The Dark Knight Rises What do you not like about the movie?

[The Joker]

Something dawned on me on why TDKR wasn't quite as good as TDK or BB. In TDK, Gotham City felt like a living, breathing city full of memorable yet minor characters. This new movie had none of that. Can anyone here recall any lesser characters from TDKR that remotely stood out?

In TDK, the list of memorable characters is huge. Lau, Chechen, Maroni, Gambol, Wuertz, Ramirez, Gordon's family, Loeb, Coleman Reese, William Fichtner, Anthony Michael Hall, etc. Characters further down the totem pole is really what made TDK special. The overconfident passenger on the ferry, the fat guy with the bomb in his stomach, that cop that 'guards' Joker, Tommy 'Tiny' Lister, Harvey's Russian ballerina date, the pudgy Batman impersonator, the nervous prisoners/passengers on the ferry, the crazy guy Batman stops Dent from killing, the old guy that stands up to the Joker, the nervous cops in the semi chase, and so on. The Joker thugs in the prolouge of TDK had more personality than any of Bane's henchmen.

The problem with TDKR is that it was all cops,thugs, and orphans. It lacked the little characters that made Gotham City a rather believable, intersting American city in The Dark Knight and Batman Begins. I think even Nolan bit off a bit more than he could chew with this movie. Don't get me wrong, it was still great but I think it's the Return of the Jedi of the Nolanverse. I'd also compare it to Iron Man 2. I think TDKR is better than IM2 but it suffers from many of the same problems. Those being some questionable writing, too many characters, too many plots, a great villain being undermined by a bigger baddie (Talia/Hammer), and too much hype.

Other things that stood out was the first 30 minutes of the movie was a bit clunky, there were a few too many plotholes, and some really questionable things that happened in the plot. For starters, the Gotham Police attacking a heavily armed group of thugs, en masse. It looked cool but I think any officer would realize that Civil War/WWI military tactics don't work against modern weapons.

Also, what's Nolan's deal with changing locations? It didn't even look like the Gotham City from the first two movies. No elevated rail, no narrows, no previous landmarks, no Arkham, and completely different geography.

I agree. I missed those little types of characters who gave Gotham a personality.

 

[Sundancer]

Bruce doing squat for 8 years

The stupid knee cartilage thing--how'd that problem get there?

Fixing Bruce's back by simply knocking a vertebrate in.

The government doing nothing for 3 months while a city is held by a terrorist

 

[JAK®]

You know when I posted my review I thought I would get a lot of flack for being too negative. But it seems that I loved it compared to most people here.

 

[Reek]

Back wasn't broken... and government tried doing some things, and failed... its a nuclear hostage situation... but agreed... a little weird.

 

[Manowar]

Can someone explain to me how Blake just happen to stumble across Gordon as he came out of the sewer? That made zero sense to me and pretty much took me entirely out of the film

Earlier in the film they found a dead body that drained out at the same location. So Blake decided to quickly check there.

 

[Manowar]

Oh, and another thing, how did batman put a shed load of petrol in the shape of a bat sign on that bridge. It was epic moment, but so ridiculous, things like that need explaining, if they are they then they are epic, if not it just looks stupid because its such a ridiculous thing to be able to acheieve, I mean how would you even begin trying to do something like that?

WTF I thought that was the Crow synbol?

 

[miggizle85]

I hated that there was no mention of the Joker at all in the movie. Ok I understand that out of respect for Heath that Nolan didn't want to recast the Joker but couldn't they have just mentioned him? It would.ve very easy to make at least a quick reference to him.

I mean come HOW AWESOME would it have been if they had included a scene like this:

A few sequences after releasing the prisoners in Backgate one of Bane's henchmen suggest blowing the walls of Arkham down and releasing them as well. Then Bane with a disturbed look on his face quickly shouts at him

Bane - "Nooo! No not there! Not them! We're trying to restore balance to the world, not burn it to the ground".

 

[LoveDragonDon]

Oh, How did Batman escape the Nuclear bomb radius?

 

[miggizle85]

Oh, How did Batman escape the Nuclear bomb radius?

Originally I was convinced that he simply ejected when The Ba t passed the bridge and then let the auto pilot take over, but I saw again today and that was debunked. For one.thing The Bat doesn't pass under the bridge, it flies over it. Also they show Batman in a cockpit 2 seconds before it blew up.

