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I rewatched BB recently and it's strange how it emerges as arguably the strongest of the whole trilogy.

The crew wanted to tell this story, the cast were mostly 100% invested in each of their characters, the mostly original story had enough riffs on various popular comics to be interesting to the core fanbase, it legitimately did show stuff that was completely new to Batman cinema (even if the comics had been doing it for decades), the action scenes were innovative to Batman films at the time, the film took itself seriously but not too seriously and it ended on a note that suggested, well, escalation. And yeah, I guess the sequels did escalate but not really in ways that anybody had been looking forward to and I think many cast members were on auto-pilot after BB.

I admit that Nolan's Batman isn't "my Batman" as they say on some other forum I forget the name of but I still think the above has some validity to it.

Well, calling the action scenes in BB "innovative" is putting it way too nicely for my liking.  I thought other than the sword battle between Bruce and the fake Ra's while the temple was burning down, the fight scenes were a complete  disaster. Without a doubt, the most poorly directed that I've ever seen in a big budget Hollywood blockbuster. Now I know I've criticised the action in the sequels for not being very well choreographed, but at least you can tell who is getting hit by whom. In contrast, BB's fight scenes are so incoherent that you'd have to hit the remote control to watch them in slow motion. Very amateurish stuff, and I can't believe that nearly got away from constant criticism. I didn't think the humour was any good either; they're just a collection of cliche, crappy one liners, like "I got to get me one of those". It wasn't funny when Will Smith said it in Independence Day, and it's not funny here, especially since it refers to that ugly Tumbler.

Personally, I prefer the video game adaptation of BB. Yes, the gameplay might be repetitive, but at least you get to play as Bale's Batman where he doesn't use that stupid voice all the time, the action is obviously better, and he does just a little bit more of investigative work no matter how meager it might be. It's arguably a template to the Arkham video games too. Besides, the ending of the game has Bale delivering a monologue that closely defines Batman than any of that pseudo-intellectual crap that was said in the entire trilogy:

I once made the mistake of thinking Ra's al Ghul was dead. But when men make themselves symbols, they shed their mortality. Henri Ducard and Jonathan Crane are already gone. Just like Bruce Wayne. He's only a mask. A cover for the face criminals now fear. All that's left...is Batman.

Because that doesn't sound like pseudo-intellectual crap.

Scarecrow even acted like he was nuts at the end from his gas, going so far as to renounce the Jonathan Crane identity to Rachel and then at the beginning of TDK, he's completely back to normal!

That always bothered how Crane seems to recover from his fear gas. I guess it's just one more plothole but then again what's one more plothole?

Who says he recovers?

Since Nolanites claim their films are so bloody realistic.
If such an injury were suffered, the doctors would wrap up his entire face to apply proper pressure to the burned side. His speech would have been affected. Also with his eyelid being burned off completely that eye would be heavily irritated; the human eye blinks on average 6-10 times per minute to clean the eyeball from particles.

I posted this before but Harvey Dent/Two face basically got the same treatment Eddie Brock/Venom did in spider-man 3; pre-release, both were assumed to spend most of the film developing their characters before being set up to become the super villains the next film. Both became villains late in the film and killed off after a few scenes yet Sam Raimi got raked through the coals while Nolan got put on a pedestal.

It's not about realism. The first film had a microwave emitter, the flower and other stuff. The second had Two-Face, the Joker's planning and other stuff. The third had the bat, the bomb and Bruce's back. It's not about it being realistic. It's about it having realism in it. Spider-Man 3 is fine.

seriously? This is a perfect example of selective evidence. Nolan supporters claim their films are better because they are grounded and gritty but when logic holes get pointed now, now it's okay not to be realistic?

I haven't said that. Check out my Batman tv series idea in general batchat and you'll find Solomon Grundy, Mr. Freeze and Zatanna among the cast. The grittiness I'm sure is a draw for most people, but I never found it to be realistic in the sense that people use.

I'm not saying yourself personally but the 'everything is grounded' is the number one argument Nolan supporters use for why their films are better than any other interpretation of the character.

I very much support the Nolan Batman films. But I think by realistic the term is meant that it has realism in it. Because the events of these movies couldn't happen in the real world by their very nature. It also doesn't make it automatically better. But I don't think I've seen anyone say that this version is better than the DCAU Batman. Personally I like the version that isn't great at everything. But I think the DCAU version is better.

This is an updated fan cast and images of the fan cast. I hope you like!

