Gotham Delenda Est
If you can’t tell from the picture, this post will discuss spoilers of both plot and theme in the new Batman movie: The Dark Knight Rises. Ethan Gach has a lovely non-spoiler review here which is perfect for non-spoilery discussion of the movie. Since we’ll have spoilers after the cut, I imagine we’ll also discuss spoilers in the comments. I’d ask that we either put spoilers after the first couple of sentences to protect innocent eyes checking out the gift of gab *OR* that we rot13 the spoilers if we absolutely positively must talk about how they’re all in the Matrix and the real bad guy is Killer Moth and that absolutely positively cannot wait to talk about that until after the first 100 or so characters of the comment.
Non-spoiler review for those interested in that: I thought it was very, very good and not merely “for a superhero movie”. It wasn’t a thrillride like The Avengers, however. It attempts to be a serious discussion… and, as we’ve seen in the last couple of days, we can’t always have serious discussions about serious things under serious circumstances. Sometimes we need a little absurdity to help a serious discussion to take place… and the Batman Trilogy is, I think, an important discussion of what happened on 9/11 and what happened to America in its aftermath. See you after the cut.
In the first movie, the main bad guy was the Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Shadows as well as The Scarecrow. In the second movie, we see The Joker and, eventually, Harvey Dent turned into Two-Face. Well, in this movie, we’re up against The League of Shadows once more and Bane is the inheritor of the Mantle of the Demon (though Selina Kyle (the name “Catwoman” is never uttered) does show up to steal the movie as well). The main thread that goes through all of these things is that the main bad guy is trying to destroy the city of Gotham and that the established authorities are not sufficient to deal with the threat.
The League of Shadows, you’ll remember, had this idea that, ahem, “Like Constantinople or Rome before it the city has become a breeding ground for suffering and injustice. It is beyond saving and must be allowed to die. This is the most important function of the League of Shadows. It is one we’ve performed for centuries. Gotham… must be destroyed.” Bane has now shown up to finish this particular job using, once again, the tools made by the people intending to save the city as weapons with which they can destroy it. In this case, Bane takes the core of a fusion power plant and turns it into a 4 megaton bomb with a range of six miles. (I don’t know the physics of that, I’m sure they must have asked *SOMEBODY* sciency about it… right?)
Where I think that the movie is most interesting is in the speech given by Bane to the Batman after Bane defeats him in the sewers. He gives a small speech about Hope. The general theory is that if you tell people that they will die, they’ll be noble in the face of death. Tell them that they might *NOT* die, however, and they’ll turn into rats who will tear each other to bits in order to survive… and, before he destroys Gotham, he will give it *HOPE*… which, apparently, includes breaking the criminals out of prison and imprisoning the police underground.
It’s pretty hard to not think about Occupy Wall Street when one hears Selina Kyle’s speech explaining that “You think this can last? There’s a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you’re all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.” It’s even harder to not think about it when we see Bane shooting up the Stock Exchange (“This is not a bank. There’s no money for you to steal.” “Then why are you here?”) or Selina walking through a trashed apartment (and picking up a picture with a shattered pictureframe) with her little sidekick who says, in response to “this was somebody’s apartment”, “now it’s everybody’s apartment”.
The themes explored by the movie should be familiar to everyone who has seen the first two: “When civil society is at its worst, it is up to extraordinary individuals to push for reform.” “Don’t make a deal with the Devil.” “Ordinary citizens are pretty decent at their core.” “In the wrong hands, a wonderful tool is a terrible weapon.” And, of course, “Extraordinary evil requires more than mere civil institutions to fight it… it requires extraordinary individuals as well.”
As such, it’s a movie that does a better job of processing the horrific acts from 9/11 than films such as World Trade Center or Flight 93 managed to do. It sits down and discusses, under a thin veneer of absurdity, how are we supposed to handle people that want to do grave damage to a city that is pretty much one of the symbols of America and kill thousands/millions in the process? The movie, instead of championing the idea of the rugged individual, champions the idea of civil institutions. The Batman should be little more than a symbol of who any of us could be, rather than the guy who is there to save us.
Sadly, when we look at the world, we don’t see any villians who are as awesome or insightful as Ra’s al Ghul, The Joker, or Bane. Osama bin Laden was a religious nut who got lucky (spectacularly so, granted) and James Holmes was just… crazy. We’re stuck with villians who, as much as they start out looking fearsome, end up looking more pitiable than contemptable. We’re stuck not knowing what justice could possibly entail… locking them up won’t solve anything, killing them won’t solve anything, exiling them won’t solve anything. They’re problems that can’t be solved. The best we can hope for is to mitigate them, maybe.
The fantasy provided by the Batman movies is not only a hero protector who can save us all, but discrete and coherent bad guys who can be stopped and when they’re stopped, life can get back to something approaching normal… instead of these weird, weak, fundamentally silly bad guys who get away with a huge, monstrous amount before they’re stopped, and when they’re stopped, there are far too many people for whom nothing will ever be the same… even as life gets back to approaching normal for the rest of us.
