Messages

As we all know, despite Batman telling Catwoman "no guns, no killing" during the rooftop fight scene, the end of the movie has Catwoman shooting Bane to death in order to save Batman, and Batman himself shooting at Talia's truck to save the town. What always made a huge impression on me was Catwoman telling Batman as soon as she rescued him: "About the whole no guns thing...(shakes her head)...I'm not sure I feel as strongly about it as you do".

So, I suppose Nolan was trying to convey the message that guns are the answer to stop crime and disorder after all? I don't think even he knows, because according to TDK Screenplays Book, he actually admitted having no idea that Batman doesn't normally carry guns OR kill people:

Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=uwV8rddtKRgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q=I%20didn't%20know%20Batman%20didn't%20kill%20people&f=false

Yet despite all of this, Nolan decided to include these moral policies into his movies, but didn't bother to address any of them when Batman decides to break them. How typical. And people still regard him as a "cerebral" director. 

It's amazing how this guy gets away with a lot of things that other directors would've gotten castrated over. I guarantee you, if it was somebody else introduced a moral code and then have their character break it without exploring the consequences over it, or come to terms that he must break it to rescue others, that director would've been condemned by the critics for poor writing.

The films never seemed to take a stance against guns directly. Even the line you quote says, "No guns, no killing." Which seems to give the idea not to kill with guns. Not not to use guns at all. In every version Bruce is a supporter of the police and a friend to Commissioner Gordon, who uses guns. But there are consequences to him breaking the rule. But the rule in the movies wasn't about the consequences.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

Absolutely. Some people will try to dismiss this by saying "how could Bruce and Selina really fall for each other if they only knew one another for a week", but I think they missed the point. Yes, normally it would be very hard to believe two people would fall in love so quickly in only a matter of days, but Bruce and Selina aren't normal. Like I said before, they resembled each other in a lot of ways. Besides, Batman going so far by ripping off his mask during his desperate plea for her to stop her murderous rage had to have been motivated by some genuine love for her. You'd be hard pressed to argue otherwise.

I think it was mainly motivated by Bruce's own emotional desperation to save her because of their similarities.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

Wish we could have seen him again with a more developed character. It appears Schumacher was headed that way based on his idea for a third film. Damn shame we'll never know what it would have looked like.

To tell you the truth, I don't think Batman's character development in this film was a problem at all. If you look at it from the context to what evolved compared to the Burton films, Batman had gone from being a loner who carries a burden over the loss of his parents, to overcoming it and accepts being who is as a choice by the end of BF. In B&R, he is willing to open a partnership with Robin, but he has difficulty dealing with Dick's immaturity and selfishness. But in the end, the two had to put their differences aside for Gotham and Alfred's sake, and finally, Bruce's newly extended family grows after accepting Batgirl as a new member of the team. The ending goes to show that Batman is not alone any more. Despite the many mistakes in the direction that Schumacher went for, I still admire this plot development.

It's sad that all of that gets ignored and overlooked because of the choice in costumes and bad comedy. And that's a real shame because it goes to show that Clooney, and the entire film for that matter, was a wasted opportunity.

A lot of people thinking it's a wasted opportunity doesn't make it a wasted opportunity. The Burton films, particularly batman returns is full of bad comedy. Bruce's character in batman & robin is the natural continuation of his character development, I agree with that.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

[***]

I've seen a couple of people elsewhere online who claim that the Dent Act, and its uncovering as a sham, shows that Batman and Gordon covering up Two-Face's crimes was a mistake.

Well, yeah. That's common sense, and anybody with half a brain would've thought it was the worst thing that Batman could've done under the circumstances. So where were the scenes that showed Batman realizing that he made a mistake?

There were scenes doing that. They weren't completely extensive certainly, but Alfred has that line about how it's time that stop trying to outsmart the truth and let it have it's day.

Gordon did show regrets because he felt sickened to cover up a madman who nearly murdered his son, which is why he wrote that letter in the first place. But even he never acknowledged that telling that lie Dent was the wrong thing to do. As a matter of fact, while Bane was exposing the cover-up, Gordon tried to justify himself to Blake by arguing he had no other choice. He and Batman were afraid that Dent's crimes could release every crook he ever put away and they thought the entire town would lose hope (despite this going against everything that Batman said about the city being ready to believe in good, when everybody had the strength and compassion to not kill each other by the end of that stupid boat scene. But never mind).*** The last sentence in the dialogue with Blake shows that he had some gratitude over Batman's "bravery" to frame himself:

Bruce's feelings about the people being ready to believe in good was based on Harvey. It's developed in the film that Bruce sees batman as something that hurt gotham.

