmer doing that awesome score for it. Or when the Joker threatened to blow up a hospital if Reese wasn't killed, and we see the city go nuts, and several citizen attempted assassinations made on his life (even one by one of Gordon's cops). Even at something smaller scale like at Dent's press conference when we see all the citizens angry and scared because of Joker's reign of terror and demanding Batman be taken in (including seeing Bruce in the midst of it all seeing Gotham turn on him). It was more of a citizen reaction than we got in TDKR. I don't even have to go into detail about the whole segment of Joker allowing himself to be caught and the consequences that came with that. It all felt more raw, high stakes, and real than any of Bane's city siege to me.

Joker had the city proper scared, panicked, and we literally saw him turn it to chaos. Bane's big siege felt much more quiet and tame by comparison. Even on Batman lying with an injured back in a pit, that didn't compare to the despair and guilt we saw in TDK when he was hitting brick walls trying to nail Joker but nobody would spill about where he was because they feared him more than Batman. Or when he packs up his Batman stuff and prepares to turn himself in. Or when he's mourning Rachel's death and blaming himself for bringing madness and death onto the city. Or even the ending when he and Gordon are standing over Dent's dead body looking at what Joker turned him into and the mess they're left with. All felt more emotionally raw and bigger for me.

Agree with everything said here. There was only one moment in TDKR where I felt any sort of tension and it was probably more in my own mind then it was properly built up in the film. When the Swat team was surrounding the Stock Exchange, all I could think about was what was going on in their minds. Despite the 8 years of peace they all enjoyed after being terrorized by the Joker, they must have always had that lingering fear in the back of the minds "what if it happens again?" I wish they would have explored that a bit further throughout the movie. It would have been interesting to see how Gotham citizens had finally lost their minds with the siege.

 

[Shikamaru]

The stakes felt the highest for me in TDK. Which is ironic since it was the only film to not have a "nuke the whole city" plot.

 

[BatLobster]

Re: "stakes"...I think the difference is that in TDK the tension of..."what if the city just plunges into absolute chaos?" is there the whole time, from the first shot of the window shattering all the way through. Maybe it will, maybe it won't...maybe Joker will pop out of nowhere and blow somebody's head off. Shattering glass is a huge motif in TDK, just like ice is a big motif in TDKR. It's a great symbol for The Joker's chaos, and the constant fear running through the movie of how vulnerable the structures of our society may be. So TDK has more heightened tension. The one sigh of relief in the movie comes when those ferries don't blow up.

TDKR moves past the "what if?" and, building upon the themes of the previous films, simply allows the worst to happen at the halfway point, which actually reduces the tension and brings the story into a semi post-apocalyptic realm. That's where the bleakness comes in. Now the bomb plot is there, but that really only creates superficial tension because we know Gotham isn't going up in a mushroom cloud. But again, just the mere thought of that hanging over the movie = very f**king bleak. The real tension of the film is whether or not Bruce is going to ultimately give his life to save the city, which suits the more emotional, Bruce-centered arc of the movie. But it's more of something you want to root for (him living), as opposed to the pure dread that creates tension throughout TDK.

It's funny, the more I compare and contrast TDK and TDKR, the more I appreciate each of them for what they each bring to the table. They share a lot of surface similarities but they're really such different movies. All in all I think the decision to make TDK the true "city story" of the three, with bookending chapters that have Bruce Wayne's journey at the forefront is just brilliant. The sum total of the whole thing truly becomes the story of a man/legend and his city.

And yes, I just slipped into /gushmode.

 

[Brother Jack]

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this but the Daredevil show takes so many cues from the Nolan trilogy.

Despite being in the MCU technically it honestly feels like the spiritual successor to what Nolan was doing with the super-hero genre, than anything else Marvel is doing.

Oh, totally. They took a lot of cues from Batman Begins.

 

[Malicked]

Yeah the Maroni club fight was great. Felt really brutal, too, with smashing beer bottles, and thugs being thrown down the stairs etc. Of course the big pay off is Maroni getting his ankles broken.

Batman was pissed off that night.

That fight as well as the Prewitt building fight are probably my two favourite fight scenes of the entire trilogy. Most people say there weren't any 'bad-ass' Batman moments in the 2 sequels which has always annoyed me. The Maroni brawl was awesome. In Rises I loved Batman and Catwoman taking on Bane's men before the Bane v Batman fight. And even though the coreography of the final fight maybe could've been better, it still payed off just for the sheer emotion of the scene and that onne comeback line 'tell me where the trigger is, THEN you have my permission to die!'.

 

[redfirebird2008]

I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice this but the Daredevil show takes so many cues from the Nolan trilogy.

Despite being in the MCU technically it honestly feels like the spiritual successor to what Nolan was doing with the super-hero genre, than anything else Marvel is doing.

