The Dark Knight Rises Forum

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Just in case you didn't notice in the title this blog will have hella spoilers for the Dark Knight Rises so go see the movie first!

Also long post is long.

This movie is kinda weird for me, TDKR I mean. In order to explain why I'll have to go back to The Dark Knight, back to four years ago. I was ending my freshmen year of high school and at the age where minds get molded and moved around. Seeing this movie, about a week before the release date thanks to my sister and the arg, was like a revelation. The way it was all grounded in just enough realism as to be frighteningly real and expanded into unrealistic territories to add a twinge of the surreal. More so the relentless pacing was one of my favorite things about it.

This pace continues until the finally of dramatics, a scene evolved out of the pathos derived from the Long Halloween. The Long Halloween was a story arc in the batman books that lasted a year, from 1996-1997, that told of this mystery about a killer who did his craft on every holiday for a full year. Yet none of that is relevant becuase they didn't pull the mystery to use for the Dark Knight, what they did pull was the framework for pathos. In the arc Harvey Dent's interaction with both Batman and Gordon serve as a jumping off point to get to the relationships shown in the Dark Knight. Yet in the movie this interaction is amplified ten fold by the Joker's presence. It gets to the point that I would argue that the Joker is not concluded when he is taken in during the final physical confrontation with Batman.

Heath Ledgers performance is so good his Joker echoes after he's gone.

The Joker's presence is eerily palpable during Batman, Dent, and Gordon's final conflict. If the Joker wins or not is decided by what happens in that scene. The movie could have ended a number of ways but only with this final confrontation between Dent, Gordon and Batman does it make sense to end it. I honestly don't see a problem with the passing when it all felt as if it was building up to this. More so at the end you were not given catharsis on a silver platter, you had to earn it. It was this unique mix of denied emotion and strange pacing that left a heavy imprint upon me. After that movie I became obsessed with striving towards that level of craft.

I became consumed by media, by fiction, and by the mechanics of it. So going into Dark Knight Rises my expectations where perhaps unreasonable. I expected to be surprised in the ways I wanted to be. I swore I would leave the theater if they made John Blake the new Batman, like everyone called, or if the mentioned Robin, which everyone sort of got. Quick side note: I don't have a problem with Robin so much as seeing him as unessential to the Dark Knight version of Batman, still don't know about Rises Batman.

This man's name is John Robin Blake apparently ...

Yet I did not leave the theater I stayed, as always, till the end of the credits. I know of course that Nolan films never have an end of credits teaser but I usually do so just to listen to the music and to mull over the film. Clearly my mulling over has spilled all over your screened here, sorry about that.

The best way I can describe the experience of this movie is weird. It's weird watching a sequel to a movie that practically defined you in many ways by the same director who made the initial movie. Perhaps it's just a matter of almost growing up with the Dark Knight to where certain things aren't visible but the complaint about the costume and voice really seemed exasperated in this installment. It felt like no matter what face Bale made in the costume and no matter what words he said in it it all just seemed dumb, like really dumb.

HI! I'M BATMAN!

This may, again, merely be the complaints about the Dark Knight catching up to me but it honestly felt as if the voice had one tone. This wouldn't have been as much of an issue if he did not make a plethora of lengthy small talk at practically everyone. Switching back to the costume for a moment though, it mostly his face which felt as if it was in full on derp mode.

Happy Derpmas

For a third time this may just be all of those stupid videos in which people in Dark Knight halloween costumes make silly faces coming back to haunt me but it was rather unsettling. I'd like to pause for a moment and state that this isn't a review, it feels to big for me to review, and not some outright condemnation of the movie. I mostly just want to explain, to myself more then you guys, what I think about this movie.

I feel like I'm dancing around the issue of deeply dissecting this movie so I'll just jump into it. I was not one of the lucky souls who saw the prologue several months ago and felt the initial mid air action scene was intense and establishes Bane as this super classical villain in his comedic comments and a terrifying physical force. More so it establishes the loyalty his underlings have based on belief, in fact instilling belief seems to be a core part of Bane's plan.

I couldn't find a picture of the plane scene in our database and I'm to lazy to go grab one so instead here's some more derpmas.

After this things get a bit blurry as far as exact order so I'll continue with a part 2 when I see the movie again, or if I don't by next week I'll just some beat by beat plot synopsis. Either way this is already a hell of words to ask you to read anyway.

I found the Batman voice to be a non-issue this time around. At this point, the end of a trilogy, you either accept it or don't. It's odd that you would find it bothersome here. I also don't understand much of the "derp" comments.

The quick mention of the loyalty of Bane's followers did remind of how I felt during that scene. The man sacrificed himself – for unclear reasons – and showed his deep trust in Bane or at least Bane's ideology. They never quite followed up with that thought. Was it loyalty to the League of Shadows? Fear of Bane's power?

@jasonefmonk said:

I found the Batman voice to be a non-issue this time around. At this point, the end of a trilogy, you either accept it or don't. It's odd that you would find it bothersome here. I also don't understand much of the "derp" comments.

The quick mention of the loyalty of Bane's followers did remind of how I felt during that scene. The man sacrificed himself – for unclear reasons – and showed his deep trust in Bane or at least Bane's ideology. They never quite followed up with that thought. Was it loyalty to the League of Shadows? Fear of Bane's power?

I felt that the issue with the voice finally hit me when he started to say so many more casual or comical lines. As for the loyalty I thought it was similar to the loyalty that an extremist variation of any ideology tends to generate. Imagine the normal loyalty that the league of shadows generated in Batman begins amplified through the theatricality of arc words like "the fire rises". We literally hear the sacrificed lackey say "did we start a fire?" I felt that the follow up was during the first fight between Bane and Batman when he states "theatricality and deception are powerful agents". While it felt like it was mocking Batman it was also a definition of the character, he lies to almost everyone to twist them to his loyalty.

He says that he's getting revenge for Ra's death because it was a betrayal of the league but he doesn't care about the league. He makes a show of standing up for the loyalty of the league so his men have something to look to and be locked into. He tells the people of Gotham that he's for them with his speech about taking back their city but the city will be destroyed in the long term. He gets a very large portion of the city on his side because of this.

The movie is as insanely complex as most Nolan movies are just kinda jarring for me initially.