Westies14
Master Member
Really solid film! If you haven't read much of the comics - particularly The Dark Knight Returns - you're gonna enjoy several more surprises than the avid readers who will see a lot coming.
Tate as Talia, despite Marion Cotillard's outright denials of the character, seemed pretty obvious during the film. She talked about not having much as a kid, but they felt like kings when they had a fire. She had a V-shaped scar on her back. When they decided to confide in her and showed her the potential doomsday device (and subsequently put her in charge of Wayne Enterprises) it seemed sure that it would come back to haunt them. Besides - Catwoman was in the movie. Bruce couldn't have two real love interests pay off!
Blake was a similar thing - I didn't know his name was gonna be Robin, but it was clear that he'd take up the mantle of the bat. Given the new bat signal on the roof, I think it's safe to extrapolate that the city has a future with its urban legend bat protector, with John in the suit, as opposed to Robin/nightwing. He was an orphan, like Bruce. Bruce gave him comfort, as Gordon gave Bruce as a boy. He was clearly horrified by having shot the cement guys, and threw away his gun as Bruce did in Batman Begins. He's idealistic, intelligent, and motivated.
My only real complaint about the movie is more of a complaint about the series: we had three straight movies with similar beats about similar things. Someone wants to plunge Gotham into anarchy! There's a madman with his finger on a detonator, etc. No one can leave the island. Moral ambiguity, cops against cops, yadayadayada. In retrospect, I would have loved for the second film to have been eight years after the first - making this one 16 after BB - and for it to have been a much smaller, more intimate movie. That way, Batman could have already reached his legendary status among the people and criminals of Gotham. It could have been a nice tight detective story/thriller, with the Joker as a serial killer who cuts smiles into the faces of his victims or something. Batman has to hunt him down. Nolan can do this well enough (Memento, Insomnia), and having that movie be smaller in scale and more intimate would have allowed for the scope of this third movie to be all the more impressive. As it is, it feels very similar in too many places.
That's a minor gripe though - I felt like I was watching a year or two of Batman comics scroll across a movie screen last night. I really enjoy the origin stuff in BB. I really enjoy the Joker scenes in TDK. I think this might be the best of the three though - time and repeated viewings will tell!
Tate as Talia, despite Marion Cotillard's outright denials of the character, seemed pretty obvious during the film. She talked about not having much as a kid, but they felt like kings when they had a fire. She had a V-shaped scar on her back. When they decided to confide in her and showed her the potential doomsday device (and subsequently put her in charge of Wayne Enterprises) it seemed sure that it would come back to haunt them. Besides - Catwoman was in the movie. Bruce couldn't have two real love interests pay off!
Blake was a similar thing - I didn't know his name was gonna be Robin, but it was clear that he'd take up the mantle of the bat. Given the new bat signal on the roof, I think it's safe to extrapolate that the city has a future with its urban legend bat protector, with John in the suit, as opposed to Robin/nightwing. He was an orphan, like Bruce. Bruce gave him comfort, as Gordon gave Bruce as a boy. He was clearly horrified by having shot the cement guys, and threw away his gun as Bruce did in Batman Begins. He's idealistic, intelligent, and motivated.
My only real complaint about the movie is more of a complaint about the series: we had three straight movies with similar beats about similar things. Someone wants to plunge Gotham into anarchy! There's a madman with his finger on a detonator, etc. No one can leave the island. Moral ambiguity, cops against cops, yadayadayada. In retrospect, I would have loved for the second film to have been eight years after the first - making this one 16 after BB - and for it to have been a much smaller, more intimate movie. That way, Batman could have already reached his legendary status among the people and criminals of Gotham. It could have been a nice tight detective story/thriller, with the Joker as a serial killer who cuts smiles into the faces of his victims or something. Batman has to hunt him down. Nolan can do this well enough (Memento, Insomnia), and having that movie be smaller in scale and more intimate would have allowed for the scope of this third movie to be all the more impressive. As it is, it feels very similar in too many places.
That's a minor gripe though - I felt like I was watching a year or two of Batman comics scroll across a movie screen last night. I really enjoy the origin stuff in BB. I really enjoy the Joker scenes in TDK. I think this might be the best of the three though - time and repeated viewings will tell!
