Open Thread: The Dark Knight Rises

July 23rd, 2012 by Latoya Peterson

Open Thread! Feel free to discuss the film, the tragedy, or whatever else is Batman related and on your mind. Assume there will be spoilers in the comments.

Posted in Open Thread | 14 comments

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  • http://twitter.com/KendraJames_ Kendra James

    I was not prepared for the swell of emotion I experienced in the last 5 minutes of this movie. But prior to that [in bullets]…

    — What a thoroughly reactionary movie. I’m sure this is hardly a new thought, but man did that play up to every fear that the uber-rich must have of the Occupy Wall Street movement. I mean, who exactly were the ones ‘rising up’ in Gotham as part of Bane’s plan? Obviously Bane had his army, and then there were the Blackgate prisoners, but was I alone in interpreting the rest (especially during the whole looting montage) as just… blanket poor people? The rich were being attacked, that much was clear, but it seemed like it was portraying that the middle class just locked themselves in their homes to keep safe (a la, the one police officer who lets his wife answer the door) while it was strictly the poor people who went crazy with rioting and killing people.

    – You know what the movie DIDN’T need? Marion Cotillard as Talia. Again, this is something that’s been rehashed and rehashed, but when it actually happened I just got pissed all over again. Especially since it seemed (to me anyway) that they went out of their way to make it seem like her mother was a POC? Why is she consistently miscast in movies that I otherwise adore? (ie. Public Enemies) Other than that, while Bane was terrifying? Talia was pointedly… not.

    — I mean, and then there was Bane. In retrospect, I’m actually amazed that Lucius managed to stay Black.

    Slightly nerdier thoughts?

    The sacrificial scene at the end was straight out of Morrison’s RIP run, meaning I’ve decided that Bruce left Robin with instructions for setting up Batman Inc and –because Robin is more akin to Tim than Dick in my head– Tam Fox is gonna appear to help him do it. Because that’s how I want it to be.

    Overall, I enjoyed it enough to definitely plan on seeing it again, but it’s really hard to overlook some of the things that were done.

  • http://twitter.com/Minivet Minivet

    Of course the only main character with an accent and Mediterranean look turns out to be a secret terrorist near the end!

    Also they seem to have mixed up West Africa and North Africa.

  • Jakinj

    Loved the movie! Wasn’t happy that the only Asian guy got shot.. but whatever. Anne Hathaway nailed the part of Catwoman! She had so many doubters, I was happy that she proved them all wrong. The ending itself was just amazing.

  • Anonymous

    Your first bullet point is pretty much exactly why I don’t want to go see this movie. If I desperately want to watch people be reactionary and trashing Occupy, I post something Occupy-related to my facebook and watch my fauxgressive friends have at it. If I wanted to watch cops and uber-rich multi-billionaires beat up protesters, I can check Twitter or turn on the news. These narratives are already a big part of my life; I have no desire to see them in 3D with special effects.

  • Jabeen Ghomer

    I haven’t seen it, but I thought Richard Kim on the Melissa Harris Perry show this past weekend raised some interesting–middle of the page, about 30 seconds into the clip:

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/msnbc-guest-ties-dark-knight-shooting-to-george-zimmerman-in-discussion-of-gotham-and-america/

  • http://twitter.com/HowlingBusou Howling

    I can, begrudgingly, let the Bane thing slide (his father is British in the comics). But the al Ghuls? I just can’t with how many so-called hardcore fans were alright with the blatant miscasting of them both. Even when some colourists had lightened their skin tone, there was never any denying the fact that Ra’s was not white in any sense of the word. Since, depending on when he was actually born, would depend on which ethnic label you’d slap on him, I guess. I remember getting really excited in Begins when I saw Watanabe, and was hoping for a switcheroo where Neeson was just the..socially acceptable front man to Watanabe’s being the true al Ghul.

    Thanks to the whitewashing, the trilogy just surmounted to a bunch of movies where white people fight it out about what’s best for us poor coloured folk.

  • El Tiburolobo

    Just FYI, Bane in the comics was never Mexican. He was of mixed British and Caribbean heritage, but yeah that still doesn’t take away from the other problems you mentioned.

  • http://twitter.com/mezz98 @mezz98

    I had the complete opposite reaction to Bane: I found him tiresome and rolled my eyes every time he came on screen and began to pontificate.

    That said, i agree with your first point: I actually found the framing of the class conflict to be even more eye-roll inducing than Bane’s speeches. Then again, I found this to be the least convincing of CN’s Batman films.

    Also, if the Nolans couldn’t find a way to make Bane menacing without that mask, they were falling down on their screenwriting job.

  • http://twitter.com/KendraJames_ Kendra James

    It wasn’t the speechifying that got to me so much as the fact that he was incredibly physically imposing– he was huge. For me, at least, he read –more than any of the villains in the trilogy– as someone who could actually take Bruce. I need to see it again, but I feel like his lines would have come off better for me if his voice hadn’t been so messed up. It was an improvement over the trailer behind MI4, but it still didn’t completely work for me.

    The class-conflict, for me, becomes even more interesting when you think about how they purposely filmed down around Occupy protests, and then also in some of the poorer areas of Newark. Definitely interesting choices.

  • Lucane

    I thought Anne Hathaway was terrible as Catwoman. She looked good in the outfit. That’s it. It was really obvious to me that the director told her to act sexy and cunning like a cat. Nothing original! The transition from maid to Catwoman was horrible. I want to see a Catwoman who is versatile and more complex.

  • Lucane

    No you are not alone in interpreting the class war. I think the movie really shows the fears of the rich and depicts those “rising up” (clearly the poor/ Occupy folks) as violent and with a misdirected cause.

  • Lucane

    No you are not alone in interpreting the class war. I think the movie really shows the fears of the rich and depicts those “rising up” (clearly the poor/ Occupy folks) as violent and with a misdirected cause.

  • PotentPotables

    I watched TDK right before going to see the TDKR and yesterday watched Batman Begins….and Liam Neeson as al Ghul was definitely the most boo-boo part of the movie. I actually did really like Neeson’s acting. I thought he was equally intimidating and amusing. But that still doesn’t change the fact that Nolan cast a white guy in a role specifically written as a POC…and POC who has been a part of so many different non-white cultures!

    And also, is it me, or does Marion Cotillard have an usual French accent? It always sounds so out of place to me.

  • patchworkpoet

    Did anyone else read Bane as disabled?

    I love Tom Hardy and was really into Bane though I agree that the manipulation of his voice made it often very hard to understand the nuances of his speeches. Perhaps that’s why they seemed so extra. Truth, I haven’t read the comics so I don’t know if he has a crip history or not but I totally empathized with him around having chronic pain! When it was explained that he wore the mask to protect him from the pain he suffers after his attack – I was like, hold the phone, he what?!

    Can someone recommend some of the comics about Bane that I could go back and read?