The Dark Knight Rises

Just back - on first viewing, not as good as the first two IMO but still way better than Avengers and the rest of the blockbuster schlock that some people have been drooling over. The flaws include too many characters and a plot that skips over certain important points too quickly. But I may modify that opinion on rewatching.

I don't want them to do a reboot any time soon, but they probably will anyway.

I saw it too.

I also think it is the weakest part of the trilogy, but still a very good movie. Hard to top Batman Begins or The Dark Knight.

Leather-clad Anne Hathaway was a nice treat. I think I need to rewatch it though.

A partial list of complaints that come to mind. And just to emphasise, the problem isn't that it was bad, just that Nolan had set the bar so high that anything less than magnificent feels disappointing.

Your idea may be sensible but it is not profitable.

You asked "Why?"
Because millions will pay good money to see it - that's all the reason a studio needs.

There can be no doubt that DC wants to eventually reap the profits of a Justice League movie and they can't do that with either of the previous Batman franchises. so they will need another.

As for how - the how is that you find a way to do a live version of the batman in the animated series, particularly the one in JLU.

(in fact, just go ahead and hire Bruce Timm to produce it)

I don't think they need another version of Bartman just to do Justice League. In fact this Batman would be perfect for a Justice League.

Very good. Not quite "The Dark Knight," but a very enjoyable conclusion to the series. If TDK is an 8.5, then TDKR is a 7.5, though TDKR has some terrific highpoints in that last hour or so.

Some comments on the particulars:

Falls short of greatness, but still a very fine, epic piece of film-making. I'm already looking forward to seeing it again.

Better than the Avengers? TDKR is about equal on an entertainment level, but definitely better in terms of emotional involvement.

but Nolan wants no part of JL and is adamant he's done with Batman. Most likely Bale is too. that creates a problem

Explain please?

I've heard nothing on this...

Very, very enjoyable film.

Much as with Iron Man/TDK, with Avengers/TDKR I don't feel comparisons are really very valid - in both cases the latter is a superior as an all-round movie, the former as a comic book adaptation.

And, apart from the usual movie plot brush-overs, there was little to dislike about the movie and plenty to enjoy.

I actually liked the tip of the hat, and feels it opens an opportunity to revisit the Nolanverse in the future with

An excellent film. Really enjoyed Anne Hathaway as Catwoman, far more than I thought I would. I liked the character of John Blake, though I wasn't quite convinced of the means by which he discovers Bruce Wayne = Batman. Would I watch him as Nightwing? Absolutely.

Bane's dialog is at times difficult to understand. At times the dialog is overpowered by the relentless score (perhaps they will tinker with this for the Blu-ray release). There are plot holes big enough to fly the Bat-Pod through. There are gaps in logic (why is the League of Assasians so obsessed with destroying only Gotham City? Why not New York, L.A., Minneapolis, St. Louis? All these cities have crime, gang activity, organized crime).

Overall, did I get my money's worth? Hell yeah. The genuine thrill at the moment Batman makes his first appearance is alone worth the price of admission. Would I see it again? Hell yeah. Is IMAX the ONLY way to see this? Hell yeah.

The fucking projector died with 45 mins left in the movie. So I got free passes to rewatch it. Because they were all sold out we couldn't just switch to another theater. So I enjoyed the first 2/3 of the movie anyway. Gonna try to see the rest this week.

!!!! I think my head would have exploded.

Want me to tell you how it ends?

^^^ The butler did it.

Darth Vader is Luke's father.

Nooooooo! Why didn't you spoiler that shit! Whyyyyyy!

I figure that at least I'll be able to pick out more of what Bane is saying the second time around. So I got that going for me. Which is good.

Yeah, on my second viewing (last night) I caught the few lines of Bane's that I couldn't understand the first time around.

8/10. Not the strongest of the trilogy but very damn good.

Hard for me to nitpick over something that's brought me 7+ hours of fantasic entertainment. Pretty gutted that's the last one!

The opening scene was fucking amazing, and I liked how it wrapped up at the end. I'm of the belief that Bruce Wayne deserved to get away from it all and be happy after the pain and sacrifice he had to endure.

Liked it very much, perhaps even more so than TDK myself.

One thing I would have changed:

Everyone likes the opening scene with the planes but the physics of it is all fucked up. The Herc doesn't mass enough to 'pull' the other plane vertical like it does and maintain level flight. As soon as it pulled the tail up, the victim airplane's thrust would have pulled the Herc's tail down and taken it right into a power-on stall. It might be something that could be compensated for by pre-trimming down and holding a fuck-ton of back stick against the pressure until the moment of truth, but I don't buy it and nobody who didn't have a death wish would even try it.

Also, everyone would have been hypoxic long before they were finished yakking and shooting each other up.

That being said, it was a comic book movie.

Color me unimpressed with the opening bit, and with 'the bat' aircraft. The rest was fantastic.

Watched it a second time with a different friend, and I definitely enjoyed it more this time.

It was hard to make sense of the plot the first time around but this time it all hung together for me. That's the problem with all Nolan movies... He introduces characters at such a rapid pace, things can get jumbled.

Really like Anne's Catwoman and loved the scenes where they fought together... just wish we could have gotten more of that.

And I didn't care much for the Blake character at first because his background was so different from the traditional Dick Grayson Robin backstory. I didn't like the idea of him being Robin.

Caught it a second time and enjoyed it even more. Some of the things I thought didn't hold together about the movie actually do; you just have to pay attention.

And two important visual elements went right by me the first time...

And I like Hathaway's Catwoman more and more. She really does a nice job of capturing that essentially playful element of the character without going too far.

I once had a GN that built a story-line around Bruce's having been dragged into the pit by Ras under the theory that the pit would kill the weaker as it enhanced the stronger....and Bruce emerged alone.

the long term upshot of this is that Bruce allowed the Batman mantle to pass on and he became, in essence, a "good Ras" - he took over Ras' organization and used it to manipulate world events for good rather than evil.

I haven't seen this movie but i would have liked to have seen some element of that here - not that Bruce just retired and "got happy" but that he stepped back into the shadows and used his intellect and fortune to operate against evil on a grander scale than one superhero could ever do.

1. Wow. A significant miss your first time around, but forgivable. Nolan's movies require two sees at a minimum in order to catch everything. Two minimum for us 'smart geeks'. Maybe three or four for the dullards. All of us get something extra from a second viewing from a Nolan film.

2. Bruce set that up, but with the knowledge that it was for Blake, either as Batman or Nightwing. Either way, the implication is that Gotham still has a defender. I mean, really: what is Gotham without Batman? Nothing.

Oh, and Anne Hathaway owned the role like nobody else with the exception of Julie Newmar. Eeryone raves about Michelle Pfieffer but it never worked for me: Catwoman is a long-legged brunette. So is Anne Hathaway. As Mewa would say: whaddyagonnado? Meow.

Like you said before, the trilogy touches just about every major story arc from over the years... and Wayne handing the cowl over to Blake fits in with the current Batman universe and Batman, Inc. This movie is a bit more realistic in that Wayne has to admit that he is officially Too Old For This Shit and get himself a life, while he's still young enough to enjoy it.