HOWEVER I noticed something that I missed the first time. Just before coming into view if the bridge Batman fires a missle and creates a huge explosion and a large cloud of smoke from there. Suddenly I thought, "why did he do that?" Now.i think that it's possible that he created the cloud of.smoke so he could hop from one Bat, to another. After all they never said there was just one. As was proven later when we see Lucious working on yet another Bat.

 

[LoveDragonDon]

Oh, and another thing, how did batman put a shed load of petrol in the shape of a bat sign on that bridge. It was epic moment, but so ridiculous, things like that need explaining, if they are they then they are epic, if not it just looks stupid because its such a ridiculous thing to be able to acheieve, I mean how would you even begin trying to do something like that?

I am pretty sure he did it to gave people HOPE. And give people HOPE is important enough to spend time! And Batman has enough technology to do it and take NO time at all, maybe 2 minutes tops for his technology?

 

[miggizle85]

I am pretty sure he did it to gave people HOPE. And give people HOPE is important enough to spend time! And Batman has enough technology to do it and take NO time at all, maybe 2 minutes tops for his technology?

Yeah. He had The Bat back by then. Just mount a hose on that sucker and boom. Bat symbol

 

[Saitou Hajime]

I didn't like how it often felt like whole transitions were cut, which I'm guessing they were.

This is what I can't get past the most. It's like they hired a complete newb to edit this film.

 

[Prison Mike]

I loved this movie but the only things I didn't like was how the score drowned out what the characters were saying, Bane's voice (I hardly understood him), and Blake's legal name being Robin. I would have preferred Dick Grayson. They are very minor complaints but over all, I loved this film and thinks it stands up very well to TDK.

 

[Leenie]

Nitpicks:

I thought the foreshadowing was pretty obvious and not-so-subtle at all throughout the film. For example, when Alfred told his story to Bruce at the beginning of the movie, my brain immediately assumed that the movie was going to end that way. I mean, I don't dislike the ending, but yeah ... I saw some things coming a mile away because of the obvious foreshadowing. This is just a minor nitpick that doesn't hinder my enjoyment for the movie, to be honest.

Another nitpick would be Bane's voice. It wasn't downright terrible, but it did grate on my nerves a little bit when he made long speeches, not gonna lie. I'm sure it'll probably not bother me as much upon repeated viewings.


The biggest issue I have with the movie:

I thought the entire character of Miranda Tate/Talia was completely pointless ... And she was an extremely weak character. Being familiar with the comics, I just got impatient with Miranda. I kept thinking, "Oh, just get ON with it, Talia." I also thought Miranda's relationship with Bruce was completely contrived and random.

The thing that bothered me about Talia the most was how it tainted the villainy of Bane. This is by far my biggest issue of the movie. We see the badass Bane being hyped up for most of the movie, and he breaks Batman in a way that no other character has in this trilogy, and it's all because of ... Ra's al Ghul's daughter who hated her father, but wanted to avenge him anyway? That's so weak. Bane was downgraded to lackey status by the end of the movie, which is really lame. I honestly would have been completely ok with Bane being the son or protégé of Ra's who became too extreme for the League of Shadows and wanted to take over Gotham in the way that he thought it should have been taken over. Some comic fans may have disapproved of that, but it's honestly a change I would have been ok with for the sake of storytelling and character.

 

[SentinelMind]

I don't mind Nolan showing Bane as being partly fragile behind that rough exterior and mask. Nobody can go through something Bane has gone through and not feel emotional about few relationships one had. I thought it was handled well.


The way Bane was killed could have been handled a little bit more dramatically, though.

 

[SentinelMind]

The biggest peeve was how Blake figures out Bruce is Batman. That dialogue made no sense. He saw his facial expression as a child and knew he was batman? Seriously? We couldn't get a little bit more creative? Maybe people were running out of time with the script.

 

[warhorse78]

I also hated how they didnt even try to make Gotham look not like NYC. I don't know anything about the Gotham of the comics and I can't really remember anything about the Gotham of the previous films, but I wish they would've at least tried to make it look like a separate city.

I don't know about NYC, but I saw the Empire Records tower many times, which means several shots were from LA!

 

[warhorse78]

So, I have two major complaints, the first big one, the whole BS story with the plot on why the villains want to destroy Gotham. They did it in BB, which I thought was stupid, and then to have the same ridiculous plot line to be included in this latest installment.

How Bane went down. Both physically and characteristically. Geeze, was that dumb. Bring back Joker any day now!!!! I'll take him in a nurse costume over Bane any day!

