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The Dark Knight Rises
389 Plays3 years ago
Will Short of the Days Past Tooncast is back again to talk The Dark Knight Rises, the long-anticipated and ultimately anti-climatic conclusion to Nolan's famed Dark Knight Trilogy. We discuss the comic book influences in the movies, gush over Anne Hathaway's Catwoman, speculate about Nolan's affinity for weird voices, and so much more.
Listen to Will on the Days Past Tooncast.
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Transcript
Bane's Speech and Connection to the League of Shadows
00:00:16
Speaker
The theatricality and deception. Powerful agents to the uninitiated. But we are initiated, aren't we, Bruce? Members of the League of Shadows. And you betrayed us. Yes, you are estimated by a gang of psychopaths.
00:00:45
Speaker
The League of Shadow. I am here to fulfill Raza Ghul's destiny. You fight like a younger man. There's nothing held back. Landrable, but mistaken.
00:01:15
Speaker
Oh, you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man, but then it was nothing to me but lightning. The shadows betray you because they belong to me.
00:01:47
Speaker
I will show you where I have made my home whilst preparing to bring justice. Then I will break you. Your precious armory, gratefully accepted. We will need it.
00:02:23
Speaker
Yes! I was wondering what would break first! Your spirit! Oh, your bunny!
Podcast Introduction and Movie Discussion
00:03:08
Speaker
Welcome to the Superhero of Cinephiles Podcast. I'm your host, Perry Constantine, and welcome me back now becoming a recurring guest, and that is Will Short. Will, how are you doing today? I'm doing great. We're going to talk about an interesting movie today, and I'm excited about this one. Same here, yeah.
00:03:27
Speaker
But I was, you know, I was thinking about it last night. This is now your fourth appearance on the show. Five if we count your appearance on the Patreon show as well. And you're, you know, it's only been like a few months you've been coming on and already you're like one of the most frequent guests.
00:03:43
Speaker
I didn't have as much going on so it's just like you gave me an opening and I took it and off we went man. Well there's a lot of fun stuff to talk about. I've always liked movies but growing up I loved them a lot and then went through a long time where I didn't really pay much attention and so getting back into whether it's current movies or older movies and appreciating them in a different way
00:04:05
Speaker
uh that's a new thing for me and then combine that with superheroes which is always in comics which has always been a thing and then my friends doing my friend who i get to catch up with now after you seriously think of each other's lives it was just uh it was kismet yeah it's great i'm loving having you on again of course you're always welcome to come on as as often as you want so um so today uh like you said we're talking about an interesting movie um probably one that was
Mixed Feelings on The Dark Knight Rises
00:04:31
Speaker
I think fair to say for that time period, next to Avengers, this was probably the most anticipated movie of that time period, and that is The Dark Knight Rises. And unlike Avengers, for me at least, it did not live up to that expectation.
00:04:49
Speaker
No, it didn't. And it's the kind of thing that, you know, I actually watched it a couple weeks ago and I watched most of it again today. And before that, I had watched it, I don't know, a year ago, two ago, not out of just love of the movie, but going back and watching the Nolan trilogy.
00:05:05
Speaker
And I've seen it a few times since I shot in the theater and it it has rewards to it It's not like it's a dumper. It's just that it's it's following one of the best Superhero movies and a great crime movie that just a great film The Dark Knight so it's it has that to go up against you got to wonder I mean obviously it is what it is we'll get into it but this movie is what it is largely because the Dark Knight is what it is and
00:05:30
Speaker
Yeah. And so you can't really have this without that. And Heath Ledger's death in between. But you got to wonder, like, if you had this level of movie made without The Dark Knight, would we judge it quite as harshly? I don't know. That's a good point. I'm not sure. But, you know, at the same token, I think a lot of people. I think there are two different camps. I think there are people who probably judge it too harshly because of The Dark Knight. But I think also there are people who
00:05:58
Speaker
give it a lot of leeway because of the Dark Knight. So it's this really odd, it has this really odd, which is kind of a good way to describe the movie too, because I don't know when, I'm not sure what you felt like when you first saw it, but when I first saw it, my girlfriend at the time, she had asked me, she's like, what do you think? And I'm just like, I don't know.
00:06:20
Speaker
I think that's one, very honest answer. Two, I think a common, if we were all being honest at the time when we saw it, we would probably have that reaction. Partly because it is kind of, I mean, there's a lot that happens in the movie. I wouldn't say that it earns its two and a half hour runtime, but for the amount of things that happen in it, yeah, it should be pretty long. So there's a lot to just take in. The tone of it varies kind of wildly and is,
00:06:49
Speaker
Sometimes trying to be in tune with what's come before and other times is really strangely like you know It's it's very heightened in a way that showed up occasionally in the first two Nolan movies But not so much and of course you've got and you've got Bane. I mean it's a whole track of conversation right here and the choices that Tom Hardy and and I guess Christopher Nolan made as well um, but yeah it you know, I when I went to go see it I
00:07:14
Speaker
A friend of mine had already seen it and he said, oh, you haven't seen this yet. You've got to come see it. I want to see it with you because he knows I'm a comic guy. And he warned me ahead of time. I didn't follow, you know, I guess the Internet wasn't quite as what's going on with these movies quite as much as it is now. So I guess this is what 2012 is that 2023 2013 is when no, no.
00:07:38
Speaker
I think it might've been 2014 maybe, but it came out. Double check. But go ahead, tell you, sorry, I'll double check. Yeah, I mean, obviously the internet was more and more becoming a place where you get all the news and details. At very least I wasn't following it like I would something now and everything gets reported on now. You know everything that's happening with any of these superhero movies for sure. So I didn't really know anything except that Bane was in it and I liked that character from the comics quite a bit. And my friend said, I want to know what you think of this portrayal of this character who I know nothing about. His name is Bane.
00:08:07
Speaker
And you're going to have a reaction to the voice right away. And then we saw the movie. I was kind of like mouth agape. Look over him like, oh, wow. OK. Yeah. So it was 2012. I just double checked, which is weird because that was the same because I remember it was the same summer that Avengers came out. And.
00:08:27
Speaker
what like that that's a pretty good way of looking at this is that i thought it was in a completely different year than if yours is well it's kind of a handoff i mean not truly but in a way like the no one thing what the no one trilogy was the last really big superhero thing we had before marvel truly became what it was and so in some ways there was kind of a handing of the baton
00:08:51
Speaker
or a taking of the baton potentially with. This is now, and especially that first Avengers movie really defined where we would be going. It's the crossover. It's everyone coming together. It's lots of jokes and big world ending shit going on. And versus this dark, I want to be Michael Mann, all these things going on with Christopher Nolan stuff, for better or worse, which also gets echoed in a lot of DC stuff later. Probably, in my opinion, most of the worst things about it get echoed. But they're so different.
00:09:21
Speaker
One is very cool temperature one is very hot temperature as far as like just the colors even and the amount of jokes and all that stuff So it is
00:09:31
Speaker
To watch the movie now, this one almost ages worse to me than the first two Nolan ones because it just feels like the end of an expression of Batman that is tied to a time before the Marvel Comics movies and to a particular time of what we wanted out of the Batman. Because, you know, Batman just, especially in the movies, reflects something about what's going on in our culture at that time and what we want out of this mirror of a
Evolving Opinions on Superhero Films
00:09:56
Speaker
man.
00:09:56
Speaker
Now I'm not sure about you, but when I see a movie in a theater, I tend to have two, not always, but for the most part, I tend to have two general reactions coming out of a theatrical experience. One is either, oh my God, that was fucking awful. Or, oh my God, I absolutely love that.
00:10:12
Speaker
And then it's not until I watch the movie again, you know, later on home video when I start developing more nuanced opinions, like, OK, well, yeah, that was OK, but maybe not as good as I originally thought it was. Or yeah, that wasn't as bad as I originally thought it was. So when I and it was so it was such a weird reaction for me to come out of this. And I was like, I don't know what to think. I feel like I should love this, but I don't.
00:10:35
Speaker
I think there is some brand loyalty issue there, especially at the time of, well, I only know these movies to be good between Batman Begins and now The Dark Knight. And Christopher Nolan seems like a smart guy who knows what he's doing. And you've got so many great people involved in this. Am I missing something here? Or is it possible for this to not be good?
00:10:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, you know, definitely that. But before you go too deep in the movie, let's back up a little bit. What is your general experience with Batman comics Batman as a character?
Will Short's Batman Connection
00:11:08
Speaker
Oh man, it's funny how like that, you know, it's him, Spider-Man, Superman, maybe a few others, but mostly those three where it's like, you just are giving them at birth. You're handed like, you know, your underoos or whatever. And if you have any superhero interest, you're gonna have some basic touch with that. I love Batman. I didn't have much of an idea of him as a kid, but except for like, I would go, I went to the Batman movie. The first one in returns, I really, I was more of an age to appreciate a movie at that time. So I loved those.
00:11:35
Speaker
I would play video games. I had a bunch of different Batman action figures because they made so damn many of them. And they always gave him something so he could maybe play with a Superman or whatever. So it's like, I'm freeze-ray Batman because I can't just detect. That's not enough to do with these action figures. I would watch the Adam West show when it was on TV. I watched not only the animated series, which I love, you know, the Bruce-Tim, Paul Dini one.
00:12:00
Speaker
but I always rented superhero VHSs at the store. Anytime I would go, I'd get the Spider Woman cartoon, all kinds of shit. And there was one, I think Filmation did it, the people who did He-Man, but there was one where Adam West
00:12:15
Speaker
did the voice of Batman again. And it was just like, it was just another kind of like campy version of the character. But I mean, I've always had him in my life, always dug him, but it wasn't until, and this is just, I wish I had a cooler or more different story for him, but it wasn't until I read as a teenage comic reader, Dark Knight Returns, year one, which is more, I like more as a story. I like Dark Knight Returns a lot, but I like year one even more, because it feels,
00:12:42
Speaker
so self-contained and very much like a real crime story to me. And digs into the psychology also of Jim Gordon so much, which I love him as a character. And then later Long Halloween, Dark Victory, like I started to get into the Batman crime comics and where it's a focus on that. I didn't dig the ones that were there was always some big
00:13:01
Speaker
You know, event, which this movie is based a lot on fall, which was going on. And I remember buying some of those comics partly because it's new Batman, you know, Asriel. He's a bad Batman and he's in the suit and all this shit. But the things that really stuck with me are Batman is a broken person who is a hero still and all the psychology stuff as fantastical as it is that goes along with him and his villains.
00:13:24
Speaker
So I love the Batman Legends. The stories where Hugo Strange was involved are so, so good. If you haven't read those, they were like when Legends was still a series coming out and they were really focusing on how Hugo Strange was obsessed with Batman and trying to become Batman in this way and all that stuff. Really love that.
00:13:43
Speaker
And then later on, Grant Morrison's run on Batman, I ate up because, again, anything that they do, I'm interested in. But I did really appreciate their take on let's take every wild thing that's ever happened in this character's history and try to make it try to make it make sense and not apologize for it.