It’s a good fantasy. It’s a good movie. I recommend it.
As a secondary theme, is it just me or does The Dark Knight Rises feel like a movie that should have come after a movie after TDK. Like there should’ve been something between TDK and TDKR that could’ve wrapped up the loose ends left by Harvey Dent murdering all the crime lords, Bruce hanging up the cowl,etc. etc.Report
The Joker sequel we never got.Report
Didn’t even need Joker.
Just Black Mask showing up and taking over the underworld. False Face Society and maybe bring Selina Kyle into it early…would’ve been able to build that up quite well, even without Heath Ledger.Report
Or if it had been split up into two movies, so that they had the time to work out the Dent fallout (the Dent Law, the cover-up, the fall of Batman) before Bane. But then again, who cares about that sort of process!Report
You know, I think that the whole “a lot of stuff happened and here we are now and, for the record, everybody’s smiling in public and frowning once they’re out of sight of the cameras” is one of those things that is really, really easy to run with.
I’ve had movies ask me to run along with crazier stuff.Report
Oh, there’s nothing wrong with it…just felt like a missed opportunity.
Also…I hope the next Batman franchise DOESN’T start with the origin story. Everyone freaking knows it already.Report
I was of the same opinion the first time I saw The Dark Knight; they really should have made two films. Plenty of films have been padded for better studio box office mojo, so it’s weird that it didn’t work out in this case.Report
Hans Zimmer used the orchestra like a heavy blunt instrument. That’s not a bad thing, by the way. And I likes me that Anne Hathaway, yes I does!
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Fb vf gur ivtvynagr, gur fvathyne ureb, gur hfr bs ivbyrapr hafnapgvbarq ol ohg sbe gur orarsvg bs fbpvrgl, ernyyl gur nafjre gb gung?
Bar ynfg dhrfgvba, haeryngrq gb gur ovt gurzrf bs gur zbivr. Fryvan Xlyr’f yvggyr oybaqr sevraq. Gurl frrzrq njshyyl… vagvzngr.Report
Gur Serapu Eribyhgvba vf n terng pbzcnevfba. V ernq bar zbivr erivrj gung fnvq gur sbyybjvat: Ynqvrf, vs BJF rire qbrf eribyg, cyrnfr qb abg jrne lbhe shef.
Nf sbe Fryvan’f yvggyr sevraq, gung’f fbzrbar jub fubjf hc va Ongzna: Lrne Bar nf Fryvan’f “jneq”, vs lbh jvyy. V trg gur vqrn gung vg’f n zveebe vzntr gb Ongzna’f riraghny eryngvbafuvc jvgu Qvpx Tenlfba (naq gur frk, vs nal, vf cheryl vapvqragny).Report
Um. Wow. Is this real? And no, I’m not actually sure what I’m asking with that question.Report
Rot13 is a simple encryption or decryption. It stands for “rotate 13”. A becomes N, B becomes O, M becomes Z. This allows it to be switched back and forth without loss of fidelity. It’s pretty much perfect for discussing movie spoilers in a public forum while protecting people who don’t want to read them.
Just copy and paste the comment into http://rot13.com/index.php and press the “cypher” button. It’ll allow you to read the comment. Type your own and press the cypher button and you can post your own spoilers without fear of someone saying “I WAS PLANNING ON SEEING THAT TOMORROW!” even though you were talking about Blade Runner which came out before Jesus was even born and if you haven’t seen it by now then you should seriously consider your managed ignorance of Blade Runner to be *YOUR* responsibility rather than *MY* responsibility. Jeez.
Where was I? Anyway, yes. Rot13.
That is what you were asking about, right?Report
Ah, okay. I had no idea what that referred to in the post, or more precisely, I didn’t even see it as my eyes skipped over it as I skimmed since I’d seen the movie and wasn’t planning on making an original comment of my own that included any specifics. So, as is often the case, I simply had absolutely no idea what was going on once I got a little ways down in the comments. So it just seemed like Burt had simply without warning slipped into Klingon as he went along, which I wouldn’t assume is something he’s not entirely capable of.Report
Holly Robinson is also the character who takes up the “mantle” of Catwoman when Selina Kyle hangs up the mask after having a kid…(She’s also by the by, one of the first openly gay characters in DC’s lineup)Report
I had the exact same thought.Report
Frankly, I found all the “Serapu Eribyhgvba” scenes pierced through my normally generous suspension of belief. The drek coming out of Bane’s megaphone is only powerful in a conservative fever-dream like “Red Dawn”.Report
I’m under the impression that it was the convicts that were a lot more interested in the redistribution than the average Gothamite who, I’ll have you know, would have been happy to keep on keeping on even without Police on every corner.Report
I didn’t get that impression from the movie or, at least, the scenes where it was “redistributed”. I’m reminded of the story that was posted earlier on the League where the ants tear down the corrupt Queen and the Grasshopper.
