The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

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tenia
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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1376 Post by tenia » Sat Jul 21, 2018 5:59 am

nitin wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:59 pm
I have never understood the dislike of TDKR but the liking of many other superhero movies.
When you see in the US how most Marvel movies are received, including Thor 2, that's indeed probably the bigger myestery.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1377 Post by connor » Sat Jul 21, 2018 11:11 am

nitin wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:59 pm
I have never understood the dislike of TDKR but the liking of many other superhero movies.
Same.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1378 Post by bearcuborg » Sat Jul 21, 2018 12:16 pm

This series has always been a mixed bag for me. I appreciate Heath of course, and I thought Bane and Ras were handled well. However both films suffer from too many villains in secondary stories that aren’t all that convincing. I like the realism but also adored the mood and atmosphere of the Burton films.

Nolan (who for me has never made a film that was more than passable) dabbles a bit in politics, but it’s all so superficial that it wouldn’t be out of place in a Lucas prequel.

They have yet to make the perfect Batman movie.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1379 Post by nitin » Sun Jul 22, 2018 10:59 pm

tenia wrote:
Sat Jul 21, 2018 5:59 am
nitin wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:59 pm
I have never understood the dislike of TDKR but the liking of many other superhero movies.
When you see in the US how most Marvel movies are received, including Thor 2, that's indeed probably the bigger myestery.
Out of the ones I have seen (basically up to Phase 2), I found Ant Man and Ultron worse than Thor 2 which at least had some great visuals (the funeral for example).

ps: did you see my PM?

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1380 Post by tenia » Mon Jul 23, 2018 4:10 am

nitin wrote:
Sun Jul 22, 2018 10:59 pm
tenia wrote:
Sat Jul 21, 2018 5:59 am
nitin wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 8:59 pm
I have never understood the dislike of TDKR but the liking of many other superhero movies.
When you see in the US how most Marvel movies are received, including Thor 2, that's indeed probably the bigger myestery.
Out of the ones I have seen (basically up to Phase 2), I found Ant Man and Ultron worse than Thor 2 which at least had some great visuals (the funeral for example).
I found Ultron absolutely awful at pretty much every level, from jokes falling flat, no visual flair, an overall look that makes it look like a Bulgarian-shot DTV, and an absolutely unbearable length.
Ant Man is one I actually would put slightly over the rest. It seemed un-ambitious in a lighter better way, and I really liked that. It's still a bit overlong, but at "only" 117 minutes, it seemed also better paced than most overbloated recent Marvel movies.
Thor 2 is pretty much like Ultron to me, though it looks a bit better for sure, but it still felt like an awful self-parody, a movie that doesn't really know how to handle the extremely heavy-handed seriousness of the universe while at the same time making it unwillingly campy. Branagh was better at handling this Shakespearean universe (but was a poor choice for any action oriented sequence) while Waitiki understood how silly this all could be. Thor 2 kind of chose none of them and ended up falling flat on both accounts.

But in any case, I found most Phase 2 movies to be mediocre at best, but there clearly is a positive US bias regarding these movies that you won't find in France, where reviews (but also viewers and BO results) are easily more mixed. What would get, say, a 8. something on RT would only be at 6.5 or 7 here.

nitin wrote:
Sun Jul 22, 2018 10:59 pm
ps: did you see my PM?
The last one I received from you is from June about the 2 Carlotta releases. I thought I answered it already but will answer it again in case I didn't.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1381 Post by nitin » Mon Jul 23, 2018 8:02 am

The highest I would personally rate any of the Marvel ones I have seen is 7.5-8/10, which is what I would give Guardians of the Galaxy. Iron Man would get 7.5 and the others 7 or lower.

