Re-Evaluating Bad Movies

Nothing redeeming? Not even Rosario Dawson's boobs?

Watch Trance and then get back to me.

This isn't a bad movie, just one where the flaws are more and more apparent.

The Dark Knight Rises

I know I sound like a broken record. I've said time and time again that, for me, the Christopher Nolan Batman films are fun but heavily flawed and those flaws at the time of their releases were cast aside and ignored by the ultra-fans who have since moved on to other films and franchises. For me personally, the Nolan Batman movies, and for the most part all of his films, are ones where the more I watch them the more those flaws stick out. Like Chinese water-drip torture they just pound me in the face. I actually quite enjoyed The Dark Knight Rises when it first came out. I thought there were vast improvements in the fight sequences and thought that this was Christian Bale's best outing at Bruce Wayne by far. I recently popped it on while I worked out, something to keep me busy without me having to focus too much. I gotta say, it was rough.

I'll say it before and I'll say it again; Chris Nolan can't do dialogue. He can make a good shot, he just can't write a 'real' scene. One of the most cringe-worthy moments of Interstellar was at the very beginning during the parent-teacher conference. The principal says to Cooper something to the effect of 'I know you were a famous NASA pilot, and I also know that your wife is dead leaving you two children to raise on a farm....' His whole character is laid out in two sentences. Nothing is left to the audience, it's just 13 seconds of 'here ya go!' It's lazy writing at its best and Chris Nolan does it all.the.time. In Dark Knight Rises, the second scene of the movie is a party at Wayne Manor honoring Harvey Dent Day. Over the next twenty minutes we are told several times how the Dent Act has cleaned up the streets, how Gordon is essentially useless because the streets are cleaned up, how Gordon should relax because the streets are cleaned up, and how Blake is going to end up policing small-time crimes because the streets are cleaned up. In case you didn't get it, the streets are cleaned up. It's a rather interesting choice to make because the 'streets being cleaned up' don't have a major effect on the overall outcome of the movie. In fact, it kind of flies in the face of Batman Begins in the sense that Ra's al Ghul wanted to wipe out Gotham because it was a terrible city, plagued by violence and crime.  Batman stopped him and by the time the third movie rolls around it is beaten into our brains that those same streets are 'cleaned up.'  So why do Bane and Talia want to destroy the city?  For revenge?  Then why not just kill Bruce Wayne?  You could argue that Bane is a terrorist because he was 'expelled' from the League of Shadows, but that doesn't explain why Talia would want to basically act the opposite of her father.  Ra's wanted to destroy Gotham out of a misplaced sense of righteousness to make society better.  Talia just wants to blow it up because she's evil.  She didn't do it to save Gotham because by the time DKR starts it's a city that doesn't need saving anymore.  It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense and that's because I think in a way Chris Nolan gave up.  I'm not saying he shit the bed, I just think there was an element of 'I can put whatever I want in this script and people will still love it.'

The main factor that says to me that Nolan was lazier on this film than others is the fact that it turns into another stupid, boring 'ticking clock' movie with another stupid, boring nuclear bomb complete with military brass and politicians looking on as if I'm watching The Rock or Under Siege.  Seriously?  This is a Batman movie.  And it takes months for this stupid, boring bomb to go off?  Why?  So we can watch Gotham crumble in the meantime?  But we've already established that Gotham is an alright place nowadays, why make it crumble?  Because Talia wants to do it?  But it's entirely different from what Ra's wanted to do, it doesn't make sense.  See what I'm saying?  These are all little things that could have been fixed by just going over the scrip and coming to terms with the fact that you can't have everything in the movie.  Instead we're peppered with a lot of erroneous and sometimes just weird scenes that easily could have been cut from the almost 3 hour movie.

Speaking of lazy, there's only one purpose for any secondary character in this movie; more exposition.  The opening dinner party scene is nothing but 'streets cleaned up' and 'Bruce Wayne needs to turn on his reactor after he gets a girlfriend.'  In fact, there's a intercut sequence where Selina Kyle is walking through Wayne Manor and it cuts from Alfred talking to Miranda Tate back to Selina then back to Alfred, but now he's talking to Tate and Daggett.  We then cut back to Selina Kyle but when we cut back now it's Tate and Daggett, no Alfred.  It's so fast, it feels like such a mangled, confusing scene and all it does is force more information on the audience.  And when Alfred isn't doing that he's telling stories to Bruce so we pick up on every bit of foreshadowing and backstory without leaving anything for us to naturally figure out.  And don't even get me started on Daggett explaining the Clean Slate to Selina Kyle.  *shudders*  Again, so many of these scenes feel so forced and weird.

What's another example of a weird scene?  When Batman first appears in the movie.  The cops are chasing Bane and Co. on motorcycles through a tunnel.  All the lights turn off and back on for some reason to little effect and Batman takes down a bad guy.  He then climbs off his Batpod and pulls out a big, futuristic looking gun.  He fires it and a few sparks pop off on another baddie's motorcyle.  He then lowers his gun and as he does you hear a gunshot.  Batman doesn't react, he doesn't even move.  He just looks at his gun and looks back at a young cop who just says 'sorry.'  Batman gets back on the Batpod and rides off.  At this point the bad guy he shot at about 10 seconds before is finally shown falling off his motorcycle with cops apprehending him, about 10 seconds after he shot him.  So what was this scene supposed to be?  Was it supposed to be funny?  Some sort of screwball kind of sequence?  And why wait for so many shots before showing the other bad guy being taken down?  That's just more bad editing but the scene itself is just so bizarre.  Why even have it?  And unfortunately there are several scenes like this, ones that could have been cut because they don't contribute to the story and don't move anything in any direction at all.

And last nitpick; did they just go with every first-take of Bane?  Heck, his voice even cracks at one point like a 14 year old kid ('Was getting caught part of your master plan?' 'Of coooo*crack*urse).

This entire post isn't to say that DKR is a bad movie.  There's a lot that I enjoy.  I think the action is heads and tails above that of the previous two movies.  I actually really enjoy Christian Bale in this one.  I like a lot of the stuff in the cave prison.   I like how they treat Batman as a 'mythical figure' rather than a dude who just shows up when the police force is too dumb to do anything.  That said, it's a movie that like other Nolan films with maybe the exception of Memento is one that really rubs me raw the more I watch it.  There are some great scenes in the trilogy however I don't think any of them are movies that I'll ever sit down and watch from beginning to end ever again. 

I believe it was to sink Wayne's fortune. It was related to Selina stealing his fingerprints at the beginning. But again, a lot of that stuff didn't have a tremendous effect on the outcome of the story, it's just filler.

Yeah it is, they allude to it at the beginning when Selina and Bruce are dancing and she tells him that 'a storm is coming.' The rich folks are ripped from their homes though after Bane tells the people to take back Gotham after revealing the truth about Harvey Dent and freeing the Blackgate prisoners.

We get it! You like the old Batman!

It's not that I just decided to just type about Dark Knight Rises or Chris Nolan because I was bored, I said I watched it again recently (a couple days ago) and these are things I saw throughout. Also, I said it didn't qualify it as a bad movie. Also, this is the first time I'm really writing about DKR. Besides, it's not like this movie isn't without its detractors, people generally regard it as the weak link of the Dark Knight trilogy. I'm not typing about why Goodfellas or Citizen Kane are terrible or something just to seek attention.

Like Terence Malick.

Even trying to find something critical to say about him that's tongue in cheek is a difficult task.

If you go backwards, you can mock him for Kundun, The Age of Innocence and New York New York. You can even take some shots at Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Hey, Malick's name does not belong in a bad movie thread.