Flaws of The Dark Knight Rises

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Well... Let me start off by saying that TDKR was amazing, best Batman movie ever (Yes, even better than Mask of the Phantasm and MUCH better than Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) and EVERYBODY NEEDS TO GO SEE IT. HOWEVER! *MASSIVE MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD*

There were 4 issues I had with the movie that severely hampered my enjoyment... Now I know that a lot of people who haven't seen the movie yet and chose to read this anyways might say that I'm nitpicking and that I'm just an as*hole who takes movies to seriously and that you need to have suspension of disbelief. I completely agree that you need to have suspension of disbelief in a movie and I even with the suspension of belief there were 4 parts of the movie that literally bugged the f**k out of me... While these weren't enough to ruin the movie (because trust me it was f*****g amazing) but it definitely left a bit of a odd taste in my mouth after leaving when I couldn't decide whether I loved it despite the flaws, or what. These are those 4 flaws and why they f****d the movie up.

Flaw 1: First off this is the flaw that honestly is the closest to nitpicking and if this was the only thing that I picked up on I could have brushed it aside with suspension of disbelief. HOWEVER I still need to bring it up because yeah... Anyways I felt it was pretty damn weird that Bruce had this sudden deux ex machina style love for Miranda/Talia and needed to save her. I mean maybe if she revealed she was carrying Damian after that one night her and Bruce f****d after knowing each other for a week that would make some sense, but his sudden need to save her and not really caring about anything else really bothered me and stuck out. Although I guess I could just make an excuse that Miranda was a rebound because Bruce was still stuck up over Rachels death so he wasn't thinking straight.

Flaw 2: So Bruce escaped the Lazarus Pit all fine and dandy and healed his broken back in less than a month, hell it's a movie and I need suspension of disbelief that's fine. BUT HOW THE f**k DID HE GET BACK TO GOTHAM! First off Bruce is obviously in some third world country and it doesn't appear he really has any way out. SECOND IS THERE IS NO WAY FOR HIM TO GET BACK TO GOTHAM! The island WAS BEING f*****g QUARANTINED BY THE UNITED STATES MILITARY! There was no way he could have had somebody flown him in because either the military or some of Banes men would have shot him down. Same goes for if he came by boat as well. There is literally zero conceivable way he could have come back to Gotham. It's just not possible and it bugged the f**k out of me the whole rest of the movie.

Flaw 3: Now this one actually got some people in the theater groaning it was so out there... So Bruce is dead and Blake is going to take up the role of Batman, everybody could see that coming as it's been foreshadowed the entire movie, it's pretty obvious he's like Dick Grayson only with a different name. So he goes to collect what Bruce left him in the will and reveals that his true first name is in fact... ROBIN... Robin Blake... Now honestly that's pushing it... And it just makes the whole Dick Grayson/Robin analogy way too f*****g obvious. Maybe if he revealed his true first name was Dick or Grayson that would different, but just straight up Robin? f*****g pushing it too far.

Flaw 4: So this one pissed me off because of how it was done. So Alfred as we know previously talked about how went to France (I think?) on vacation while Bruce was away during his training with the League of Shadows in Batman Begins and went to this restaurant and always hoped to see Bruce there happy with a wife and possibly kids. So I mean Bruce is obviously dead, I mean he got f*****g nuked to s**t. Yet that ending scene where Alfred sees Bruce and Selina in the restaurant was not executed properly at all (not to mention the whole BruceXSelina romance felt forced as f**k in the first place). But I mean, the way it was done it felt kind of ambiguous as a "Oh is Bruce alive or is Alfred just imagining what he wanted to see because he felt terrible about letting Bruces parents down" and it was just terrible... And I mean if it wasn't in Alfreds imagination it would have literally ruined the entire climax of the movie and made the entire movie feel cheap. They needed to have Bruce just kind of fade away to show that it was just Alfreds imagination. I mean I love ambiguity in movies, I'm a sucker for it. But NOT when it has the potential to absolutely ruin the entire movie... And even with the likely scenario of it being just his imagination then why Selina as the "wife"? I mean her and Bruce had literally zero chemistry or any real experiences together before he died other than kicking some ass and her inadvertently getting his back broken. That whole relationship just felt f*****g forced...

Honestly writing all this I realize that Mask of the Phantasm is still the best Batman movie. It's still the best of the Nolan Batman movies though and everyone needs to see it.

Okay f**k this s**t... I just found out from talking to some people online that there was a small scene where Fox realizes the autopilot on the Batplane is fixed which means that Bruce is indeed alive which makes the whole symbolic sacrifice of his in vain... f**k this s**t! I honestly don't know how I feel about the movie anymore... I mean it was still great but like... Gahhhh now I have a real sour taste in my mouth...