I think the average Gothamite went along with it. After that, much like Selina was “This is what you wanted, right?”, everyone realized that noone had thought of what happens afterward.Report
And yet in the Serapu Eribyhgvba stuff like that actually happened.Report
Personally I enjoyed the third but felt it paled in comparison to the second. This might be because Joker’s evil was much more primal than that of Ras or Bane. I definitly think that in ascending levels of evil the movies go 1,3,2 in order of intensity. To be frank up until the reveal of Talia I was working up a good amount of dislike for the film but that then transmuted to enjoyment.Report
I left the second absolutely entranced but wondering how in the heck Joker managed to do half of the things he did. The bombs in the hospital, for example. How did he get all of those there? I mean, don’t get me wrong, The Joker was absolutely hypnotic and I would have been willing to run with him being able to pull off all kinds of stuff… but I still would have asked about it as I walked out to the car.
In this one, I found myself wondering “how can the bad guys be able to guess EVERY SINGLE MOVE they make???” until that reveal… at which point it was obvious. That’s how they tagged the wrong truck. That’s how the soldiers knew about the police escape. That’s how they were on top of absolutely everything. They had someone on the inside.
The bad guy in 2 was perfect… but the plot in 3 was tighter.Report
Yes, I agree. The only justification for the perfection of the bad guy in 2 was that he was a mirror of the good guy. Batman is perfect/near perfect from meticulous planning. Joker in contrast is perfect/near perfect from pure chaotic insights.Report
Agreed. And watching it a second time really pulls the movie together. Nolan covers all of his bases, but doesn’t waste time hitting you over the head with the fact that he did.Report
I guessed that she was in on it pretty early on, which made the movie significantly less interesting to me.
Also, I liked the first one best. It was just a tighter movie than the other two. The joker was cool and all, and there was some interesting stuff in the 3rd (I really didn’t like it, though), but the first was first Indiana Jones tight.Report
My impressions from G+:
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Missed the first five-ten minutes of DKR (Thanks, Fandango.) but I imagine that I didn’t miss too much.
I can see where people would not like the Dark Knight Rises, especially as opposed to the Avengers. Social messages aside, Bane is, in all honesty, a low-key villain. That is how he broke the Bat in the first place. Unlike most of Batman’s villains, Bane is very smart and, while capable of standing up to Batman physically, he used strategy and intellect to make sure that he was fighting Batman on his terms. A Batman movie with Bane that was as spectacle-driven as Avengers was would have been awful. In many ways, comparing the two is an apples/oranges comparison. Yes, they’re both superhero movies but that’s the extent of the comparison.
This, incidently, allows the movie to make a more social statement. While they did some of that with the second movie, Heath Ledger’s performance as well as the direction of the movie overshadowed any messages that really were made. Heath Ledger’s Joker could not have been the villain for Dark Knight Rises any more than Tom Hardy’s Bane could have worked for The Dark Knight.
And, as for the twist….Well, comic knowledge aside, I knew there was more going on with a character than I was piecing together but the actual twist was both reflective of what happened in Batman Begins but still unforeseen.
As for the end of the movie, I’m sure that everyone knows that this is Nolan’s last film for Batman and Christian Bale also isn’t planning on donning the cowl again, having already nixed any rumors floating around him and the Justice League movie. Could a Robin movie work?
Ages ago, when the Force.net still hosted films, Grayson was made based as a continuation from the Adam West days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiZuvJ48MZ0
It could work but we’ll never really know.
TL;DR version: Yeah, they aced it.
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Yeah, I could expand on my G+ post but I think it says everything that it needs to.Report
I just have to say, I thought Tom Hardy’s Bane voice was AMAZING.Report
The first time I heard the voice, I laughed. It was not supposed to be a funny moment. It’s always a bit awkward to be the only person laughing in a crowded theater.Report
I was vaguely reminded of a bad Sean Connery impersonation… “Shpeak of the Devil and he shhall appear.”
I giggled to myself and got back into the story.Report
Strangely, it didn’t bother me every time he spoke. However, it did bother me/amuse me several times throughout the film.
My question, why does he have to wear an amplifier to avoid feeling pain?Report
I kindof felt Latin America was robbed by this Bane interpretation but the voice did work for me.Report
Also, you’re supposed to read my comment the exact same way Bane would have said it, with the last word going up an octave.Report
I dunno. I wonder if these sorts of movies might not be doing our conversation a disservice. In a sense, this is riffing off the same urge which makes conspiracy theories compelling: “Really, the one comforting side in most conspiracy theory arguments is the one claiming that anyone who’s in power has any plan at all.” The problem with society isn’t villainy, it’s vice.Report
I’d say the real problem is irrationality more than vice.Report
Finally saw it. Generally loved it.
But…
…was anyone else appalled by the “wrapped up with a neat bow” ending? The balls it would have taken to kill Batman would have meant something. At least have it open-ended! Alfred looks over, smiles, and screen goes black. Do we need to see Bruce and Catwoman sipping wine in Italy? Just felt so forced and lame. And the idea of Wayne truly sacrificing himself, even if he did fix the autopilot (I would have left that in to show he made a deliberate choice to sacrifice himself), is awesome. It shows he sees himself as part of the problem, or at least as a symbol that has run its course. Thoughts!?!?!?Report