That's interesting since a lot of diehard MCU people don't like Nolan's style yet they're willing to accept it when it's a Marvel property. I happen to be a big fan of both styles and feel that there is plenty of room for both.

 

[Tacit Ronin]

It has nothing to do with Nolan's style or Marvel's style or whatever. It's brand politics, nothing more.

Look at the trailers for Daredevil, Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron, they were sufficiently dark and somber. But you did not hear a peep of criticism.

But when the trailers for Fantastic Four, Days of The Future Past and Batman vs Superman arrives, suddenly 'dark and grittyness' is a problem.

Look at the hilarious video where they purport to up the colors of Man of Steel, while ignoring Age of Ultron, which has similar ugly filters.

It's all so brazenly biased that the only conclusion is brand politics and agenda.

 

[redfirebird2008]

It has nothing to do with Nolan's style or Marvel's style or whatever. It's brand politics, nothing more.

Look at the trailers for Daredevil, Iron Man 3 and Age of Ultron, they were sufficiently dark and somber. But you did not hear a peep of criticism.

But when the trailers for Fantastic Four, Days of The Future Past and Batman vs Superman arrives, suddenly 'dark and grittyness' is a problem.

Look at the hilarious video where they purport to up the colors of Man of Steel, while ignoring Age of Ultron, which has similar ugly filters.

It's all so brazenly biased that the only conclusion is brand politics and agenda.

Yes, the hypocrisy makes it very clear that it's a brand bias thing. It's a shame too. I think there is plenty of room for Marvel, DC, or any other brand out there...not to mention plenty of room for different takes on each of them.

That Man of Steel video was laughably bad. I didn't like the movie that much but I remember seeing it in the theater and it didn't look anywhere near as dark as it does in that video. You can tell the guy put a filter on it to make it look worse.

 

[The Shape]

I think it's clear that the stakes were really high both in TDK and TDKR, but each film presented Batman with a different battle and, therefore, different win/loss scenarios.

TDK was about the battle for Gotham's soul, whereas TDKR was literally a battle for Gotham's survival as a city. I agree that the conflict with The Joker felt more intense, not only because of the nature of a character like The Joker, but because it was on a smaller scale and also a little more personal.

The Joker heavily directed much of his focus on Batman himself, calling for Batman to unmask himself, getting the city to feel ill-will towards him and calling for him to turn himself in, the kidnapping of Dent and Rachel (and later her murder), etc. In TDKR, Batman is taken out of the equation relatively early on and the Bane's focus then rests on Gotham itself.

 

[Malicked]

I'd add that the battle between Batman and The Joker is philosophical. If it's personal, it's because The Joker challenges every single thing that Bruce believes in the Batman symbol that he's created. The Joker really got the heart of what Batman stood for and really tried to twist it against Bruce and the people of Gotham.

 

[Kane52630]

http://kane52630.tumblr.com/post/118509276334/bruce-this-is-harvey-dent-the-dark-knight

 

[Tacit Ronin]

That's the kind of dry humor Man of Steel lacked.

 

[The Joker]

Some people say Nolan's movies were humorless. I do wonder if they were watching the same movies as the rest of us. The playboy Bruce stuff was always a laugh, Joker had a ton of funny moments, the Bruce/Alfred banter was always gold etc.

 

[Team Andino]

Funny thing is they don't put two tables together, they just bring two extra chairs.

 

[The Shape]

Funny thing is they don't put two tables together, they just bring two extra chairs.

I guess Harvey was right.

 

[Kane52630]

http://kane52630.tumblr.com/post/118825330369/the-joker-planned-to-be-caught-he-wanted-me-to

 

[Bruce Malone]

Some people say Nolan's movies were humorless. I do wonder if they were watching the same movies as the rest of us. The playboy Bruce stuff was always a laugh, Joker had a ton of funny moments, the Bruce/Alfred banter was always gold etc.

I can't believe anyone who saw TDK at least would believe that.

The Joker had tons of humorous moments, the fact that many of them weren't so in your face just made it even better, especially when you catch new things on re-watch.

I see no reason why Batman however had to have been funny?

 

[The Joker]

I don't think people were expecting Batman to be funny, just the movies themselves to have humor in them (which they did). But even Batman had his moments like when he appeared behind Joker in the interrogation room and slammed his head on the table. Or the "So that's what that feels like" line when Catwoman disappears on him in the middle of a conversation etc.

Btw Kane, those gifs are glorious. I'd go out on a limb and say that image of Joker hanging out the Cop car window is something of an iconic image, at least in CBMs.

 

[Victarion]

That part in TDK where Michael Jai White says "You think you can walk in here.." something get away? To which Joker replies "Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah," always gets a laugh out of me.

I may be in the minority, but I don't see how you can call Man of Steel dark, grimdark, or whatever the flavor of the month term is for "things I don't like."