Was a bit disappointed, not a patch on the other two - thought the 5 months of sitting around made it less threatening and duller, and it was riddled with daft plot holes.
Certainly no better than the Dark Knight, nowhere near. Heath Ledger knocked it out of the park as the Joker but Bane was a bit crap as a villain, bit of Ras from the first film and bit of Joker from the second but not as good as either, and then to top it all off it was even his plan, he gets demoted to chief henchman then shot in about five minutes. I like Tom Hardy and he did a good job but the character was just fundamentally flawed to me. I can't speak for anyone else but as soon as Michael Caine gave his little speech about the Italian cafe I KNEW how it was going to end, and I was right.
Blimey that sounds negative. I really did like it I promise but it just wasn't as good as the hype, sorry.
Watched it about a week ago and thought it was pretty good, but not as good as the first. Thought the ending was a little too perfect personally, everyone got there happy ending, which annoys me sometimes. I felt sorry for Alfred but thought he left the film a little too early personally, and it kind of came out of nowhere too. Good twist with Talia at the end, but felt like it was a little unjust to Bane too. Also, Batman when he gets defeated by Bane is made to look a little too weak, it looks like Bane's beating up a child. Batman would still hurt him even if he doesn't win. Like the Dr Caine being in it from Batman begins though. One mroe thing, the whole Robin thing was a little underplayed. He needed to look a bit more powerful, he obviously played an important part in leading the resistance within Gotham but i wanted to see more of him just DOING more. A better end would've been Bruce waiting for Robin in the Batcave at the end i reckon. 8/10
I went to see the film a couple of days ago, and I quite liked it but... I didn't love it. Oddly, I found it a bit too dark; Bane was a similar villain to the Joker in the way he operated, but without the black humour. Somehow, the film left a bad taste in my mouth. I'll still get the DVD though, and perhaps when I watch it again I'll have a different view. I think that maybe I was watching it through my wife's eyes - after I persuaded her to watch the first two, she was really looking forward to seeing this one. But since we have a 4-month old daughter, she had to stay at home and I went with my sister instead. My wife doesn't really like grim violence (I don't even let her watch that bit in The Dark Knight with the pencil), and throughout even single tiny bit of violence, I was thinking about how she would view it. As I say, perhaps when I watch it again on DVD, I'll enjoy it more.
On the subject of Bruce Wayne getting back to Gotham so quickly - maybe I'm completely wrong, but I thought he exited the prison and just up ahead the was the collapsed football stadium? As in, he was already in Gotham (I could be remembering this wrongly, I haven't had much sleep - how would he have even got to Gotham otherwise?!)
Also, I'm surprised so many of you have such a literal (almost naive) view of the ending. Nolan clearly went for the Inception ending - the 'make of it what you will'. Of course it was too perfect for Alfred to see Bruce and Selina sitting there - didn't he say when he mentioned it at the start that it was a recurring dream he had?
Finally, the film did bring a tear to my eyes a couple of times, which the other two didn't do.
Yes, it's going to be called the Leon Knight Rises. Batman does battle with an ex Gillingham player who abuses people on Twitter. It's a battle he can't win, but that won't stop him trying.
Nolan's Batman trilogy has gone the same way as the original Star Wars trilogy: First is great, second is amazing, third is ok. Bane sounded like Sean Connery playing Darth Vader and he wasn't as well written as the Joker(And you knew two things were going to happen: the bat was going to get his back broke and Bane's mask thing was going to get fucked up). JGL's character was superfluous and didn't add much to the film apart from the possibility of being able to make more money from Robin films and Marion Collitard was very unconvincing as Talia Al Ghul. But it was still a decent film, just not up to the standard of the previous two.
Agree with all of that except about getting his back broken and the mask - two key details from the comics that needed adding in!
Also, I'm surprised so many of you have such a literal (almost naive) view of the ending. Nolan clearly went for the Inception ending - the 'make of it what you will'. Of course it was too perfect for Alfred to see Bruce and Selina sitting there - didn't he say when he mentioned it at the start that it was a recurring dream he had?
