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The Dark Knight Rises. Like bread.

[YOUTUBEHD]g8evyE9TuYk[/YOUTUBEHD]

I get the feeling they're tweaking Bane's voice every ten minutes (movie looks awesome.)
 
I had Tom Hardy dreams last night thanks to watching the trailer the other day.

And Alcide was there too. OH YEAH BABY
 
Now that looks just incredible.

I'm not a fan of Anne Hathaway, but she comes across well there.

Joseph Gordon Levitt looks good too.
 
I saw this film! Michelle Trachtenberg saw this film! Did you see this film? I did! Here's what I thought - I haven't written it yet but I'm sure there'll be big spoilers in it:

I quite liked this film. Here's the thing with me and the Nolan Batman films. I think Batman Begins had an amazing emotional arc, mainly because it's an easy story to get emotionally invested into. Kid looses parents in horrible way, kid tries to deal with pain, kid dresses up as bat. Easy. The actual plotty-plot, however, was nothing special or really very interesting. Something about microwaves and Liam Neeson and everyone pronouncing "Ra's al Ghul" wrong. But that didn't matter because, as I said, the emotional arc more than carries the film. It also helped that Gotham City oozed character.

The Dark Knight, however, was the total opposite. The nitty-gritty plot was really good, and interesting to watch unfold, but the emotional aspect fell really flat (for me, at least). Like Rachel dies, and we're really more concerned with how that effects the plot than how it effects the characters. Gotham also lost all of it's character and just turned into a generic American city.

But how does any of that carry over to The Dark Knight Rises? It's really weird, but this film felt like a sequel to Batman Begins, and not The Dark Knight. While it's not as full-on emotional as Begins was, we now again have the plot work through the characters. Gotham gets overtaken by Bane, but instead of just watching it in a mechanical way we see it through how it effects Bruce watching it, and how JGL lives through it.

Basically, I think it's a much better balance of plot and emotions that the other two had. Although, like the other two, there was a lot of both. Like, a lot. So much has happened by the end of the film that it's hard to remember exactly where we started from. But to the films credit, it never felt over-long, and there wasn't anything I could think of that bloated the film.

I really liked that the film didn't hold back on what it was doing. It went all out epic (I HATE THAT FUCKING WORD) in it's scale, and instead of having the boring superhero "SAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND, DO-GOODER!" plot it was actually the whole of Gotham and there were some kids and stuff. I also liked that the very end of the film basically was a 2012 version of "some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!".

Also Catwoman's in it. Here's the thing about Catwoman - and for the record my main exposure to the character has been outside of the comics: the films, the animated series, and the games - Catwoman is very tricky to get right. For me, it's a delecate balance between "sexual" and "object". I literally had a massive rant about this ON THE LAST PAGE OF THIS THREAD so I won't do it again, but sufficed to say this is more of a Animated Series Catwoman (GOOD) than Arkham City Catwoman (TERRIBLE IN EVERY RESPECT). Anne Hathaway does a really good job, and obviously got the character, and there aren't any "HEY GUYS CHECK OUT CATWOMAN'S ASS" shots, because Christopher Nolan is thankfully not Michael Bay.

I'm still writing Jesus Christ. So Bane was good. I liked Bane. The voice was odd sometimes, but eh. I liked that they humanised him by making him the protector of Talia.

WAIT TALIA? SHE'S THERE? DIDN'T SEE THAT COMINg oh wait we all did. But still I can't deny the massive grin that went over my face as Marion Cotillard transformed from "Generic Love Interest" to "Awesomely Evil Person". It was an obvious twist, but damn it it was a good one. Michelle Trachtenberg should play Talia too some point in the future because FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY.

Oh and JGL is Robin but not that Robin but it doesn't matter as DC is rebooting it all into some forced Justice League thing anyway. Oh well.

I thought it was pretty cool.
 
The Tomtrek said:
I saw this film! Michelle Trachtenberg saw this film! Did you see this film? I did! Here's what I thought - I haven't written it yet but I'm sure there'll be big spoilers in it:

I quite liked this film. Here's the thing with me and the Nolan Batman films. I think Batman Begins had an amazing emotional arc, mainly because it's an easy story to get emotionally invested into. Kid looses parents in horrible way, kid tries to deal with pain, kid dresses up as bat. Easy. The actual plotty-plot, however, was nothing special or really very interesting. Something about microwaves and Liam Neeson and everyone pronouncing "Ra's al Ghul" wrong. But that didn't matter because, as I said, the emotional arc more than carries the film. It also helped that Gotham City oozed character.

The Dark Knight, however, was the total opposite. The nitty-gritty plot was really good, and interesting to watch unfold, but the emotional aspect fell really flat (for me, at least). Like Rachel dies, and we're really more concerned with how that effects the plot than how it effects the characters. Gotham also lost all of it's character and just turned into a generic American city.

But how does any of that carry over to The Dark Knight Rises? It's really weird, but this film felt like a sequel to Batman Begins, and not The Dark Knight. While it's not as full-on emotional as Begins was, we now again have the plot work through the characters. Gotham gets overtaken by Bane, but instead of just watching it in a mechanical way we see it through how it effects Bruce watching it, and how JGL lives through it.

Basically, I think it's a much better balance of plot and emotions that the other two had. Although, like the other two, there was a lot of both. Like, a lot. So much has happened by the end of the film that it's hard to remember exactly where we started from. But to the films credit, it never felt over-long, and there wasn't anything I could think of that bloated the film.

