I didn't like this movie. Which makes me kinda sad because I really loved the first two (especially the Dark Knight) and I was very enthused for this one, and I generally love Nolan films.
The message incoherence with the Dark Knight was what gets me, I think. The message of the Dark Knight, I thought, was that people will surprise you, both with their capacity for mayhem and their capacity for good (even when given powerful incentive to do evil.)
The message of The Dark Knight Rises appears to be: the rich are self satisfied and bad (except for the ones who are good! Except not all of them really are), the poor will, at the slightest provocation, rip the rich to shreds and side with criminals (the sarcastic bitter part of me adds "because obviously those are their friends and buddies, right, right?" except I don't think that's actually implied. It does tend to go with 'the poor sympathize with the bad people' though), and the middle class are cowering cowards who have to be forced and shamed into doing the right thing.
I don't get it. I don't. I would have liked the film 100% better without the class conflict stuff, which felt weirdly tacked on. The part of me who adores Nolan wants to go "maybe the studios demanded it! Maybe they looked at the headlines and went 'we need Occupy Wall Street, but VIOLENT! ONLY NOT REALLY! Go forth and shoehorn it into the movie."
There are other things that bug me, but they're crazy spoileriffic. Except this:
Also: the people of Gotham are apparently dumb and will believe whatever the last person they heard told them, even if that person just blew up a football stadium.
Seriously, man. If you blew up Foxboro Stadium the good people of Boston would come after you with pitchforks and torches, even if you said "FREE HUGS AND PUPPIES FOR ALL!" and began handing out wiggling balls of adorableness.
(Okay. That part was tongue in cheek. Well. Mostly.)
She was wonderful. The second she dropped the shy act at Wayne Manor at the very start? I was like, "Oh, this is AWESOME."
And while the film muddled it (intentionally, I think), the hubby pointed out that Kyle and her buddy were likely prostitutes, as was her origin in the Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. And if that's the case, Kyle has every reason to hate humanity and society, and I think Hathaway handled that anger really, really well.
Also loved Gordon-Levitt as Blake. Though every time they said his name, I kept thinking Eddie Blake, aka the Comedian, from Watchmen, which probably isn't the best character comparison to make...
Did the end at least work for you? The last five minutes or so?
The last five minutes were fine. But that was "thrilling fight to save Gotham from crazy person with a nuke" then "resolution." None of what I had issue with was there.
I agree I think it was implied that, at the very least, Kyle started out as a prostitute. Her plight is interesting to me. She feels she made the choices she had to make and they were never choices she was entirely comfortable with. Maybe she did. Maybe she had other options. It's hard to know. It's pretty clear, though, that her whatever options were extremely limited, and this has put an otherwise good woman in a position where she does a lot of ungood things.
I thought that was handled well.
Hathaway acted the part fantastically. I just love how she can exude sweet and innocent, but with enough of an edge sort of skirting around the corners that you're stuck wondering if she's *really* that person. I liked how that worked in this role, because you want to believe, like Wayne does, that Kyle is deep down a good person...but there's enough there to make you really wonder.
When I see this again, I'll pay closer to the class dynamics. I will say it didn't immediately bother me: I'm rather pessimistic when it comes to humanity, and while I don't see the poor as siding with the criminals, per se, I can see the poor feel vindicated at the destruction of those who they FEEL have held them down, namely the rich. That doesn't mean necessarily that the rich DID hold them down, but that doesn't change how it feels.
And it also made sense to be that with the exception of those who were willing to put EVERYTHING on the line (the heroes of the film, Batman, Gordon, Blake, and even Catwoman by the end; oh, and of course the police force), most of the people in between were right to be scared. They've seen what's been taken away from the rich, and they're terrified they'll be next. Why not cower in fear? It seems to me, and again, I have a very negative view of humanity as a whole, that most people would hide rather than rise up.
But again, this is something I'll try to pay closer attention to on a repeat viewing.
There are other things that bug me, but they're crazy spoileriffic. Except this:
Also: the people of Gotham are apparently dumb and will believe whatever the last person they heard told them, even if that person just blew up a football stadium.
Did you mean to type something between "except this:" and "also: the..." ? :)
No, I edited badly. I typed "also: the" before "except this:"
Class tension is hard to do well and easy to do poorly. It felt to me like he could've done this plot two ways: social revolution or terrorist holds city hostage by terror. He tried to do both, and he could have omitted all but the class stuff he did decently enough if he had just went "terrorist holds city hostage."