I rate each of Nolan’s Batman films between an 8-9, although I realise most people do not think the same of TDKR.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1382 Post by Drucker » Thu Sep 06, 2018 9:54 am

Ten years later, I revised The Dark Knight in 70mm IMAX last night. I always enjoyed the film, and saw it twice upon release. This was several years before I started taking film seriously, and I wanted to come away from my viewing with a deeper understanding of just what I liked about it. I didn't care for Memento as a high schooler, nor Dark Knight Rises or Inception. However, I loved Dunkirk and Interstellar...and in large part I'd really say I just liked the films, they were a good time at the movies.

I've never been able to wrap my head around the political message argument about Rises vs. Dark Knight, and whether the former negates the latter. But I didn't come away from my viewing with any thoughts on that. Instead, my big takeaway from the film is just how in sync it is with a theme that I realized runs throughout Nolan's work: either the ultimate failure of the ability to ever be a "hero" or its ultimate emptiness.

Throughout the Dark Knight Trilogy, you have groups of individuals (good and bad) determined to restore "order" and "balance" to Gotham. Bane, Joker, and League of Shadows clearly want to do this, but so does Batman. So does Jim Gordon, for that matter, that claims "I must save Dent!" and feels he is the only non-corrupt cop (or one of the few), and takes a personal stake in preserving the legacy of Harvey Dent (another "hero" for us). Not only do none of these people succeed in their vision, but they all make things worse! Bane's doomsday plot, Joker's boat explosion, Batman's quest to only inspire good: they all fail. Is the political subtext that power belongs to the people, and authoritarians both good and bad, ultimately lead to negative outcomes? I'd like to believe but probably not.

I'm not well-read in Comic book world, but from what I've seen in other films and what I know of the genre: superheroes are held up as the one saving grace against order/chaos, safety/violence, etc. Perhaps not always, perhaps there are exceptions and grey areas, but that is the general idea. Nolan's Batman films turn that idea on their head. Three gigantic, bombastic films about how utterly ridiculous the idea of a superhero is.

As I said, I think this theme runs throughout his work. I'd have to revisit most of his films, but Dunkirk is a war film about a battle that was lost. Interstellar and Inception are both films where the protagonist "succeeds" but in such empty ways--in the former it follows 30 or so years of despair, and bringing pain to one's own family. Inception is a success, but we ultimately never know if our hero actually finds any sort of closure. And of course Memento is what Memento is...

Again, I'd have to revisit most of his non-Batman films to see if my idea holds. Not sure if these thoughts have been placed by others in earlier pages on this thread, but this was my takeaway last night. I still feel the one failing of his films is they are just so rushed. Even with 2.5 hours, there is too much going on, not enough space to breathe. It works here, it didn't work for me in Inception, and maybe I like the last two a lot because there's less going on.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1383 Post by tenia » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:08 am

I'm not sure that most people are going out of these movies thinking Batman is ridiculous. For all I've seen around me, most people were cheering Batman at the end of TDK when he agrees to do the dirty work in order to capture the Joker, and when he agrees taking the blame at the end. The movie is rooting for Batman in the end, giving him a final iconic monologue from Gordon. "He's done nothing wrong, why do we chase him ?" even asks Gordon's son.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1384 Post by Drucker » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:28 am

Not that Batman is ridiculous, but the idea of "heroism" itself more or less is.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1385 Post by tenia » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:36 am

I don't think that would change much the feeling left by the movie at the end, which to me is that Batman is a wonderful hero willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good and how lucky are Gotham people to have him.
It might be a deeper message, but then, I'm not sure the movie succeeds in conveying it properly.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1386 Post by Big Ben » Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:37 am

Drucker wrote:
Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:28 am
Not that Batman is ridiculous, but the idea of "heroism" itself more or less is.
This is pretty much how I see it. I think Nolan believes that people need an ideal to believe in but it cannot be a billionaire playboy all the time and that when faced with new challenges your morals will be tested. They may need someone like that sometimes but they really need to strive for ideals. The entire facade at the end of The Dark Knight is shown to not work at all in Rises and it's only until authority is honest about it.