It wasn't just the Alfred bit though
1. He fixed the Autopilot on the Flying thing 2. He clearly fixed the Bat light on top of the Police Station
Also, I'm surprised so many of you have such a literal (almost naive) view of the ending. Nolan clearly went for the Inception ending - the 'make of it what you will'. Of course it was too perfect for Alfred to see Bruce and Selina sitting there - didn't he say when he mentioned it at the start that it was a recurring dream he had?
It wasn't just the Alfred bit though
1. He fixed the Autopilot on the Flying thing 2. He clearly fixed the Bat light on top of the Police Station
On the subject of Bruce Wayne getting back to Gotham so quickly - maybe I'm completely wrong, but I thought he exited the prison and just up ahead the was the collapsed football stadium? As in, he was already in Gotham (I could be remembering this wrongly, I haven't had much sleep - how would he have even got to Gotham otherwise?!)
Also, I'm surprised so many of you have such a literal (almost naive) view of the ending. Nolan clearly went for the Inception ending - the 'make of it what you will'. Of course it was too perfect for Alfred to see Bruce and Selina sitting there - didn't he say when he mentioned it at the start that it was a recurring dream he had?
Finally, the film did bring a tear to my eyes a couple of times, which the other two didn't do.
think your memory is a bit hazy. The prison was set in Albania. Thing is we don't know how much time lapsed between him escaping and then arriving in gotham. In the film is was like 10 minutes but it could have been weeks. The film was long enough as it was so I can forgive them for not having a planes, trains and automobiles style sequence showing him hitching rides home.
I appreciate your view of the ending and if they didn't include the two scenes which imo removed any doubt that he was alive (when fox finds out that Bruce fixed the autopilot and the fixed bat sign) I might agree with you. But I think the sole purpose of those scenes was to confirm he survived.
Now that I think about it, I fully accept the location of the prison - it was hot and dry where he escaped, but snowy winter in Gotham.
Still surprised so many think the ending was that cut & dry. I've not heard anyone else with that opinion (including, for example, Mark Kermode). Didn't you think the bit with Alfred on holiday was just too perfect? I think the whole point of that little scene is to make you question it, it's completely incongruous with the previous 7 hours of Batmanning.
the film borrows a few elements from the graphic novel the dark knight returns, in which Bruce Wayne comes out of retirement when Harvey dent holds Gotham to ransom with a big bomb. The book ends with bruce faking his own death.
Don't really get the "how did he get back so fast" thing. Was it really necessary to show him at the airport? Did Nolan need to show him at baggage reclaim, maybe waiting for a taxi?
How he found Selina is a good question, but who cares in a movie about a man dressed as a bat.
My theory is that the second movie of a franchise will always be the best as it doesn't have the baggage of the third, or the introduction responsibilities of the first. In a planned trilogy at least. Which this kinda was.
Only criticism I've heard of the ending is in this thread. The Italian reference, autopilot comments etc. were all designed to set it up. The character arc of Bruce Wayne over the course of the three films was about him becoming Batman, then reclaiming his life when Gotham no longer needed the help. TDK offered hope then snatched it away. At the beginning of TDKR Wayne couldn't have been further from achieving a life outside of Batman, by the end, he'd learnt - largely via Alfred - how to move on. That was the point. Like at the end of TDK when Fox said he wouldn't work with the sonar machine, Bruce already had a plan in mind. Incongruous couldn't be further from the truth. There was never supposed to be a moment of ambiguity around the ending!
Are you Christopher Nolan? I don't think you can say there was never intended to be any ambiguity because films are there purely to be interpreted. Especially Nolan films. When I saw the film my first interpretation of being told that Bruce had fixed the autopilot (before Alfred 'sees' him at the end) was that he'd fixed it in case he needed it, but had chosen to die anyway as he'd re-established The Batman as a symbol and was a broken man. Gotham was safe, he had a successor and he could finally die, which is what his character has wanted since the first film. When they showed him at the end the water was muddied and you could easily interpret that he survives the film. Personally I don't know (or care that much) but I don't think you can just dismiss the entire theory that he dies.
i guess it's down to what you want the ending to be. If you wanted him to die then there's enough evidence to suggest he did and likewise if you think he should survive.
personally I think he should survive. I mean it's batman, the guy who carries shark repellent spray in his utility belt.
