Batman The Dark Knight Rises (Including Batman Begins & TDK) Discussion Thread

Awesome.

 

Agreed. Those=WIN.

 

Never been a fan of that style...was immensely disappointed with the Prequel Posters...No Where close to the iconic look the OT posters captured, each in their own way.

The Prequel Teaser material was MUCH more effective and memorable.

 

Well for anyone who thought that the Catwoman costume wasn't cat-like enough here is this to appease you. http://i.imgur.com/9JZlP.jpg

The goggles apparently flip up when not in use and appear as 'cat' ears on her head. I like it. Only issue I have is the heels... wouldn't think Nolan with his realism would've gone for something like that but I'm sure he knows what he's doing.

 

So...

8 years later.

 

I'm not that surprised; Nolan has been talking up the idea of the final film having to bring a conclusion to the trilogy, and moving it past the beginning of Batman's career makes it easier to get that conclusive note.

The real trick is just what kind of conclusion we're going to get . . .

 

I'm thinking The Dark Knight Returns is in the mix so...

I like it. I was against the very idea of possibly retiring or "killing" Batman if it was set immediately after TDK, but I'm way more open to it with this time skip. That means we could have 8 years of Batman being well... Batman, complete with a slew of rogues.

 

I just don't see how killing Batman can fit with 'The Dark Knight RISES' unless Nolan decides to throw a massive curveball and has Nekron resurrect him as a Black Lantern.

And if his death just inspires Gotham... that'll be worthless. Gotham will be back to the hell hole it was in five years. Batman is the only thing keeping Gotham from descending into the 9nth level of Hell, without him, and I mean without him physically, Gotham has no hope.

If Batman isn't in costume fighting crime at the end of the movie he will have failed and Gotham will be doomed.

 

I don't think he's gonna die. And I think Bruce Wayne will become that White Knight hero-face that Gotham wants, but Batman will be the Dark Knight they need. If Wayne is going to do philanthropy finally and it seems he is... I think that's in the wings. I just have no idea how this thing will end. Not dead, but maybe not active on a regular basis. Or perhaps preparing a protoge or protoges. Kind of like The Dark Knight Returns and the Sons of the Batman.

 

Eh, if Gotham is impossible to actually save, then Batman isn't making a difference -- he's just staving off the inevitable until he dies. Thematically, it doesn't work, and physically, it makes no sense -- if Batman's able to put away the mob and put the rogues behind bars, what makes Gotham any worse off than any other city?

I'll be very interested if Nolan manages to have Bruce really struggle with the idea of retirement and move away from his own need for the Batman persona, and get a fitting retirement out of it, which is something the other stories haven't really reached, for obvious reasons.

 

I thought Batman Beyond and Justice League Unlimited did a pretty good job of presenting Bruce Wayne's declining years and retirement from active crime-fighting.

 

Gotham isn't possible to save, it never has been. All Batman can do is stem the tide. He knows it's a never ending battle that will never end in victory, but it's a battle that he chooses to fight, that's what makes him great. He chooses to fight an unwinable battle. If Batman is gone, if it's up to the people of Gotham to save their city, they will fail. Batman can put every criminal he can behind bars, but they escape, and more are created every day. Batman holds the tide, he keeps them at bay. But once he's gone there will be nothing to stop the floodgates from opening and Gotham being drowned beneath the evil that's festered for so long.

I mean take Batman: Battle for the Cowl for example, if Batman hadn't Nightwing, Robin, Damien, Oracle, Huntress, Black Canary, ect...operating in Gotham the whole city would've fallen apart. Without Batman, or people he's trained to keep up his cause, Gotham is doomed. Look at Gotham after Batman retired in Batman Beyond, it got a lot worse.

And if he retires or dies then that ruins the whole ending of the Dark Knight, Batman is Gotham's permanent guardian, he'll always be there for it. He can't be there for it if he's dead, and any retirement of his will be temporary. I can't see Bruce just sitting in his penthouse watching the Penguin or the Riddler or the host of other supervillains that have sprouted up rob a bank and do nothing.

Let's say Batman does retire, who will keep Gotham safe? The police? We've already seen they can't do it, they are limited by law. The only way to save Gotham is to be able to go beyond the law, and only Batman can do that because only he has the moral character to be able to step outside the law and not abuse his power. Not to mention the League of Shadows was already trying to bring Gotham down before there was Batman, who will stop another such group if Batman is gone? And all the new super villains that are going to pop up, and will pop up even if he is dead, who will stop them? Batman opened a door when he started, one that can't be closed. The Joker was right, he changed the game in Gotham, permanently. Gotham can never go back to pre-Batman days now.

So unless Batman has someone to replace him by the end of the movie I can't see any ending with him dying or retiring having a happy ending for Gotham. That's why the ending I'm hoping for is where Bruce realizes that being Batman isn't just temporary to raise Gotham's spirits, but permanent. He'll be Batman till he dies, and Gotham wi

 

Well, if you take what I'll call the whole-DCU view and accept that the supervillains are relentless and there will always be new ones popping up to wreck the city, I think you have to accept that superheroes will keep popping up, too. Even if Batman retires, nothing stops him from having inspired Barbara Gordon or Tim Drake, or the next guy who develops superpowers from having good character and becoming a hero. If you want to go mythic with the whole big picture, everything can't hinge on Batman because there's simply so much going on in such a big world. If Batman retired in the comics, surely Dick Grayson would be able to hold the city together? It might be ugly for a bit, but he can do it.

