Batman - The Dark Knight Rises

[Force Guy]

I'll go against the grain and be blunt: as a whole, I thought it sucked.  Seriously.  Too many parts that simply defied fundamental logic (as has been stated).  It grated on my nerves that most of Bane's dialogue was unintelligible.  It gets a solid D- in my book. 

[efranks]

I'm actually happy I'm not the only one that had so many problems with it.  I figured I was going to be one of the only ones talking about how badly I thought it fell down while everyone else was praising its genius.  I felt throughout the movie that I was trying to catch up and as if I'd somehow missed 30 minutes from the beginning where they'd actually explained all the stuff I had questions about...but they didn't.

Spoilerish stuff below:

Quite a few of the problems Bill had with it I did also.  I didn't have as big of a problem with the final flight, but the redirecting of the truck and things like that, yeah, weak.

I accidently heard about the Miranda thing and it panned out, but the little kid, that I was surprised at.  I thought through most of the movie that maybe what was theorized before the movie was wrong and Bane really was the kid.  Loved the Liam Neeson cameo, that was a huge surprise.

Also didn't care for how Wayne just showed up back in the city, finds the one person that he really needs to help him and then takes on the bad guys.  I could have taken the healing part in the cave if it hadn't been piled on top of a limping, cane using Wayne at the start when it appeared the only thing that helped him back into the cowl was some fancy prosthetic device for his knee...and now he's healed his back and climbs out of a pit, which requires a huge physical leap on knees a 20 year veteran football lineman doesn't suffer from?  Whatever.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt getting so much screen time had me believing that he'd end up in the cowl at some point but I see where they went with it at the end.  But, even assuming there will be another Batman movie after this one, without Bale and Nolan, does anyone think that WB will bring JGL back for some role?  And what will that role be?  Robin?  Nightwing?  The new Batman?  I don't really get the time they spent establishing him when I doubt that they'll really continue to build the franchise on him either as an actor or as a character.

I will say that I definitely want to see it again.  I want to see if, on second viewing, did I somehow miss little things that helped hold the movie together or was I right after the first viewing and they really weren't there making the movie as disjointed as I think it is.  I thought the idea of the story was solid, but I felt there was too much extra in there that they got away from the heart of it.

   E...

[Matt_Fury]

I thought it was good overall.  It had a lot of parallels with The Dark Knight Returns comic...so it kind of made the ending make sense.  They left it open for more, but I hope that this is it for this incarnation of Batman.

SPOILER ALERT





I think they did set up the batwing being able to get the bomb far enough away...they did have it outrunning missiles afterall.

[BillCable]

The world speed record for a helicopter is 250MPH.  And I assume that aircraft wasn't fitted with armor or weaponry.   

At world record speed, the farthest Batman could have flow in 90 seconds is 6.25 miles.  At least half the island of Gotham would still be in the initial blast radius.  The rest would burn.  And that's TOP SPEED, not accounting for lifting off from a dead stop in a powered-down aircraft dragging a half-ton (minimum) nuclear bomb.

The timing simply does not work out.  Not even remotely close.

[DSJ™]

The world speed record for a helicopter is 250MPH.  And I assume that aircraft wasn't fitted with armor or weaponry.   

Errrrr...... a tad faster... 

Sikorsky X2: 299.2mph

[Jayson]

What if the nuke detonated underwater? Wouldn't that diminish the blast radius? It probably cause one hell of a tsunami.

[MattCBR]

The Tumblers are bad ass... in the fact they are actual running vehicles... obviously the real versions would be worthless in the real world.

The rear end and tires weigh over a ton alone. There are some good videos on You-tube about it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKAx2VCpdLI&feature=related

[BillCable]

Errrrr...... a tad faster... 

Sikorsky X2: 299.2mph

I was going off Wikipedia.

My point is - the aircraft coulda been the Concorde, it wasn't getting 10 miles off-short in 90 seconds from a dead stop.

[Rob]

At world record speed, the farthest Batman could have flow in 90 seconds is 6.25 miles.  At least half the island of Gotham would still be in the initial blast radius. 

I thought they went out of their way to say the bomb had a 6 mile blast radius during the movie?  Do I remember that wrong?

[Jayson]

That is correct, they mentioned the 6 mi blast radius.

[BillCable]

The island (assuming it's similar to Manhattan) would be 10+ miles long.  Batman left from a few miles inland based on the panning shots.  You can't argue he departed 1/4 mile from the coast.  So even if he traveled 6.25 miles, he wouldn't be more than 6 miles from all points on the island... a good portion of it would be destroyed by the initial blast.  And the rest would be leveled by the resulting expansion of gases and debris.

[Nicklab]

I suspect that someone has failed to suspend their disbelief.

[BillCable]

There's a suspension of disbelief threshold that this movie crashed through.  Like I said, I could tolerate the bomb countdown, to the second, of an unstable fusion reactor.  I could tolerate the pretend vehicles and weapons.  But when they not only bend but shatter basic physics... that's where you lose me.  People may as well have been walking on the ceiling for as badly as they botched things with this movie.

[iFett]

I ended up seeing it on Saturday.....kept eyeing the emergency exit doors though (seriously)  Some things didn't make sense, but whatever.  Glad they left it open at the end for whoever to start it back up again.  The first two movies were on later that day on Spike or TNT so ended up seeing the trilogy all out of order, but that was okay.

Oh - and there was a couple behind me that brought their 3year old daughter... Really? Why?  The guy kept telling her to shut the **** up throughout the movie...didn't think that was cool, but not my kid.

[JediJman]

Oh - and there was a couple behind me that brought their 3year old daughter... Really? Why?  The guy kept telling her to shut the **** up throughout the movie...didn't think that was cool, but not my kid.

People are idiots.  My kids won't be seeing movies like this until they are weill into the teens, and even then it won't be @ the theater.  The public wants to blame video games on desensitizing kids today...how about 3 year olds watching crap like this?  I swear, crap like that should be reported to social services.  That's a serious lapse in parental judgement.

As for the movie itself, I'm net seeing it until Friday, but somewhat dispmayed by the intial reports on here.  At the end of the day, it's just an action flick and shouldn't be taken too seriously.  That said, I'm will Bill in getting frustrated with movies that don't take the time to follow the laws of physics.  If there's a bomb counting down from 60 seconds, don't show me 5 minutes of material on how they stop it.  Just make the bomb count down from 5 minutes!  Or pad your estimates and make it 10 minutes.  That's just lazy and poorly thought through.  I'm fine with aliens and weird powers and technology I don't understand, but mistakes like this do really annoy me.