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Can anyone explain to what the point of the Dr. Crane cameo was?
The guy was in there for litteraly two minuets, we don't even find out what happened to him.
Now I love Cillien Murphy as Scarecrow but his appearence just felt shoehorned and phoned in.

Wha-? It was a cameo - that's why he was there for a couple of minutes. Otherwise it wouldn't be a cameo. And he was obviously [spoiler]one of the escapees from Blackgate.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I agree - it was nothing more than a cameo - he had clearly escaped from arkham asylum and got himself appointed 'judge' of the people of Gotham brought before him whom he condemned to death basically (death by exile, or death) I agree it was unneeded, but I also feel talia al ghul's presence in the plot, as well as Liam Neeson's cameo are unneeded - but they are all part of Nolan's need to round off his trilogy.[/spoiler]

yeah that's great Bale has taken it on himself to go and visit the people affected by the shootings - especially the wounded.

here's William Friedkin's opinions on the killer and shootings.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/showbiz/news/a395256/william-friedkin-batman-cinema-shooter-deserves-gas-chamber.html

I was gonna watch my boxset of all the Mad Max films, but if the next installment is due out next year I may wait and watch the other movies before Mad Max Fury Road comes out since it supposedly leads on from Mad Max - Beyond the Thunderdome.

couldn't see a topic for this already -
I like Hugh Jackman, he reminds me of Clint Eastwood on occasion - though he picks some dodgy films to be in sometimes.
But here he looks like he's leaned down again to look more like the wolverine from the 1st x-men movie as he starts shooting soon for The Wolverine.

http://tv.uk.msn.com/video/?videoid=91e3b5b5-3546-42e0-858b-110e1fb27364&src=v5:share:sharepermalink:&from=sharepermalink

I'm wondering where they got this Joker/red hair connection from anyway. He may have looked that way for ages. Who says he didn't just like dying his hair red?

well this is the basis of what they're trying to decide now, and whether or not they should give him the death penalty or not; is he a mentally ill insane guy who thought he was the Joker after losing touch with reality, or was this just a guy wanting to get even with society over his own failings and calculating and planning a murder spree. I'd say the answer is BOTH - but obviously they have to see if the guys completely insane or not so they can decide how to deal with him i.e. what sentence (e.g. death) he gets.

If he liked dying his hair red, he had only been doing it for the past couple of months...within which time he was buying ammunition online as well as guns and boobytrapping his house as well.

You can have as many characters as you want once you can make it work, which is not impossible despite what critics say. Any Lord of the Rings film had no problem juggling and introducing new characters in each film.

surely LOTR and the dark knight trilogy movies are different beasts altogether. Fine I see what your saying - that you can have any number of characters - an ensemble cast - as long as you juggle them and write for them well, Joss Whedon for instance is an expert at this. But what I'm saying is Nolan has really focused (whether he meant to or not - I'm just assuming he meant to) on 3 main characters in each film and their 'journey' or agendas - 1) batman, ra's al ghul, scarecrow 2) batman, joker, dent....these character studies also showed the character's different agendas, principles and morality/amorality..................[spoiler]perhaps the reason why alot of fans don't like TDKR as much as the previous two films (though many find it hard to point out exactly why, often simply falling back on blaming Hardy's Bane) is because Nolan expanded on this 3 main character study structure and blended the journey of Talia and her father with that of Bane's onslaught etc[/spoiler]

maybe what I'm trying to say is; [spoiler]Nolan tried overly hard to wedge a nice ending and rounding off of the trilogy onto a film that could have played out the same way dark knight did, therefore instead of 'the rule of three', Nolan expanded in to a more ensemble cast. I'd even say Cmmsioner Gordon became a superhero in his own right in this movie, then of course you have the rise of John 'Robin' Blake - instead of treating the film as another chapter with 'the rule of three', TDKR became a disguised attempt at an ensemble 'super - hero movie'.[/spoiler]

Many thanks for your invaluable tips guys - I will definately check out those films.