Luke Mitchell or Ryan Kennedy as Bruce Wayne/Batman

Shelley Hennig as Selina Kyle/Catwoman

Jack Coleman as Captain James Gordon

Colin Donnell as Harvey Dent/Two-Face

Brie Larson as Barbara Gordon/Batgirl/Oracle

Dylan Minnette as Richard "Dick" Grayson/Robin/Nightwing

Adam godley as Alfred Pennyworth

Alan Tudyk as The Red Hood/The Joker

Alison Brie as Dr. Harleen Quinzel/Harley Quinn

Lacey Chabert as Zatanna Zatara

Seth Gabel as Edward Nashton/Edward Nygma/The Riddler

Tobin Bell as Victor Fries/Mr. Freeze

Giancarlo Esposito as Professor Hugo Strange

Garret Dillahunt as Julian Day/The Calendar Man

Yvonne Strahovski as Firefly

Alexis Denisof as Zsazz

Kevin Durand as Killer Croc

Mark A. Shephard as Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin

Joe Morton as Lucius Fox

Enver Gjoak as Roman Sionis/Black Mask

Mark Pellegrino as Kirk Langstrom/Man-Bat

Jeremy Davies as Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow

Claire Holt as Pamela Isley/Poison Ivy

Since Nolanites claim their films are so bloody realistic.
If such an injury were suffered, the doctors would wrap up his entire face to apply proper pressure to the burned side. His speech would have been affected. Also with his eyelid being burned off completely that eye would be heavily irritated; the human eye blinks on average 6-10 times per minute to clean the eyeball from particles.

I posted this before but Harvey Dent/Two face basically got the same treatment Eddie Brock/Venom did in spider-man 3; pre-release, both were assumed to spend most of the film developing their characters before being set up to become the super villains the next film. Both became villains late in the film and killed off after a few scenes yet Sam Raimi got raked through the coals while Nolan got put on a pedestal.

It's not about realism. The first film had a microwave emitter, the flower and other stuff. The second had Two-Face, the Joker's planning and other stuff. The third had the bat, the bomb and Bruce's back. It's not about it being realistic. It's about it having realism in it. Spider-Man 3 is fine.

seriously? This is a perfect example of selective evidence. Nolan supporters claim their films are better because they are grounded and gritty but when logic holes get pointed now, now it's okay not to be realistic?

I haven't said that. Check out my Batman tv series idea in general batchat and you'll find Solomon Grundy, Mr. Freeze and Zatanna among the cast. The grittiness I'm sure is a draw for most people, but I never found it to be realistic in the sense that people use.

The BTAS Two-Face is still top dog.

I liked Aaron Eckhart's Harvey a lot. He was likeable and firm. However I agree it's a shame he was killed off so quickly. The character has been getting the short end of the stick lately, even in the Arkham games. Two-Face is one of the best villains in the Batman universe and he deserves more.

A film devoted to Aaron Eckhart on a warpath would've been pretty exciting. Two-Face works because he's a close friend and gives a solid reason to why Bruce *tries* to believe in the possibility criminals can be rehabilitated.

To be honest, I think they missed a dramatic scenario with TDK, leading into TDK Rises. The idea Two-Face is on the loose whacking people left right and centre, with Batman and Gordon initially trying to hush everything up, is more appealing to me. Say, they could've had the confrontation with Gordon's family, and the bullet that Dent fires keeps Batman down. Dent lips the coin, and thankfully for Gordon, it comes up good. And Dent leaves, but swears it's not over.

But they chose to go down a completely different narrative structure. Mine is more exciting, IMO, and would've given us a direct TDK sequel without having the 8 year time jump. You would have seen the public's reaction of horror and disappointment when they see with their own eyes what Dent has become - not just being told by Bane via a letter which is hardly an form of proof whatsoever. In TDK Rises we never see what the pubic thinks of the Dent revelation.

But that ship has long sailed.

Two-face played into the story of that movie.

Since Nolanites claim their films are so bloody realistic.
If such an injury were suffered, the doctors would wrap up his entire face to apply proper pressure to the burned side. His speech would have been affected. Also with his eyelid being burned off completely that eye would be heavily irritated; the human eye blinks on average 6-10 times per minute to clean the eyeball from particles.

I posted this before but Harvey Dent/Two face basically got the same treatment Eddie Brock/Venom did in spider-man 3; pre-release, both were assumed to spend most of the film developing their characters before being set up to become the super villains the next film. Both became villains late in the film and killed off after a few scenes yet Sam Raimi got raked through the coals while Nolan got put on a pedestal.