To be totally honest though I think the inability of folks to agree on a lot of thematic coherence at times is a weakness in Nolan's storytelling.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1387 Post by Mr Sausage » Thu Sep 06, 2018 11:29 am

I don’t think this series has a coherent politics. Nor is it trying to. Its random smattering of evocative but unlinked political beats serves more as a Rorschach blot for critics.

The films are probably thematically coherent. I don’t think the argument that there isn’t a consensus about its themes necessarily means they’re poorly communicated. If that were the case we’d have to include in that category many of the greatest works of narrative art. Works of a sufficient complexity produce the same effect.

Nolan’s trilogy is far from original in its questioning of heroism. Even my very small acquaintance with comics has turned up this theme: from Alan Moore’s Watchmen, to the comics that served as direct inspiration ( The Dark Knight Returns , Batman Year One ), to Batman comics like Arkham Asylum and Moore’s The Killing Joke , comics have been questioning, ridiculing, and even undermining superheroism for decades. Batman especially has made much out of the darkness of its knight, often questioning whether Batman is any less mad than the villains he’s populated Arkham with.

With his origins in noir and birth from trauma, Batman has lent himself to more skepticism, questioning, and anti-herodom than other heroes probably get. Nolan’s films reflect that, but they’re pretty tame versions of it. I don’t even think they’re ridiculing superheros. I think they’re trying to show that, more than any of his individual actions or the truth behind them, Batman works best as a symbol. A symbol of hope to galvanize a dying city, a symbol of unchecked violence for a city to rally against, and a symbol of rebellion behind which good people can rise up and take back their city, and finally a symbol of self sacrifice. Batman’s importance comes in the good actions and the sacrifices he provokes in others (Rachel, Gordon, Catwoman, Blake, and lesser figures like Modine’s commissioner). That includes the unintended negative consequences of letting his symbol ossify and become an ugly parody in the last film, requiring him to rise and create a new and even more necessary one. I think the films are closer to saying that individual action is good but not enough in itself. It has to also serve as a larger model for others. I don’t think this is especially political, tho’. It’s more a conception of how Batman functions.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1388 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:05 pm

Murdoch wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 2:00 pm
SpoilerShow
It felt very odd to me that Dent would listen to Joker, the man that killed his lover, and focus his revenge on Batman. Not to mention how dramatically his entire demeanor changes afterward. I can understand that suffering severe burns and losing a loved one affects a person, but I never bought his sudden transformation to this supervillain overnight.
SpoilerShow
You're forgetting that the only reason the Joker lives is because of the coin flip. It's the one remaining strand of his morality after going through something so traumatic, and he inverts it into something dangerous for everyone in his cross-hairs.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1389 Post by Roscoe » Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:33 pm

flyonthewall2983 wrote:
Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:05 pm
Murdoch wrote:
Fri Jul 20, 2018 2:00 pm
SpoilerShow
It felt very odd to me that Dent would listen to Joker, the man that killed his lover, and focus his revenge on Batman. Not to mention how dramatically his entire demeanor changes afterward. I can understand that suffering severe burns and losing a loved one affects a person, but I never bought his sudden transformation to this supervillain overnight.
SpoilerShow
You're forgetting that the only reason the Joker lives is because of the coin flip. It's the one remaining strand of his morality after going through something so traumatic, and he inverts it into something dangerous for everyone in his cross-hairs.
SpoilerShow
But part of the question is why does Dent bother with the coin flip at all? Why not just kill the Clown then and there, regardless of how it turns out? If we're talking chaos, and all.

Myself, I could never quite get past the idea that somebody's able to walk around with all that exposed raw muscle tendon and eyeball.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1390 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Thu Sep 06, 2018 4:24 pm

Roscoe wrote:
Thu Sep 06, 2018 3:33 pm
SpoilerShow
But part of the question is why does Dent bother with the coin flip at all? Why not just kill the Clown then and there, regardless of how it turns out? If we're talking chaos, and all.

