Clark Kent also needs that phone booth too! Modesty rules, even for super hero's tights:p
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Dark Knight rises
- Thread starter singveld
- Start date
erection2015
Alfrescian (InfP) + C
The movie is causing so much heat that fanboys (who haven't seen the movie) are trolling critics at Rotten Tomatoes.com 
'You should die in a fire': Batman fans' turn on critic who panned Dark Knight Rises, forcing film website Rotten Tomatoes to suspend comments
Reviewer Marshall Fine under fire for comparing film to the Transformers
Poster tells him he would be the 'most hated man on the internet'
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 03:04 GMT, 18 July 2012 | UPDATED: 09:37 GMT, 18 July 2012
It is in turns explosive, menacing and sinister.Not the film itself, but the war of words that has broken out on the message boards over reviews of The Dark Knight Rises.It has not even opened in cinemas yet, but so intense is the strength of feeling over the film that fans have taken to making death threats against those who have given it a bad review.
Movie site RottenTomatoes.com was even forced to suspend user comments on reviews of the latest batman film after commenters reacted harshly to negative reviews, hurling abuse and threatening the critics.
Matt Atchity, the site's editor-in-chief, said on Tuesday it was the first time RottenTomatoes.com has suspended user comments, adding postings about Dark Knight reviews would likely be restored by the end of the week.
The UK premiere of the final film in director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy wa slast night, ahead of it opening on Friday.
'The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether,' said Atchity. 'It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn't even seen.'
Atchity said the site is considering a move to a Facebook commenting system, which might cut down on the glut of anonymous posts.
Other film review aggregating sites, such as MetaCritic.com and MovieReviewIntelligence.com, either do not allow user comments or do not permit comments to be posted before a film opens.
'There are a lot of options on the table,' said Atchity, who is worried about a similar backlash when director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released later this year.
'We may do away with comments completely or get to a place where comments are only activated after a movie opens,' he added.
While The Dark Knight Rises is currently experiencing a glowing 84 per cent 'fresh' rating on RottenTomatoes.com, the film has been deemed 'rotten' by a few critics, including Marshall Fine of Hollywood & Fine, Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Nick Pinkerton of the Village Voice.
Fine lambasted Dark Knight Rises for being 'nonsensical,' and Lemire called it a 'letdown.'
And it seemed the comment that brought the most anger was Fine's comparing The Dark Knight to the Transformers films. He wrote: 'At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the "Transformers" movies.'
To which 'Evan H' replied: 'Not only is this turd a moron, he is completely unoriginal. There was another troll reviewer that compared The Avengers to Transformers back in May. UNORIGINAL TROLL.'
'You should die in a fire': Batman fans' turn on critic who panned Dark Knight Rises, forcing film website Rotten Tomatoes to suspend comments
Reviewer Marshall Fine under fire for comparing film to the Transformers
Poster tells him he would be the 'most hated man on the internet'
By ASSOCIATED PRESS and DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 03:04 GMT, 18 July 2012 | UPDATED: 09:37 GMT, 18 July 2012
It is in turns explosive, menacing and sinister.Not the film itself, but the war of words that has broken out on the message boards over reviews of The Dark Knight Rises.It has not even opened in cinemas yet, but so intense is the strength of feeling over the film that fans have taken to making death threats against those who have given it a bad review.
Movie site RottenTomatoes.com was even forced to suspend user comments on reviews of the latest batman film after commenters reacted harshly to negative reviews, hurling abuse and threatening the critics.
Matt Atchity, the site's editor-in-chief, said on Tuesday it was the first time RottenTomatoes.com has suspended user comments, adding postings about Dark Knight reviews would likely be restored by the end of the week.
The UK premiere of the final film in director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy wa slast night, ahead of it opening on Friday.
'The job of policing the comments became more than my staff could handle for that film, so we stopped the comments altogether,' said Atchity. 'It just got to be too much hate based on reactions to reviews of movies that people hadn't even seen.'
Atchity said the site is considering a move to a Facebook commenting system, which might cut down on the glut of anonymous posts.
Other film review aggregating sites, such as MetaCritic.com and MovieReviewIntelligence.com, either do not allow user comments or do not permit comments to be posted before a film opens.
'There are a lot of options on the table,' said Atchity, who is worried about a similar backlash when director Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is released later this year.
'We may do away with comments completely or get to a place where comments are only activated after a movie opens,' he added.
While The Dark Knight Rises is currently experiencing a glowing 84 per cent 'fresh' rating on RottenTomatoes.com, the film has been deemed 'rotten' by a few critics, including Marshall Fine of Hollywood & Fine, Christy Lemire of The Associated Press and Nick Pinkerton of the Village Voice.
Fine lambasted Dark Knight Rises for being 'nonsensical,' and Lemire called it a 'letdown.'
And it seemed the comment that brought the most anger was Fine's comparing The Dark Knight to the Transformers films. He wrote: 'At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the "Transformers" movies.'
To which 'Evan H' replied: 'Not only is this turd a moron, he is completely unoriginal. There was another troll reviewer that compared The Avengers to Transformers back in May. UNORIGINAL TROLL.'