It's not about realism. The first film had a microwave emitter, the flower and other stuff. The second had Two-Face, the Joker's planning and other stuff. The third had the bat, the bomb and Bruce's back. It's not about it being realistic. It's about it having realism in it. Spider-Man 3 is fine.

Hence, it goes to show that the lie that Gordon and Batman chose to tell was such a horrendous idea if all it took was a little letter that exposed the truth. I really doubt Gordon, Batman or even Ramirez would feel guilty that the Joker and/or his henchmen were framed for Harvey's death.

The most annoying thing about Ramirez is that while she wasn't a main character in the movie, she still played a prominent part in it. We never see or hear from her again, it's like she was a plot device and then gets discarded. So yes, according to the series, we are supposed to assume she did keep quiet. That's another thing I really dislike about Nolan. He uses characters as plot devices and then throws them away. Scarecrow is another example of this.

I beg to differ. He described his corruption of Harvey Dent as "his ace in the hole" and boasts to Batman that he wouldn't risk fighting for Gotham's soul in a fist fight...but then he mysteriously keeps quiet when his plan to devastate the city over the truth didn't work out at all. The Joker might say a lot of nonsense and lies a lot, but he's not a self-defeating moron. He had a plan. I don't know what the original ideas for the Joker were if he was supposed to appear in TDKR, but in my opinion, there's no believable way he'd go through all that trouble only to give up and let Gotham restore peace through the Dent Act for eight years. Now you might argue that Joker was proven right when the truth was exposed in TDKR, but I'd say that the lie came back to bite Batman and Gordon on the ass. In other words, those two morons got themselves into this mess.

Like I said before, I might have cut the TDK's ending some slack if there was a logical explanation about the Joker's fate in the third film. I understand and even respect why Nolan didn't want to recast the role when Heath Ledger died, but I completely disagree with his decision to not even acknowledge the character in the last film. Like he never existed.

Batman didn't kill Two-Face out of malicious intent, that's true, but it still doesn't change the fact he did it to save a young boy's life. Which like I said many times before, it makes his refusal to kill Joker meaningless if it only put the entire town in harm's way. So yes, I'd say Batman did break his rule. I see a lot of people try to justify that Dent's death was an accident, but I disagree. The way the scene was written and depicted on screen can be compared to the way Superman killed Zod in Man of Steel situation. But of course, you see people attack that film because they hated the way the scene was written where Superman was forced to take that action, and wondered why he didn't use his heat vision to lobotomise Zod. My response is: you might as well condemn Nolan for making Batman break his code, and demand Batman to use a Batarang to disarm Two-Face instead and avoid killing him. But as you know, hypocrisy rules. 

And its muddled nonsense is the biggest reason why I really dislike it so much.

The Joker had already been captured. I still think it was Batman taking responsibility he felt he deserved because he blamed himself for Harvey's situation and Rachel's death. Which is backed up by the film. I'm referring to him feeling like it's his fault.

That's the way most films work. She wasn't needed. Scarecrow reappeared in both films afterward.

No matter what the Joker said, there's no reason for a sane person to believe him.

They could've mentioned him, but they didn't. It's hardly a big problem.

Of course Batman broke his rule. But it's pretty clear that he didn't have the intention to kill Harvey. MOS's doesn't work because we see Clark happy afterwards, the film is poorly written and Clark makes out with Lois in the middle of war zone after many people were killed without a care. It's not about him killing Zod. Not to mention the reason the writers did it made no sense. The point being they didn't deal with it. The action scene was also poorly done where after Zod threatens humans he never actually tried anything, which made it uninteresting. Two-Face had the gun to the boy's head. A batarang could've made it go off.

I don't see how it's nonsense.

I do agree with you that his disfigurement was completely out of place and didn't gel with the attempt at realism here. It was over-exaggerated. It would've made a lot more sense if they used similar make-up for the type of facial disfigurement in Mel Gibson's The Man Without a Face. Yes, it might've looked less "spectacular" but it would've been more believable and fit the realistic tone that Nolan was supposed to be going for.