 

[miggizle85]

So, I have two major complaints, the first big one, the whole BS story with the plot on why the villains want to destroy Gotham. They did it in BB, which I thought was stupid, and then to have the same ridiculous plot line to be included in this

It is best explained by Ras Al Guhl in Begins. Once a civilization reaches the pinnacle it must be brought down to restore balance. There have been many examples of this happening in the past. The movie mentioned "Rome and Constinopol" and also that they "sacked Rome, burned London to the ground, and loaded trade ships with plague rats". There are numerous other examples too, and some day America will go through the same thing. So if you understand that it has happened, and will happen again, and if you just take the leap of faith that movie suggest that the League of Shadows has secretly been behind it all along, then the idea isn't so hard to accept.

 

[MrWayne]

Well, I got my wish and got to see Batman use some batarangs, but I'm disappointed we didn't get to see him use his grappling gun one last time.

I also agree the score was a bit too loud in areas over shadowing characters dialogue.

 

[Robin91939]

Can someone explain to me how Blake just happen to stumble across Gordon as he came out of the sewer? That made zero sense to me and pretty much took me entirely out of the film

I've sees way too many questions and complaints like the one above.

In the first scene where we meet John Blake he finds the body of an older orphan he knew that washed up in the exact spot. The orphan was declared to have died in the sewer.

When Gordon goes into the sewers, Blake deduces that one of the ways out (whether Gordon was alive or not) would be to the spot where he earlier found the body -- so he runs there as fast as he can.

This is a question/complaint that is answered in the film and would be solved by a movie goer who pays just a little more attention. You were taken out of the movie because you weren't paying attention to the movie. And more than half of the complaints I've seen/questions I've seen about the movie are just as easy to answer if you only WATCHED the film.

Like people question how Bane knew Bruce was Batman, seriously? I mean, really? These kind of nonsense questions are out of control.

-R

 

[HBKfan28]

I wish there was more Catwoman. Specifically, showing her robbing some random person or people before the steals Bruce's fingerprints, with a news report or something calling her "Catwoman." Or Daggett should've called her that. And maybe Alfred saying something to Bruce/Selina in the end at the resort or wherever that was, since he didn't have too many lines in the film (though they were great ones). They probably could have cut down on the Orphan story-line other than the beginning with Blake and the end where they get Wayne Manor...didn't need to see them trying to leave on a bus or whatever.

Ultimately the movie is great. Bane's voice was a bit hard to understand in some scenes, though it will probably sound better at home on a regular TV. And after seeing it.

I noticed the new World Trade Center tower (under construction) and Brooklyn Bridge (quickly), but I didn't mind that too much at the end of the day.

 

[Hotwire]

With Gotham's bridges cutoff how did that the surrounding rivers turn to ice, yeah it was snowing but was it that extremely cold that rivers turned to ice?

From the point where the bridges are destroyed, which is at some point during football season, to the climax, almost 5 months passes. Being winter, the freezing isn't unreasonable.

 

[Nemesis Prime]

Nitpicks:

The biggest issue I have with the movie:

I thought the entire character of Miranda Tate/Talia was completely pointless ... And she was an extremely weak character. Being familiar with the comics, I just got impatient with Miranda. I kept thinking, "Oh, just get ON with it, Talia." I also thought Miranda's relationship with Bruce was completely contrived and random.

The thing that bothered me about Talia the most was how it tainted the villainy of Bane. This is by far my biggest issue of the movie. We see the badass Bane being hyped up for most of the movie, and he breaks Batman in a way that no other character has in this trilogy, and it's all because of ... Ra's al Ghul's daughter who hated her father, but wanted to avenge him anyway? That's so weak. Bane was downgraded to lackey status by the end of the movie, which is really lame. I honestly would have been completely ok with Bane being the son or protégé of Ra's who became too extreme for the League of Shadows and wanted to take over Gotham in the way that he thought it should have been taken over. Some comic fans may have disapproved of that, but it's honestly a change I would have been ok with for the sake of storytelling and character.

Thank you. You just listed most of my complaints about this movie.

So let me get this straight. Bane/Talia went through all these troubles so they can break Batman and force him to watch the nuclear destruction of Gotham. Talia has the detonator with her all these times so she could have done it any second after Bruce was placed in his cell. Why then did she have to wait months in order to do so? It's idiotic to think that after all these careful planning and great execution Talia was forced to chase down the truck that has the bomb. I mean if she wants Bruce to see the destruction of the city he's sworn to protect so bad, this was a really poor way of doing it.

