The Dark Knight Rises [R]

I thought the first two were filmed in Chicago and the last in Pittsburgh.

 

I'm quite sure the 'Batbike weird 180 degree turn against the wall' bit in the second film was on State Street in Chicago.

 

Maybe it's just my weird perspective, but to me that voice made total sense. I'm bilingual, and don't have an accent in either language, but I find that if I'm speaking in one language and need to use words from the other language, I'll say them with an accent. So to me the weird voice kind of made sense - he wants to make himself a different person while Batman, and that goofy voice is a way to do it. It bothered me less than plenty of other decisions in that movie. (Hey Bane - how about stationing a goon outside the prison so that if Batman escapes you toss him back into the pit? Thanks - I'm here for supervillain consulting all week.)

Anyway, the Nolan Batman movies certainly had their issues, and I thought the third was a much better spectacle than a movie, but they're entertaining, reasonably well made and rewatchable. For a superhero movie, there's really not all that much more I'm hoping for. For all that people complain about the Nolan Batman films, there's Ghostrider, Green Lantern* (space chickens!), X-Men 2 and 3, Johah Hex, Catwoman, Superman Returns, Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Spiderman 3, etc. etc. It's a really long list of shitty movies - the expectation wasn't Citizen Kane, it was an entertaining superhero movie that let you suspend belief without feeling stupid. Some people don't see it that way - YMMV.

*It's amazing how badly that was bungled - save the space corps stuff until the sequel; start small with some garden variety crooks for god's sake!

 

Well they are not terrible features, just mostly very disappointing. I'd agree that they are better than many superhero movies, but that isn't exactly a very high bar to clear. I mostly balk at the exaggerated praise they got. Especially TDK. That was actually likened to "Heat" by some critics.

Part of the problem is that there seem to be different expectations out there in terms of what a superhero movie should do. I'm personally not too fond of the super-serious approach used by Nolan and to a significantly worse degree, Snyder. I prefer the lighter tone employed by Whedon for "The Avengers" and Jon Favreau and Shane Black for "Iron Man" (not the second one, which was perhaps the worst superhero sequel not called "Spiderman 3").

 

But those are a completely different style of filmmaking. I'd also argue that going "cute" with Whedon style films doesn't work well for certain characters. When you have Iron Man being played by a ham, an inherently hammy charaThor and some lesser known heroes, you can do hammy. We've seen attempts at a hammy Batman - it did not go well. At all. I also liked the second Iron Man, actually, to a limited extent.

I think TDK featured an amazing performance by Heath Ledger, but the fundamental problem with Batman is that he doesn't grow as character, because he's a monomaniacal loner and borderline (if not full) psychopath. Batman has always been defined by his villains, so after the origin story, there's actually not much left. He is who he is, and basically hasn't changed, including in the comics. So I'm not sure what people were expecting with him in film - a great character arc?
Demos' post above (which I forgot to respond to) complained about Nolan's Bruce Wayne. OK, what about Tim Burton's? Does that character grow? (And this is aside from Burton being the most overrated director alive today. I give you - Dark Shadows!) Iron Man's 3 movies at least have a consistent arc because the character changes: movie 1, origin, movie 2, getting past daddy issues/health issues, movie 3, recognizing what is really important and getting past the fear of making that choice. Not always artfully done, occasionally silly (what exactly is Stane's plan in the first one - to live the rest of his life in a giant robot death suit?), but Stark was always a real human with real problems. Batman never was, so expecting the films to provide that has been strange to me. A Batman who "grows and changes" isn't Batman as we know him, and interestingly I don't believe any comic treatment of him (though I'm far from an expert) has ever featured a future Batman as anything other than an angry old recluse, with the possible exception of Kingdom Come, and even there his new attitude is the result of a near apocalypse.

If you don't think these movies are Oscar contenders, sure, I agree with that. But they're not intended to be - it's escapism, and it's escapism very well done.

 

That's the one! I spent a few months on Division/Western about 6-7 years back when it was in the very early stages of being done back up, right by those cool metallic Puerto Rican street flags. Do miss the place, great auld city all in all.

 

It was Heinz Field that they blew up.

 

The major problem with Nolan directing is his prior filmography. The Dark Knight films are therefore, a major disappointment given his previous efforts. May not be fair, but when viewed against his body of work, this trilogy does not compare favorably.

 

I first saw him in Winterbottom's "24 Hour Party People," which is a must see if you're a fan of the Manchester music scene in the 80s.

I saw "Philomena" yesterday and thought he was good in it. He was good in "Tropic Thunder."

 

@stanleyt Have to turn 24 Hour Party People back on, on that note. Haven't seen that in a good decade or so by now, and amazingly it's all on Youtube. It's also got Paddy Considine who's a pretty underrated actor in his own right - you might know him from Dead Man's Shoes (great UK independent film), In America and the guy Matt Damon has to instruct through a busy London train station via mobile phone in the second Bourne film.

 

We agree to disagree. This trilogy was disappointing and I really hated and was completely annoyed with the mumbling Bane. Moreover, the films are not particularly as adventurous or as thought provoking as Memento or Inception.

 

Nah, in America he's known as one of the two local detectives in Hot Fuzz

Incidentally, I've never really understood Coogan's appeal. He's OK, but my favorite thing I've seen him in is definitely Tropic Thunder.