00:14:01
Speaker
And then out of that, you got some really interesting like poppy stories, I think. So I love him. But I mean, so the Christopher Nolan version of Batman and the more recent The Batman, the Matthew Reeves one, pretty neatly into my interest of Batman as a grounded, relatively grounded
00:14:19
Speaker
crime character with really psychologically interesting villains and himself being that. So the Hugo Strange one that's Batman Prey is the graphic novel that it's available in. I haven't read that but I've had my eye on that for a while and I've just been
00:14:36
Speaker
And I'm going to be picking it up eventually. But yeah, that's definitely been on my list. I think we had a lot of, probably because we were the same generation, we're pretty much, I think we're pretty much the same age. So we had very similar experiences. And yeah, like with Superman, Batman was that kind of character that was, it was kind of like,
00:14:56
Speaker
handed to me at birth. I was just recently on a Superman podcast digging for crypt tonight. And I was talking a little bit about how I don't have a memory of my life before Superman. And it's the same thing with Batman. Like they've always existed in my universe. There's never, I don't remember when I was first introduced to them. It's just always been part of who I am. So, and yeah, so it was Superman and Batman were definitely there right from the start. Like I can remember being introduced to the X-Men. I can remember seeing the
00:15:26
Speaker
the first line of X-Men action figures and seeing the Wolverine X, like, oh, wow, that guy looks cool. I want that one. And not knowing anything else about the character. And then not until like a few years later when the animated series came out. So I have those memories of that was my first introduction to those characters. But with Superman and Batman, I don't have a first memory of them. And
00:15:45
Speaker
With Batman, yeah, it was also a weird time because I think it was, it might've been Fox was airing the 60s show on reruns. And at the same time, you had the Burton film. So it's like, I'm watching these two competing versions. And for my kid's brain, it's so funny when I think about it now, studios for a while, studios are so worried, like, oh, we can't have these different versions of the same character.
00:16:10
Speaker
people are going to be confused and then me as like a five-year-old kid I'm like oh cool there's this dark Batman and there's this campy Batman and I'm totally fine with both of those. Absolutely same here there I mean because you again because these characters are everywhere and especially Batman is so malleable in this way like there's like two things that remain true about him and everything else can be fit to whatever else
00:16:31
Speaker
that, yeah, we can totally accept all these things, and I'm glad that we're getting to a point where that is true in pop culture at large, all the media we consume. I will say, it's funny how, of course, the Tim Burton movies have quite a bit of darkness to them, but I would say that they are
00:16:46
Speaker
they're almost as close to the 60s Batman show as far as campiness and heightenedness goes. They're not a realistic gritty. It's not like, and not even to say that the Christopher Nolan version is the better version, but Christopher Nolan wants to dig into the politics of how the police forces run in Gotham and how Batman affects that, sometimes to a good effect, sometimes to his detriment. It's not like that's what Tim Burton's movies are about, especially the second one. They are,
00:17:15
Speaker
they're so interesting and they are definitely darker but they are very heightened and in a way cartoony in my mind that now as a now that i'm older and i see both i'm like oh well one is wanting to be a comedy and the other one has comedic elements and they are both very heightened and arch in a certain way exactly yeah yeah and so when when people want to talk about it as like and it totally was a revolution for
00:17:37
Speaker
superhero movies and just understanding Batman at all to have a Batman that's not making quips all the time, you know, was a new thing. But look at it as such a dark thing. It's like, I don't know if you watch this and you're someone who just saw The Batman. It's not a dark movie in 1989. Oh, no. Yeah, it's fun as hell. But and there's darkness to it that is maybe more
00:17:59
Speaker
unique and personally twisted than you would find because Tim Burton puts a bit of himself if not a lot of himself into everything so you get his particular piccadillos coming out in that film and especially the second one versus How characters show up in the Batman, but yeah, it's I yeah, I remember Adam Garcia who's probably like tied with you for like most appearances on the show He once said on Twitter. He's like he's like
00:18:23
Speaker
Batman Returns is a lot hornier than I remember. It's so, I mean, of course, Michelle Pfeiffer is Catwoman, but everybody's, I mean, those, it's funny, those four, even going outside of the Tim Burton ones, but the ones that are ostensibly follow-ups forever and Batman and Robin, whether you want to talk about the homosexual aspect of it or not, it's all horniest shit. Yeah. I mean, that's, there's an element of Batman, ever since Neil Adams drew Batman, I feel like that's been a part of it, if not before.
00:18:52
Speaker
Right, which is, speaking of Grant Morrison, like, one of my favorite lines is when they described their version of Batman and the Neil Adams version as the horny chest, the hairy chested love god. Look at, I mean, yeah, those ones where he's like shirtless but has the cowl on, those classic Neil Adams. It's like, yeah, he is part Indiana Jones in a way, like, and again, we're just, all the things that we can attribute to this character that seem not to go together in some ways, just tell you how
00:19:19
Speaker
how malleable in the best way this character is and that yeah we kind of come coded in our DNA an understanding of what is Batman's origin we all know it somehow we we I don't same as you I don't know when I learned that it might have been the first Batman movie but probably not I don't think so I think yeah or that yeah so interesting see when talking about the Nolan films
Realism vs. Impracticality in Nolan's Batman
00:19:42
Speaker
Derek had a had a pretty interesting perspective on it because when these were coming out, you know, pretty dark night rises, I think, everyone was gushing about that. And they're like, these are the greatest things ever. It's the godfather of superhero films is what people were saying about the dark night back then.
00:19:58
Speaker
Derek's reaction was much more muted, I remember. He was very much like, it's like, yeah, they're okay. And one of the things he said is, he'd said one time in the show is that one of his big gripes about the Nolan films is that in trying to make a realistic Batman movie, Christopher Nolan just kind of proved that Batman doesn't work in the real world.
00:20:23
Speaker
And I think there's a lot of truth that I think that really comes into the I think in The Dark Knight and Batman Begins you can forgive a lot of that stuff But I think it really starts to come to the fore in this movie and you really start to see the cracks forming Another thing too is I think at this point Nolan was just bored with Batman like there's a definite sense of
00:20:44
Speaker
He made Batman, he was like nobody when he made Batman Begins, right? He had, you know, he had indie cred from Memento and, you know, Insomnia was like his biggest thing, but it didn't do that well. It wasn't that well received. So when he did Batman Begins, it was kind of like this big stepping stone and that allowed him to go on and do like the prestige and other stuff.
00:21:05
Speaker
and so then he did The Dark Knight and you really got the sense that after The Dark Knight it was kind of like okay I've made it now I did the superhero I did the cape shit so I can make my own movies and now I can do things like Inception and all this and then Warner Bros is like but we want you to do a third one he's like fuck all right I agree I also
00:21:27
Speaker
and I mean interviews or whatever I'm sure there's documentation out there that might prove this one way or the other but you know it definitely the dark night and you don't have to follow that up with anything you could leave that that writing and leave it and now most people and most like Warner Brothers you know million millions of dollar movies would not want to end on something so dark
00:21:47
Speaker
Cynical, you know open-ended as well. Yeah, this is just the world as it exists and we're not gonna fall on it Which is Batman is now being hunted by the police. He's seen as a criminal, you know, the Joker is still out there doing whatever I truly believe he wanted to follow that up originally and that when Heath Ledger unfortunately passed away that
00:22:08
Speaker
neutered the idea of doing the next Batman, because he, to assume things about how he felt about it, he had great inspiration working with someone like Heath Ledger on this thing. And I think there's an aspect of, oh, I can't do, I mean, even if he could come up with other things, he did for this movie. But it's like the fire is coming up with something for these players that is interesting to me. And when one of those is just taken off the board and you just have no option,
00:22:34
Speaker
Aside from the emotional impact I'm sure that had and carried working on this project. I don't know. I just feel like it's like you if I if he had plans even just
00:22:43
Speaker
barely structured ones over what happens next, and you remove this person, the only person who can play the character. You can't have someone recast, obviously. That is, I would think, part of what takes the wind out of the sails of doing the third Batman movie. And then, of course, he's, you're right, he's done Inception, which is also, it's like his thing that he wanted to do, that's his baby. Batman is not his baby. He managed to adopt it and race it as his own, his ward, in fact.
00:23:10
Speaker
The Inception was such a hit and so defining for him that, yeah, he didn't have to make this movie for himself, certainly. I don't think he would have wanted to without Ledger or ultimately without some... I don't think he had a contractual obligation to, is the thing. I don't believe so. I mean, I could be wrong about that.
00:23:31
Speaker
Yeah, but he also he carries so much weight at Warner Brothers like he has like a first all kinds of power that he has there and few directors wield that the way that he does.
Nolan's Reluctant Involvement with The Dark Knight Rises
00:23:40
Speaker
But yeah, I I do believe I agree. I also feel like he he thought he had found something to do based on some of the things I read. I think he did have something he wanted to say. It's unclear to me what exactly he wanted to address with this movie. There's a lot of returning to certain themes of
00:23:59
Speaker
I mean, things about lies coming out for that matter and masks and hiding yourself. There's a lot of, oh, the whole symbolism, the importance of symbolism in that one man, which is something that in the comics you don't really find. I have not seen that so much. I guess you could argue that the Bat family is a representation of Batman is an idea and these other people can adopt it. But the way it shows up in this, where it's like Batman can be an inspirational figure to non-
00:24:25
Speaker
non-heroes, basically non-superheroes or non-vigilantes, is not something that I would have ever thought to connect him to, but that comes back in a big way in this one, in very clear ways and in more symbolistic ways. And then things like the disparity, wage disparity, or how we distribute wealth and everything, which are things that have kind of been there before in the other movies. But it's like, there's a lot that he's returning to here, and also it feels like there's a lot of cleanup
00:24:55
Speaker
for things that he set up in Dark Knight that now have to be at least mentioned because there is no Joker and there is no Ledger around to make that better. I don't know. I would think that would be a reason not to do it for him is that now I got to deal with, you know, it's like a continuity cleanup. Basically, it's like you call Chris Claremont to figure out a reason why Magneto has been dead three times and now he's back or something, you know, like one of those. So it's.
00:25:20
Speaker
it is that kind of and also I believe one of the reasons he wanted to make it was that he would get such a big budget that he could do a lot of neat things because that's what he's about at the end of the day is making big movies doing cool things on screen that you don't get to do anymore because we rely on CGI and all these things so much and so that opening scene
00:25:38
Speaker
is one reflection of the opening scene in The Dark Knight as far as we're going to tell you everything about this movie and this villain in one scene and what your whistle with the cold open before we jump into the real story. And I do think that that opening scene, as cool as it is,
00:25:56
Speaker
i think it tells you a lot about bane and i feel like it reflects bane and the movie at large the same way that the opening scene from the dark knight reflects joker and that movie at large which is like this scene is really cool to watch it doesn't make a ton of sense when you watch it it feels over complicated and like
00:26:12
Speaker
two big fritz britches however it pulls it off but it's like why am i watching a plane pulling another plane in a batman movie and why are they and later you get some ideas why but it feels like you didn't have to do make this this complicated it's just a cool 007 opening to a to a movie one thing that kind of annoys me about that opening scene too is the
00:26:32
Speaker
Bane's henchmen who agrees to stay behind and sacrifice himself. And then later, you know, Daggett is, you know, Daggett's assistant. He says that Bane says that his men would die before they talk. And Daggett's like, where does he find these guys? And I know the idea is trying to make it seem like, you know, Bane is this huge inspirational figure to them. But
00:26:52
Speaker
That really felt like an example of, okay, you're telling me that he's this big inspirational figure, but I'm not seeing why. I'm not seeing any motivation for it. And I think that was a big fail, especially with this whole idea is, you know, and again, that going with that class disparity and the tale of two cities aspect that Nolan said he was going for. You get that.
00:27:14
Speaker
that gets lip serviced a lot in the movie, especially with Selena. I love that scene when she's dancing with Bruce and she says,
00:27:24
Speaker
You know, there's a storm coming and, you know, pretty soon you're all going to wonder how you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us. And then later, when he goes to lose all his money, he says, well, they're letting me keep the house. And she says, even the rich don't go broke the same way the rest. Those are good lines. These are great lines. Yeah. But the movie itself doesn't really do a lot with those ideas.