And despite dismissing Gordon's excuses, Blake suddenly sees Gordon's point of view in the end, following his confrontation with the army officer on the bridge:

He sees the point of view about the structures becoming shackles. He doesn't mention the lie.

Yes, the film showed us the terrible consequences when Gotham City was told about Harvey Dent's crimes. But not once did the film ever imply that Batman and Gordon's decision to cover up Dent's mess was a mistake. It was presented that they were forced to do it because of the corrupt and flawed justice system.

The situation itself shows that it was a mistake.

In any case, it wouldn't matter to me even if the movie presented us the message that the Dent Act was wrong. I still regard Batman and Gordon's handling of the Dent situation not really as a mistake, but rather, an act of pure negligence. It gave the citizens of Gotham a false sense of security, and put them in harm's way when the truth eventually comes out. It's unacceptable.

There isn't anyway either of them could've predicted what would happen.

***NOTE:*** I agree with riddler when he said in this thread earlier on, and in the 'Your Version of The Dark Knight' thread (which he explained in even greater detail) that the whole excuse that Batman had to sacrifice himself to protect Two-Face's reputation is bogus because Dent's crimes had nothing to do with his work as a DA. Lawyers get caught red-handed for committing crimes in the real world, but their prosecutions of criminals don't get overturned, unless they were found to be tampering with evidence or rigging verdicts.

As I understand it, the idea was that it would call his character into question and make it more easy for the system to be tampered with, or so they thought.

Another excuse I see some people try to use is that Batman had to frame himself to protect Dent because he became a fugitive by the SWAT team after he fought them during that reckless attempt to save the Joker's hostages, and nobody would believe him if he told the truth. But that too doesn't make any sense because Batman was involved in a highly dangerous Tumbler-car chase with the cops in the first film, and he was extremely lucky that he didn't kill anyone. If an incident like that didn't make Batman become Public Enemy #1, then I see no reason why his fight with the SWAT team would immediately make him a fugitive, especially not after spending a whole year establishing himself as a crimefighter.

That isn't the reason. The way I see it is that Bruce blamed himself for what happened to Harvey and Rachel and saw batman as bad for the city, so he turned the cops on himself.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

It's an issue that I don't understand.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

I understand what you're saying. But, let's say for a second that you may be right about the people who threatened Reese were only a minority, whereas the majority of citizens are naturally good. That would've been fine, except the problem is that Bruce taking the fall for Dent still betrayed his belief about people were ready to believe in good, because he kept saying that the citizens of Gotham AND the prisoners wouldn't kill each other. That is amazingly rich for him to have faith in criminals, because they are the reason why he became Batman in the first place.

His belief that people were ready to believe in good was about Harvey. Bruce thought of batman at that point as an inspiration for madness. That's what he says to Alfred. I don't know how a criminal being the reason for him becoming batman means that Bruce should automatically believe that criminals aren't capable of doing the right thing, but Bruce knew that the boat had guards with weapons.

So if the message from that boat scene was supposed to mean that even convicts are capable of goodness regardless of whatever crimes they may have committed, then that gets totally flushed down the toilet when the truth comes out in TDKR. And you're okay with this?

I don't see how it gets flushed down the toilet. It shows those criminals being bad guys. While tdk shows a single criminal deciding to do the right thing. The other criminals stay down. When people vote on the boats, there are people who want to save themselves. But either the criminals and civilians aren't willing to do it or the criminals are afraid of being shot by the guards. Everyone, in some way, does have good in them, but that doesn't mean that they'll do the right thing all the time. The film sends a message, but it also says that people can and do do bad things. The joker, Harvey, that russian guy and Lau are examples.

TDK's ending is a huge catalyst for the Dent Act in TDKR, and Batman's decision to frame himself left an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Would Gotham have had eight years of peace if Batman and Gordon didn't lie to the public? Maybe not. But the disastrous consequences that happened once the lie was exposed by Bane only prove that it wasn't worth it.

