Yes, The Dark Knight Rises has indeed risen. With the exception of a handful of countries that won’t be seeing Christopher Nolan’s film until August, Batman has flown around the world and, like a catty Catwoman, I have a few things to discuss behind his bat back.
It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the movie; my review was, like the nuclear power reactor, um, glowing.
That said, I had mentioned “some muddled plot points.” While I dared not breathe a word of objection last week, for fear of ruining the bats-perience, by now most of The Dark Knight Rises aficionados have seen light of day.
Note that HUGE SPOILERS are looming straight ahead. If for some reason, you’re still holding out — waiting for ticket prices to drop, a Netflix envelope to fall into your lap, or a masked hero to rescue you from some nasty prison situated below ground — stop reading now. As for the rest of you: Come fly with me, won’t you?
Bane (Tom Hardy):
- Standing on the stairs of the City Hall, he produces some sheets of paper and proceeds to read a supposed tell-all confession from Commissioner Gordon. But the villain has just attacked the City; who’s going to believe him? (Even if it is true.)
- Why doesn’t the SEC simply refuse the bogus trade made by Bane? Last I heard, Wall Street brokers surely know fraud when they see it.
- With the Mayor in attendance at the football stadium, how is it possible that he doesn’t have some kind of police detail escorting him? There’s no sharp shooter, no guard in the crowd who might try to take down Bane? No one?
- On the attempt to transfuse the blood between a thug and Dr. Pavel in the opening scene on the plane: The human body contains ten pints of blood. Given the pressing time, the attempt to transfer even a half a pint from Pavel to the thug is just silly. It wouldn’t register, it would only mix with whatever blood type the thug already has. And then there’s the pesky problem of the teeth. Sadly, there just isn’t time to knock out all of Pavel’s pearly whites and, with a dental surgeon on hand, graft them onto the thug’s gums one by one.
Batman/Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale):
- Miranda thrusts a knife deep into his torso and twists away. He can barely move for all the excrutiating pain he’s in. And yet, a few minutes later, there he is, la-la-la, magically back to his old bat self.
- Speaking of backs — Bane breaks Batman’s. Just like in the comic book (the classic Knightfall storyline), the villain actually, physically breaks his back. Yet, one ‘chiropractic’ adjustment from a fellow prisoner and a few weeks standing upright on the cold prison ground will knock that vertebrae back to normal, just like new. Yeah, that’s the ticket.
- Without money, ID, bat-transport, smartphone or friends, once Bruce succeeds in ascending the prison walls, how does our hero get back to Gotham? I didn’t notice any superpowered motorized Bat-camel hanging around the deserted wasteland on the outskirts of Jodhpur, India.
- Considering Gotham is under absolute lockdown, how does he manage to slip back in, unnoticed? Yes, I know … he’s Batman.
- Why, in all his fights with Bane, doesn’t Batman try ripping that Hannibal Lecter-esque mask off his head?
- As for Bruce Wayne’s passing: What story did his few close pals give about his death? We see the city mourning for him… how does Gotham think he died?
[For even more quibbles about John Blake, Miranda Tate, Selina Kyle and that idiot Foley, take a peek at my full doddle article here]