00:27:46
Speaker
I agree it's it's such a not even to get into the whole like no man's land you know God that was now a wasteland aspect of it and the stock the stock trading thing like yeah there is I mean that's one of the things it seems like he wants he finds some importance in highlighting that I don't know Nolan does I don't know if it's because there are things that he actually finds important to talk about or
Anne Hathaway's Complex Catwoman
00:28:09
Speaker
or if he just thinks that they are important because they're kind of present in the DNA of certainly a Batman Catwoman story for sure. And that's something that got like, I mean, I think that I think Anne Hathaway is the MVP of this movie. I think her portrayal of Catwoman
00:28:26
Speaker
as this character would have to be a good actor to do the things she does. In that opening scene with her at the mansion and she's looking so mousy at everything she does, it's like she shapeshifts in front of you. And when she does the whole thing, you see her face when he...
00:28:43
Speaker
calls out that she's wearing his mom's pearls. You see her face, basically, again, like, shapeshift into another thing, and just, she changes the voice. Later on, when she is caught in the middle of this fray, she's screaming. And, you know, while the police come in, so that they think she's just a bystander, because she knows the power of being a white woman in a dress, screaming, which is, I'm the victim here. And it's so great. I mean, she does that so many times.
00:29:08
Speaker
even when she's tricking Bruce in a sense, into facing Bane and everything. But her portrayal of that person who is a shape shifter as a real person also, who can be heightened and interesting, but that is a mask or the many masks she puts on to interact with the world, I found so engaging. I was way more interested in her than anyone else, pretty much in this movie. As much as I liked some of the people in it, she was just so good. And yeah, I mean, for me, there is,
00:29:37
Speaker
The Batman, the most recent one, the Batman, Zoe Kravitz's portrayal in that, I don't know if it was the writing or whatever. I wasn't a huge fan of the character, that version of Catwoman, but I do think casting a person of color in that role
00:29:56
Speaker
makes sense, way more sense with this class disparity idea in Gotham. Not that a white person can't be downtrodden or poor, but especially with Anne Hathaway. It's not her fault that she looks like an erudite, and that her public persona is that of a well-off drama school kid, and there's that whole thing with people hating her that's bullshit.
00:30:16
Speaker
Anyway, but that's the only thing that she's working against that and still makes it work She looks like somebody who should be at Juilliard and you still believe hey this lady's seen some shit and she's been through some shit so it's funny you say that it's funny you said that about Zoe Kravitz because actually I was gonna say that Anne Hathaway was my favorite catwoman until Zoe Kravitz and now Zoe Kravitz has kind of overtaken her but you know rewatching this last night it's
00:30:39
Speaker
Like I found myself kind of questioning that a little bit because, you know, she is just so good in this movie and she so completely embodies that character. Probably more than any other actor in the Nolan movies, she completely embodies the comic version of that character.
00:30:56
Speaker
Agreed it. She it's also interesting because she kind of physically resembles the Julie Newmar version also in especially with the costume Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so but I agree that like the way that she This person who is highly intelligent very dangerous if you're on the wrong end of it But is trying to it is the anti-hero that catwoman ultimately is to be yeah, I and I get I
00:31:19
Speaker
It's not so much Zoe Kravitz herself. I think partly it's the way the character is written as very dour, which makes sense, given what she's gone through. But I like, and in my mind, Catwoman has always got a certain playfulness to her that doesn't always seem so forced, where it's like, here I gotta go, I gotta be Catwoman and Flirty again. You at least believe in the moment that she might be into you. It's that kind of thing. Maybe the bartender does like me. Oh no, I was just trying to get a tip sort of thing.
00:31:46
Speaker
And I think a lot of that's in the writing here too, because those are such great lines that she was given. And they are kind of unwieldy, and of course, Anne Hathaway can make them work, and she does.
00:31:57
Speaker
You know, I think this movie really kind of cemented for me, Anne Hathaway as like kind of like an actor to pay a lot of attention to because before this, like my whole impression of her was like, oh yeah, the, you know, the girl from the Princess Diaries movies or whatever. And, you know, I'd seen her in, well, it broke back mountain and like, okay, well, wow, she's pretty good in this, but I don't think it was until this movie and I'm just like, oh, wow, she's really good.
00:32:26
Speaker
And she's really walking a line that is not easy to do, and this whole movie is kind of struggling with it, and sometimes working and sometimes not, but a line between the heightened, superhero-y, comic book-y, you know, kind of scene-stealing tone versus a more grounded, we-want-to-make-a-crime-thriller tone. And that managed, as far as a film just overall goes,
00:32:51
Speaker
was very much straddled successfully in The Dark Knight. We get some very heightened things, not just the fact that things are blowing up, but just the portrayals that people are giving are, on one hand, they can be really big and you're like, I don't know, if someone did that in person, I would think that that's just not true to life. But in this world, I'm getting both
00:33:11
Speaker
both of them at the same time and in this movie she manages that I feel like and it's not that other actors don't but some of them are better defined characters in the first place so they have more to work on but it's just the film itself is veering between what is the deal with the police the police are corrupt in this way or they're not and they're they're fat cats and we're waiting to get rid of James Gordon they're talking about so much nitty-gritty with the police shit so much time spent on that and then also somebody's blowing up a football stadium with an earthquake
00:33:40
Speaker
So these are things that are more common in an MCU or Superman movie that are things that you would maybe, at least the big part of it,
Overloaded Superhero Film Narratives
00:33:49
Speaker
you're used to. But as big as these movies have gone, they didn't feel like they hit the same operatic scope as this one did. And I think that's some of where it fails. Not because it doesn't pull it off.
00:34:02
Speaker
I think one of the things that I think it's a similar problem I had with Batman Begins and it's this kind of like this recurring issue with a lot of superhero movies is that everything has to be like the
00:34:14
Speaker
world is in danger or the country's in danger or the city's in danger. And one of the things I really admired about the Dark Knight is it didn't do that, right? It was just, the Joker's got two boat fulls of people and he's gonna blow one up and he's gonna blow one or both of them up, right? It was a very simple, like, yeah, he's causing all this chaos in the city. But when you look at Batman Begins, right? It's the whole thing of like, okay, where we have this microwave emitter that's going to, which is kind of ridiculous thing because
00:34:42
Speaker
how come it doesn't evaporate all the moisture in the human body? Yeah, exactly. But it was that kind of thing. And then this, we have Bane with the nuclear bomb that's being driven around the city. And so it's these big city ending threats. And even the Batman fell prey to that too. And I think that's why, I think that movie really should have ended when they captured the Riddler because I think that was like the perfect place to end it. I think going into it more with the whole
00:35:10
Speaker
the his followers and all that stuff at the end. I think that was taking it too far. We could have done without that whole last part. And also something else about the Nolan movies I realized is they're kind of representative of different eras of Batman comics. So you've got the Batman Begins, obviously, you know, Batman year one. And then you've got the Dark Knight, which,
00:35:39
Speaker
kind of evocative of the of the Neil Adams uh Denny O'Neill era you've got him living in the penthouse and all that kind of stuff um and he's traveling he's like uh traveling overseas to do something a different you know right being a James Bond type yeah
00:35:54
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then this feels much more evocative of like the 90s era because you've got you've got Bane, you've got the whole nightfall aspect of it. You've got Catwoman as an antihero, which I believe that pretty much started in the 90s. And then you've got the whole no man's land thing, too. Yeah. And I think one of the problems with this movie is
00:36:16
Speaker
They're trying to do way too much. I feel like Nolan had general ideas for like two or three Batman movies, but he didn't want to make two or three Batman movies. So he just decides to throw them all into this one. So you've got the whole thing, the wage disparity, the tale of two cities thing. You've got the relationship with
00:36:36
Speaker
Catwoman Talia and, you know, going back to Rachelle Ghoul from which, by the way, it annoys me that they call him Roz all the time in these movies, but that's not. Yeah, yeah. I noticed that I was like, wait, did they not call do they call him the wrong thing before as well? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. In fact, they they have a note about that in Batman Begin Batman Beyond. And there's an episode of that show when Rachelle Ghoul comes when Talia comes back into Bruce's life.
00:37:04
Speaker
and him and Terry are talking about it. And Terry calls him Ra's Al Ghul and Bruce says, no, that's a misconception. It's pronounced Rach. Yeah. You know, they just haven't played the Arkham games. That's it. Because that's where I learned the pronunciation, I think, was probably playing Arkham City or something where he shows up and I'm like, oh, Rach, got it. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember if they said it correctly and when he was in Arrow or not, though.
00:37:29
Speaker
I have to double check that. But yeah, so you've got the whole stuff with Rachelle Ghoul and picking up on the League of Assassins stuff, or League of Shadows in these movies. And then also, you've got this whole thing where you want to do the Nightfall story. But you also want to do a little bit of Dark Knight Returns is in there, too. It feels a lot like Batman v Superman in that way, where we want to do Dark Knight Returns, but we want to do the first meeting of Batman and Superman. But we also want to do
00:37:59
Speaker
You know, we also want to introduce Wonder Woman and the Justice League, but we also want to do the death of Superman. And they're cramming all these things into one movie and it's overstuffed as a result. It really is. And it's amazing that they get that much stuff into a sub three hour movie that they still managed not to crack that because it is a lot of stuff. But things start to suffer as a result of that, where it's like, well, that maybe would be a good story if it was given room to breathe or if you could edit it this way. But it's there's so much to
00:38:28
Speaker
Going back to the beginning, just the concept of the movie, you're absolutely right, there's kind of a combination of the tone and the goals and the villain side of things from the first two movies. You've got, they're trying to do the, basically the movie Heat was, the Dark Knight was Heat, but with Batman, essentially as far as tone, as far as a lot of the way that it was shot, all sorts of things go, and that worked great for that. They try to pull some of those gritty crime elements into this, whether it's because of what's going on with the police or anything like that.
00:38:58
Speaker
And it doesn't really work here as well because the scope is already trying to shoot bigger, and it just doesn't feel like they have time to sit with it and bake it properly. They're also combining that, this kind of lower level, but look at all the seedy underside of this place. Combine that with the bigger, more superhero-y threat, or super villain-y threat of Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows from the first one, you're right. This is kind of a retread and
00:39:22
Speaker
of, it's almost like the Death Star in Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, where it's kind of just doing this again with some slightly different faces involved, and it's for real this time. It's going to be a big deal. It works out okay. It's not like that's the worst thing in the world, but it does feel like we've been here before, and it now feels incongruous with the grittier world we lived in in The Dark Knight.
00:39:47
Speaker
but you have to live in that world a little bit because you have this leftover lie that Batman and James Gordon told in the second one that you now have to start off the film with. And that is one of the biggest hurdles for me is that I don't care about that shit anymore. This is personal, but if Ledger's not around, you may as well ignore the end of that movie as far as I'm concerned, because you're not gonna follow up on it in a way that I would love to see.
00:40:13
Speaker
I feel like we were robbed of course of many, I mean people were robbed and his family was robbed, Ledger was, of it by his death. But as far as these movies go, we were robbed of a cool Batman movie where he is on the run from the police for the entire movie, he is an enemy of the city as far as they're concerned, and he is not a hobbled Batman who's been away for
Bruce Wayne's Reclusion: A Narrative Misstep
00:40:34
Speaker
eight years.
00:40:34
Speaker
That's not my favorite version of Batman. And if you're going to go that way, go longer, make him real old or much older and much more like he's really working against his body. This one, he had only been gone for what? Five years in our world, like as viewers, maybe. I think it was. Oh, yeah. In our world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like us as viewers, it's not been that long since we saw him. So it doesn't work for me. Him being a recluse, it doesn't feel real. It doesn't feel like it had to happen. And you've skipped over the interesting part of the story. Batman is the bad guy now.
