jon5000
Posts: 1087
Joined: 29/3/2007
From: LA
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quote:
ORIGINAL: justfontaine
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ORIGINAL: jon5000
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ORIGINAL: justfontaine
I'm actually shocked, and a little disheartened, with the amount of criticism it's getting.
There seems to be one positive review in every ten posted. I really don't understand why everyone wishes to pick apart every minor detail based on the plausibility of something really being able to happen.
It's a superhero film.
People expected far too much, It's clear to see now, that was the case. I've said this on here before but I was fully aware there would be clunky moments and so on. Hell, BB and TDK has many of them why would Rises fare any different?
It's just what happens with huge blockbuster film making, some minor things will get neglected, but come on, It's a good solid film and a fitting ending. People should watch it again and this time, maybe not expect the be all and end all of cinema and watch it for what it is; the third installment of a fantastic superhero trilogy.
That's a bizarre argument to make!
Watch the film again with lower expectations?
I think Hood_Man got it right in the post above. It wasn't a terrible film, but as admirers of Nolan's previous Batman films and indeed all of his films thus far, we feel this film has a huge amount wrong with it that just seem so un-Nolan-like, if you will. Sub-par character development, clunky script writing, poor pacing. It was just very off from his usual standards. He's so regarded as having very strong creative discipline and standards, he just seems to have lowered himself here, if anything. Maybe success has got to him. I'm still puzzled as to what made him personally hire Zack Snyder to direct Superman also, but that's a separate issue!
I don't think the problems with the film are audience's fault for having high expectations! You're effectively asking us to allow it to be sub par? What kind of argument is that!
Everything I have marked in bold. Could you elaborate slightly please?
Character development - What's the issue here? Did we all want an extra half an hour explaining Selina Kyle or Holly Robinson or whoever so then we could take issue of why he dedicated so much of the film to her/them? I don't understand which characters were weak in development. I knew exactly what everyone's roles were and this didn't impede on the enjoyment nor the story development.
Poor Pacing - I'll admit the occupation of Gotham was it's weakest point, it felt rushed and I didn't really get to grips with the scale and time frame of it I never felt like Gotham was in that much trouble. Should have been more inclusion of how the people of the city were dealing with a four month rule under a terrorist.
Clunky script writing - What? as appose to the Arthur Miller stature of the previous two? Do me a favour, they are all slightly clunky dialogue wise. Don't sugarcoat the others.
With pleasure,
Sub par character development. Okay, you have Bruce Wayne/Batman at the core. That worked fine, Christian Bale was superb. But other characters such as Miranda Tate, Mathew Modine's character and Bane were just completely off for me. It was almost as if Nolan was too quick with their development, or didn't have enough patience to allow them to bed into the narrative. This was most certainly true of Modine's character where you start to wonder, why is he even there? Could his role in the narrative not have been given to a character we already know? It just became flabby. And Bane/Miranda Tate. Well, I had so many problems with that relationship, but getting at the character development and the way they were dealt with on screen, was in my opinion very poor for Nolan. The most awkward bit was having Alfred apparently knowing exactly who Bane is/where he's come from early on the film. That was terribly clunky, a was almost putting my hands in my head thinking 'show it, don't tell it.' Which is bizarre for Nolan as I've previously said he's normally so creatively disciplined. Bane started out quite ominously, which I quite liked. But then Nolan - I think perhaps wrongly influenced by the Romantic idea of the revolutionary - turned Bane into this kind of Marxist liberator, which to me felt jarring. I think his character has clearer and more threatening motivation as he was in the comics with his kind of 'I'm going to be the boss... I view Gotham as my prison.' mentality. And then exposing him as a caring friend to Talia was just awful, completely undermined him as a threat. Suddenly he sheds tears? Please. And having Miranda Tate as this forced love interest on Bruce, it was just a bit too obvious what her role was for me because of her character's chunkiness. I think Selina Kyle and her should have been one shadowy femme fatale character, to be honest. I like what Nolan was trying to do with Selina Kyle as this untrustworthy person in Bruce's life but she needed more screen time for it to bed in. Fuck the twist at the end with Talia being behind it all - let's just have Bane as the main threat. Simple character is often so much more engaging and ultimately fulfilling. All these off shots, twists and turns just contrive what they stand for. They cease to become relatable archetypes and become more contrived plot devices. You could see why Miranda Tate was there, and that's the problem. I felt this was true in Lord of The Rings with many characters also, their roles were just too obvious in regard to what function they serve to the plot. It felt like they'd been written rather than having them as pure and relatable people in the story. I wasn't bothered in the slightest when Bane, Foley or Miranda died. Good or bad.
Poor Pacing. Right, this one is true of a lot of Nolan's films for me, but he really doesn't let the film breathe for any moment of time. It's just plot, character, plot, character, event. You never get that needed emotional pause. And even when you do get one they're never long enough for me. Bane's threat on the city needed a lot more time to bed to be truly worrying. Instead of just having Gordon's men turn up and 'discover' it all going on underground. Why not have more targeted attacks on various city institutions? Whispers of a masked man around the city. Let's have Batman do some detective work instead of Alfred telling him who Bane is and how he was ex-communicated by the League of Shadows. Let's have Batman discover that for himself. It would have worked far better instead of having it all happen in the first 40 or so minutes. And then there's Bruce's incarceration. Aside from the obvious flaws in the time it takes for a vertebra to heal... the whole idea was so rushed it became ineffective. Nolan has said he was influenced by another revolutionary tale, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and you can see how this plot thread was almost an homage to that - but as fantastically Romantic as the idea is, it just didn't work at all. It made it hopelessly complex. The prison should have been in the sewers beneath Gotham or even Blackgate itself. The breaking out of prisoners from Blackgate worked well as another nod to The French Revolution as a kind of Storming-of-the-Bastile which kind of worked, but why not keep it all within Gotham? Make it relevant to the threat of the city being like a facist state. Instead I was just left wondering how on earth Bruce got back to Gotham if it was cut off by ice?!
Clunky scriptwriting. Well I think this has been true of some aspects of the previous films, but on the whole I think the scriptwriting in those films was better. There were moments of pure plot-dumping in Begins - 'We've had a microwave emitter stolen!' But this film was full of them. Suddenly Bane can be researched by Alfred on the computer can he? And there's lots of information about the highly secretive society The League of Shadows just lying around on there? Possibly on the internet? It just felt so clunky and plot-dumpy. And the other conversation between Bruce and Alfred where Alfred explains he burnt the letter from Rachel to Dent. That felt so random to me. That could have been far greater woven into the story without having a separate scene for it. 'Oh hi, we're on the stairs reminding the audience about the last film.' Let's have Selina Kyle asked who Rachel is or something. In the end just having Bruce walking off like some sad child. It just lost all emotional resonance for me again because it felt like plot-dumping. It should have been far more seamless. The same was true of the nuclear fusion project thing with Fox. It was just like 'Oh, now we need to talk about this part of the plot,' which is a shame as Nolan's been so clever at weaving things seamlessly in the previous films. The introduction of Dent in the TDK was so well handled. We were thrown into it, Dent in court with Maroni. Two characters dealt with seamlessly. Not Alfred standing there explaining to Bruce who Dent is and where he's come from. Urgh, so many moments like that.
I'll probably come up with some more.
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RE: The Dark Knight Rises - 
) Bruce deserves to live his life away from the chaos of what once was. Nolan knows and appreciates the character in this way as I'm sure many of us do. 
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