I am watching The Dark Knight Rises tonight, and I must say, it’s a great movie! Wow, I was expecting to be like: “Another Batman movie? Whatever.” But it really is compelling.
The only part of this movie that falls flat for me (aside from the silly ending of The Dark Knight, where they blame Batman for the murder of Harvey Dent, rather than just say the Joker’s henchmen did it) is that we’re supposed to believe it’s been years since the last chapter, and he can still come back wearing the same stuff. Look, I was still nice and slim a few years ago, but now I have a beer belly (just in time for a new poll of women to claim slim guys are the hottest: just my luck!), and I don’t believe this scenario where Batman can just get back into his old costume! Where are all the scenes of him trying to squeeze back into his old body armor and not fitting, or showing his big fat tummy hanging out the bottom of his Batman costume shirt while his utility belt hangs on for dear life, asking Alfred what happened? (Alfred could say: “Perhaps you shouldn’t have drank so much champagne and eaten all that rich restaurant food, or sat around the house for so long, sir…”) Then the movie could have been called: The Dark Knight Gains!
No, for this movie to be realistic, Alfred would have had to order that Nutrisystems diet plan, only to be countermanded by Bruce Wayne, claiming everyone would know he was the Batman if he got all skinny all of a sudden. So then Bruce Wayne goes to get liposuction and erases the doctor’s memory afterwards, while always wearing a fat suit as Bruce Wayne in public. (Or maybe he could use the Nutrisystems diet plan to lose weight, and that could be a lucrative product placement deal to help pay for the movie, as well as having Batman be an endorsing spokesman for Nutrisystems in television commercials afterwards!)
Now that would have been more realistic! Or how about Bruce Wayne getting busted for steroids and HGH? That would have added another element of contemporaneous plot into this otherwise wonderfully zeigeisty movie experience.
Oh, and for that Batman voice, shouldn’t he have to wear one of those toy Darth Vader masks with the voice enhancement? Then nobody would take him seriously, so they’d underestimate him, and he could win more easily (now that he’s all old and stuff).
Oh, well: maybe they can work these ideas into the next movie: The Dark Knight Slims!
(Okay, there are other problems with this movie too, but please don't get mad at me for revealing them.
First off, apart from the earlier issue I mentioned, couldn't Bruce Wayne simply say he never authorized the trades, and wouldn't the fact that someone broke in to the NYSE prove he didn't do it? {So shouldn't there have been some super-secret cyber-hacking scene from a remote location?} But I suppose that cyber crime isn't very interesting cinematically, so they have to have a big heist scene. {I have an old joke sketch about a cyber crime movie, with a bad guy and a good guy just typing on their computers, and action movie music playing the whole time, because it really is boring to watch hacking in progress, since it's just someone sitting at a computer and typing: that's why they had all those silly graphics in the movie Hackers.}
Oh, and does this movie have a Bush-era anti-French bias? I mean, come on: Marion Cotillard is French, and she turns out to be the badguy gal. So doesn't this continue the anti-France sentiment started during the Iraq War? {I knew it!} And clearly Bruce Wayne would rather be with a back-stabbing thief than a French person: so it's obvious what the subtext of this movie is, right? {Take that, France! If only you'd been more polite to American tourists! You never know which one might be Batman, or any number of other American superheroes!} [Just kidding: I love France!])
(Okay, there are other problems with this movie too, but please don't get mad at me for revealing them.
First off, apart from the earlier issue I mentioned, couldn't Bruce Wayne simply say he never authorized the trades, and wouldn't the fact that someone broke in to the NYSE prove he didn't do it? {So shouldn't there have been some super-secret cyber-hacking scene from a remote location?} But I suppose that cyber crime isn't very interesting cinematically, so they have to have a big heist scene. {I have an old joke sketch about a cyber crime movie, with a bad guy and a good guy just typing on their computers, and action movie music playing the whole time, because it really is boring to watch hacking in progress, since it's just someone sitting at a computer and typing: that's why they had all those silly graphics in the movie Hackers.}
Oh, and does this movie have a Bush-era anti-French bias? I mean, come on: Marion Cotillard is French, and she turns out to be the bad