[bomb]

The only thing wrong with Bane is his confused motivation. Does he want to destroy Gotham or free it?

Bane as a character is fine, he's not the Joker and it's not imperative that everything he says should resonate. He's muscle plus intellect with a neat backstory and completely merciless which creates a far more sinister presence than the Joker. The only thing that deflates his role is why would he bother seizing the most important city in the world if he's only going to pretend at being a revolutionary when his real intention is to blow it into oblivion. It just sounds like they didn't finish melding their thematic with the character, which could easily have been done.


I don't believe that the hero should always directly meet and beat his nemesis in a duel of flying fists; it's one of the worsts aspects of nearly all superhero films and it definitely made both Iron Man films infinitely blander than they should've been, but the Bat/Bane pummeling is enjoyable, and I didn't mind his swift end but again it feels slightly deflated because Bane's character, reason and motivation became even more obscure at his very end when it should've highlighted the difference between his and Bruce Wayne's separate struggles.


It may sound contrarian but I think TDKR is simply not long enough. It needed more time to tell the story it set forth to tell but compressed far too much incident into too few scene beats leaving a lot undramatised. This is what makes the pacing feel hectic/wearing, yet paradoxically too long. It's scale of story is akin to Return of the King rather than the previous films.


The bomb acting as nuclear deterrent to guard against intervention is a great modern idea* - as any 'rogue' Middle Eastern State will attest - using it as a literal countdown to the denouement probably not as great.

There's clunky exposition, under-written characters and lazy writing -Selina ending up in the men's prison- but it is still very enjoyable with admirable ambition and no weak performances. There's similar thematic problems in all Nolan's Bat-films but he still knows how to compel despite them.


The ending is indulgently all things to all men and there's nothing wrong with that.






*I like the visual reference to Edge of Darkness with the ever mobile lead-lined nuclear containers trundling around the city.

I think it's inevitable and right for Bane to be compared with the Joker - and in that respect I think they should have been compared with Ras al Ghul from the first film - but [spoiler]Ras al Ghul stretches his presence throughout the trilogy, something I believe didn't need to exist throughout the trilogy, or indeed exist as a factor in 'capping off' the trilogy and ultimately undermining Bane as a villian.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]I think Bane kept threatening to offer lines that resonated like the Joker's did in the 2nd film - but he/the script never came up with the goods. I would have preferred Bane to be the main focus of the 3rd film (sorry to harp on about that lol) and talia al ghul's motives incorporated into Bane's.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]You say Bane was intelligence and brawn with a neat backstory - but I believe his backstory is ultimately completely undermined near the end of the movie;
Bane is built up to be a nigh-on-mythical terrorist leader and ex league of shadows member (like Batman) with eccentricity, athleticism and intelligence, who wants to create the illusion that Gotham will be freed but simultaneously destroying it - however, talia al ghul's expose of who Bane really is completely clashes with his character in the movie previously, and this spoils it in my opinion, appropriately and ironically wiping him out in a single snivelling shot soon thereafter.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]To say I 'loved' Batman and Bane's first head to head punchup is not appropriate, but dramatically I found it to be exactly as good as I thought it would be in my head and having read the comics - Bane showing he is also an initiate of the League of Shadows and so Batman's tricks have little effect on him, eventually breaking his back....so the second fight between the two should have definately been the climax of the film![/spoiler]

[spoiler]- to me you have a first film draft similar to the dark knight that was scripted with Bane being the anarchic revolutionary leader outmatching Batman on paper in intelligence and physicality and knowledge, who wants not only to introduce anarchy to Gotham, but also destroy it completely - But then it seems like alot of Bane has been written out in the final draft of the script in order to make way for talia al Ghul's creeping subplot and ultimately she steels Bane's thunder as a villain at the end of the film.[/spoiler]