But really, the biggest problem was Two-Face's transformation itself. I didn't buy it one bit and instead thought it was ludicrous. This is the same man who took matters into his own hands to find out the Joker's whereabouts when Rachel's life was in danger, yet when Joker did kill her (or at least was an accessory to her death, I don't know if Joker or Maroni came up with that plan), Dent allows Joker to manipulate him instead of shooting him. It makes absolutely no sense. When Harvey became Two-Face in BTAS, he swore to get revenge at Rupert Thorne and his gang because their blackmail threats were responsible for causing his disfigurement in the first place. Two-Face didn't misdirect his anger out on Gordon, Batman or anyone else in the corrupt legal system. He simply wanted to get back at the people who have been trying to ruin his life. That character motivation makes way more sense, whereas in TDK it feels so incredibly out-of-character and terribly forced.

Insanity often doesn't make sense.

Look, I don't trash movies because I happen to prefer others or follow trends in liking/disliking whatever. That's just childish. I do prefer Burton's films the best, but that doesn't mean I think they're perfect masterpieces by any means. Nor am I close-minded to believe nothing will touch them. As a matter of fact, I criticize the Burton films for a few things I thought could've been handled better.

I don't like Nolan's films because I simply don't like them at all. I gave those films a chance, and I didn't like what I saw. I just don't like the way the characters are written, I find the action and acting apart from two or three performances to be sub-par and I find the plot to be incredibly poorly written. I thought the ludicrous praise for them was completely unjustified. If I complain about Batman's contradictory actions in the series, it's because I thought the writers did a terrible job in developing his character and decided to cut corners whenever it suited to tell the story they wanted to tell. After all, if I'm bothered with Batman's hypocritical "Wrong on both counts!" line to Catwoman in BR, I'm certainly going to be bothered by what I see in the Nolan films. I'll admit that I am passionate about my criticisms for the films, but I'm fed up that people won't call out their obvious flaws. If they do acknowledge the flaws exist but it doesn't bother them, that's fine. But those flaws did bother me.

But the flaws you call out aren't the flaws the movie has. And the movies do have flaws. But it's not what you've said they are.

I thought that ending was an insult to the intelligence and far from honorable or uplifting. Batman decides to frame himself because he was afraid the feeble masses could accept the truth over Harvey's crimes, which contradicts his belief that "people are ready to believe in good" during that boat crisis (and let's face it, that message was rubbish to begin with because we saw people trying to kill Reese earlier on, which means Joker already proved his point). I'd imagine that lots of people would've been equally devastated that the costumed crimefighter who saved them from terrorism became a cold-blooded killer, but whatever. Batman's idiotic handling of the situation not only betrayed everything he believed in people and his own purpose of becoming an incorruptible symbol (like he said in BB), but he tells a lie that eventually results in disastrous consequences during Bane's siege in TDKR. If the idiot really had to lie to the public, then why didn't he put the blame on the criminals he was fighting for Harvey's death, instead of risking such a dangerous scenario if the lie he chose to tell could be exposed so easily? You might argue that it's questionable for people to look up to Batman for inspiration, but I say the same thing can be said about Harvey Dent because his association with Batman and his request to get kidnap Lau from Hong Kong despite having no jurisdiction is just as shady. So no, I don't buy this "White Knight" excuse either.

It doesn't contradict his Batman's belief at all. Because the reason he had that belief when he said it to the Joker was because of Harvey. That was the clear point. We saw a few people trying to kill Reese. Not the entire city, or even all the people who had family in the hospitals. The Joker isn't proven by a few people. Especially when nobody tried to actively blow up a boat of criminals. I wouldn't say it's really questionable to look up to Batman. I don't recall Harvey requesting Batman to go after Lau. I remember Batman offering.

And any feel good momentum was destroyed for me in TDKR when he faked his death for no reason. I could buy him faking his death as Batman if he wanted to stop being a crimefighter, but not as Bruce Wayne too. I don't know about you, but if I was mourning over the death of somebody I cared about and then found out they're living it up elsewhere without telling me, I'd be extremely pissed off. I don't give a damn how much inheritance you leave behind to somebody, giving your friends and family unnecessary grief by faking your death is a reprehensible thing to do. TDK and TDKR would've been far better to me if their respective endings had the truth about Harvey being told and Bruce ends his crusade as Batman and follows his his parents' footsteps to become a philanthropist. That's how you uphold integrity.

The truth about Harvey was told. Bruce did try to do that. In fact Bruce did at the end. He gave the manor to the city to be used to house the orphaned children of the city. But that isn't a flaw. It's something you didn't you like or couldn't accept. Him faking his death as Bruce Wayne goes back to Alfred saying that he never wanted him to come back to Gotham because there was nothing left for him there but pain and tragedy.