He can die or become a paraplegic in the movie.. it doesn't matter because that's just Chris Nolan's own take on the Batman trilogy. Official rights of the Batman franchise still belong to DC and if they say Bruce Wayne is Batman, then he's still Batman :p
The next director (could be James Cameron or one of the Scott brothers or M Shyamalan Night) may re-tell the Batman vs Joker story or do another version of Batman's origins. But until then, Chris Nolan's Batman movies are THE BEST!!
hollywood and fine review - cause riots in rotten tomatoes
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July 16, 2012
‘The Dark Knight Rises’: Grandiose, not grand
Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that, in the early 1990s, the Batman comic-book series featured a storyline with a super-villain – actually, steroid-enhanced – named Bane, who broke Batman’s back, turning him into a paraplegic (until he was eventually healed by paranormal means).
None of which will mean anything to the target audience of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” an audience too young to have been born, let alone old enough to read (or willing to read, for that matter), when the Bane storyline first surfaced in print. They want it now – hold the history or context – with a side of Imax, and snap it up.
And so we get “The Dark Knight Rises,” the third Batman film in Nolan’s trilogy and also the weakest. Where “Batman Begins” (2005) had a mythic feel that remade the origin story in an exciting new way (away from the flat-footed cartoonishness of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher entries), “The Dark Knight” felt like an overreach – an attempt to tell too many stories in one long movie. But it won over the critics, mostly because of a sizzling performance by Heath Ledger, who died before the movie was released (and who was given a posthumous Oscar).
Now comes “The Dark Knight Rises,” bringing in the Bane character (played, with my condolences, by Tom Hardy) and Catwoman (Anne Hathaway, one of the movie’s few highlights). Nolan gets so caught up in creating an epic adventure that he hammers the “epic” and neglects a crucial component: the adventure.
Which has been my criticism of so many of the comic-book movies of the past decade: too little attention paid to that most necessary of elements – excitement. There is very little about “The Dark Knight Rises” that will make you tense, hold you in suspense or cause your adrenaline to squirt. At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the “Transformers” movies.
That’s unfortunate because, somewhere within the mashed-potato mounds of Nolan’s 2:40 behemoth exists a lean, compelling and distinctly dramatic tale of redemption and sacrifice, told in the kind of personal terms that Nolan made work for him in such films as “Memento,” “Inception” (despite its size) and “Batman Begins.” I’m not trashing the entirety of “The Dark Knight Rises” – I’m saying that its potential is such that it ultimately disappoints, thanks to Nolan’s decision to go big, bigger, biggest.
Part of the problem is the storytelling in the script by Nolan, his brother Jonathan and David Goyer. As in “The Dark Knight,” that urge to operate on a grand scale results only in a grandiosity that, ultimately, becomes a bit silly, even nonsensical.
Because, as in the previous “Dark Knight,” you have to buy the notion that the world is full of super-villains whose goal is to destroy for the sake of destroying, under the cover of a half-baked raison d’etre having to do with wiping the slate clean and starting over. That was the story with Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson) in the first Nolan film, but it was brief enough (that film being an origin tale, with less of the story actually devoted to plot, as it were) to be ignored. When it came to the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” well, the guy was crazy (though the whole sequence with the two boats full of people with triggers to blow each other up was a seriously confused time-waster).
It’s even worse in “The Dark Knight Rises,” because Bane, the central villain, announces that, as a disciple of Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson actually pops up at one point), he’s come to Gotham City to finish what Ra’s and the Legion League of Shadows had started: to blow it up with a nuclear device. Period. Then he takes over the city for what seems like tension-draining months.
Oh, there’s more but it’s the yin-yang good/evil gobbledy-gook: about the police being the criminals and the criminals being the only ones who understand the truth about life – the whole Bob Dylan “to live outside the law, you must be honest” riff, taken no further than that. The Gotham City cops, of course, have already been playing that game, chasing Batman as though he were Public Enemy No. 1 when he finally makes an appearance in this film.
The story in a nutshell: It’s eight years after the events of “The Dark Knight.” Batman hasn’t been seen in that time; Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a recluse, still nursing a bum leg from his last adventures. Enter Bane to destroy Gotham – and up pops Batman to fight him.
Wayne/Batman is also fighting/flirting with a talented jewel thief, Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who disguises herself in a catsuit to perform her acts of cat burglary. She’s got her own agenda, the only part of the script that actually seems to make dramatic sense. It also makes sense when she teams up with Batman to take on Bane.
But the film’s conclusion – a battle between Bane’s army of criminals and the mass of Gotham’s police officers on the streets of Gotham – should inspire laughter, not awe. Both sides have guns – and they wind up in a massive fistfight in the middle of a street?
The same is true of Batman’s final face-off with Bane: single combat? Hand to hand? Really? Is that all you’ve got, Christopher Nolan? It’s as phony as a pro-wrestling bout and rematch: The first time, the villain exploits the hero’s weakness; the second time, the hero figures out where his opponent is vulnerable and utilizes that knowledge. I mean, honestly – this is the best you can come up with?