I really liked that the film didn't hold back on what it was doing. It went all out epic (I HATE THAT FUCKING WORD) in it's scale, and instead of having the boring superhero "SAVE YOUR GIRLFRIEND, DO-GOODER!" plot it was actually the whole of Gotham and there were some kids and stuff. I also liked that the very end of the film basically was a 2012 version of "some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!".

Also Catwoman's in it. Here's the thing about Catwoman - and for the record my main exposure to the character has been outside of the comics: the films, the animated series, and the games - Catwoman is very tricky to get right. For me, it's a delecate balance between "sexual" and "object". I literally had a massive rant about this ON THE LAST PAGE OF THIS THREAD so I won't do it again, but sufficed to say this is more of a Animated Series Catwoman (GOOD) than Arkham City Catwoman (TERRIBLE IN EVERY RESPECT). Anne Hathaway does a really good job, and obviously got the character, and there aren't any "HEY GUYS CHECK OUT CATWOMAN'S ASS" shots, because Christopher Nolan is thankfully not Michael Bay.

I'm still writing Jesus Christ. So Bane was good. I liked Bane. The voice was odd sometimes, but eh. I liked that they humanised him by making him the protector of Talia.

WAIT TALIA? SHE'S THERE? DIDN'T SEE THAT COMINg oh wait we all did. But still I can't deny the massive grin that went over my face as Marion Cotillard transformed from "Generic Love Interest" to "Awesomely Evil Person". It was an obvious twist, but damn it it was a good one. Michelle Trachtenberg should play Talia too some point in the future because FUCK YOU THAT'S WHY.

Oh and JGL is Robin but not that Robin but it doesn't matter as DC is rebooting it all into some forced Justice League thing anyway. Oh well.

I thought it was pretty cool.
Click to expand...

I thought it was pretty cool too. Except Bane and Batman's voice was hard to understand in some spots and I missed some funny joke or line that Bruce Wayne said. I give it a 9.5/10.
 
I liked it too.

And I agree about so much happening that by the end you can barely remember where it began, which means I can't really sum it up fairly.

I think on the whole I preferred TDK as imo it was a lot more absorbing and claustrophobic. Maybe it was that focus on the city and the mechanics of the Joker's plot that did it. I felt like I was in Gotham and there was anarchy and it was terrifying.

The Joker's schemes were novel and unpredictable. The issue of bomb in a city has a very obvious conclusion. I suppose I just didn't feel that same sense of jeopardy. It might've helped if there was more exploration of how the city was functioning and how Bane's thugs were terrorising the residents (if indeed they were - for a city of 12 million, we didn't see much of the populace once the island was locked down).

Anyway, the acting was very good as ever. It's funny, I've never really rated Michael Caine as an actor (possibly due to that accent in Cider House Rules), but Alfred is a very well defined and well played character. Anne Hathaway displayed quite a range as well, both being confident and sexy, and seeming much more vulnerable and naturalistic. Excellent design with her goggles, too.

Must admit I didn't catch all of Bane's lines. I reckon when I get it on dvd I'll have the subtitles on just to be sure.

The ending... it's difficult to begrudge a happy ending... Maybe it doesn't fit the over all tone of these films, but what the hell.

Special effects wise I would say I was impressed, except that I barely noticed any CG elements so I don't know what was impressive and what was real. One thing that did stand out was that they could've done more to conceal the true identity of Gotham in the aerial views. Shots in Chicago are fine because nothing much stands out aside from the general look of the place and the river, but some of the shots of NY were dominated by the new WTC building. It seemed like they'd got rid of other landmarks but had overlooked that.
 
Can't argue with what Tomtrek and Fuddle have said.

Now...just a couple of things. And let me start off by saying yes, we were a tad high and drunk during the watching of this film, and I was with a dude who sees the dirty in everything. Kinda like me.

Anyways. Let's start with Bane. We decided his voice sounded like Space Ghost, and once we made that connection, from then on out it was too hard to take him seriously once that was put into my head. Also...was he some sort of pedi in the hole and that's why he took such care with Talia? It just seemed creepy.

I figured out who JGL and Miranda were supposed to be early on, but it didn't take anything away from the film.

Lulz at Scarecrow. Nice to get my Cillian Murphey fix.

Anne Hathaway was awesome. As much as I love her, even I had my doubts about her donning the catsuit, but she played it perfectly. Her ass looked really good in the leather, too. Not Kate Beckinsale nice...but a delicious derriere nonetheless.

I don't begrudge the happy ending at all. It leaves it sorta open for whoever takes over the next franchise, but like he said...Batman can be anybody. He's like the Dread Pirate Robert.
 
Just seen it today, I also prefair the last one to this one, much of the Jokers menace came from seeing his face, we were robbed that from Bane, with only one brief scene.

The only thing I didn't like about the ending
was just how unlikely is it that Alfred would visit the resterant while they were there? I mean I know he sets it up at the beginning, but would they have to eat there several times a day, every day, just to increase the odds to even unlikely?
 
I'd assume that Master Bruce went there very deliberately at a time when Alfred would be around. Maybe Alfred always goes at the same time, or makes a reservation. Bruce was clearly expecting him. The only unlikely part I suppose is that Bruce and Catwoman were sitting at the same table that Alfred was looking at that other couple at in the flashbacky bit earlier in the film, but that's just down to artistic license really.
 
I don't think it's unreasonable to assume that Batman can find out when and where someone will be at a restaurant they have already mentioned they go to.
 
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