GarryManilow - I can dismiss it. And I have. I think you are completely and utterly wrong. The biggest reason apparently to suspect that the ending was ambiguous is because it's the same director as Inception. It's ridiculous. Are you implying Alfred imagined the end!? Is that what's happening here!? Nonsense. If you want to believe it, knock yourself out. But I'd wager you'll never hear Nolan comment that the end is "what you want it to be".
Which other Nolan film had an ambiguous ending anyway?
I never said Nolan dealt in ambiguous endings, I said he dealt in ambiguity. See Memento, where the protagonist's story is out of order and he can't remember what he's done, The Prestige, where misdirection is central, Insomnia, where guilt and lack of sleep warps perceptions. It's Nolan's whole bag.
But anyway, the point I was making was that for starters I don't have an actual firm opinion on the ending, but either way you can't just claim that other people's opinions are invalid. You're doing it anyway though. Okey doke. For the record I think it's entirely possible that the ending where Alfred sees Bruce is him finally seeing Bruce as happy and free, be that in a literal sense or a metaphysical sense. I think Nolan is a sufficiently talented and subtle director that he's left room for either. Certainly makes the film more interesting
i guess it's down to what you want the ending to be. If you wanted him to die then there's enough evidence to suggest he did and likewise if you think he should survive.
personally I think he should survive. I mean it's batman, the guy who carries shark repellent spray in his utility belt.
Saw this last night and am a bit gutted to say that I was a little underwhelmed. Maybe the Dark Knight and Heath Ledger's performance in particular were so great that it was going to be impossible to better the quality and tension within that film, but I was hoping and expecting something more breathtaking.
The positives for me were Anne Hathaway's Catwoman/Batgirl hybrid character (the way I interpreted it and a door left open should Nolan's successor wish to move in either direction with the character), the emergence of Robin, as a film centred around that character could be really good and the closing of this story arc's loop.
However, Bane was a disappointment for me - his superior intellect from the comics never translated fully to this characterisation, the 'breaking/recovery' was a bit too miraculous, again, a twisting knife in your side tends to hamper your ability to move, let alone take a neutron bomb away from a city and how he escaped the blast, unless he was using an unmanned bat plane on auto-pilot to carry the thing out to sea whilst he was making his own escape in a different vehicle, I don't know.
So, on balance a 6/10 and a bit gutted, as thought this trilogy could have been the one to surpass the quality of all others before them.
Misdirection isn't ambiguity - it's misdirection. The Prestige was a mystery, like Memento before it. But that doesn't make them ambiguous. Nolan's even said there's a definitive explanation to Inception if you can work it out, unlike, say, Usual Suspects which doesn't hold together on any level.
His bag is mystery, not ambiguity, which, for me, is a really cheap way to cover plotholes or poor storytelling. I would suggest it's as important to him that, as a storyteller, his audience understands what he's trying to say. And those notes, as referred to earlier in this thread about the autopilot and the Bat sign, added to the speech to Gordon about ANYONE being Batman, are clear signals and a set up for the final shot. To look for this so-called ambiguity is looking too deep into it.
Just watched this on DVD today (well the weekend here in Dubai is Friday & Saturday!). Thought it was absolutely brilliant. I really can't see any ambiguity at all about the ending.
Comments
Shame, as the first two are brilliant.
Blimey that sounds negative. I really did like it I promise but it just wasn't as good as the hype, sorry.
Thought the ending was a little too perfect personally, everyone got there happy ending, which annoys me sometimes. I felt sorry for Alfred but thought he left the film a little too early personally, and it kind of came out of nowhere too.
Good twist with Talia at the end, but felt like it was a little unjust to Bane too.
Also, Batman when he gets defeated by Bane is made to look a little too weak, it looks like Bane's beating up a child. Batman would still hurt him even if he doesn't win. Like the Dr Caine being in it from Batman begins though.
One mroe thing, the whole Robin thing was a little underplayed. He needed to look a bit more powerful, he obviously played an important part in leading the resistance within Gotham but i wanted to see more of him just DOING more. A better end would've been Bruce waiting for Robin in the Batcave at the end i reckon.