It leaving a bad taste in your mouth doesn't make it bad. I could be wrong, but I think that the lie not being a good idea was the point.

I can appreciate a flawed film that has good intentions like Batman Forever, which had admirable plot points of Batman overcoming his guilt and makes his identity a choice rather than a burden, and ensuring that Robin doesn't make the same self-destructive mistake by seeking revenge for his parents' murders. But sadly, not only I'm not too keen on Nolan's ideas, I find his execution for them extremely shoddy.

It's your right to not like the ideas, but most of the examples you've presented as shoddy don't appear to be that.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

Don't take this as a personal attack or anything, but you once agreed back in 'Your version of The Dark Knight' thread that the boat scene was rubbish and didn't buy the message that Nolan was going for. You thought it was unbelievable and called it a token 'feel-good' scene, and agreed that it was contradictory to have Reese threatened by those people. But now you're willing to justify this as those actions belonged to the "minority"?

That is the case. It's not a justification. It's what happens in the film. If Coleman Reese was being attacked by everyone that had someone in the hospital and with the amount of conviction one would give if they wanted to do something, nothing anybody did could've saved him. But that isn't what happened. A lot of people were yelling for him, two people tried to shoot him and one person tried to hit him with their car. That isn't everything everyone has to throw at this situation.

Look, I'm not that cynical. I would've been perfectly fine with that message...if Batman actually told the truth about Two-Face's crimes and not go against his belief that people can persevere anything. This is why I think Spider-Man 2 dealt with the public faith WAY better than this. A cynic may laugh at the people promising to keep Peter Parker's identity a secret, but it goes to show how grateful they are that he saved their lives despite his lengthy absence.

batman's belief or disbelief in the people don't define their goodness. What batman thinks doesn't matter in that regard. More than anything it shows that Bruce has lost belief in himself. spiderman 2's way of dealing with it was good, but it wasn't done for the same reason as it was in tdk. In spiderman 2 it was about showing Peter that he's appreciated for what he does in some way. In tdk it was about defeating the joker and having batman say that people are ready to believe in good. That's what batman says. That's his perception. That people don't simply believe in good, that they are ready to believe in good. It shows his perception of how he doesn't believe batman as doing real good, but seeing that goodness being something Harvey inspired and that it's just started, which is shown in the film.

Sorry, but I just don't buy that rationale, and I certainly do not buy the way Nolan tries to present the message.

You not buying it doesn't make it something that can't be bought.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

[all]

Like I said, the action movie trope of villains not killing heroes when they have the chance is commonplace, but I found that these films, mainly TDK and TDKR, bit more than they could chew, so to speak. Yes, I can buy one moment of that trope happening, but not to have it stretched and repeated so often throughout the film.

I think it reaches a point when it comes to subjective taste, rather one being locked in a particular mindset (I know you weren't accusing me of being negative TDK, I was just making a point). Even if these films weren't put on a pedestal, I'd still hold that opinion.

Then it's not something that's an issue with the film. Which is fine. But directing it at the film is a little unnecessary.

The only superhero film that sticks out in my mind that may compare to TDKR is Iron Man 3, when Alrich Killian explains his plot to Tony Stark once he had him captured. But I can tolerate that much better because Killian tried to kill Tony at his mansion in Malibu, and Tony found where the Mandarin was supposedly hiding on his own and uncovered the conspiracy before getting captured. But most importantly, it can be argued that Tony surprised everybody when he used his Extremis armor to make his escape. That, and I think Killian's plot to use Extremis to profit on wars against terrorism by creating a fictional terror threat to cover up his tracks made his motives work. I won't go far to say that this thought-provoking stuff, but in my opinion, Killian's agenda is much better than anything I saw in Nolan's films here.