00:41:03
Speaker
and also the whole thing about him being a recluse and his leg being injured too that's just like you know he gets the magic leg brace and then everything's completely fine it's it's fine and then later i mean well also you run into this hole it's very cartoony but it's a certain amount of this is just gonna have to show up but it's like he his leg brace makes him feel better
00:41:20
Speaker
Makes his leg better. He goes and fights Bane, and I guess the problem is that Bane is just really strong, and he's not fighting right, I guess. The second time he fights Bane, he's probably in worse shape, I would imagine, as much as many sit-ups he's been doing in the jail, he fucking, his back broke, or he had a vertebra, you know, like pushed out, and so now he comes back and just fights Bane harder this time.
00:41:43
Speaker
And that's what does it he just hits him harder this time and it's that kind of thing We're say well now I don't know what he overcame that actually would cause this I understand that the idea is that he has to I guess is that he as a character has to stop Living with a suicidal mindset of I'm just out there trying to do anything But I hope I I die at the end of this it doesn't feel like a good strong through line of a character
00:42:07
Speaker
It doesn't, no. And it completely, that's one of the things that was driving me nuts as I'm watching this. Because Alfred is telling you, he's practically shouting at the screen exactly what this character arc is supposed to be, right? He's saying that Gotham doesn't need your body. Your body, going out and causing a lot of property damage and punching people is not how you're going to solve these problems.
00:42:31
Speaker
And Bane is the representation of that because you can't beat the shit out of Bane. So for him, the whole character journey there is supposed to be, you have to use your mind. You have to use other resources. And then he just comes back and like you said, he just punches harder now. And no, that's, and also to your point, the whole idea of like, you know, you keep doing this, you're gonna die.
Emotional Depth in Alfred and Bruce's Relationship
00:42:51
Speaker
And then the whole movie ends with him, you know, apparently committing suicide. Right. And to jump to that, like I,
00:43:00
Speaker
It's funny. Of course, Michael Caine as Alfred, I think it's such a great portrayal, such a good relationship on screen. I feel a chemistry between him and Christian Bale as these characters that works for me. Absolutely. He feels more familial and more fatherly than ever in this movie because they are now on terms of, okay, I'm just gonna tell you straight. There's a scene where he confronts him in the stairwell, Alfred does, basically when they break up, when he says, I'm not gonna support what you're doing anymore. And I teared up.
00:43:30
Speaker
this time because he's talking about basically I've set your bones, I've stayed up with you while you're hurting these ways, I will not bury you. Someone that I've cared about since I first heard his cries in the master bedroom upstairs and he starts breaking up and that got me because I'm thinking of if someone I care about, you think of someone that you care about doing something that's self-destructive and even if they think it's the right thing and you do know them in that way, you've watched them and you've cared for them and maybe in Alfred's case, you even feel a little guilt because you've,
00:43:59
Speaker
allowed it. You've played a part in it. I very much felt it. Bruce, I think Christian Bale of course is just always doing, he doesn't turn in bad work. It's not his issue that anything is not working, I don't think. I think the writing makes Bruce seem dumber and
00:44:16
Speaker
denser than usual in this movie. Not because he's always clear as to what's happening emotionally inside of him, that's something that usually has to be reflected back to him by other characters, but things like that where he, and then of course you have the whole reveal of the letter from the Rachel Dawes letter, that he would just write
00:44:35
Speaker
Alfred off because of that. I just, I just didn't believe it. There are things going on emotionally for him. I just didn't buy. There's, it's such a selfish portrayal of Bruce Wayne is to like that. Yes. Cause again, that's seen it then going to change performance, which again, when he's at, when they're at the grave at the end and he's, he's breaking down, he's like, I, you entrusted me with your son and I failed you. This is all my fault. And he's like, you know, he's devastated and.
00:45:02
Speaker
I mean, and I get they want to do that whole symmetry thing where he lives out the fantasy of seeing Bruce across the, but still, I mean, like that's.
00:45:09
Speaker
I feel like the more I watch this movie, the more I think about it, the more I think like that's a fucking shitty ass thing to do to the guy. Like after you've done that, Alfred should have been the first one you called and said, look, I'm okay. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And I mean, you couldn't argue. Who knows what's on the cutting room floor also. I mean, that's the thing when you're talking about especially a movie with this much stuff going on. I would just imagine that there's not a version out there, but like there were plenty of scenes that would have gone on longer or would have maybe covered some of this stuff, not because I think they had
00:45:39
Speaker
Our interest in mind just because it's like well you just play the thing out and see what happens Yeah, there are other times that shows up for me where it's like I do find this Bruce Wayne to be almost more playful than ever which I kind of like he seems to be having a good time sometimes which is surprising given the the circumstance of a lot of this but
00:45:58
Speaker
he the fact that he trusts Catwoman the way he does when he shouldn't and again I would fall for it but I'm not putting claims on the world's greatest detective or whatever yeah I'm the way that he with the whole Miranda Tate thing that I will say that I I knew we all knew she was Talia if we were at worst cap to see you that's worse kept see that's
00:46:19
Speaker
Yeah, and that's not their fault for the writing. It's just how it works. That's just how it works. But she's pretty clearly gun for him, I feel like. And he, I understand that Bruce is a human at the end of the day. He's not just like a robot. So he is in dire straits. His body's been taken away. This is an attractive woman who seems to have been there this whole time doing things for you. But there are various things that happened that seem like he just goes into a berserker mode with Bane or places where he is just not detecting
00:46:47
Speaker
The more obvious things and it is easy to say as a viewer who is aware of these things But I feel like they the Batman they're selling me is often inept Yeah, he doesn't come across as injured. Like I can't keep up with that Bane. It's I'm just being a dumb fighter I'm not paying attention to things that matter. I'm I'm being led around by my dick with these particular people or whatever it is and
Critique of Batman's Intelligence Against Bane
00:47:09
Speaker
That's never, even in his worst moments, at least I don't want that, I don't want that feeling for Batman. That's not entertaining for me. I can accept a flawed Batman who makes a mistake, for sure, absolutely, because he would need that for this arc. But it just so many times he feels not powerful in the ways that Batman should be, in my opinion. And the Bane thing, I would love to chat about Bane for a bit. I mean, the voice thing is its own thing, but like just,
00:47:37
Speaker
this version of the character, the voices. I'll get to Ben, but I do want to talk. There are a few things I want to say about about Batman. You know what? It's I was thinking about this and I noticed a lot of similarities between the portrayal of Batman and this one and Ben Affleck's Batman in BVS. Like there's a lot of similar problems in both cases. You get this Batman who's like supposedly old and weary and
00:48:03
Speaker
Yeah, there's this world weariness about them, but also there's this ineptness about both of them. Because in BVS,
00:48:15
Speaker
And Derek and I talked about this when we covered that movie and he had said that you know one of the things he liked about it is that Batman is kind of more of a detective in that movie and I said well yeah he is, but he's also an incompetent detective because you can't tell that Lex Luther is the one behind all this shit. Right. It's so obvious like Luther's plan is so
00:48:34
Speaker
dumb and obvious that a five-year-old should be able to figure it out. I mean, he signs his own fucking work and Lois Lane is the best detective in the movie. And even she is not that great of a detective in it. And I felt a lot of that in this movie too. They completely, I mean, the whole idea about that Miranda Tate and it feels like you should be able to be, you're Bruce Wayne, you're Batman. You should be a little bit more skeptical of this woman.
00:49:04
Speaker
And it feels like there's the same thing with the relationship with Catwoman, like the whole thing, it feels like these characters
00:49:11
Speaker
Bruce is attracted to these women or he's drawn to these women. I mean, obviously they're attractive women, so that part, but he's drawn to these women, not because of anything they do, not because of anything they meet. It's just, it's because the script tells him he has to be attracted to them. Like I don't get the sense, as much as I love Anne Hathaway's performance in this, I don't get any sense of why
00:49:37
Speaker
her and Bruce trust each other so much and why, you know, she comes back for him and why he decides to go off with her at the end. Like, there's that relationship is not developed at all for me. Yeah, and it might. I think in another film where she could like have maybe well like like a Batman Returns as far as
00:49:59
Speaker
how many people you have in it, like him, her, and then a clear villain, something like that. You could explore that in a way that makes that make more sense. There's an element of it where it's like, well, there's two attractive people on screen. I accept that they like each other. But yeah, there's so many times that it's proven that you really shouldn't trust this person. And even if she's going through a character arc, which she is, she's going through a change.
00:50:21
Speaker
I do forget that there's kind of a time jump in the movie. It does take months, I guess, for Bruce when he's in jail and everything's happening in Gotham. So not because that makes everything better, but that does stretch the story out a little bit more that we just don't get to experience as viewers. But yeah, I think, you know, I think that they're very much banking as filmmakers on the
00:50:45
Speaker
the implied, well, of course you would fall for this person. Of course, you want them to get together in a way because that's one, that's how Batman and Catwoman work. You want them to kiss and have a chase and everything. And then also that, I mean, I would love to explore why Batman would be after being so drawn to a lawyer for so long, why he would be drawn to, I mean, we all like who we like. It's not that big a deal, but it is quite a different person that he's drawn to. Now you could argue, of course, here's someone who's standing up for something who,
00:51:13
Speaker
is troubled and maybe has more parallels to Rachel Dawes than you can draw them, but there's no room for that in this movie.
00:51:21
Speaker
Yeah, I agree. It's kind of a hell of a portrayal. I also have a really big problem with, and this is very much similar to like that in Batman Forever, actually, when he, you know, he's like, I'm going to tell Chase who I am and I'm going to give up being Batman now. And there's very much that in this too, where he's just like, he's like, well, I lost Rachel, and the city hates me, so I'm just going to give up and stay and lock myself away in my house. And it's just like, I'm like, that's,
00:51:45
Speaker
I mean, if you're gonna have Bruce Wayne quit being Batman, like he has to really be forced to give it up, like in Batman Beyond where he physically cannot do the job anymore. And for him to just say like, oh, well, you know, I had Rachel and now I don't, so now I'm done. It's like, it's too, again, it's something that they're sacrificing what this character is in order to fit this story.
00:52:11
Speaker
They're also placing I mean and maybe there are people who really love I didn't dislike Rachel Dawes either performance or either portrayal of her But I feel like they're placing a lot of importance on a character whose relationship with Bruce I was not specifically invested in I loved this this person that had died as much as Bruce did if you made me love that character as much I would probably believe That like just I would feeling like emotions on an emotions level be with him like yeah, I can't go on either So I get it. I totally get it
00:52:41
Speaker
and and it's not that so you know it feels like yeah you didn't really sell me on that breaking his heart I know there is kind of a childlike attachment he has to her and very much so very and so I you know this Batman I do think sometimes I'm overlooking
00:52:59
Speaker
because Christian Bale seems so capable as Batman a lot of the time that I do think I overlook, if it's maybe just partly how the films are made, how probably immature he is in certain ways. Because as perfect as he is in all these other ways that we like to have a Batman be, it's like his way of dealing with his emotions is not particularly mature or normal. And so when it comes to a crush or a love or whatever it is,
00:53:25
Speaker
I think the problem is we just haven't really seen that a ton in the other two movies, except when he was younger. I think a big problem, too, and this is a problem I had, too, with the Daniel Craig Bond movies as a whole, is you want me to believe both that this is the beginning and the ending of Batman. Right. So it's like we start off with a rookie Batman and then within the span of three movies. Now he's this grizzled veteran who has to come out of retirement. It's it's a lot to put it. It doesn't quite work. I mean, like I could
00:53:56
Speaker
If you're doing it in, and I'm bringing it back to Batman V Superman, but I could buy that because that's the first time we're seeing this Batman. And we're using an older actor. So I can buy that this is a Batman who's been around for 20 years. That makes sense to me. I can't buy that we've gone, that Christian Bale has been at this for so long and now he's this grizzled veteran who it's, it doesn't really work.