Tom Hardy was so impressive as just this sort of fighting machine in last year’s “Warrior,” stripped to the waist, his face a beefy landscape of brutal determination that occasionally cracked to reveal his emotional pain. But here, Hardy is forced to wear a mask (supposedly delivering some sort of pain-killer for Bane’s past injuries, rather than strength-enhancing steroids as in the comic) through which only his eyes are visible. Bane struts around holding his lapels like a caricature of a self-important politician. And his voice – well, it probably is Hardy but who knows, because you never see his lips move. His entire Darth Vader-voiced performance might as well have been delivered in the dubbing studio (and probably was).
There are what seem like dozens of other actors here, including Marion Cotillard as a Bruce Wayne business ally, Morgan Freeman back as Batman’s version of Q and Matthew Modine as a glory-seeking police boss trying to take down Batman. And many more familiar faces – recognizable character actors in unconscionably small roles: Aidan Gillen, Nestor Carbonell, Daniel Sunjata, Tom Conti, Ben Mendelsohn, Brett Cullen, Reggie Lee. Apparently, the chance to have your name associated with what will undoubtedly be one of the year’s biggest box-office hits is irresistible. It probably pays pretty well, too; who cares if you’re playing what amounts to a walk-on?
As I said, there are things to admire and enjoy about “The Dark Knight,” but they ultimately get swept aside by the film’s pretentious ambitions. The human scenes – between Bale and Hathaway; Bruce Wayne and Michael Caine’s Alfred; or between Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and Joseph Gordon Levitt as a young cop who becomes his protégé – demonstrate what this movie could have been, if Nolan had made it as a drama instead of a dirigible. But hot air rules.
There’s already Internet and even wire-service chatter about “The Dark Knight Rises” as the first comic-book movie to be a true Oscar contender. This comes in the wake of the ridiculous outcry when “The Dark Knight” was snubbed for the major awards (with the exception of Ledger) in 2008.
Premature? Hell, I’d say that anyone forecasting serious Oscar love for this lumpish, tedious film has been smoking too much of that potent, prescription California weed. “The Dark Knight Rises” rarely gets off the ground. It’s certainly not Oscar material.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
July 16, 2012
‘The Dark Knight Rises’: Grandiose, not grand
Anyone who pays attention to such things knows that, in the early 1990s, the Batman comic-book series featured a storyline with a super-villain – actually, steroid-enhanced – named Bane, who broke Batman’s back, turning him into a paraplegic (until he was eventually healed by paranormal means).
None of which will mean anything to the target audience of Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises,” an audience too young to have been born, let alone old enough to read (or willing to read, for that matter), when the Bane storyline first surfaced in print. They want it now – hold the history or context – with a side of Imax, and snap it up.
And so we get “The Dark Knight Rises,” the third Batman film in Nolan’s trilogy and also the weakest. Where “Batman Begins” (2005) had a mythic feel that remade the origin story in an exciting new way (away from the flat-footed cartoonishness of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher entries), “The Dark Knight” felt like an overreach – an attempt to tell too many stories in one long movie. But it won over the critics, mostly because of a sizzling performance by Heath Ledger, who died before the movie was released (and who was given a posthumous Oscar).
Now comes “The Dark Knight Rises,” bringing in the Bane character (played, with my condolences, by Tom Hardy) and Catwoman (Anne Hathaway, one of the movie’s few highlights). Nolan gets so caught up in creating an epic adventure that he hammers the “epic” and neglects a crucial component: the adventure.
Which has been my criticism of so many of the comic-book movies of the past decade: too little attention paid to that most necessary of elements – excitement. There is very little about “The Dark Knight Rises” that will make you tense, hold you in suspense or cause your adrenaline to squirt. At times, the action is so massive and thunderously clunky that I might as well have been watching one of the “Transformers” movies.
That’s unfortunate because, somewhere within the mashed-potato mounds of Nolan’s 2:40 behemoth exists a lean, compelling and distinctly dramatic tale of redemption and sacrifice, told in the kind of personal terms that Nolan made work for him in such films as “Memento,” “Inception” (despite its size) and “Batman Begins.” I’m not trashing the entirety of “The Dark Knight Rises” – I’m saying that its potential is such that it ultimately disappoints, thanks to Nolan’s decision to go big, bigger, biggest.
Part of the problem is the storytelling in the script by Nolan, his brother Jonathan and David Goyer. As in “The Dark Knight,” that urge to operate on a grand scale results only in a grandiosity that, ultimately, becomes a bit silly, even nonsensical.
Because, as in the previous “Dark Knight,” you have to buy the notion that the world is full of super-villains whose goal is to destroy for the sake of destroying, under the cover of a half-baked raison d’etre having to do with wiping the slate clean and starting over. That was the story with Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson) in the first Nolan film, but it was brief enough (that film being an origin tale, with less of the story actually devoted to plot, as it were) to be ignored. When it came to the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” well, the guy was crazy (though the whole sequence with the two boats full of people with triggers to blow each other up was a seriously confused time-waster).
It’s even worse in “The Dark Knight Rises,” because Bane, the central villain, announces that, as a disciple of Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson actually pops up at one point), he’s come to Gotham City to finish what Ra’s and the Legion League of Shadows had started: to blow it up with a nuclear device. Period. Then he takes over the city for what seems like tension-draining months.