[spoiler]Summary = Nolan has made a singular mistake to me in TDKR -
in each film he has focused on 3 characters primarily in a sort of The Good the Bad and the Ugly way; in Batman Begins there was Batman, Rha's Al Ghul and the Scarecrow - in TDK there was Batman, The Joker and Two Face. However in TDKR you have Batman, Bane, Catwoman AND Talia Al Ghul - Nolan should have kept to his rule of 3![/spoiler]

Just one little thing, tabloids kept said that he appears in court in Joker bright red hair,

but I thought it was common Joker's hair was green?

alot of things point to mental derangement - a minor element of this would be confusing the batman series - I gather he was just obsessed with the films as a whole. He's died his hair red and everyone knows the Joker's hair isn't red - and apparently he had a batman mask taking pride of place in his demented shrine to the batman films in his boobytrapped appartment.

You guys really know your stuff about monster and giant robot movies. For me....other than seeing the Power Rangers movie when I was a wee kid - this is my first foray into the giant monster/robot 'genre'. I'm greatly looking forward to Pacific Rim and I think it'll be the best thing Del Toro has done since Hellboy.

Just watching the court hearing for the gunman - holmes. There's something eerily nauseating about this kind of coverage. The guy has badly died orange hair and looks sleepy, maybe drugged up on anti-psychotics. Surreal to see the face of a human being who could commit such attrocities, as it was when they aired Brehvik's trial.

I was all for DKR embracing the more comic book elements of the Batman comics, but some of it sat really uneasily with the tone they were going for - like [spoiler]Wayne repeatedly referring to his 'friend' Batman (were we supposed to infer that Kyle knew he was Batman all along?) and people delivering dialogue like "What about this Bane guy I keep hearing about - apparently he has a secret army in the sewers".[/spoiler] Just felt really jarring and out of place.

From the early teasers, the imagery led me to believe we would get something structurally much closer to The Dark Knight Returns. I wasn't really pleased with how the story played out in the actual film. Would have been way more satisfying imo to have [spoiler]Bane kill Gordon, incapacitate Batman and takeover the city, and then jump to 8 years later - perhaps have a structure like Batman Begins where we start the film with the post-apocalypse-like Gotham, a broken Wayne rotting in the Pit and have a series of interweaving flashbacks explaining how we got to this point. Having Wayne go through one lengthy recuperation after another seemed like bad writing to me, and simplifying it would have cut down the running time.[/spoiler]

The [spoiler]nuke maguffin seemed unnessesary and clunky - and too much of a retread of the weapon from Batman Begins.[/spoiler]

And yeah - I agree with all the other comments about the obnoxious sound mixing on this film - I had a lot of trouble hearing what many characters were saying - not just Bane. Nolan really needs to cut this shit out - I gave up trying to watch Inception on my home cinema recently as the music was so overbearingly loud in relation to the dialogue and I got sick of having to constantly ride the volume up and down.

I'm very much with you in all the points you make here - including preferred plot!

I just couldn't shake the feeling that Nolan's heart just wasn't in this one.

After the first two films, he has nothing left to prove. The Dark Knight was, for me and many others, a one of a kind, lightning in a bottle, zeitgeisty sort of film. Rises just feels a bit like its going through the motions.

I'd say the Batman Begins, and The Dark Knight Rises seem like they were directed by the same guy - but infact its The Dark Knight that feels like a standout film directed by someone else or like 'lightning in a bottle' as you describe it. I thought Batman Begins was a great movie as a whole and an ideal 'in' to the new Batman world and his origins - but The Dark Knight seemed like a true comic book film and graphic novel adaptation and seemed in my head more colourful compared to the other two movies in the trilogy.

Rather muddled, overlong, predictable, far-fetched (even for a superhero film) and bloated - so many superfluous characters. So fast-paced that the characters and relationships lack any depth and the plot becomes quite confusing because a lot of things are underexplained or rushed past.