Myself, I could never quite get past the idea that somebody's able to walk around with all that exposed raw muscle tendon and eyeball.
SpoilerShow
I don't think he embraces chaos in the third act as openly as Joker does. His sense of justice is inverted, but not destroyed.

Leaving the damaged half of the face for so long was a mistake I think. If perhaps his face was covered up, only to do away with it at a more crucial moment towards the end would have made more sense.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1391 Post by tenia » Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:20 am

Went into a "older super hero movies" marathon with my GF and rewatched the Nolan trilogy. Unfortunately, I spent most of it struggling with all its flaws, that I wasn't able to put aside anymore. The endless plot constructions of Batman Begins and TDKR have become a chore to sit through, we kept laughing everytime Bale yells as Batman to thugs ("WHERE IS IT ?!! TELL ME WHERE IS IT ?!!"), Zimmer's score is quite a step-down from Elfman's one (we rewatched Batman and Batman Returns 2 weeks ago), the female characters feel very poorly sketched (especially BB Rachel), and most of the fight sequences are not very well edited (the monastery one in BB is in particular a visual eyesore in this regard).

TDKR, as a whole, probably combines all of those times 10, because on top of these more structural issues, it seems like the screenwriters took so much care avoiding smaller but still important mistakes that they seemed to stop caring for the third one :
SpoilerShow
pointless details like Bruce's leg being crippled but fixed in 2 sec, an army of over-armed thugs that seemingly can't shoot straight into a crowd of police officers, Bat-vehicles that are very powerful but only when good guys are using them (when it's driven by the bad guys, they're pretty much shooting blanks), the "hell-pit" that actually is very easy to climb but be careful of that ONE jump in the middle of it, and probably the most problematic : Gordon, Wayne and Alfred suddenly turning worst detectives ever because... the plot needs them to be, basically.
That's how you end up with a 2h45 overbloated (sorry : "epic") conclusion that actually looks like a condensate of every problematic part of the past movies.

That left me with the still-incredible Ledger perf, overall good perfs from Caine (though his accent felt often overly heavily forced and got tiring), Oldman and Eckhart, and the incredibly bluffing VFXs.
Last edited by tenia on Wed Jul 01, 2020 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012)

#1392 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:30 pm

knives wrote:
Thu Aug 15, 2013 11:17 pm
Harry percieves it that way and certainly Milius wrote it that way, but Siegel directs it in a way that shows Harry as a failure and that his ideology is thoroughly flawed. The film goes a long way to show why due process is necessary and how Harry's circumvention only works to allow Scorpio to escape. Siegel makes a point to show that had Harry just done old school detective work and followed through on the law Scorpio would be captured far more easily. Harry is made out to be his own worst enemy.
Eastwood was almost going to be Harvey Dent on the 60's tv show, but it was canceled before they got to it.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1393 Post by Mr Sausage » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:40 pm

tenia wrote: overall good perfs from Caine (though his over-done accent gets tiring).
Sorry, I’m a bit confused on this point. What is it you mean?

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1394 Post by Nasir007 » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:46 pm

I find all 3 Batman movies to be kinda crazy overrated - I know that's not a proper term of criticism but I just gotta say I simply don't see what people see in them. The obsession around TDK when it premiered was crazy. It was as if a new Citizen Kane had been made. That movie definitely permeated the zeitgeist in a way few movies have. A good movie for sure, but holy hell the praise was out of hand for it.

And TDKR is straight-up garbage. An absolutely ridiculous movie that makes no sense at all.

The success of TDK cannot be underestimated though. It is still cited as a touchstone by so many film-makers. Again, I simply don't get it. So it's me not them.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1395 Post by Drucker » Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:57 pm

The revisionism about this trilogy is shocking to me. When BB came out I was working at Party City and had a co-worker who was a diehard Batman fan and he was jubilant about Nolan taking the reigns and making the film more serious. He couldn't stand the 90s films, which these days if you read film Twitter are getting a lot more love than the Nolan films.