Oh, there’s more but it’s the yin-yang good/evil gobbledy-gook: about the police being the criminals and the criminals being the only ones who understand the truth about life – the whole Bob Dylan “to live outside the law, you must be honest” riff, taken no further than that. The Gotham City cops, of course, have already been playing that game, chasing Batman as though he were Public Enemy No. 1 when he finally makes an appearance in this film.
The story in a nutshell: It’s eight years after the events of “The Dark Knight.” Batman hasn’t been seen in that time; Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is a recluse, still nursing a bum leg from his last adventures. Enter Bane to destroy Gotham – and up pops Batman to fight him.
Wayne/Batman is also fighting/flirting with a talented jewel thief, Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway), who disguises herself in a catsuit to perform her acts of cat burglary. She’s got her own agenda, the only part of the script that actually seems to make dramatic sense. It also makes sense when she teams up with Batman to take on Bane.
But the film’s conclusion – a battle between Bane’s army of criminals and the mass of Gotham’s police officers on the streets of Gotham – should inspire laughter, not awe. Both sides have guns – and they wind up in a massive fistfight in the middle of a street?
The same is true of Batman’s final face-off with Bane: single combat? Hand to hand? Really? Is that all you’ve got, Christopher Nolan? It’s as phony as a pro-wrestling bout and rematch: The first time, the villain exploits the hero’s weakness; the second time, the hero figures out where his opponent is vulnerable and utilizes that knowledge. I mean, honestly – this is the best you can come up with?
Tom Hardy was so impressive as just this sort of fighting machine in last year’s “Warrior,” stripped to the waist, his face a beefy landscape of brutal determination that occasionally cracked to reveal his emotional pain. But here, Hardy is forced to wear a mask (supposedly delivering some sort of pain-killer for Bane’s past injuries, rather than strength-enhancing steroids as in the comic) through which only his eyes are visible. Bane struts around holding his lapels like a caricature of a self-important politician. And his voice – well, it probably is Hardy but who knows, because you never see his lips move. His entire Darth Vader-voiced performance might as well have been delivered in the dubbing studio (and probably was).
There are what seem like dozens of other actors here, including Marion Cotillard as a Bruce Wayne business ally, Morgan Freeman back as Batman’s version of Q and Matthew Modine as a glory-seeking police boss trying to take down Batman. And many more familiar faces – recognizable character actors in unconscionably small roles: Aidan Gillen, Nestor Carbonell, Daniel Sunjata, Tom Conti, Ben Mendelsohn, Brett Cullen, Reggie Lee. Apparently, the chance to have your name associated with what will undoubtedly be one of the year’s biggest box-office hits is irresistible. It probably pays pretty well, too; who cares if you’re playing what amounts to a walk-on?
As I said, there are things to admire and enjoy about “The Dark Knight,” but they ultimately get swept aside by the film’s pretentious ambitions. The human scenes – between Bale and Hathaway; Bruce Wayne and Michael Caine’s Alfred; or between Gary Oldman’s Commissioner Gordon and Joseph Gordon Levitt as a young cop who becomes his protégé – demonstrate what this movie could have been, if Nolan had made it as a drama instead of a dirigible. But hot air rules.
There’s already Internet and even wire-service chatter about “The Dark Knight Rises” as the first comic-book movie to be a true Oscar contender. This comes in the wake of the ridiculous outcry when “The Dark Knight” was snubbed for the major awards (with the exception of Ledger) in 2008.
Premature? Hell, I’d say that anyone forecasting serious Oscar love for this lumpish, tedious film has been smoking too much of that potent, prescription California weed. “The Dark Knight Rises” rarely gets off the ground. It’s certainly not Oscar material.
Review: Batman series ends as epic letdown
By CHRISTY LEMIRE-Associated Press Monday, July 16, 2012
Christopher Nolan concludes his Batman trilogy in typically spectacular, ambitious fashion with “The Dark Knight Rises,” but the feeling of frustration and disappointment is unshakable.
Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe nothing could have met the expectations established by 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” which revolutionized and set the standard for films based on comic books by being both high-minded and crowd-pleasing. With Christian Bale as his tortured superhero starting from 2005’s “Batman Begins,” Nolan has explored the complicated and conflicting motivations of man as well as the possibility of greatness and redemption within society.
Here, as director and co-writer, he’s unrelenting in hammering home the dread, the sorrow, the sense of detachment and futility of a city on the brink of collapse with no savior in sight. Gotham is under siege in ways that tonally and visually recall 9/11; what is obviously the island of Manhattan gets cut off from the outside world at one point. Rather than seeming exploitative, it’s just one of many examples of the script from Nolan and his usual collaborator, his brother Jonathan, making the franchise feel like a relevant reflection of our times. Identity theft, economic collapse and an uprising of the disgruntled, disenfranchised have-nots against the smug, comfy haves also come into play.
There’s so much going on here, though, with so many new characters who are all meant to function in significant ways that “The Dark Knight Rises” feels overloaded, and sadly lacking the spark that gave 2008’s “The Dark Knight” such vibrancy. The absence of Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal of the anarchic and truly frightening Joker, is really obvious here. It retrospect, it makes you realize how crucial Ledger’s performance was in making that Batman movie fly.