But if we're talking just in the context of the Nolanverse, which I think makes more sense, Gotham doesn't need Batman to survive. Batman's cleaned out the mob; it doesn't have a stranglehold over the city anymore, so it's no longer something the police aren't competent to deal with. We're not talking rampant corruption. Between Batman, Dent, Gordon, and the Joker, by TDKR, the mob will have been largely taken apart for eight years. At what point there is it a bigger threat than the mob in New York today, which the police are well able to handle? And Gotham attracts its share of freaks, but I don't think the Nolanverse gives us the basis to say, "Well, if Batman retires, the Penguin will roll in and take over the city." In the Nolanverse, there isn't a Penguin, or at least we don't have reason to think there is. If Batman beats the collection of freaks that have already shown up, they're beaten. Film, as a distinct and limited continuity, can allow us that luxury, without the endless implausible escapes that serial formats require to keep the villains going. You can't assume that Two-Face is going to come back the way you can in comics. And if Batman's retired, what makes Gotham a more likely target for the Riddler than anywhere else? What makes any human being other than Batman actually incompetent to handle the Riddler, or Scarecrow? Jim Gordon himself is a pretty good testament to the ability of the "ordinary" human. He was able to catch Joker where Batman wasn't in TDK -- and sure, Joker fooled him and escaped . . . but he had to fool Batman to escape just the same.

Thematically, a large part of TDK was about how Gotham does and doesn't need Batman to save itself. Batman can do what normal people can't do, sure, and it makes it easier -- but ultimately what he does doesn't matter if the people can't take it from there. The people on the ferry have to be able to reject blowing each other up. Dent and Gordon have to be able to process the mob through the legal system. And yes, TDK shatters Batman's illusion that he can pull away easily and quickly and leave things to Gotham. It shatters the illusion that leaving things to the GCPD isn't going to get messy. But I don't think it shuts the door to the idea that the city could be sufficiently cleaned up that someday the city will no longer need Batman. The mob can be broken and the League of Shadows can be broken and the handful of supervillains can be rounded up and Jim Gordon can handle things from here.

I'm not saying that I necessarily want a retirement, or that retirement would be possible or natural or in the character of the Batman of the comics. I would be perfectly happy -- and in fact I would probably find it more appropriate -- if the finality and conclusiveness of TDKR was provided by Batman considering and struggling with the idea of retirement and deciding with finality that this is him, this is his life, he will never be mentally or emotionally capable of pulling away from fighting for Gotham, and he's going to be Batman until the day he dies. I'd love for TDKR to end with Bruce Wayne at a press conference declaring "I AM THE BATMAN" -- cut to Bat symbol and roll credits.

But what interests me is that the Nolanverse, self-contained and limited as it is, is one of the few places that we could actually get a full treatment of Batman retiring and what it would mean a

 

[image=http://www.thedarkknightrises.com/images/bg3.jpg]

 

So get this....

Last Friday WB did a TDKR viral called Operation Early Bird. You went to operationearlybird.com and they had a map with points marked on it... if you clicked on them they were 70mm IMAX theaters all over the US and parts of Europe. Well, you could get passes for a special screening of the TDKR prologue 3 days before it is officially out with MI4. I had 2 passes.

I was psyched, all ready to go. Get out to my car and....













Dead Battery.

WTH?

 

I am SOOOOOOOOOO PISSED that I didn't know about Early Bird in advance. Because I was free last night and live fifteen minutes away from an IMAX showing it. I WOULDA BEEN ALL OVER THAT.

 

Believe me, it damn near ruined my (k)night.

The only saving grace was Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater. I downloaded that and it was hilarious.

 

Or you kmow, you can just watch shaky cam versions and be happy like everyone else.

 

Wow, you could be a douche about it.

Goddamn.

I ended up going to MI4 yesterday anyway to check out the prologue. It was fantastic, even after having watched a pretty clear bootleg of it for the past 4 or 5 days.

On top of that... the theatrical trailer(which I also watched bootlegs of) is now officially online and in HD. http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/wb/thedarkknightrises/

 

Oh hey that wasn't supposed to be a douchey comment, my nearest IMAX that was playing it is 2 hours away, so it's really a no brainer for me. Just wait and get it on my time.

 

Mine is like 15 min away.

Dude, I now wish I would have taken the opportunity to drive to Pittsburgh the weekend after I had gotten back from a vacation just so I could be in the Heinz Field scenes.

It would have been cool to participate in this film in some way... and an early bird screening of the prologue counts in my book. Maybe I should do a recording of the Bane Chant on Ujam so I can be in the score...

My earliest Batman memory is getting the Super Powers collection Batmobile for Christmas and being bummed because the commercials made it look like when you popped up the headlights they would shine the Bat-signal on the wall. I don't think I was even 5 years old. 5 or 6 years later I caught Batmania with a vengeance when Batman '89 came out.

 

I've seen three versions of the prologue so far.

1) Too dark.
2) Brightened up, and shots are reversed ( L to R ).
3) Brightened up like (2) but with L-R orientation of (1) and bonus GUY'S HEAD IN THE WAY.
( this one also left out some of Gordon's dialogue )

I have a question for anyone who saw it in theaters.

Did it look like the CIA agent actually shot that one guy? Because in the versions I've seen it didn't even look like the gun was pointed in the right direction.

 

I think he was trying to threaten the guys, but as Bane points out, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to threaten to shoot someone when it would be much scarier to throw them out of the airplane.

 

I looked at the trailer IMDB has, and I've got to say, 'meh'.
It seems like they just do not know what they are doing.

Maybe I'm wrong.
Maybe I'm too long out of touch with the comics.
This is nothing like any of the Batman I know of.