00:54:19
Speaker
no and i never in the movie think of him that way like when they have him with the cane and he has the goatee and stuff he looks great but i don't think of him as anybody different from the bruce wayne that i last saw in the dark knight nor in the rest of the movie they try to put a little gray on in his temples and stuff and i
00:54:34
Speaker
You know, whatever I just his portrayal doesn't feel like someone who's really any different from the last time I saw him, which also maybe says something about the unchanging nature of Bruce Wayne. But ultimately, yeah, I think a mistake in this movie was setting it this much later. And I know that that there were reasons for that. But I mean, one, I really would have rather seen just the next Batman adventure be well,
00:54:58
Speaker
banes in town I mean think I don't know I not to pitch a single movie that would have been the better version cuz there's so lots of things that I like about this and lots of things that didn't work but I love being I love Catwoman bring them into a movie that's the follow-up to now that we don't have the Joker that's the follow-up where
00:55:14
Speaker
Batman is seen as a criminal and an active threat and they're having to live in this world because now he's on the hunt and maybe he was injured at the end of that one and that's why Bane can really move in and do whatever Bane is gonna do and Gets to break him even further and the thing with Catwoman you can still have that it just feels like
00:55:32
Speaker
if you narrowed it down to those characters, those aren't even the most interesting, always the most interesting characters in the movie, but they all could have worked better, I think, even just with more time. I mean, again, we're talking about how much stuff is going on in this film, it's a lot. Yeah, well, let's, one more thing, and then we can jump into Bane, is the whole idea, and this kind of ties to Bane, because another problem I have with this movie is the mythology they try to build up behind Bane and the League of Shadows, because in,
Narrative Inconsistencies and Bane's Background
00:56:02
Speaker
In Batman Begins, I thought they had done something that was really clever, which is when they said that, when that scene when Liam Neeson reveals that he's race, when, you know, he says, oh, is racial ghoul immortal? Are his methods supernatural? And then Bruce says, or just parlor tricks to conceal your true identity. My initial reading of that is that racial ghoul was a mantle that's passed on. And I like that, because that's a real world way to explain the fact that racial ghoul is immortal.
00:56:31
Speaker
Without doing a Lazarus pit. Without doing a Lazarus pit. Yeah. Yeah. And they made it pretty clear in this movie that, no, no, no, it's 100% Liam Neeson is Rachelle Gould. He was always Rachelle Gould, which then sets up all these other types of issues, like what is the League of Shadows? How long has it really been around? And the whole mythology around Bain, because you have these two competing ideas.
00:56:52
Speaker
One, you have this idea that Bane was looking after Talia when she was this little girl and he was excommunicated by Rachelle Ghul himself, which implies that he's gotta be older than Bruce Wayne. And he had to, because, you know, Rachelle Ghul meets Bruce Wayne and then a few months later, he's dead. So there's not a whole lot of time to squeeze that in there. But then you have in this where like Alfred is talking about treating Bane as if like, well, he's a younger, stronger version of you. It's like, how does that work? That doesn't square away.
00:57:22
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, the actor, I don't know their differences. They're probably, I mean, he's Tom Hardy is probably a little younger than Christian Bale, but like, that's the actor. That's not the person. Yeah, I mean, they get into all that stuff so much way more than I want explained.
00:57:38
Speaker
Well, same thing when they're in the prison. They're like, well, the legend says I'm like, I know it was it was like, what, 20 years ago? I know. And it's it's it's like another thing where it's like maybe if you had a whole movie to dedicate to this side of the world, you know, like Batman travels to this side of the world and you do an adventure with it, you could you could spend time talking about all that stuff. But that's another place where I'm like, OK, we can edit this movie down by 10 minutes already by shortening the amount of
00:58:04
Speaker
space we give to all the story of this person, because we're being introduced to Talia and Bane in this movie for the first time, and then we're being given this intentionally secretly told story that's actually about Talia, but it seems like it's about Bane at first, and now it's about both of them. They're giving them all this mythical status of things, but it doesn't
00:58:27
Speaker
lend them status as characters. That doesn't translate into them seeming more mythical or special, nor does it really give me a lot of understanding of their character motivations. Bane continues to be, and if he's meant to be a mystery, then mission accomplished.
00:58:43
Speaker
Why exactly he does anything he does is not very clear to me. Why he's so focused on something like class warfare or on the ideology of a man that excommunicated him. Is that something he really believes in? I don't know. Talia chose Bane over her father initially when he excommunicated him from the thing she said, I stayed with him.
00:59:03
Speaker
and then so does she is she obsessed with the same thing or is this purely revenge is this all revenge if it is whatever but why are you doing it monetarily as well as well as plunging Gotham into just I mean there's so many things it again that first scene tells you a lot about how this movie will treat its villains which is that they will bend over backwards to make a theatrical display
00:59:27
Speaker
out of this thing, which I think is a mistake with the character of Bane. Some of that comes from comic interests because I read the comics and I love the way that he's portrayed there. But I think also it's a mistake to follow a theatrical villain such as the Joker that cannot be followed with a very theatrical villain. So there are several things you said in there that I wanted to touch on. First, the whole idea of Bane.
00:59:57
Speaker
One of things, voice aside, right, the voice is just, I don't know what that, and I thought the choice for Bale's bat voice was odd. I wasn't sure if that was the actor's choice, the director's choice, but now seeing that in what they did with Bane too, I wonder if it's just like Chris Nolan's got this weird thing about voices, I don't know, but
01:00:19
Speaker
That voice is ridiculous, but that's another thing. But I did, I was on board for Bane for most of this movie, despite the fact that, you know, his motivations don't really make sense and all that. I mean, more or less, I like what Tom Hardy was doing.
01:00:32
Speaker
But then at the end, when they have the Talia reveal, that's when it completely lost me because now it's like, oh, you're doing exactly what Batman and Robin did, which is you're making Bane a glorified henchman. And that's it. And I don't like that. I mean, Bane deserves so much better as a character. I mean, he is Batman's intellectual and physical equal, if not better.
01:00:55
Speaker
right and if you're not i mean of course you can change things for the films where needed but if if that's you've made him talia is not the main villain of this she doesn't get featured all that much she's gone for 30 minutes at a time until yeah a lot of the time so it's one thing if you're like well you just want a strong guy or something and so you're gonna i mean what they did in batman and robin but in this case yeah it's the best i mean they they
01:01:17
Speaker
They captured some things about vain vain vain that are of course important He still seems very intelligent in this and he is you know moving chess pieces as much as he is a physical threat But yeah, he it does and maybe it's just because of how physically like broken he is at that moment He seems kind of like a lummox
01:01:37
Speaker
once he's beaten up and because he's so big. And it, yeah, it just feels like, oh yeah, you were just muscle. You were just doing what someone else told you to do. Why were you so fervent about this? I mean, obviously you're very intelligent. I mean, and some of that, as I say it out loud, I can argue for why, because if he is that dedicated to this woman who stayed with him, who he loved as a little girl like that he took care of, I could see why he would do that. But knowing, again, it's a comic book readers thing, knowing what Bane originated as,
Bane's Theatricality vs. Character Depth
01:02:07
Speaker
I feel like it's a waste of the character at that point. But there is a lot to enjoy about this performance, the physicality of it. He makes a lot of fun choices. I mean, the voice is truly bananas. And I can't imagine that they didn't think people would think that's funny. Like you have to know, people will think this is funny. They had to recut a lot of the dialogue after the initial release, like after the previews, because people couldn't understand it. I had a hard time understanding it.
01:02:35
Speaker
Well, that's another problem with Nolan is just like, I don't know what he's doing with sound in these movies because I watched this on my Apple TV and there's a setting on the Apple TV to reduce loud noises. Yeah. And then there's another setting for full dynamic range.
01:02:52
Speaker
So I had had the reduced loud noises on for a little bit because, you know, just because, you know, my wife's in the other room and everything. And I thought, let me change it to a full dynamic range to see. And all of a sudden the dialogue got very quiet and the explosions got ridiculously loud. I'm like, okay, you can do a better job with the sound mixing. And he had the same problem with Tenant when everyone's like, what the hell is going on with this? Is atrocious in that way. I work in sound and they're like, I won't even get into all the shit behind
01:03:19
Speaker
Like what what all that is basically to say that yeah in every room every like tv setup Whatever is going to be different when things are mixed for theater is is a different world But I saw it in the theater and I had a hard time understanding him some too I now this time I can understand him better at home So lucky me but the combination of the filter that they put on his voice and everything that's that's just all its own thing but
01:03:43
Speaker
why the character sounds the way he does. I don't have to have an in-world explanation for it, but it's so specific. He is so theatrical. He's so croaky and everything's like, you know, everything is so, it's such a show. Why? How did this, how did he come to be this way? And it's the times when he is at his most intimidating
01:04:07
Speaker
are not the times when that voice is on display. There are times where he lays his hand open-palmed on the back of a real talkative and shitty CEO guy's back and says, do you feel it? Yeah, do you feel like you're in charge right now? Things like that that are about a quiet threat that are very, like Tom Hardy plays so well, it's the voices honestly playing against that in some ways. I'm like, I'm enjoying, I'm kind of laughing with him like, oh, it's funny that you would use this voice and still be intimidating.
01:04:36
Speaker
but it's not that it's indefensible. I'll say this, it's fun. It's fun that he does this voice, so whatever. But in my mind, because I'm a comic book guy and Bane is a very particular person,
01:04:50
Speaker
And also because we just had somebody who was a very theatrical character, a villain, the Joker, the most theatrical of all. I wish to see maybe someday a version of Bane that is quiet, that is intimidating, that is not just about his physicality, which they got right in this, he's both, but that is someone who will be more of those quiet moments without the Sean Connery croaky stuff that he's doing.
01:05:15
Speaker
Because that is more the character that character Bane if anything should be a man of less words as intelligent as he is and That may not be as fun or who and who knows I feel like that's a Tom Hardy thing He seems like a guy who's a steamroller like once he makes a choice. He's gonna stick with it and you can really steer it so much but I don't know what other than him kind of being a despot and kind and the leader of men
01:05:40
Speaker
that might be some of why they wanted to give him this larger than life presence that way, because the way that they dressed him, he looks like a dictator and everything. But I'm not really interested in seeing another one of that kind of villain. Again, him and Batman don't even interact that much. So he's more doing that with other people than this character who is a mastermind, who is quiet, and also this physical force. I so wish to see that someday, because I think that is where Bane's
01:06:07
Speaker
value as a character lies and of course you will never escape the the impressions and everything of this version and frankly I'll say it again like I actually really enjoy it I just think it's a wild choice see for me I think I would have thought of I think the best thing that came out of the voice in this movie is that
01:06:25
Speaker
they use it in the Harley Quinn animated series and it's hilarious. That's the only way I can defend this voice, the fact that, well, now it's being parodied in Harley Quinn. And if we didn't have this movie, we couldn't parry it that way. So that's the only thing I'll say in defense of the voice. Otherwise, I just think it's the more I watch it, I'm just like, oh, God, this is so ridiculous. But yeah, and
01:06:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think Bain was definitely underutilized in that way. And also going back to the whole motivation of it.