He wants to make money. How is that interesting? The plan is something sure, but his agenda is lame. Tony uncovered it by the power of plot contrivance, same way everything happens in most movies. There was also very little reason why Aldrich set out to kill Tony when Tony was the one who could help him. He also says that he's not interested in revenge so it isn't that, and why does Maya show up at that point? Why not sooner? And why did Aldrich use missles to attack him like that? Tony has a flying suit of armor. How does Aldrich think this is going to work? The fact that it nearly works is a contrivance in itself. jarvis just happens to not be able to function the security, Tony just happens, for some reason to be wearing an inefficient suit when he's attacked and for some reason Tony didn't activate all the other suits he had for protection. And he crashes in the place he set a flight plan for because he's unconscious for some reason as jarvis is flying and jarvis, an extremely advanced ai, doesn't understand that after an attack that maybe his previous flight plan might not be the issue now. Then jarvis shuts down because he lost power and Tony's reactor doesn't power this suit even though that was established to be the way his suits are powered, and jarvis shuts down, he's not cut off from Tony, he shuts down, how does that happen? Is jarvis in Tony's suit? That kinda goes against previously established information of jarvis being jacked into all of Tony's stuff. With jarvis being jacked into everything the logical assumption is that he has a core, I assumed in Tony's house and when jarvis shut down I thought that was because the house had been destroyed and jarvis' power was draining or something, but no, jarvis is functioning fine at the end. These are all contrivances.

I'll admit that you make a valid point by looking at it from that perspective. But my problem with that scene has everything to do with Lucius Fox. He's the same guy who supports Bruce Wayne by giving him the equipment that causes collateral damage e.g. the armored vehicles, gives him the tools to attack and kidnap people (i.e. using sonar during the Lau incident in Hong Kong, which was Fox's idea) and does so without any reservations. He's perfectly okay with enabling a vigilante that puts the entire town at risk and one who doesn't have to worry about things like jurisdictions, accountability, due processes and so on, but he thinks taking desperate measures to find a dangerous perpetrator is going too far? It's something that really annoys me and I just can't ignore. These films don't really explore how Batman impacts on the wider public like Frank Miller does in Dark Knight Returns, yet we're supposed to analyse the political undertones in that sonar scene? I think that I'd appreciate the scene a lot more if Batman called out on Fox's hypocrisy, but as it stands, I just can't help but feel it was disingenuous. I honestly think Nolan would be much better off if were to direct movies that are better suited for the themes he was going for, i.e. based on actual events. Putting them in a Batman movie just makes them too vague, in my opinion.

Political undertones don't have to be about how batman effects the people, but we do see reactions in criminals and in a few of the general public in tdk. But Bruce being batman doesn't actively violate people's privacy, regular people's privacy, not just the privacy of criminals, in particular. Accepting one doesn't necessarily contradict the other.

That's fine. But for me personally, I prefer a Batman adaptation that stays true to the character: a driven and dedicated crimefigher. And that doesn't necessarily mean he can't have flaws either. Keaton's Batman is unable to have a close relationship with someone like Vicki or have any close friends because of his secret life. TNBA's Batman became so driven and intense that he became distant to Robin, and it led to a falling out that never quite healed. These are flaws, but they keep in line with the nature of the character. If Nolan's point was Batman to becoming a symbol and wanted somebody else to take over the mantle, then he executed it poorly because that point gets contradicted in all three films. I just can't accept that, and it's simply not a Batman that I admire.

It isn't contradicted. But what version of the character you like is your opinion and your entitled to that.

Be though as it may, I find it ridiculous that Gotham is surprisingly quiet and empty after that little montage sequence. I think a lot of that has to do with the PG-13 rating hold back on the violence. I just the find the villains to be too ridiculous for my liking that I just can't their plot seriously. I just don't think it was very well executed. Once again, that's just my subjective opinion. Though I do find Tom Hardy's Bane as entertaining out of all the villains here.

You not taking it seriously doesn't mean that it can't be.

It's one thing to know what to expect from a dumb action movie, but when a director as hyped as Nolan gets especially put on a pedestal as being better than your average filmmaker, I think it's fair to scrutinise his work to see if it lives up to those standards. Personally, not only do they not hold up to those standards, I don't even think his take on Batman holds up as typical action movies.