By comparison, “The Dark Knight Rises” is plot-heavy, obsessed with process, laden with expository dialogue and flashbacks that bog down the momentum and _ dare I say it? _ just flat-out boring at times. Yes, the Batman world through Nolan’s eyes is supposed to be moody and introspective; you’ve got to admire the fact that he is willing to challenge us this way when summer blockbusters so often feel flashy and hollow. And yet at the same time, it takes some giant leaps with its characters which either make no sense, haven’t earned the emotions they’re seeking, or both.
“The Dark Knight Rises” does feature the kind of impeccable production values we’ve come to expect from Nolan’s films; many members of his core team are back, including cinematographer Wally Pfister, editor Lee Smith and production designers Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh. “The Dark Knight Rises” feels weighty and substantive _ and, thankfully, isn’t in 3-D _ but it takes on an even grittier look than its predecessors as Gotham City devolves into desperation and ruin.
But Nolan’s approach is so coldly cerebral that it’s a detriment to the film’s emotional core. It’s all doom and gloom and no heart. There is no reason to care about these characters, who function more as cogs in an elaborate, chaotic machine than as real people whose souls are at stake.
It’s been four years since “The Dark Knight” came out but eight years have passed in terms of story. Bale’s Bruce Wayne suffers in self-imposed exile, sulking about Wayne Manor, mourning the loss of his darling Rachel and carrying the burden of blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent. His goal of a peaceful Gotham has been achieved, but he’s left as a man without a purpose. Michael Caine, as the ever-loyal valet Alfred, brings dignity and eloquence to the film as he begs Bruce to carve out his own form of happiness. Fellow veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon and Morgan Freeman as gadget guru Lucius Fox are their usual dignified selves, but they don’t register the way they should because the film is so overstuffed.
Several new characters manage to draw Bruce out of his funk in various ways. Anne Hathaway brings some much needed zest to the proceedings as Selina Kyle, otherwise known as Catwoman in the Batman universe, a slinky thief who punctures Bruce’s bubble when she lifts his fingerprints from his safe, along with a beloved pearl necklace. She’s selfish and cynical, only looking out for herself, but at least she goes about her crimes with some verve and style. They never call her Catwoman by name, and she’s never as campy as Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry were in previous film incarnations of the role, but she’s always fun to watch.
The other woman in Bruce’s life, however, is woefully underdeveloped _ which is a real problem because she plays a key role in the film’s climactic revelations. Marion Cotillard (one of many alumni from Nolan’s “Inception”) co-stars as Miranda Tate, a wealthy philanthropist who hopes to work with Wayne Enterprises on developing clean, sustainable energy. The romance that develops between her and Bruce is utterly unbelievable.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt adds a youthful presence as John Blake, an up-and-coming member of the police force who inspires Bruce to revisit his own childhood as an orphan. Gordon-Levitt as solid as always but there’s not much to his character aside from earnestness.
Then there’s Bane, a muscular mass of pure evil who orchestrates an elaborate takeover of Gotham City. The role is a huge waste of what Tom Hardy can do; his character is so one-dimensional and poorly defined, he’s never so much a fearsome figure as a large and hulking one. It doesn’t help matters that it’s often difficult to make out what he’s saying beneath the cage-like muzzle that covers his nose and mouth and alters his voice. Hardy can be sexy and charismatic (as he proved in “Inception”) but also a dangerous and unpredictable figure. None of that is on display here. He’s all brute force.
But he is the instigator of the film’s dazzling opening sequence, worthy of the best of James Bond: a daring aerial maneuver in which Bane kidnaps a scientist by hijacking his plane from the skies above. That’s probably the most effective of the many set pieces Nolan stages here, although the collapse of Heinz Field during a packed football game also has an urgent, visceral quality, with thrills that recall the most imaginative moments of “Inception.”
This is the problem when you’re an exceptional, visionary filmmaker. When you give people something extraordinary, they expect it every time. Anything short of that feels like a letdown.
By CHRISTY LEMIRE-Associated Press Monday, July 16, 2012
Christopher Nolan concludes his Batman trilogy in typically spectacular, ambitious fashion with “The Dark Knight Rises,” but the feeling of frustration and disappointment is unshakable.
Maybe that was inevitable. Maybe nothing could have met the expectations established by 2008’s “The Dark Knight,” which revolutionized and set the standard for films based on comic books by being both high-minded and crowd-pleasing. With Christian Bale as his tortured superhero starting from 2005’s “Batman Begins,” Nolan has explored the complicated and conflicting motivations of man as well as the possibility of greatness and redemption within society.
Here, as director and co-writer, he’s unrelenting in hammering home the dread, the sorrow, the sense of detachment and futility of a city on the brink of collapse with no savior in sight. Gotham is under siege in ways that tonally and visually recall 9/11; what is obviously the island of Manhattan gets cut off from the outside world at one point. Rather than seeming exploitative, it’s just one of many examples of the script from Nolan and his usual collaborator, his brother Jonathan, making the franchise feel like a relevant reflection of our times. Identity theft, economic collapse and an uprising of the disgruntled, disenfranchised have-nots against the smug, comfy haves also come into play.