01:07:00
Speaker
you're kicked out by Rachelle Gould, but you're still so committed to his plan and his last defeat. And I just, it feels like a complete, because Talia talks about him and it sounds like she's still holding this grudge against him, but then she still feels this sense of honor to complete his last mission. And it's just like, it doesn't, those two things don't square with me. It's one thing if you're having her,
01:07:28
Speaker
if you want them to destroy what he had built with the League of Shadows or something like that, which actually would have made a lot, a much more interesting movie if you had like Bane being this ex muted former member who's going after the League of Shadows and Talia is now in charge. That would have been a lot more interesting I think. But just, a lot of times I'm not sure what the hell their reason is for doing all this stuff. Yeah, I feel like,
01:07:54
Speaker
I feel like once you get to everything being revealed, the problem is none of it feels organic. I can sit down and argue why he would do this because she wants to do this and at the end of the day, yes, I can hate my parent and also feel like I need to take revenge on anyone who killed them. I mean, that's something that we've accepted in a lot of movies.
01:08:29
Speaker
It doesn't feel tangible. It doesn't feel real. It feels like she's kind of just a bond girl or just a villain, just a supervillain who wants this because she wants it. And therefore, I mean, that's why as much as I like that actor, I say just get rid of the whole League of Shadows thing because I don't really want that stuff. The problem is that they sacrifice the development of Talia's hatred for Batman.
01:08:37
Speaker
just told.
01:08:53
Speaker
so that they could have this twist reveal at the end, which doesn't hold up over time, didn't even really hold up at the time. So it just, they wanted like a similar twist to, like in Batman Begins, when you had the twist that Liam Neeson has actually raised out gold. It felt like they wanted to replicate that and it just, it doesn't work here.
01:09:14
Speaker
Yeah, maybe in striving for some kind of symmetry and callback, which is, it can be really cool when you get it right. I think when Liam Neeson showed up in it, I did think like, oh cool, it's cool to see him. And it's like, I don't really need him here, but it is, it did feel like it was kind of a, I guess all of Batman's fathers show up in this movie. His dad, they even have a, when he's trying to escape the prison,
01:09:36
Speaker
They have and he falls. They have a quick flashback to his. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Going down the tunnel or whatever where the bats got to him in the first movie as a child. Of course, Alfred is there. You've got Jim Gordon, I guess not really a father figure, but he does look considerably older than him and is a bit of a mentor. I think you definitely I think you definitely make an argument for that. Yeah.
01:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, and then you have Rachelle Gould, who was a helped birth, the Batman, showing up. So it's interesting, it's like he's being visited, whether truly or in a dream, in this case, by these visions and inversions of his father, who as much as, you know, it's his parents, his father always seemed to be the defining, you know, it's about a son thing that he's looking for, that he's looking for some kind of guidance and something to fill that. He gets a lot of that and,
01:10:21
Speaker
I mean, I guess for the time that they had, I felt somewhat satisfied seeing that whether it was intentional or not, it felt like it was visited on like he is being given guidance. He has been finding people in his life to fill these roles. Yeah, I did like seeing he needs it. I did like seeing Liam Neeson come back, although.
Plot Holes in The Dark Knight Rises
01:10:39
Speaker
when I'm watching this movie again, it just still drives home the fact that the story logic just doesn't make sense here. But and going with that too, like I still can't understand how the hell he goes from this prison out in wherever the fuck it is. And then he gets back into somehow he's able to fly back across the world. I know. And he gets back into a Gotham that is under martial law. And it's just like, you know,
01:11:04
Speaker
It already feels weird when Batman wakes up in the prison and Bane is there. It's like so you guys just flew out of Gotham and you're gonna fly back afterwards. You just wanted to be here when he wakes up. Maybe Bane's got like a boom tube hidden somewhere.
01:11:19
Speaker
These are things I say this a lot, but it's also a reminder to me like these are things that show up in other movies I like these kinds of plot holes always show up because we can't they're not real these are not real stories right the problem is this film doesn't do enough to distract us with exacting it or and it gives us too many times where it's trying to explain something otherwise and does it in a way that's not satisfying or is just Distracting in the first place like I think much is spent on that stuff
01:11:44
Speaker
A really good example of this is a civil war because in that movie, the timeline does not make any sense because they're in Germany and Ross tells Stark, you've got what, like 48 hours to grab them or 24 or whatever it is. And Tony still has time to fly back to New York, recruit Spider-Man and fly back to Germany.
01:12:11
Speaker
Steve has time to call up Clint, have him fly from Oklahoma or wherever, go to Los Angeles to pick up Scott Lang, and then fly over to New York to get Scarlet Witch, and then to fly to Germany.
01:12:26
Speaker
And they don't even have a quinjet though, because then they're breaking into the airport to steal the quinjet. So none of that makes any sense. Like in the Avengers comic, that would be one panel of here they are. Yeah. But like to your point, there's so much other stuff happening in there that distracts us. So we don't notice that until we're watching these movies again. But here it's just like the other stuff is not it. So it's it's so obvious in this movie that we're not we can't be distracted from it.
01:12:51
Speaker
It's a similar thing, and I actually really like Joseph Gordon Levitt's performance as John Blake in this. I think he's very likable. The reveal of him at the end, it's kind of just funny to me. I don't mind him becoming, I guess, Batman, the idea of that.
01:13:07
Speaker
But it's more like the reveal of his name being Robin just feels like, I don't know, trying to throw somebody a bone in a way that just does not jive with me. But I do like his performance, but there's even in that, and maybe, and please tell me if I'm missing something, but he tells, he figures out who Bruce Wayne is, Batman, which is a cool little, you know, uh, Tim Drake, you know, callback from the comics where it's like, Hey, I was the one kid who was able to figure out who you were.
01:13:30
Speaker
Easy on his own. I'm not gonna detective. Um, but he says that he grew up in an orphanage or whatever a home and he saw bat or he saw Bruce Wayne come around with women on his arm and in a nice car and all this stuff. So he was a kid then but Bruce was not doing that until he was Batman because he came back and started acting the role of Bruce Wayne and Batman begins and Joseph Gordon left it and this is partly the problem of the actors.
01:14:01
Speaker
I believe Justin Gordon-Levitt is seven years younger than Christian Bale. They do look, it does play a little better in the movie because Justin Gordon-Levitt looks fairly young and Christian Bale is looking older than this. But even without that, it's like, so how old is John Blake then? This is the first time I noticed that in this watch. So maybe that says something about not important, but it's that kind of thing where it's like, yeah, you guys keep dropping the ball on stuff. I start
01:14:27
Speaker
worrying about shit that really should be glossed over in my own brain. One of the things that drove me nuts about the Joseph Ford Levitt when John reveals that he knows that Bruce is Batman is just the way he's found out. Like I'm fine with him figuring it out just like Tim Drake did. But Tim Drake figured it out by using actual detective skills.
01:14:45
Speaker
John Blake figures it out by looking at Bruce Wayne and saying like, hey, you look like Batman. I think behind your eyes. Yeah, it's a weird sense of Batman from you. And then Bruce goes along with that. There is something I guess it's.
01:15:02
Speaker
A lot of people end up knowing who Batman is in this movie, and that's fine. I mean, it's the end of this Batman, so who cares? But there's something that's nice that was absent from the other movies, which is a sense of brotherhood for Bruce. He almost had it in Harvey Dent, and he kind of has it in Jim Gordon, but again, that's more of an uncle or a father figure. He doesn't have a lot of peers.
01:15:22
Speaker
Yeah, and that says something to me about his psychology, which is like I make myself the special being an only child myself I make myself the special one that needs mentors and people to take care of people to see to me not so much someone that I can be on equal ground with and then he gets
Batman Without the Bat Family
01:15:39
Speaker
John Blake who and when they're in the car and John Blake is like so why the mask when you started off and he starts talking about it There's something about I wanted to see more because I just like Batman having a friend that has talked to that is a recurring theme throughout all the Batman movies that is really lacking is the whole absence of peers of the bat family and and I think like these decisions to constantly
01:16:04
Speaker
put Batman in these scenarios, in these situations where he's the only guy who does it. I think it's really doing it. There's so much of the character that you're leaving out of that.
01:16:14
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, it's I mean, I get I do get it. I think also we're at the point in pop culture where we are fine with things being more comic booky for a better term. And I think that was I mean, Robin is easily the one you would point to. But the idea of Batman working with other people like pops the balloon of gritty Batman working, you're doing this.
01:16:35
Speaker
and that it becomes a headache to try to figure out how to make Robin Robin. But I'm not arguing those
Realism in Batman Films: Overdone?
01:16:41
Speaker
points. I'm just saying I think that's why for the longest time we've avoided it and that I do think going forward, whether it's with Matt Reeves' version of the character or not, I think we are primed as an audience more than ever to accept a live action, you know, like taken seriously version of Batman that also has a Nightwing or a Robin or a Huntress or whoever.
Batman's Detective Skills Highlighted
01:17:01
Speaker
One of the things that really, as much as I loved the Batman, one of the things that really annoyed me about it is that I am so done with Batman in the real world, right? I was, you know, it was fine when Nolan did it, but that's done. It's run its course. We've had that. And I kind of want to see, you know, the
01:17:22
Speaker
the Batman who's in a much more colorful situation. Not like the Adam West stuff, not like the Tim Burton stuff, the hypergothic, but something that is, and that's actually one of the things I, as many criticisms as I have about the Zack Snyder movies, I did like that they're giving us a Batman who can move around, who isn't tied down to this real world situation type of thing.
01:17:46
Speaker
Yeah, it would be very, I would totally be on board for seeing it. I do tend, since I, I don't know, just the things that I like about Batman the most tend to be the things that would lead you to this type of interpretation, the Batman or the Dark Knight trilogy. Those are the things that I'll always, if they look like they're done well, I'll always want to go see them and see what's going on because that's my favorite Batman. But especially a Batman that's living in a world with other people who do crazy things or even superhero, super,
01:18:14
Speaker
super humans even. The version of Batman that shows up in JLA, the Morrison version is what I tend to think of. The Batman that has a UFO in his closet and will pull it out if he needs to. I would love to see that. It would be really interesting to see what balance of
01:18:33
Speaker
you know, confidence and capability and closed offness. What would you find? What actor would you find and how would they portray it that would balance with that kind of world? That's not me saying it couldn't be done. I just think it'd be really interesting because we certainly never seen it in live action. Yeah. I mean, I think maybe the animated series version of Batman is closer to that, even though because we ultimately saw him in the Justice League
Call for Diverse Batman Representations
01:18:55
Speaker
cartoon. And I think it absolutely was because I mean, like, I mean, in the animated series, because even though it was this
01:19:01
Speaker
more or less ground to take. You also had the fantastical elements in it, right? You had Rachelle Gould, who was actually immortal. You had the giant penny and the robot dinosaur in the back cave. You had Clayface. Yeah, you had all these weird elements to it. And just like, I feel like you're
01:19:19
Speaker
I feel like there and this is not a criticism necessarily the Nolan films is a criticism the movies in general since Nolan it's that you're doing a disservice this character by saying like we're just going to focus on the real world style. Yes. Yeah, I can see that for sure. And I think the character is is a lot more diverse than that. And I think and that's as much as I and again, I love the Batman, you know, we talked about on the show and
01:19:40
Speaker
There's a Robert Pattinson was great in it. I'm glad that we get a Bruce Wayne who was actually a detective who actually does detective work in it and who is cop because like in you got a little bit of in with Michael Keaton, you got a little bit of it with Christian Bale in the dark night, but it's mostly done like off screen.
01:19:58
Speaker
Yeah, this was the first time that I felt like, OK, we're seeing Batman as a detective actually going through and detecting stuff. We're seeing him solving crimes like a detective. And I like that. But at the same time, he's a guy who dresses up as a giant bat. You know, have some fun with it.