I revisited The Dark Knight as part of it's 10 year anniversary a few years ago and saw it in IMAX 70MM and it still holds up. The chase scene after Dent is arrested, done with all real effects, is still incredible. The performances are great, it's a good time. It's a big dumb great action film, incredibly entertaining and has just the right amount of darkness and violence. Not sure why people have turned on it so much.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1396 Post by Glowingwabbit » Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:30 pm

Drucker wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 2:57 pm
The revisionism about this trilogy is shocking to me. When BB came out I was working at Party City and had a co-worker who was a diehard Batman fan and he was jubilant about Nolan taking the reigns and making the film more serious. He couldn't stand the 90s films, which these days if you read film Twitter are getting a lot more love than the Nolan films.
I wouldn't say it's revisionism. I've long disliked Nolan's films and know many others that do, but like myself felt like a pariah for speaking up about it. I think that climate has changed now. I'm also one of the people on Twitter saying I'd prefer to revisit the 90s batman films to Nolan's. They aren't good films, but they are at least fun and not drenched in Nolan's neo-liberal pandering.

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1397 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jul 01, 2020 3:56 pm

I cannot stand The Dark Knight Rises, which is representative of the gripes about Nolan's flaws that I often read, here and elsewhere, about the entire series- but I really like the other two and unabashedly love The Dark Knight. It's successful for many reasons, some of them drawn from the same well of why the Joker character has received criticism (see my series of comments about his- or more like "its" 'personification of an idea of confident nihilism' in other threads) because for the flip side of the reasons people feel validated by his existence to represent their nihilistic psychological part looking for attention, he also represents pure chaos and disorder that destroys a stable sense of existence for those of us who are following the rules; and possibly even forces us to question them- and our similarities to the villains in our lives in shared characteristics. The lack of clear moral ground becomes so blurry, while also serving as an entertaining piece of entertainment, that it builds to a very insecure grey space that shatters the very glamorization of vigilantism that has populated the dreams of repressed individuals since childhood, daydreaming of how they'd 'save the day.'

The film says that this doesn't exist and shows you why, even implicating you in the process of holding worldviews that are dangerous (so what does that, then, say about the ethical weight of the 'rules' we follow that the Joker opposes?) This leaves one helplessly void of the clear virtues and ideals cinema normally makes easy for us, especially in a blockbuster, all within the faux-safety-net of an actual action blockbuster. I remember feeling challenged and philosophically provoked to discomfort while simultaneously enjoying a wild cinematic ride of performance and spectacle, to the point where- when the final lines were delivered in the theatre after a montage of how he will sacrifice his reputation and undo the glorification for utilitarian ends- I was breathless.

As the film ended, the music, montage, and all the cinematic tricks of catharsis aided a crescendo of thought-provoking anti-catharsis to create something deeply satisfying and troubling at the same time (encouraging only in transforming Batman into an existential film noir antihero embracing fatalism yet carrying on into the unknown in a new chapter, one that didn't matter because all that needed to be said had been said). It's like a combination of food that shouldn't go together but just works perfectly for some reason. I can understand why Nolan doesn't work for some, but count me among the crowd who thinks this is fun, smart, and emotionally-flooring, and not because of the "neo-liberal pandering" (which I admit can be distracting, but I guess I see that as a tangible checkpoint to the real meat that forces a forfeit of tangible constructs, thereby minimizing its importance in the scheme of bigger questions).

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1398 Post by domino harvey » Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:14 pm

For a series I don’t care that much about one way or the other, it’s amazing to me that I’m nevertheless one of the most positive voices on this forum about the third film

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1399 Post by Glowingwabbit » Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:19 pm

Domino, somehow that just seems very on brand for you :D

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Re: The Dark Knight Trilogy (Christopher Nolan, 2005-2012)

#1400 Post by therewillbeblus » Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:22 pm

It makes perfect sense to me that if you don't like what the series has to offer, the third one could be most pure in meeting your wavelength of enjoyment since it completely abandons the strengths I see in the other films!

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