8/10
On the subject of Bruce Wayne getting back to Gotham so quickly - maybe I'm completely wrong, but I thought he exited the prison and just up ahead the was the collapsed football stadium? As in, he was already in Gotham (I could be remembering this wrongly, I haven't had much sleep - how would he have even got to Gotham otherwise?!)
Also, I'm surprised so many of you have such a literal (almost naive) view of the ending. Nolan clearly went for the Inception ending - the 'make of it what you will'. Of course it was too perfect for Alfred to see Bruce and Selina sitting there - didn't he say when he mentioned it at the start that it was a recurring dream he had?
Finally, the film did bring a tear to my eyes a couple of times, which the other two didn't do.
Agree with all of that except about getting his back broken and the mask - two key details from the comics that needed adding in!
1. He fixed the Autopilot on the Flying thing
2. He clearly fixed the Bat light on top of the Police Station
No way was Nolan going for an Inception ending
I appreciate your view of the ending and if they didn't include the two scenes which imo removed any doubt that he was alive (when fox finds out that Bruce fixed the autopilot and the fixed bat sign) I might agree with you. But I think the sole purpose of those scenes was to confirm he survived.
Still surprised so many think the ending was that cut & dry. I've not heard anyone else with that opinion (including, for example, Mark Kermode). Didn't you think the bit with Alfred on holiday was just too perfect? I think the whole point of that little scene is to make you question it, it's completely incongruous with the previous 7 hours of Batmanning.
How he found Selina is a good question, but who cares in a movie about a man dressed as a bat.
My theory is that the second movie of a franchise will always be the best as it doesn't have the baggage of the third, or the introduction responsibilities of the first. In a planned trilogy at least. Which this kinda was.
Only criticism I've heard of the ending is in this thread. The Italian reference, autopilot comments etc. were all designed to set it up. The character arc of Bruce Wayne over the course of the three films was about him becoming Batman, then reclaiming his life when Gotham no longer needed the help. TDK offered hope then snatched it away. At the beginning of TDKR Wayne couldn't have been further from achieving a life outside of Batman, by the end, he'd learnt - largely via Alfred - how to move on. That was the point. Like at the end of TDK when Fox said he wouldn't work with the sonar machine, Bruce already had a plan in mind. Incongruous couldn't be further from the truth. There was never supposed to be a moment of ambiguity around the ending!
personally I think he should survive. I mean it's batman, the guy who carries shark repellent spray in his utility belt.
Which other Nolan film had an ambiguous ending anyway?
But anyway, the point I was making was that for starters I don't have an actual firm opinion on the ending, but either way you can't just claim that other people's opinions are invalid. You're doing it anyway though. Okey doke. For the record I think it's entirely possible that the ending where Alfred sees Bruce is him finally seeing Bruce as happy and free, be that in a literal sense or a metaphysical sense. I think Nolan is a sufficiently talented and subtle director that he's left room for either. Certainly makes the film more interesting
The positives for me were Anne Hathaway's Catwoman/Batgirl hybrid character (the way I interpreted it and a door left open should Nolan's successor wish to move in either direction with the character), the emergence of Robin, as a film centred around that character could be really good and the closing of this story arc's loop.
However, Bane was a disappointment for me - his superior intellect from the comics never translated fully to this characterisation, the 'breaking/recovery' was a bit too miraculous, again, a twisting knife in your side tends to hamper your ability to move, let alone take a neutron bomb away from a city and how he escaped the blast, unless he was using an unmanned bat plane on auto-pilot to carry the thing out to sea whilst he was making his own escape in a different vehicle, I don't know.
So, on balance a 6/10 and a bit gutted, as thought this trilogy could have been the one to surpass the quality of all others before them.
Best trilogy ever? Big call but perhaps.
His bag is mystery, not ambiguity, which, for me, is a really cheap way to cover plotholes or poor storytelling. I would suggest it's as important to him that, as a storyteller, his audience understands what he's trying to say. And those notes, as referred to earlier in this thread about the autopilot and the Bat sign, added to the speech to Gordon about ANYONE being Batman, are clear signals and a set up for the final shot. To look for this so-called ambiguity is looking too deep into it.