There’s so much going on here, though, with so many new characters who are all meant to function in significant ways that “The Dark Knight Rises” feels overloaded, and sadly lacking the spark that gave 2008’s “The Dark Knight” such vibrancy. The absence of Heath Ledger, who won a posthumous Oscar for his portrayal of the anarchic and truly frightening Joker, is really obvious here. It retrospect, it makes you realize how crucial Ledger’s performance was in making that Batman movie fly.
By comparison, “The Dark Knight Rises” is plot-heavy, obsessed with process, laden with expository dialogue and flashbacks that bog down the momentum and _ dare I say it? _ just flat-out boring at times. Yes, the Batman world through Nolan’s eyes is supposed to be moody and introspective; you’ve got to admire the fact that he is willing to challenge us this way when summer blockbusters so often feel flashy and hollow. And yet at the same time, it takes some giant leaps with its characters which either make no sense, haven’t earned the emotions they’re seeking, or both.
“The Dark Knight Rises” does feature the kind of impeccable production values we’ve come to expect from Nolan’s films; many members of his core team are back, including cinematographer Wally Pfister, editor Lee Smith and production designers Nathan Crowley and Kevin Kavanaugh. “The Dark Knight Rises” feels weighty and substantive _ and, thankfully, isn’t in 3-D _ but it takes on an even grittier look than its predecessors as Gotham City devolves into desperation and ruin.
But Nolan’s approach is so coldly cerebral that it’s a detriment to the film’s emotional core. It’s all doom and gloom and no heart. There is no reason to care about these characters, who function more as cogs in an elaborate, chaotic machine than as real people whose souls are at stake.
It’s been four years since “The Dark Knight” came out but eight years have passed in terms of story. Bale’s Bruce Wayne suffers in self-imposed exile, sulking about Wayne Manor, mourning the loss of his darling Rachel and carrying the burden of blame for the death of District Attorney Harvey Dent. His goal of a peaceful Gotham has been achieved, but he’s left as a man without a purpose. Michael Caine, as the ever-loyal valet Alfred, brings dignity and eloquence to the film as he begs Bruce to carve out his own form of happiness. Fellow veterans Gary Oldman as Commissioner Gordon and Morgan Freeman as gadget guru Lucius Fox are their usual dignified selves, but they don’t register the way they should because the film is so overstuffed.
Several new characters manage to draw Bruce out of his funk in various ways. Anne Hathaway brings some much needed zest to the proceedings as Selina Kyle, otherwise known as Catwoman in the Batman universe, a slinky thief who punctures Bruce’s bubble when she lifts his fingerprints from his safe, along with a beloved pearl necklace. She’s selfish and cynical, only looking out for herself, but at least she goes about her crimes with some verve and style. They never call her Catwoman by name, and she’s never as campy as Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry were in previous film incarnations of the role, but she’s always fun to watch.
The other woman in Bruce’s life, however, is woefully underdeveloped _ which is a real problem because she plays a key role in the film’s climactic revelations. Marion Cotillard (one of many alumni from Nolan’s “Inception”) co-stars as Miranda Tate, a wealthy philanthropist who hopes to work with Wayne Enterprises on developing clean, sustainable energy. The romance that develops between her and Bruce is utterly unbelievable.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt adds a youthful presence as John Blake, an up-and-coming member of the police force who inspires Bruce to revisit his own childhood as an orphan. Gordon-Levitt as solid as always but there’s not much to his character aside from earnestness.
Then there’s Bane, a muscular mass of pure evil who orchestrates an elaborate takeover of Gotham City. The role is a huge waste of what Tom Hardy can do; his character is so one-dimensional and poorly defined, he’s never so much a fearsome figure as a large and hulking one. It doesn’t help matters that it’s often difficult to make out what he’s saying beneath the cage-like muzzle that covers his nose and mouth and alters his voice. Hardy can be sexy and charismatic (as he proved in “Inception”) but also a dangerous and unpredictable figure. None of that is on display here. He’s all brute force.
But he is the instigator of the film’s dazzling opening sequence, worthy of the best of James Bond: a daring aerial maneuver in which Bane kidnaps a scientist by hijacking his plane from the skies above. That’s probably the most effective of the many set pieces Nolan stages here, although the collapse of Heinz Field during a packed football game also has an urgent, visceral quality, with thrills that recall the most imaginative moments of “Inception.”
This is the problem when you’re an exceptional, visionary filmmaker. When you give people something extraordinary, they expect it every time. Anything short of that feels like a letdown.
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Nick Pinkerton of the Village Voice
Self-Important, The Dark Knight Rises Feels Like Batman Forever
Why so serious? By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Jul 18 2012
Christopher Nolan's ponderous, pontifical action movies are written less as screenplays than as operator's manuals, guiding an audience through assembling their important themes while scrupulously making sure you don't miss a thing. This is as true of Inception, with its reams of expositional walk-through, as of Nolan's superhero saga, now swollen into a trilogy in which the dramatis personae are always stepping up to identify themselves in statements of principle. All of the on-the-nose speechifying (scripted by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan) keeps the runtimes long, while the drum-tight rule of schematic relevance shuts out anything resembling wit, spontaneity, and recognizable human conduct.