01:20:16
Speaker
Well, and that is kind of a dichotomy there where it's like, well, you know, that's something that gets brought up so often. I'm sure I've said it where it's like, yeah, I want to see, I mean, we kind of got it in the dark night, but I want to see crime thriller Batman. I want to see that. And I think I personally would be fine with a Batman, like Michael Mann's Batman, where it's basically like there are some action scenes, but it's mostly like simmering, you know, conversations between
01:20:43
Speaker
Batman and the villain that he's going after all this shit. But at the same time, I understand that that's a pretty particular flavor of Batman that I, as a 38-year-old man, am interested in at this point. And that the character, as we discussed at the beginning, is so many things to so many people that there is room for all that stuff. And yeah, we keep going back to this grimdark well for Batman.
01:21:10
Speaker
Yes, that has been the most popular version, or a version of that is the one we've gone to for most versions of Batman outside of the Adam West. The things that have been most successful so far, but we are not giving much of a chance to Batman, who still isn't smiling all the time, but can hang out with Superman and not treat him like, hey, I want to kill this alien that's on the planet, or whatever. Yeah.
01:21:34
Speaker
I have a friend. His name's Clark. I have another friend. Her name's Diana, this type of thing. I have a buddy. His name's Tim Drake. We hang out. I'm kind of his dad. But, you know, like that that would be nice to see those. And I think I do think it's it's going to split the character in a way that people aren't used to once they do that. And that's a good thing.
John Blake as Batman's Successor?
01:21:50
Speaker
Probably. Yeah. Yeah. So we talked a little bit kind of danced around John Blake a little bit. Anything else that really add about him? What do you think about him like becoming the successor to Batman at the end there?
01:22:04
Speaker
It's fine. I would have been completely happy without it. I think if we didn't get the scene where we find out that Bruce is, or I interpret to be that Bruce is alive with Selena, because I guess you could see that as Alfred just kind of.
01:22:18
Speaker
I mean, I was thinking about that, but you've got the Pearl thing. So I think that really sells it. I think it's so I am glad we got that because even though I never would have imagined that ending for him, because I coming from comics, you never imagine a Batman that is ever going to retire. That's right. You know, Detective Comics has to keep running.
01:22:35
Speaker
but that if they hadn't had that and it just ended with him dying even if they cleaned it up to be a little bit more heroic and nicer I would have been like no that's not how this needs to end for me but that they ended with
Forced Storytelling Decisions in Films
01:22:45
Speaker
that was fine the John Blake thing was kind of like okay this is fun I did get last time I watched it I had a little more like
01:22:52
Speaker
pinprick feeling, you know, like a little bit more goosebumps about it. I think just because I had bought into John Blake as a person more, and the score is rising and everything, and it's a cool image that this is going to happen. It's not because I'm excited, you know, to imagine the adventures that John Blake will have as Batman, because, I don't know, there's just something about it. It's like, yeah, but you're not Batman. Like, you're, if anything, apparently you're Robin, and Robin isn't supposed to be Batman. Batman's back. You know, it's just this kind of turnaround thing.
01:23:21
Speaker
Like I think it's a cool idea. I just I don't even see. I just don't even see Bruce like passing along that stuff to him. I also seems I don't really buy John's decision to quit the police force either. Like it just when he throws when he tosses the badge off the bridge, like I couldn't quite figure out. It just felt like it was again. This is an example of something that has to happen because the story tells us it has to happen. So I didn't really like that aspect of it. And and also
01:23:51
Speaker
There's also another story which I realized because they say at the end when they're executing his will, he says that his will wasn't amended since the financial troubles, right? So most of this will was made before, so when did he decide that John Blake is gonna be his successor? That Batman, yeah. I think it could have been handled better as far as the writing and who knows what, again, what was cut out of the movie, but- Yeah.
01:24:21
Speaker
John Blake is going through it stayed or you see it pretty clearly that his arc in the movie forced as it might be is that he is a officer that he is and it's funny it's interesting watching a movie that doesn't really it's just watch interesting watching this in 2022 when the police are so much a part of the focus and kind of ultimately part of the not really the problem or the solution at the end you know but uh
01:24:45
Speaker
that John Blake is going through an arc of disillusionment with authority in general. He gets it from, I mean, one, meeting Batman and Batman not being exactly how he wants him to be is already kind of a thing. Of course, the whole thing with Jim Gordon and the reveal of how they lied about Harvey Dent. This city is so obsessed with Harvey Dent. I have never heard of a city having a whole day around a single DA. I mean, that sounds like made up shit to me, but so be it.
Blake's Disillusionment and Journey
01:25:11
Speaker
And then, of course, the whole thing with the bridge.
01:25:15
Speaker
I think he's inter is he interacting with military? Yeah, yeah, okay, so I mean obviously representing similar ideas that this is an authority figure This isn't the police you're dealing with it's it's you know But maybe that it's part of is that I'm bound by certain things that I can't do and I've seen The bullshit because he's also been dealing with Matthew Modine's character, which is a weird character Yeah, yeah, he got so much screen time for a character that was invented for this It's not like a wrap-up of his arc from
01:25:42
Speaker
you know the first movie or something um and then he i guess dies a hero's death at the end but but it's like at that point i'm just like i don't even give a shit no i really don't i i don't really care there's a giant battle going on but yeah i it's i don't think the arc is done well but i do think they at least check the boxes and jlg does sell me on
01:26:04
Speaker
Okay, I believe this is where you're at now that you would leave the force. None of that is to say it's so transmitted. Like they let you know what's happening with that pretty early on and certainly as
Lucius and Bruce: Ethics and Technology
01:26:16
Speaker
it's happening. But I don't mind that, but I don't necessarily think that that makes him Batman either in his mind. Well, yeah, and also Bruce hands it down. Maybe he would. But I mean, I think I think I probably would have liked the ending better if
01:26:27
Speaker
he goes and finds the back cave on his own. Not that Bruce- That would be cool. I think that would have, because I think that would have made a little bit more sense because all this time, you know, he's been asking Bruce these questions about, you know, wearing a mask and everything like that. So I think it would have made much more sense for him to kind of come to this decision a little bit more organically as opposed to, okay, well, I'm quitting the force. I don't know what I'm going to do. Oh, well, Bruce Wayne just gave me the coordinates of the back cave. So now I can go- Yeah.
01:26:56
Speaker
Yeah, what a coincidence. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's it gets me as far as filmmaking goes It doesn't get to an extent It doesn't get me as far as I'm looking at a thing and how I'm thinking about it. Yeah, you know I afterwards I'm like, well, I don't really care. I don't need him to be Batman. I don't need a movie where he's Batman That's not gonna do it for me. So right no. Thanks on that one
01:27:16
Speaker
Um, I don't know. Is there anything else you want to, we haven't really talked about Morgan Freeman or anything, but he didn't really have a whole lot to do. He was just kind of like there mostly in this. I mean, he's good enough in the party has, but he's doing, he's doing his usual thing. Um, I mean, he's doing great. And I, it's another case where it's like, Hey, he's always known that Bruce is Batman, but it is nice that they don't even have to dance around it anymore. And this one at a certain point where he's just leading them around, showing them what they're doing. And.
01:27:39
Speaker
What's available as far as machines go and being an ethical you know, he's such an ethical kind of another father figure in that way where he Kind of you know taught in the in dark night when they're talking about this the security or the surveillance machine, you know that they have That's that's one of that. That's one of the issues I had is like that it's almost that the way that ends there
01:28:00
Speaker
Like it's almost kind of setting. I know they had the thing where he typed in his name and then it all, the machine blew up, but there's still the fact that this happened. There was this whole thing about it. And that is just, it's like it never happened in this movie. I mean, I know it's been eight years, but still that's a big, that's a big character. That's a big change in their relationship that is just gone.
01:28:25
Speaker
Yeah, Lucius, I mean, they made a big deal about Lucius is adamant about this thing. And basically it was like, don't worry, we'll never have to talk again. You just need to do this for me right now. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that being healed, but all that seemed to happen was he disappeared. Maybe, I mean, you can argue that it's like, well, not times are dire, but they're not dire when they first get back together in this movie. It's just kind of like, anyway, do you want to see some toys we have? Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, he's like, oh yeah, I know you're retired, but by the way, I made this, I made you a back plane.
Critique of Batman's Action Scenes
01:28:52
Speaker
Yeah, but there's something about like the pressure being off that once he's showing him around, especially like later on in the film, once things have kind of gone to hell and they're talking about what they need to do next, I just enjoy Bruce just kind of being able, they're not saying, hey, by the way, I'm Batman, you know I'm Batman. They don't say that, but they're talking so openly about it and it feels nice because it feels like a humanizing of Bruce. Like he can be something closer to his whole self in the presence of someone who already knew this, but they just could not talk about it before.
01:29:20
Speaker
Well, I think that's more of an extension of what they did in The Dark Knight because in Batman Begins, they were dancing around with it, but in first time we see him in The Dark Knight, right? He's, you know, you know, he's talking to Lucius openly and he says he had some ideas about the column. He's like, oh, you want to turn your head? Okay, yeah. And that kind of, so I think it was, for me, it was just more of an extension of that. Yeah. But yeah, it's a nice relationship to see them in, although,
01:29:45
Speaker
Again, just the whole idea of, yeah, you're retired, but I still made you a Batplane anyway. Seems kind of weird. I mean, got to say that Batplane looks great. And it was interesting watching the movie and then thinking about it. I'm like, oh, well, one, it reminded me of the spinner from Blade Runner, which I believe was a inspiration for Christopher Nolan for that. But also I was like, oh, in any other movie then or now, that would just be all CGI. There would be nothing there. And this thing is a thing that is on camera that is doing stuff. I mean, it's not a real Batplane, but it is
01:30:15
Speaker
Something and it feels and looks so good. It just I love it because you can see things reacting on set that are being blown around by whatever they're doing and the thing landing it's just like there's something about a real practical effect that
01:30:30
Speaker
I found myself not even questioning it because it is real. It is what it is. And that, I just forget that that's what Nolan strives for a lot of the time. And that's some of his magic is just choosing to do the harder thing with something that's not that important to the movie. I mean, it's there, but it shows them multiple times and that it's practical is really, really cool to me. I would say that advice for any future bat filmmakers do not, two parts to this one, do not film
01:31:00
Speaker
batman in the day and definitely don't film his entire body at once during the day because the fights at the end when he is fighting bane and it's bright daylight and they're fighting on the steps he looks ridiculous yeah look that suit was not meant for daylight it was not meant to be seen all at once it makes him look kind of
01:31:20
Speaker
squat and short and neither of them are particularly tall guys, but it's just not a good look. And I remember seeing it in the theater when it came out and I was like, no, no, no. It's like, if you saw like a Freddy Krueger movie and it was all the deaths were happening during the day. No, this is just not how we do this. This would be at night. Everything happens at night in Gotham city. It's night, 18 hours a day there. Let's just keep it that way. That was one of the things I thought Snyder did really well is just filming how Batman fights. Like that was,
01:31:48
Speaker
as much as I despise BVS, it's like one of the worst movies I've ever seen. But that warehouse scene is up until he blows the guy up. Up until that, it's perfect. It's perfect. It shows exactly how Batman, it feels like one of the Arkham fight scenes just in live action. It's done so well. And I know it wasn't live action, mostly CGI in that, but still. Sure.
01:32:15
Speaker
And it's gonna be difficult to get a, I mean, I think it can happen, but to get a Batman that is, I think Pattinson is lean. He's more lean than he is muscle. And so that's a good look for a Batman because the suit adds weight. So if you get someone who's kind of lean and lanky and you put a suit on them and you give them a suit that you allow to not be a perfect Batman suit, then you can get someone who can move like a ninja. That's not what they chose with Pattinson, but that type of thing, I would love to see more fights like that. Like with Batman where it's like,
01:32:42
Speaker
Yes, see him actually pull off these amazing ninja skills that he supposedly went and trained to get.