I think this would bother me a lot less too if it *hadn't been the whole point of the Dark Knight* that people can be better than this, often are better than this, even when you give them reason not to be. That not everybody wants to watch the world burn or stand by while it does. That most people *won't*.
Except when given a vague ambiguous threat, apparently, by a guy who just blew up a football stadium and a brilliant scientist they've all never heard of?...Seriously?...
It's a comic book movie, not a treatise on class relations. I get that. In the absence of the Dark Knight, it would bother me less, but you can't make a film that makes the argument the Dark Knight makes, and then make a film that suggests *exactly the opposite* and not leave at least a few people going "huh? What?"
The part why people believed Bane so readily still bugs me though from a storytelling perspective. He's given them absolutely no reason to think he has their interests at heart, but it's like your average citizen goes "Oh, this scary guy who slaughtered a bunch of innocent football players just told me something. HE MUST BE INCAPABLE OF SELF SERVING LIES."
Nolan's better than this. I am perhaps harder on him because I know he is.
We talked recently about "stuff in the text" and "stuff you read in." I'm aware that some amount of my irritation is "stuff I read in": it's a political sphere I know more than average about and that will cause me to see things that other people will hop over. It's probably why it broadly ruins the movie for me, rather than being "something I notice if I think about it but I can put it aside and enjoy the film otherwise" and that is what it is.
But I'd also argue that in this case, a lot of the foundation for what bothers me is *in the text* and the implications don't take one sitting around waiting to be offended to get. Perhaps when the movie is a little less fresh and I'm a little less irritated by it I'll pull out what I mean on a scene by scene basis (I don't doubt we'll get this movie when it comes out: it irritated the husband for slightly different reasons (message incoherence, which bothered me too but bothered me less) but he still liked it. I was the one who didn't like it.)
I think Nolan was purposely vague about the percentage of Gotham citizens who went along with Bane as opposed to how many were hiding in their homes. If the situation in Gotham paralled the Chinese Cultural Revolution, than it would only take a minority of people to do what happened in that movie.
And I don't think Nolan intended to do justice to both the ideas of social revolution and terrorism. I think he intended to show a terrorist with a destructive goal using social injustice as his cover story. Since Bane was ex-League of Shadows, he was more interested in giving people an excuse to be bad than making anything better.
And I don't think Nolan intended to do justice to both the ideas of social revolution and terrorism. I think he intended to show a terrorist with a destructive goal using social injustice as his cover story. Since Bane was ex-League of Shadows, he was more interested in giving people an excuse to be bad than making anything better.
That's a good point, because let's be honest: despite what Bane was preaching, the city was going to blow anyway. He knew that the city would blow in five months regardless of what people did or didn't do.
The message incoherence with the Dark Knight was what gets me, I think. The message of the Dark Knight, I thought, was that people will surprise you, both with their capacity for mayhem and their capacity for good (even when given powerful incentive to do evil.)
The message of The Dark Knight Rises appears to be: the rich are self satisfied and bad (except for the ones who are good! Except not all of them really are), the poor will, at the slightest provocation, rip the rich to shreds and side with criminals (the sarcastic bitter part of me adds "because obviously those are their friends and buddies, right, right?" except I don't think that's actually implied. It does tend to go with 'the poor sympathize with the bad people' though), and the middle class are cowering cowards who have to be forced and shamed into doing the right thing.
I don't get it. I don't. I would have liked the film 100% better without the class conflict stuff, which felt weirdly tacked on. The part of me who adores Nolan wants to go "maybe the studios demanded it! Maybe they looked at the headlines and went 'we need Occupy Wall Street, but VIOLENT! ONLY NOT REALLY! Go forth and shoehorn it into the movie."
There are other things that bug me, but they're crazy spoileriffic. Except this:
Also: the people of Gotham are apparently dumb and will believe whatever the last person they heard told them, even if that person just blew up a football stadium.
Seriously, man. If you blew up Foxboro Stadium the good people of Boston would come after you with pitchforks and torches, even if you said "FREE HUGS AND PUPPIES FOR ALL!" and began handing out wiggling balls of adorableness.
(Okay. That part was tongue in cheek. Well. Mostly.)