Christopher NolanThe Dark Knight RisesBruce WayneArts, Entertainment, and MediaAction and Adventure Movies
Billed as director Nolan's final contribution to the franchise he revived with 2005's Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years after the events of 2008's The Dark Knight, eight years after the death of Harvey Dent, a/k/a Two-Face, still honored as a hero through the print-the-legend contrivance of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman, returning), and eight years after the villainized, fugitive Caped Crusader was last sighted in Gotham City, which has settled into a fragile peace. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has hung up his Batman suit and become a Howard Hughes–like recluse, only lured into the world again by a couple of women: a socialite investor in Wayne Enterprises' clean-energy programs, Miranda (Marion Cotillard), and a cat burglar who penetrates his sanctuary, Selina (Anne Hathaway, repeatedly proving the "No-Fun" Nolans' ability to make comic-relief one-liners fall flat amid their sepulchral, master-builder cinema.)
The overarching theme of the Batman films is the moral problem of vigilantism, as played out by name-tagged figures of virtue and vice. "The idea was to be a symbol," Wayne says of his anonymous alter ego in The Dark Knight Rises—and so this most solemn of superhero franchises duly marches ahead with the process of ominous signification, having established itself among those who accept its self-regard at face value as not just another blockbuster but the multiplex State of the Nation for the 21st century. If The Dark Knight openly invited interpretation as the War on Terror Batman, then The Dark Knight Rises, whose creators obviously scented the class discontent in the air, is the Occupy Wall Street installment. "You think all this can last?" down-and-out survivor Selina says upon meeting Wayne at a fancy-dress masquerade ball. "There's a storm coming."
That storm breaks in the form of the living incarnation of Have-Not rancor, Bane, played by the hulking Tom Hardy, face indistinguishable behind the ventilator apparatus clamped over his mouth. The visage will remind many of the unmasked Vader, though his fruity, magniloquent purr is closer to Vincent Price talking through a window fan.
Bane was "born and raised in hell on earth"—a pit prison on the other side of the world. In order to punch in Bane's weight class, the softened, fresh-out-of-retirement Wayne will first have to join the 99 Percent, eventually enrolling in the same third-world school of hard knocks that spawned his opponent. Training in dismal, prehistoric conditions trims away the fat of techie decadence and reinvigorates Wayne's sense of the ethical obligation of privilege. If this sounds familiar, it's because Wayne did a similar piece of slumming in Batman Begins. It is also the theme of Rocky IV.
As in The Dark Knight's conflict between Wayne and the Joker, Order versus Anarchy, the face-off between Wayne and Bane is a dialectical battle between personified concepts. Wayne is Gotham City's philanthropic chaperone; his company develops technologies with great potential for help and harm, which Wayne then keeps away from a polis that he protects without trusting. Bane is, in posture at least, a radical revolutionist, setting himself up as the champion of the disenfranchised, though it is difficult to imagine who would be seduced by his tactics or his plan "to return control of the city to the people," followed by the neutralization of law and order and the foundation of a Gotham Commune.
For the Nolans, it is characters who voice seemingly utopian goals such as "restoring balance to the world" of whom the most is to be feared. And while The Dark Knight's climax hinged on finding faith in the common man's decency, upon witnessing the goings-on in Occupied Gotham, it is impossible to imagine this revolution accomplishing anything decent—the citizen's tribunal kangaroo court, a fantastic production design flourish by Nathan Crowley, is Reign of Terror by way of Kafka, while a parody of the Bastille is played out before Blackgate Penitentiary. The Dark Knight Rises is not a reactionary movie outright—it would be more respectable if it were—but only on a villainous technicality. The perpetrators of the city-upending mutiny have no interest in a new order, only in seeing Gotham purged in blood with a rote ticking time bomb, an apocalypse that precludes the possibility of revolution either failing or succeeding on its own terms.
The Dark Knight Rises is a shallow repository of ideas, but as a work of sheer sensation, it has something to recommend. At two hours and 45 minutes, it's no fleeter of foot than its plodding predecessors, but Nolan has continued his experimentation with the IMAX format, and the sheer mass of what he has constructed inspires a dull awe—it is impossible not to be cowed by a film that's five stories tall while Hans Zimmer's stampeding orchestra tramples you. As throughout the Batman films, Nolan is at his best symphonizing second-unit footage, illustrating how the shock waves of an assault resound across the infrastructure of an entire city, a coordinated attack on Gotham's pressure points being a particular highlight here. (The city is composed of bits of Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, with New York City for establishing shots, including a half-complete new WTC tower available for suggestive effect.) The history of Batman's burden is, however, increasingly cumbersome, and it's Mr. Bane who finally makes the pertinent point: "Gotham is beyond saving and must be allowed to die."
Self-Important, The Dark Knight Rises Feels Like Batman Forever
Why so serious? By Nick Pinkerton Wednesday, Jul 18 2012
Christopher Nolan's ponderous, pontifical action movies are written less as screenplays than as operator's manuals, guiding an audience through assembling their important themes while scrupulously making sure you don't miss a thing. This is as true of Inception, with its reams of expositional walk-through, as of Nolan's superhero saga, now swollen into a trilogy in which the dramatis personae are always stepping up to identify themselves in statements of principle. All of the on-the-nose speechifying (scripted by Nolan and his brother, Jonathan) keeps the runtimes long, while the drum-tight rule of schematic relevance shuts out anything resembling wit, spontaneity, and recognizable human conduct.