Nolan's Influence on DC Films
01:32:47
Speaker
And most of the time, it's like, well, it's quick cuts. And Nolan isn't known for doing great, like, you know, fight scenes or anything like that. So it's so weird. They keep getting directors for Batman movies who don't really know how to film fight scenes because that was Tim Burton's big thing. It's not.
01:33:00
Speaker
I think that's not what everyone thinks of with Batman. If you have to choose, you're going to go with atmosphere and character if you have to choose. You're going to go with atmosphere and character over action because the action supplements those things, but with a Batman
01:33:16
Speaker
Even though the fight scenes are obviously like there's some importance there. He's a hand to hand fighter. That's what he does. There's so much that you can do to obscure that because he does fight in the shadows versus like a Spider-Man. You got to be able to shoot Spider-Man doing crazy fights where you almost think he has six arms and stuff because he's in the daylight. Yeah. Anything else you want to say about Dark Knight Rises?
01:33:39
Speaker
I think it's such a weird movie. I think it's so interesting the circumstances surrounding it. Some of them are sad, but it's interesting that it got made and then it got made the way it did and then it turned out this way and then it made so much money.
01:33:53
Speaker
You know, and I say despite obviously it was going to but it's just it being as weird as it is and kind of a mess Really a mess and then it made this much money and and it's I do I agree with your statement It gets overrated by some usually people who are just like, you know, maybe contrarians are also Christopher Nolan diehards I love
Critique of Nolan's Post-Inception Film Choices
01:34:12
Speaker
Christopher Nolan. I also think he I did not like tenant so I'm not just the diehard for everything he does or also undervalued
01:34:19
Speaker
because there are great performances in this. Really, no one's putting on bad performances. And I think if you choose to just accept the bane choices for what they are, that is still a great performance. And it's entertaining. It's fun. It can be dumb fun at some points. And I think that's a good thing. Yeah. With Nolan, I think after Inception, I kind of feel like Nolan started to buy into his own hype a little bit.
01:34:44
Speaker
And I feel like it's like a lot of the stuff that I seen from him after that, like I pretty much gave up with him after I saw Interstellar. And then I saw Tenet because it was on HBO Max and I'm just like, okay, yeah, I think I made the right choice. But and it was, and this is definitely one of those movies where he feels like his ideas and his way of doing things can override, are more important than the lack of the story problems in this movie.
01:35:15
Speaker
That just makes the story problems all the more blatant for me. And yeah, and I don't like that this kind of set the tone at DC for like the next 10 years too. Yeah. That's another big... Yeah. I mean, like... We can't blame Christopher Nolan for that. That's on DC. I mean, we can blame a little bit because they went to him as and brought him on to be executive producer of Man of Steel. So I think we can hold him. To his credit though, he did...
01:35:43
Speaker
try to fight back against like the the Zod killing scene um although we eventually acquiesce so i think i mean i think we can give him i think we can hold him a little bit accountable for that stuff yeah but yeah there's just it's
01:35:57
Speaker
Bane is, for the voice aside, I think Bane is mostly pretty well done. I think JGL does a good job with what he's given. I think Anne Hathaway is definitely, like you said, she's the MVP. She's electrifying on screen, like no notes on her performance. She's just perfect from beginning to end. Some of the story choices they make her character do are questionable, but she sells it completely. So I think that's good.
01:36:28
Speaker
As much as I like Bale, I do feel like at this point, kind of like Nolan, I think he's kind of tired. I feel like he's just kind of like, he's like, yeah, I'm kind of, the scene when him and Catwoman were on the roof and, you know, he looks almost like he's, he looks so bored, I felt like. And I mean, I do like the line when, you know, she leaves him hanging and he looks around and he's like, oh, so that's what that feels like. But it sounds so weird in that, in that bad voice. Why would he do that voice to himself?
01:36:56
Speaker
Well, I couldn't understand why he's using the voice around Catwoman around Bane when they both know who he is, too. I think it's out of habit. And it's also the actor. I know that he said like he started doing the voice when he auditioned just because he was in a suit and he was like, I feel ridiculous in this thing. I got to do something that makes me feel like maybe put some distance between or like I'm doing a character as a character sort of thing. Part of why he started doing that.
01:37:19
Speaker
But yeah, there's some really funny moments in this. It was in the trailer, and it's like, oh, but I still find this very funny. When Catwoman, he takes the pearls back from her when they dance, and then she ends up stealing his ticket from him, his valet ticket. The quick cut, he goes, my wife?
01:37:37
Speaker
a quick cut to her. It's such, it's so well timed and it is almost like a sitcom joke, but it's, it's just so well done. And then right after that, you get, you get him getting, you get Alfred picking him up and he says, he's like, oh, it's just you. And he's like, you know, well, don't worry. It takes a while to get back in the swing of things. I did. They kind of touched on it, but I wanted to take him further just for my own humorous benefit.
Gotham Under Siege: Contextual Issues
01:37:57
Speaker
But when Alfred leaves Bruce, like Bruce goes to bed, he wakes up and Lucius is banging on his front door, or maybe it's, I forget who. It's Lucius.
01:38:05
Speaker
Yeah, he's like, you're answering your own door now, but I wanted Bruce to wake up and like not know how to do anything in the house without Alfred. They're like, I can't make tea. I can't operate the microwave. My Google Cal is just off the charts. He doesn't know it because what does he do every day? Like Alfred was taking care of everything, but probably would have taken away from the seriousness of the moment. Yeah. They touched on it. Yeah. But yeah, I think overall, this is it.
01:38:29
Speaker
it is a real disappointing end to that trilogy because, and I think, in some ways I think we just would have been better off just leaving it at the way the Dark Knight ended and just being done with it there. But you know, it's, you gotta have a trilogy that's the thing, so.
01:38:44
Speaker
And it's not, I don't think it's harming any, I mean, I can't make the argument that anything about the other movies is harmed for me by this movie existing. No, no, yeah, I'm not one of those who thinks like, you know, a bad movie invalidates an earlier movie. Like it's just, I mean, you know, let's get example, Terminator movies, right? You're fine ending at Terminator two and just saying that the other ones don't exist. Yeah, or. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, so I mean, that doesn't bother me at all.
01:39:13
Speaker
It is just it's just a disappointment of what we could have had. And I think you're right. You talked about, you know, if Heath Ledger had survived, because I think Nolan had said that at the time they were making The Dark Knight, he was thinking about a third movie and he was thinking of
01:39:29
Speaker
Heath Ledger, he would have wanted Heath Ledger in it, but not as like the main antagonist. Instead, he would have been like almost like a Hannibal Lecter type, you know, talking to Batman through Arkham or something like that, which would have been really interesting to see. And apparently in the in the novelization of this movie, they do say what happens to the Joker, because now all the prisoners are in Blackgate. Arkham Asylum only has one prisoner and it's the Joker, and he's the only one who's locked up in there. Interesting, interesting.
01:39:57
Speaker
So they do say that's what happened to him. And he's just, so he's just locked up in Arkham the whole time. But yeah, it's not the worst Batman movie, but it's definitely not a good one. It's just a weird movie. Things happen in it that I never thought I'd see in a Batman movie. And the things that are like, the things that are like set pieces are well done and interesting. I just, they don't necessarily belong in this movie and they don't always feel earned.
01:40:27
Speaker
you know, the whole Gotham under siege thing is just such a weird heightening that I never was asking for in a Christopher Nolan Batman
Jim Gordon's Awareness of Batman's Identity
01:40:35
Speaker
movie. If you want to keep it grounded, like them doing No Man's Land from the comics is not something I was waiting around for, nor was I thinking, oh, this will be stuffed into the last 30 minutes of a movie. But I also didn't like the way Gordon finds out because what I loved about up until that point was,
01:40:54
Speaker
when Blake asks, you know, do you ever wonder who he really was? And he says, oh, I know exactly who he was. He was the Batman. My conception of Jim Gordon is the same of my conception of Robbie Robertson, same of my conception of Perry White, is that he knows. He's just not saying it. So when he's surprised, he's like, Bruce Wayne, like that.
01:41:13
Speaker
I didn't like that. I thought that took away from that. And that's just my personal thing. That's my personal headcount. I'm with you on that though. I mean, even if I don't think that he always knew, I also even think in the moment that he would be like, yeah, of course it is one of my things. Even if he had just, that sort of thing where like, I've known this, I've been interacting with them the whole time, not thinking about that, but that is who that is. And also that, yeah, probably, I mean, he's supposed to be a great detective himself, so should have
01:41:38
Speaker
Well, I mean, if, if, if, you know, an orphan kid can figure it out by looking, by looking at his eyes. Yeah. I think there should have, I mean, even if he just kind of says like, you know, even if it's just like, like I knew it or something like that, or I was right or something like, yeah.
01:41:55
Speaker
I do like it. It's another thing where it's like a kind of like a fatherly or, you know, a brotherly thing where when Batman says something about when he's kind of about to go fly off and do the bomb drop when he says something about like you could be this person or it could be someone that just gives you like, you know, I don't remember the line, but he's like a jacket on the it's kind of over. It's an overwritten line. And but but yeah, the idea behind it.
01:42:20
Speaker
Yeah, I feel it because I'm like, I appreciate that Bruce has learned at this point to like, I got to open up because I'm maybe about to die. I don't know if this is going to work. So I'm going to let people know that I appreciate them because I could never I couldn't do that in the first place. And maybe I just didn't know how in the first place. Yeah. So I did enjoy that because also I just I like seeing those guys get along. Yeah. All right. Well, any any final things you want to say?
01:42:45
Speaker
No, that's it. We squeeze this
Guest Podcast Promotion and Social Media
01:42:48
Speaker
one dry. Yeah, well, thanks for coming on again. As always, you're always welcome to come back on. Why don't you tell me where they can find you.
01:42:55
Speaker
Yeah, I host a podcast called Days Past Tooncast, where you can find us everywhere at dptooncast. We cover old Saturday morning cartoons, sometimes not Saturday morning, sometimes not so old. It's a comedy show, we go over these things, we tell you trivia about them, but more than that, we just have a great time talking about it. And you can find us on Twitter, Instagram, you can find us wherever podcasts are found. And if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, I am at Will Short, ha ha.
01:43:24
Speaker
Okay, great. And as for us, superherocinephiles.com is the website, SuperCinemapod on Twitter and Instagram. And if you sign up for our Patreon page, you can get these episodes, not the movies, the episodes if we can advance.
Host's Patreon Promotion
01:43:39
Speaker
And you can also get access to the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club companion podcast, all of that for just as little as a dollar a month. So yeah, thanks so much for listening and we will talk to you next time.
01:43:52
Speaker
If you enjoy the Superhero Cinephiles, then you'll also love my companion podcast, the Superhero Cinephiles Book Club. All my Patreon subscribers get access to this exclusive podcast where I review superhero comics and graphic novels. Not sure what comics you want to read next or what you should dive into? I've got you covered on that. I'll be doing reviews, recommendations, and also talking to you about useful entry points if you're interested in reading some comics but don't know where you should start.
01:44:16
Speaker
Plus, you'll get access to all episodes of the main show a week before everyone else. On all of this, for as little as just a dollar a month, all you have to do is go to patreon.com slash supercinemahot and you can sign up at any subscription amount to get started. Thanks so much for your support, and please don't forget to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
01:44:56
Speaker
Thank you for listening and as always good night. Good evening. God bless.