The Dark Knight Rises: "Appendum"

And now, here's some more specific questions/criticisms of "The Dark Knight Rises" I could not fit into the review proper.

Just about every major spoiler in the film will be discussed here. Except for stuff regarding Bane, which will be it's own article.


You've been warned:

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THE TITLE

I think we all knew it was a shitty title when it was announced. But it's not just bad; it's wrong. It's literally, factually incorrect. It's not a sequel to "The Dark Knight". It's a sequel to "Batman Begins". It doesn't really bridge these three films together. Instead, it side-steps a lot of what happened in the second installment, beyond lip-service to Aaron Eckhart's character. It is only there because putting a big number "2" at the end would have been too obvious a cash-grab.

I think "Batman Ends" would have made a lot more sense.

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SELENA KYLE

I was hoping this third installment would feature a female Batman character teaming up with Bruce Wayne. And here's how they screwed that up too:

SELENA KYLE: "I'll switch sides and be good if I can get a thing that will erase my past on the internet."

BRUCE WAYNE: "I just happen to have a thing in my pocket that will do that."

SK: "How did you get that?"

BW: "..."

SK: "How does it work?"

BW: "..."

SK: "Did you make it?"

BW: "..."

SK: "If you made it, was this before or after you became a recluse and stopped making things?"

BW: "..."  

SK: "How did you get it if Bane robbed your secret inventory?"

BW: "..."

SK: "Did you have that with you for no reason when you were stuck in the pit in a foreign country?"

CHRISTOPHER NOLAN: "Just shut up and give me your money."

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HANS ZIMMER

I remember an interview with Zimmer when he was composing the score to Inception. He made it very clear that he was really pulling up his sleeves and putting in the effort, instead of just pulling a Kung-Fu Panda 2 where he just collects a paycheck while the new music is made by someone else.

In some ways, he pulled a Kung-Fu Panda 2 on this one. Most of the soundtrack is just him remixing the music from the first two films. It's like the stuff you'd hear on youtube when searching for the official music. Some dork with Audacity speeds up the Doctor Who theme and thinks he's a musician. Oh, wow, so you slowed down the tempo to the credits theme from "The Dark Knight"? Aren't you special.


Counterpoint: the "Deshi Basara" chant is the catchiest thing I've ever heard at the movies. It's too bad the music in the commercials were better than the official soundtrack, but hey. Props where it's due.


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JOHN BLAKE

I enjoyed Joseph-Gordon-Levitt-Montague-Smith-Queen-Pulsating-Slug-For-A-Butt's performance... right up until the part 2 minutes before the credits where they literally call him "Robin".

Fuck you too, movie.


It's like, why would this movie trust us to understand who Selena Kyle is, without the need to beat us over the head with it... and then feel the need to beat us over the head with the fact that John Blake is fulfilling the sidekick role here? So what, we're a smart, saavy audience AND we're drooling idiots?


It does little to dissuade the feeling that they swiped this ending, from an abandoned script from the Burton/Schumacher era.
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THE BAT

How did Batman survive a nuclear blast? Even if he changed his mind about his own life and jumped out at the last-minute, and somehow being at ground-zero of an atomic blast didn't kill him, the radiation or the fall would have. And wouldn't somebody have seen him? Wouldn't that heavy suit of his make him sink like a stone if he went into the water?

Later "The Bat", his new flying machine is safe and sound. Not a scratch on it. Scientists are evaluating it without protective gear, despite it being at the centre of a nuclear explosion. Is Jonathan Nolan a five-year old boy?


Also, why does it look like the Tumbler? Remember how the Batpod was a sleeker, realistic evolution from the bulky land-rover? It feels like the Tumbler looked that way because it was in the first film, where the characters were still working the kinks out of this whole "Batman" thing. Prototypes tend to look like they haven't had the edges sanded down yet. Why would the culmination of Lucius Fox's work resemble his early, crappier stuff?

It's not a believable evolution of design. They just made it blocky and bulky because "that's what The Tumbler looks like". It also has two propellers that overlap, so I'm not sure how this thing even gets off the ground without the propeller blades slamming into each other and shattering. Discrepancies like this are part of why I feel this film was half-assed from the get-go.
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NOT-HARVEY

That's what I call the character in this movie who looks exactly like Aaron Eckhart, if he played a nitwit.

So he's out on patrol chasing the mass-murdering asshole who just killed the stock market... which he then lets get away the moment Batman, a guy who was helping him and hasn't been a problem for 8 years shows up. At which point he tells every police-officer in an entire city to all start chasing Batman instead.

And then he sends every single police officer except for himself, Gordon and Blake into an obvious trap.

And then he refuses to help Gordon when the city is under the control of Bane.

And then he puts on a uniform and gets shot by one of the stolen Tumblers.


Hey, Nolan! Remember how much of an impact was made when Rachel Dawes and Harvey Dent died in the last movie? That's because those were two characters I actually had some emotional investment for! I feel no sadness for the death of a dumbass, whose incompetence put the people he should have been protecting in harm's way. I don't know why you thought I would react differently.

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Ooh! No, now I know what this movie should have been called: "The Dark Knight Refunds".

END OF LINE

~A.H.