Christopher NolanThe Dark Knight RisesBruce WayneArts, Entertainment, and MediaAction and Adventure Movies
Billed as director Nolan's final contribution to the franchise he revived with 2005's Batman Begins, The Dark Knight Rises opens eight years after the events of 2008's The Dark Knight, eight years after the death of Harvey Dent, a/k/a Two-Face, still honored as a hero through the print-the-legend contrivance of Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman, returning), and eight years after the villainized, fugitive Caped Crusader was last sighted in Gotham City, which has settled into a fragile peace. Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has hung up his Batman suit and become a Howard Hughes–like recluse, only lured into the world again by a couple of women: a socialite investor in Wayne Enterprises' clean-energy programs, Miranda (Marion Cotillard), and a cat burglar who penetrates his sanctuary, Selina (Anne Hathaway, repeatedly proving the "No-Fun" Nolans' ability to make comic-relief one-liners fall flat amid their sepulchral, master-builder cinema.)
The overarching theme of the Batman films is the moral problem of vigilantism, as played out by name-tagged figures of virtue and vice. "The idea was to be a symbol," Wayne says of his anonymous alter ego in The Dark Knight Rises—and so this most solemn of superhero franchises duly marches ahead with the process of ominous signification, having established itself among those who accept its self-regard at face value as not just another blockbuster but the multiplex State of the Nation for the 21st century. If The Dark Knight openly invited interpretation as the War on Terror Batman, then The Dark Knight Rises, whose creators obviously scented the class discontent in the air, is the Occupy Wall Street installment. "You think all this can last?" down-and-out survivor Selina says upon meeting Wayne at a fancy-dress masquerade ball. "There's a storm coming."
That storm breaks in the form of the living incarnation of Have-Not rancor, Bane, played by the hulking Tom Hardy, face indistinguishable behind the ventilator apparatus clamped over his mouth. The visage will remind many of the unmasked Vader, though his fruity, magniloquent purr is closer to Vincent Price talking through a window fan.
Bane was "born and raised in hell on earth"—a pit prison on the other side of the world. In order to punch in Bane's weight class, the softened, fresh-out-of-retirement Wayne will first have to join the 99 Percent, eventually enrolling in the same third-world school of hard knocks that spawned his opponent. Training in dismal, prehistoric conditions trims away the fat of techie decadence and reinvigorates Wayne's sense of the ethical obligation of privilege. If this sounds familiar, it's because Wayne did a similar piece of slumming in Batman Begins. It is also the theme of Rocky IV.
As in The Dark Knight's conflict between Wayne and the Joker, Order versus Anarchy, the face-off between Wayne and Bane is a dialectical battle between personified concepts. Wayne is Gotham City's philanthropic chaperone; his company develops technologies with great potential for help and harm, which Wayne then keeps away from a polis that he protects without trusting. Bane is, in posture at least, a radical revolutionist, setting himself up as the champion of the disenfranchised, though it is difficult to imagine who would be seduced by his tactics or his plan "to return control of the city to the people," followed by the neutralization of law and order and the foundation of a Gotham Commune.
For the Nolans, it is characters who voice seemingly utopian goals such as "restoring balance to the world" of whom the most is to be feared. And while The Dark Knight's climax hinged on finding faith in the common man's decency, upon witnessing the goings-on in Occupied Gotham, it is impossible to imagine this revolution accomplishing anything decent—the citizen's tribunal kangaroo court, a fantastic production design flourish by Nathan Crowley, is Reign of Terror by way of Kafka, while a parody of the Bastille is played out before Blackgate Penitentiary. The Dark Knight Rises is not a reactionary movie outright—it would be more respectable if it were—but only on a villainous technicality. The perpetrators of the city-upending mutiny have no interest in a new order, only in seeing Gotham purged in blood with a rote ticking time bomb, an apocalypse that precludes the possibility of revolution either failing or succeeding on its own terms.
The Dark Knight Rises is a shallow repository of ideas, but as a work of sheer sensation, it has something to recommend. At two hours and 45 minutes, it's no fleeter of foot than its plodding predecessors, but Nolan has continued his experimentation with the IMAX format, and the sheer mass of what he has constructed inspires a dull awe—it is impossible not to be cowed by a film that's five stories tall while Hans Zimmer's stampeding orchestra tramples you. As throughout the Batman films, Nolan is at his best symphonizing second-unit footage, illustrating how the shock waves of an assault resound across the infrastructure of an entire city, a coordinated attack on Gotham's pressure points being a particular highlight here. (The city is composed of bits of Pittsburgh and Los Angeles, with New York City for establishing shots, including a half-complete new WTC tower available for suggestive effect.) The history of Batman's burden is, however, increasingly cumbersome, and it's Mr. Bane who finally makes the pertinent point: "Gotham is beyond saving and must be allowed to die."
memento is power. inception is not bad too, more action. between the 2, yes, prefer memento as understated and more disturbing.