Talia was also on the side of Gordon and Blake for months just playing the part of a good guy. What's the point of that if she wasn't trying to work behind the scene of sabotage their efforts of shutting down the bomb? I don't think she was behind the discovery of the US agents and in fact she helped Gordon locating the truck with the bomb. To have her turn 180 degrees when she ran into Batman and spent 5 mins explaining her actions was really poor writing imo.

I also have problem with cops who were trapped in the rubble getting all the food and water needed to survive all those months. If a hole was big enough to lower aide to them, how come the same ropes used to lower the supplies didn't allow the cops to get out of the hole? Wasn't the city under lockdown and none of the help can come through the bridge? I find it hard to believe that the city, already short of food and water due to the lockdown, can still find enough of them to give to the cops for many months afterward. How come none of them froze to death during the winter months?

The showdown between the cops and the criminals was pretty laughable. Cops were mostly using small arms, while the criminals were armed to the teeth with machine guns. With that kind of disparity you'd think 99% of the cops would be dead before reaching the other side. Batman was so kind of take out the cannons but left the criminals well enough alone. I thought he should have helped the cops by taking the criminals out with the weapons and give cops chance to close the distance. Yeah I know about his moral code but these are cops and shouldn't he try to help them from getting killed?

 

[Robin91939]

Thank you. You just listed most of my complaints about this movie.

So let me get this straight. Bane/Talia went through all these troubles so they can break Batman and force him to watch the nuclear destruction of Gotham. Talia has the detonator with her all these times so she could have done it any second after Bruce was placed in his cell. Why then did she have to wait months in order to do so? It's idiotic to think that after all these careful planning and great execution Talia was forced to chase down the truck that has the bomb. I mean if she wants Bruce to see the destruction of the city he's sworn to protect so bad, this was a really poor way of doing it.

Talia was also on the side of Gordon and Blake for months just playing the part of a good guy. What's the point of that if she wasn't trying to work behind the scene of sabotage their efforts of shutting down the bomb? I don't think she was behind the discovery of the US agents and in fact she helped Gordon locating the truck with the bomb. To have her turn 180 degrees when she ran into Batman and spent 5 mins explaining her actions was really poor writing imo.

First things first, she didn't help Gordon find the truck with the bomb. She lied and said that the Geiger counter read nuclear energy in that truck and Gordon placed the tracker on it... Later, when Gordon stops that truck in the climax, he opens it and the back is empty...Talia lied to Gordon and had him mark the wrong truck -- this isn't helping him.

Second. Talia stayed under the guise of Tate to monitor and manipulate the good guys and their rebel efforts. She was never truly helping them (as stated above) and yes, was the one who sold out the special ops soldiers to Bane to be hanged on the bridge.

Third. Talia and Bane were PREPARED to destroy the city with the nuclear bomb, but as Bane said in his speech at the stadium, they wouldn't blow it up if Gotham accepted its fate and "took control" of their city. They never did, not in the way that Bane and Talia wanted them to, that is.

Fourth. They didn't have to blow the city up when Bruce was in the Pit because they still wanted Bruce to suffer. That's why they gave him the TV, so he could see his city fall and then die knowing he failed. Only one person survived the Pit so they CLEARLY didn't think Bruce would ever escape.

Fifth. You think that waiting those few weeks that Bruce was in the Pit was waiting too long to do something -- Talia waited YEARS and said as much. She even said why... The slow knife cuts the deepest. She spent years working with Bruce, slowly getting to know him, until eventually (even if it was in a time of need, a need that Talia ultimately orchestrated) he trusted her. She even slept with him to increase his attachment to her. And it worked. Bale sells it beautifully as you see the shock and sadness in his eyes at the moment of the betrayal. This was long term revenge. This was planned since, perhaps, the end of Batman Begins. It was only when Dr. Pavel revealed how to turn a fusion reactor into a bomb that Talia saw the opportunity.


My one complaint was if Marion had been featured in a cameo in The Dark Knight as Miranda Tate in a scene talking to Bruce about investing in green energy -- that would have made her reveal in this film even better. Overall, I feel like she was handled well. We as comic book fans are a little tainted, because we see it coming -- we know that she is the daughter of the demon. Non-comicbook fans did not and were surprised. I didn't spoil it for my girlfriend and she was shocked that the little kid was indeed Talia.

-R