The Dark Knight Falls… Jared’s thoughts on TDKR (mild spoilers)
In the comics, Bruce Wayne was so devastated by the murder of his parents that he spent years training up his body and mind to become not only an expert fighter, but the World’s Greatest Detective. He spends every night going in to the city, fighting both high-level supervillains and low level purse snatchers, trying his best to ensure that a tragedy like the one that happened to him never happens again. Gotham City belongs to HIM, and he will not allow anyone to hurt or terrorize it unpunished.
In the Nolan-verse, Bruce Wayne runs away from his life of privilege for years, punishes himself by picking fights and living in squalor, spends about a year learning how to fight from the League of Assassins, and spends roughly 2 or 3 years as Batman. Then, following the death of his childhood sweetheart, Bruce spends 8 years living as a hollow recluse holed up in his mansion hiding from the world. Upon deciding to don the cape and cowl again, he is begged not to by Alfred, and responds with a childish “You don’t think I can do this!” He then spends roughly 3 more nights dressed up in the batsuit, then retires to Europe under a false identity, letting others take up the mantle and crusade of The Batman.
The Batman of the Nolan-verse is not THE Batman.
The Dark Knight Rises is a fun movie. I was thoroughly enraptured for its entire 2 hour 45 minute runtime. It is, however, a movie with serious flaws and huge gaps in logic.
The passage of time in the movie is very fuzzy once Bane activates his bomb. He has time to fly Bruce all the way to India and back without skipping a beat? Bruce is in the cave long enough to heal his back (and his knee, miraculously), get out, fly from India to the US, and sneak back in to Gotham in under 5 months. The cops are all underground for 5 months, but come out looking perfectly clean with laundered uniforms?
Bane wants to destroy the city, but allows chaos and citizen-rule for 5 whole months simply to punish Bruce by forcing him to watch it on a TV in India?
Talia and Bane are intent on destroying Gotham as an example and for revenge on Bruce for killing Ra’s Al Ghul, even though it means they die in the explosion as well and the League of Shadows is once again without leadership?
Bruce jumps out of The Bat, into water cold enough that it instantly killed the people who were “exiled”, far enough outside of the 6-mile detonation radius that he isn’t vaporized?
No one else, in hundreds of years, thought to make the jump on the prison wall without the rope? Also, with the prison well entrance right next to a city wall, all that chanting never got anyone curious enough to go investigate?
When I asked how Bruce, who is legally dead and doesn’t have a penny to his name, winds up in Europe with Selina at the end of the movie, people responded “They sold his mother’s pearls.” So Bruce, the guy who was so tore up about his parents death that he dressed up as a Batman to avenge them, just goes out and pawns the pearls his mother was wearing when she died?
Alfred Pennyworth would NEVER leave Bruce Wayne when he needed him. Never ever ever.
Anyway, those are some gut reactions. What did YOU think about the film? Let us hear your thoughts on our Hotline: 707-OK-GEEKS!
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As I said on your facebook, this article hits all of my gripes with the movie. In my opinion it’s the weakest of the trilogy. There I said it. Nerd rage, bring it
The thing I’m most sad about is that all future Batman movies will be compared to the Nolan-verse… so if they try to make a movie closer to the comics, then they will be lambasted for not being “real world” enough like Nolan’s. At least that is what I’m afraid of.
Nice. You managed to point out a lot I had overlooked. My biggest problem aside from the passage of time, was that the whole premise for the scheme was to let the citizens control the city, but normal people don’t sit around and wait for authority to disappear to rise up and pillage others. Anarchy does not bring the worst out in people, even though the word is used with that understanding. One thing though… the funds from which Bruce Wayne lived on after the the bomb were mentioned very quickly in the final scenes. An employee mentions some missing funds… and I took that as a hint that Wayne had accumulated those funds some way.
If I’m remembering correctly, the item they say is missing at the end IS the pearls. Maybe someone else can help us with that part.
Yes, the missing item is the pearls.