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And while the film muddled it (intentionally, I think), the hubby pointed out that Kyle and her buddy were likely prostitutes, as was her origin in the Frank Miller's Batman: Year One. And if that's the case, Kyle has every reason to hate humanity and society, and I think Hathaway handled that anger really, really well.
Also loved Gordon-Levitt as Blake. Though every time they said his name, I kept thinking Eddie Blake, aka the Comedian, from Watchmen, which probably isn't the best character comparison to make...
Did the end at least work for you? The last five minutes or so?
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I agree I think it was implied that, at the very least, Kyle started out as a prostitute. Her plight is interesting to me. She feels she made the choices she had to make and they were never choices she was entirely comfortable with. Maybe she did. Maybe she had other options. It's hard to know. It's pretty clear, though, that her whatever options were extremely limited, and this has put an otherwise good woman in a position where she does a lot of ungood things.
I thought that was handled well.
Hathaway acted the part fantastically. I just love how she can exude sweet and innocent, but with enough of an edge sort of skirting around the corners that you're stuck wondering if she's *really* that person. I liked how that worked in this role, because you want to believe, like Wayne does, that Kyle is deep down a good person...but there's enough there to make you really wonder.
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And it also made sense to be that with the exception of those who were willing to put EVERYTHING on the line (the heroes of the film, Batman, Gordon, Blake, and even Catwoman by the end; oh, and of course the police force), most of the people in between were right to be scared. They've seen what's been taken away from the rich, and they're terrified they'll be next. Why not cower in fear? It seems to me, and again, I have a very negative view of humanity as a whole, that most people would hide rather than rise up.
But again, this is something I'll try to pay closer attention to on a repeat viewing.
There are other things that bug me, but they're crazy spoileriffic. Except this:
Also: the people of Gotham are apparently dumb and will believe whatever the last person they heard told them, even if that person just blew up a football stadium.
Did you mean to type something between "except this:" and "also: the..." ? :)
Reply
Class tension is hard to do well and easy to do poorly. It felt to me like he could've done this plot two ways: social revolution or terrorist holds city hostage by terror. He tried to do both, and he could have omitted all but the class stuff he did decently enough if he had just went "terrorist holds city hostage."
I think this would bother me a lot less too if it *hadn't been the whole point of the Dark Knight* that people can be better than this, often are better than this, even when you give them reason not to be. That not everybody wants to watch the world burn or stand by while it does. That most people *won't*.
Except when given a vague ambiguous threat, apparently, by a guy who just blew up a football stadium and a brilliant scientist they've all never heard of?...Seriously?...
It's a comic book movie, not a treatise on class relations. I get that. In the absence of the Dark Knight, it would bother me less, but you can't make a film that makes the argument the Dark Knight makes, and then make a film that suggests *exactly the opposite* and not leave at least a few people going "huh? What?"
The part why people believed Bane so readily still bugs me though from a storytelling perspective. He's given them absolutely no reason to think he has their interests at heart, but it's like your average citizen goes "Oh, this scary guy who slaughtered a bunch of innocent football players just told me something. HE MUST BE INCAPABLE OF SELF SERVING LIES."
Nolan's better than this. I am perhaps harder on him because I know he is.
We talked recently about "stuff in the text" and "stuff you read in." I'm aware that some amount of my irritation is "stuff I read in": it's a political sphere I know more than average about and that will cause me to see things that other people will hop over. It's probably why it broadly ruins the movie for me, rather than being "something I notice if I think about it but I can put it aside and enjoy the film otherwise" and that is what it is.
But I'd also argue that in this case, a lot of the foundation for what bothers me is *in the text* and the implications don't take one sitting around waiting to be offended to get. Perhaps when the movie is a little less fresh and I'm a little less irritated by it I'll pull out what I mean on a scene by scene basis (I don't doubt we'll get this movie when it comes out: it irritated the husband for slightly different reasons (message incoherence, which bothered me too but bothered me less) but he still liked it. I was the one who didn't like it.)
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And I don't think Nolan intended to do justice to both the ideas of social revolution and terrorism. I think he intended to show a terrorist with a destructive goal using social injustice as his cover story. Since Bane was ex-League of Shadows, he was more interested in giving people an excuse to be bad than making anything better.
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That's a good point, because let's be honest: despite what Bane was preaching, the city was going to blow anyway. He knew that the city would blow in five months regardless of what people did or didn't do.
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