It's unfair to judge a director based off of how he's view by other people. He's not the people that praise him. Their reaction isn't his fault.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

Bane and Talia's plan would have been far more successful if they had simply killed Bruce, and his allies. Instead, we get a contrived time bomb situation where they have to wait for five months to detonate the bomb. We see Talia going to bed with Bruce as part of her plan, when it could've been much easier if she had simply killed him when he's already down in the dumps. We see Bane sending Bruce to a prison where Talia escaped from as a little girl. We see Talia living among the hostages as she co-operates with Blake and Gordon...but not take the opportunity to kill them and prevent them from sabotaging her plan to destroy Gotham. All because of some hysterically misguided approach to "emotionally" cripple Bruce. I know that it's a common action movie trope when villains don't kill heroes despite the chance being there for the taking, but this is ridiculous. A lot of people make fun of Bane and Talia's plan by comparing them to Dr. Evil from Austin Powers, and rightly so (and yes, I realize one may rebut this by arguing the same can be said about every villain ever existed, but I'm using this example to show that Nolan's aren't that great as they're made out to be.).

And a lot of the villains that have done it aren't not great. Villains doing that doesn't make the movie less.

Sure, it makes TDKR great entertainment as a comedy, but to take it seriously even remotely? No.

Let's face it, the whole mass murder-suicide plot to destroy Gotham was really a smokescreen for Talia's desire to get revenge at Batman for killing Ra's...even though she originally resented her father for kicking her and Bane out of the League. Never mind that Gotham was already peaceful for eight years before their arrival, thanks to the Dent Act.

What's not to take seriously? Having resentment towards your father doesn't mean that you don't care when they die. The dent act allowed corruption and crime to come in under the radar without the people noticing and come at them from within in many ways.

In my opinion, that author I cited is right when he says that Nolan is cynical for his use of political themes. They come across as gimmicks that trick the audience, and don't really say anything meaningful about what's going on in the world, and come across as "let's put refer to something political in an attempt to sound sophisticated than we actually are". Other than that montage sequence showing people rioting when Gotham was under siege and Bane exposes the truth about Harvey, the streets are otherwise silent and empty.

It showcases Bane's characterization. The joker rants about how bad people are, but at the end of the day it's not true. Like here. Bane rants about giving gotham back to the people. but people aren't into being held hostage with a bomb.

That being said, Bane taking the opportunity to expose the truth about Dent only goes to show what a terrible ending that TDK had. Batman and Gordon choose to tell a lie that risks tearing the city apart if the truth gets exposed, when blaming the Joker and/or his henchmen, or even keeping Dent's death a mystery, could have allowed Dent's reputation to come out completely unscathed and spare the city from further chaos. Yet, some people reckon that ending was "uplifting". Too bad that Batman and Gordon never realized it was a terrible mistake. Even Blake, despite dismissing Gordon's justification with that shackles speech, told Gordon he was right to lie in the end.

He didn't tell him that. He said he was right about the structures becoming shackles. He did't say he was right about the lie. I don't know how tdkr shows that the ending of tdk is terrible. It shows that the decision they made wasn't great, but that doesn't make the ending bad.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!

['The Dark Gnat: How Christopher Nolan's Embarrassing Seriousness Ruined Batman']

I completely agree with the excerpts that I've listed underneath. It's from a review that was published three years ago, titled  'The Dark Gnat: How Christopher Nolan's Embarrassing Seriousness Ruined Batman'.


Suffice to say, Nolan's villains never really make any sense. Only Ra's al Ghul had a more coherent agenda, in my opinion.

How do they not make sense? Bane wanted to destroy gotham as a way of completing Ra's attack and while I don't think this is confirmed in the movie I think that he was trying to prove himself.

Given all the outrageous things that happen in these movies despite how they're supposed to be "thought provoking" and so forth, I can't help but feel that WB executive was taking the piss out of the audience.

How do outrageous things happening make something not thought provoking?

Spot on. It makes me laugh how people say TDK and TDKR is a reflection of September 11 and terrorism in general. Last time I checked, terrorists in the real world tend to commit crimes because they have extreme religious and/or political motives. These are things that TDK's Joker couldn't give a damn about. And as if something like that stupid boat scene and how it ended could have happened in the real world.  Though that being said, I'm leaning towards to give The Matrix a second chance nowadays. I'm beginning to think that movie was more successful in the themes it was purported to having.

Source: www.newrepublic.com/article/105198/isaac-chotiner-dark-gnat-how-christopher-nolans-embarrassing-seriousness-ruined

The joker expresses his own ideology about what he's about. People doing the right thing could happen in the real world.

God bless you! God bless everyone in your life!