This, sorry to say, feels like the movie I'm going to see when I eventually work my way around to it on DVD.

I was talking to a friend the other day about Nolan's previous Batman films, and I think I hit upon what frustrates me about them. They seem to play out as if they were handled by a COMPLETELY different director!

I genuinely like the first movie, because it has the kind of focus that I expect from a decent flick. It's weaker (in my opinion) in comparison to Nolan's other movies like The Prestige, Memento and Inception. But what I can't get over is how those movies all excel in the very areas that The Dark Knight stumbled in.

I've already said here how I hate the second movie. Given that Rises sounds a lot like it replicates and magnifies the self-same problems I had with that, I don't think I'll be watching it at the cinema.

The Dark Knight was overlong and a little bloated, but it's such a fantastic film I am more than willing to forgive it.

But if you didn't like The Dark Knight, you won't enjoy Rises. It has all of TDK's problems tenfold, but it's far less focused and doesn't have Heath Ledger's incredible performance to give it that shot in the arm he gives TDK every time he appears on screen. The plot is way more convoluted too.

I'm probably still rather unnecessarily using spoilers incase some people stumble on this thread not having seen the movie - [spoiler]I disagree - I feel like Bane did have the performance from Hardy and his impressive physical build to be the equivalent to the bad guy Ledger's Joker was. But the plot undermined Bane - A 'rematch' with Bane should have been the essential climax to the film - Nolan should have also shown more of Bane at work as an underground terrorist mastermind, rather than have him speak little lines of dialogue and then be reduced to a snivelling brute with his intelligence seemingly falsified at the end of the movie. It was a good movie....but like with some great movies that have been overhyped it frustrated me because the elements were there to make TDKR a truly great movie and equivalent to TDK, but the plot was too padded out with Nolan's need to round off his trilogy. rather than rounding off the trilogy with a neat bow I would have liked each movie to be a different phase and chapter in Wayne/Batman's life - sort of chapters he had to overcome in order to achieve mythical status, overcome his own demons and save gotham's morality - phases quite different to each other rather than a linked full circle trilogy.
In summary, if I rejiggered TDKR;
A) I would cut out the Talia al Ghul subplot.
B) have more Bane and have him revealed as the intelligent terrorist mastermind he started the movie as.
C) have the climax as the final fight with Bane and Batman (rather than Catwoman simply shooting Bane down, Talia al Ghul trying to set off a bomb, and Batman's last act being flying over the sea with a bomb in tow).
[/spoiler]

I thought Normans lines were excellent, right from the off! The very first episode, where he repeatedly says 'They're dead Dave. Everyone is dead. They are all dead Dave.' in his droll manner was hysterical!

Lister: Where is everyone Hol?
Holly: They're dead Dave.
Lister: Who is?
Holly: Everybody Dave.
Lister: What Captain Holister?
Holly: Everybody's dead Dave.
Lister: What Todd Hunter?
Holly: Everybody's dead Dave.
Lister: What Selby?
Holly: They're all dead, everybody's dead Dave.
Lister: Peterson isn't, is he?
Holly: Everybody is dead Dave.
Lister: Not Chen?
Holly: Gorden Bennet, yes Chen, everybody, everybody's dead Dave.
Lister: Rimmer?
Holly: He's dead Dave, everybody's dead, everybody is dead Dave.
Lister: Wait, are you trying to tell me everybody's dead?
Holly: *slightly under breath* Shouldn't have let him out in the first place!

I thought Norman's lines in series VIII were funny too. One of the only redeeming features of series VIII. But I do think that was a sort of last hurrah for Norman. Holly will always stand out as an extra character because A) he/she was the computer who you went through alot of the times to see what was wrong with the ship, or to access Holly's IQ and opinion and B) Holly chipping in, even if just a few times, with the odd funny line was always welcome.

But I think there is still room for Kryten and Holly. Of course Norman was really on form in the first series, and Hattie did a brilliant job before they phased Holly out.