The thing I didn't fully understand was the overcomplexity of Bane/Talia's plan, though it might have been that I missed an important line or conversation.

I didn't really understand why they bothered with the extended occupation of Gotham. It was clear that intended to let the bomb detonate and kill everyone anyway, so why drag it out for so long? Why not just detonate it immediately?

My responses:

Flaw 1: She saved his bacon with the Wayne Corp board earlier in the film. Dunno whether love was involved, but until she put the knife into him, he felt that she deserved being saved like everyone else in the city who wasn't with Bane. As for afterwards, he was trying not to kill her because of his rule.

Flaw 2: How did Bruce get from Gotham with only the clothes on his back to the rest of the world in Batman Begins? The implication in that story is that he used a ship. He knows how to get around discreetly. As for getting into Gotham, well, is Wayne Manor actually part of Gotham City proper? He may still have had equipment left there.

Flaw 3: Okay, now this one is just plain nitpicky. It is contrived, I'll give you that, but it's not that bad.

Flaw 4: It was Florence. And like you said later, there is no ambiguity in that regard, as a scene had Lucius learning that the autopilot had been upgraded. Plus, while I do agree that the romance between Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne was a bit contrived as put onscreen, they did have certain things in common: a desire to wipe the slate clean and start over, a desire to help the helpless, and an enjoyment of rather kinky costumes.


My personal nitpicks?

Flaw 1: The rhetoric of (especially) Bane and Catwoman seemed too much like that of the Occupy movement, making the film as a whole seem rather right-wing for my tastes. And the whole film has a certain "America, f*** yeah!" vibe to it. It's mitigated by the fact that Bruce makes Wayne Manor into an orphanage at the end, and the fact that Bane's goal is anarchy and destruction rather than true liberation, but still...

Flaw 2: Bane, as a villain, was good, but the voice (while not muffled so much that I couldn't understand it, thankfully), seemed to have the wrong attitude. I thought Bane would sound more serious, but he sounds a little too jolly at the wrong times, even for a villain. But his snark is funny, though. Especially in the opening sequence.

Flaw 3: There were little bits of dialogue that I saw in the trailers that weren't in the final cut, especially when Alfred is confronting Bruce about becoming Batman again and being on an apparent self-destructive urge. In the trailer (but not the film, although it is echoed at the end), he says "You are as precious to me as you were to your own mother and father. I swore to them that I would protect you, and I haven't."


These are, in the end, nitpicks. It's a good film, just not on the same level as The Dark Knight.

The only thing I wish was the scene at the end where Alfred is in paris getting lunch. He looks over and nods at someone. They should not have cut to who it was. They should have left it unsaid.

Four words: He's the Goddamn Batman.

Ways and means?

1. Grappling gun.

2. Gliding on his memory cloth cape.

3. Crawling over the ice may be safer than walking on it.

4. The Tumbler, while conspicuous, was made for jumping over bridges. Maybe he stole one of Bane's.

5. One bridge was kept open, as seen throughout the story. And Batman's a master at stealth when he puts his mind to it.

Keep in mind, too, that he is probably more familiar with Gotham and how to get in or out than either the US military or Bane.

And finally, Xenu, think of the MST3K Mantra.

I'm not saying that it is propaganda, just that there were some unfortunate implications that tainted (but did not ruin at all) my enjoyment of the film. And I get where you're coming from. In fact, when I heard about that whole A Tale of Two Cities thing, I thought they were going to replicate the ending, and I wondered how that would work out.

And I heard about the Rush Limbaugh thing on TV Tropes. Apparently both Nolan and Morgan Freeman gave him what-oh. Seriously, does that guy do any research? Or does he just speak his opinion, regardless of the fact that though he is entitled to it, it doesn't mean we all are entitled to his opinion?

Yeah…

I guess, to be fair, there will be many people who won’t get or care about the A Tale of Two Cities thing. These are apt to be the same folks who were putting Joker makeup on President Obama…

You can’t make art, or life, “moron safe.”

Did you know that when the movie Kony 2012 came out, Rush Limbaugh was defending that monster—characterizing him as a persecuted Christian because he’s the leader of “The Lord’s Resistance Army” ?

The thing is, Limbaugh cannot be that stupid, but he knows many Americans on the right are…

The guy has made millions of dollars being a ridiculous caricature of William F. Buckley.

Sometimes I think that when Limbaugh retires, his last words on the air will be, “Just kidding…YOINK!”