Scots Taffer on 5/8/2012 at 14:00
Marion Cotillard is not a bad actress. Bane mostly sucked ass.
Other than that I agree with you.
I'm still formulating my "perfect" TDKR in my mind. :D
Kuuso on 5/8/2012 at 15:10
I don't get the love for BB, when is the last time you guys have watched it? All the movies have bad one-liners, but it has the worst. Katie Holmes is awful and Ra's Al Ghul is boring as hell. It is closest to the horrible 90's Bat films from the new ones. What is it's saving grace is the fact that the origin story of Batman (with the semi-realistic style Nolan went for) is super interesting.
froghawk on 5/8/2012 at 16:09
I saw one of the TDKR marathon showings, so I watched again directly before the other two. And yes, everything you say is true - but the film has a strong thematic focus, great atmosphere and style, and it is the only Batman movie to make me care about Bruce Wayne as a character. If you overlook a few one liners and Katie Holmes (which really are rather small parts of the film), the first two acts especially are quite fantastic. It hasn't aged well since TDK surpassed it in every way except emotional intimacy, but it is still a good film.
Sg3 on 6/8/2012 at 10:22
Quote Posted by froghawk
It's funny - the liberals are all claiming that the movie has a conservative agenda while the conservatives are claiming a liberal agenda.
I do not consider myself either conservative or liberal. I pick and choose my stances based on merit, rather than buying into a party's arbitrary set of positions as most U.S. people do. From this relatively neutral P.o.V., what I noticed about the Nolan
Batman films is that they drag current events into the movie in as big of a way as possible. Terrorist attacks, corruption in government and business, sinking economy & disparity between rich and poor, and now the "occupy" thing. The movie really feels like the movie producers are taking the side of the little guy--"yeah, we're on your side, we're for justice and stuff"--but it's all a placebo. It lets the audience cheer as the make-believe bad-guys get their asses beaten, and forget that the real-life bad-guys are getting away with everything. This sort of movie, in short, smacks of trying to be the new "opiate of the masses." I'm more than half-convinced that the film-makers are deliberately putting out a message which they themselves don't believe in, to keep the lower classes (as low of classes as can afford to watch movies, anyway) complacent. Or maybe I'm just cynical. [shrug]
DDL on 6/8/2012 at 11:12
Next up: "Movies as useless culture (no paedo talk)"
:p
Seriously though, all entertainment could be considered "opiates of the masses": anything you do to distract yourself from the crushing hopeless futility of life on this cruel unforgiving rockball is basically self-medication.
Nolan may just be savvy enough to know he can boost sales by tapping into the zeitgeist, or maybe he just feels the movie will simply play better if it matches current "background thinking". Great movies generally resonate with the watcher, so adding thematic elements that resonate with current political climates could be seen as a quick and dirty way of doing that.
Morte on 6/8/2012 at 11:53
Quote Posted by Sg3
I do not consider myself either conservative or liberal. I pick and choose my stances based on merit, rather than buying into an arbitrary party position as most U.S. people do. What I noticed about the Nolan
Batman films is that they drag current events into the movie in as big of a way as possible. Terrorist attacks, corruption in government and business, sinking economy & disparity between rich and poor, and now the "occupy" thing.
The movie really feels like the movie producers are taking the side of the little guy--"yeah, we're on your side, we're for justice and stuff"--but it's all a placebo. It lets the audience cheer as the make-believe bad-guys get their asses beaten, and forget that the real-life bad-guys are getting away with everything. This sort of movie, in short, smacks of trying to be the new "opiate of the masses."
That's the a charge you could leverage at something that has populist villains, like Tower Heist, or, well Leverage, where the villain are explicitly Bernie Madoff type characters, victimizing the lower and middle classes.
But The Dark Knight Rises is firmly on the side of the status quo, and the villain is a demagogue spouting populist rethoric, recruiting homeless and disenfranched, assaulting the stock exchange and the wealthy, until the benevolent millionare and police return to set things right, by smashing them in their filthy hobo faces. Not what I'd call a satisfying fantasy for the unruly masses.
SubJeff on 6/8/2012 at 12:41
Good Christ. Wtf?
These debates come from where exactly?
Reminds me of some guff I read about The Matrix being a criticism of the Nixon era and not A GODDAMN SCI-FI KUNG FU MOVIE.
Next up; The Hangover 2, Masculine Introspective or do we all secretly desire ladyboy bum fun?
Thirith on 6/8/2012 at 12:54
@SubjEff: Nolan's Batman films aim for some relevance, though, or at the very least they pick up motifs from our real world. Critics aren't really reaching when they talk about Bane (in this version) being inspired to some extent by OWS. Whether Nolan succeeds or not in making his film have some real-world relevance, he didn't aim just for escapist fun. Ignoring that would be doing a disservice to him and the film IMO.
froghawk on 6/8/2012 at 13:31
^yep
Quote Posted by Sg3
I do not consider myself either conservative or liberal. I pick and choose my stances based on merit, rather than buying into a party's arbitrary set of positions as most U.S. people do. From this relatively neutral P.o.V., what I noticed about the Nolan
Batman films is that they drag current events into the movie in as big of a way as possible. Terrorist attacks, corruption in government and business, sinking economy & disparity between rich and poor, and now the "occupy" thing. The movie really feels like the movie producers are taking the side of the little guy--"yeah, we're on your side, we're for justice and stuff"--but it's all a placebo. It lets the audience cheer as the make-believe bad-guys get their asses beaten, and forget that the real-life bad-guys are getting away with everything. This sort of movie, in short, smacks of trying to be the new "opiate of the masses." I'm more than half-convinced that the film-makers are deliberately putting out a message which they themselves don't believe in, to keep the lower classes (as low of classes as can afford to watch movies, anyway) complacent. Or maybe I'm just cynical. [shrug]
Did you actually read the rest of my post? Morte has it right. The politics of Batman have always been right-leaning, and the Nolan series is no different in that regard. The police and government are useless, so a Randian self-made man - a vigilante - must take things into his own hands. Remember the use of cell phone surveillance in TDK? Sure, it was in the 'hands of the responsible', but it was still a deliberate and wholly unnecessary use of a controversial Bush-era tactic in a way which the film considered positive. And indeed, it is the magically uncorrupt police force and the wealthy billionaire who save the day from the evil violent Occupy crowd in TDKR.
Now, if you look at Nolan's Batman story from a human angle, then it's really about a guy who is very angry and hurt and unable to heal, and therefore takes the law into his own hands, shitting all over his saintly father's legacy, causing mass destruction, inspiring all the crazies to come out and play, and possibly killing people though he thinks it is his one rule not to (remember when he blew up some cars right near where there were some kids in a car in TDK? It could have been the car with kids in it very easily. When he flew missiles into a probably populated building in TDKR? The man is a hypocritical menace). Batman is not a good character in the Nolan verse, and his existence is about unresolved pain acting itself out on the world. This human element means that the films are not in support of such extreme-right Randian politics. You could argue that the TDK wiretapping has Lucius pointing out that 'This is wrong' and that the methods aren't really praised there despite being successful - this is another instance of Batman going unethically far to achieve his goals, similar to the mass destruction he causes and all the public money he wastes and people he potentially kills because of it.
But TDKR isn't so thematically tight, and what it is trying to say is unclear. The human element is nice - Bruce Wayne is finally allowed to heal and let go of his pain and anger, represented by him giving up Batman (killing him off would have been incredibly stupid from the human angle, making it a dumb moralistic tale of 'if you act your anger out upon the world, you will live a sad life and die'). He feels forced into being Batman again when he isn't ready, and is resultantly defeated - but then he must fully become Batman one last time in order to really let go of his pain and heal. But the political aspect of this film isn't really altered by the human side - to me, they seem like two separate entities which confuse each other when placed together. Politically, Batman is finally the good guy here to save the day in this film, for the first time in the trilogy. The pitiful government and police force have failed, and the Batman is the only one left to save things. There has always been some aspect of that in the series, but with a sense of conflict between Batman and the establishment. That sense of conflict is gone, leading to a full political glorification of this mad billionaire at the same time as a complete human/emotional deconstruction of him and what he stands for. As I said - confused.
Morte on 6/8/2012 at 13:36
Plus, Nolan has cited A Tale of Two Cities as an inspiration.
I don't think the Dark Knight Rises intentionally advances any political agenda, by the way. It's just unfortunate implications from lazily appropriating OWS imagery.
I would've quite liked if they *had* taken some kind of a political stance, advanced some kind of coherent argument. But that would have required taking the time to actually flesh out the situation of the average Gothamite, and what happens during the months of isolation. What's the effect of the Dent act? Who's in Bane's army? You can assume the blackgate prisoners joined, and there's some mention of vagrants, but does he actually acttract enough people to make the Tale of Two Cities comparison work? Who the fuck knows.
