I think the one thing that I didn't get/catch was the leaving something in Bruce's will for Blake. I was confounded by the scene where Blake picked up the duffel bag, and then of course where the heck the coordinates came from. I was either overwhelmed with feelings or an overly-loud score at the time.

He was picking it up from the final settlement of the Wayne estate. In the bag was a GPS, and apparently he needed that to guide him back to the Manor, but this time via backdoor into the secret lair...where he would begin to be a pretty inexperienced cop who'd promptly get beat down by a whole bunch of very pissed off bad guys with a grudge against Batman. After spending so much time stressing Bruce's training...how does that make sense?

Harrumph.

But finding the bat lair doesn't mean that Blake will immediately begin picking off bad guys vigilante style. I saw it as, firstly, that he was geeking out over seeing his hero's lair. Secondly as Blake starting to figure out what he wanted to do with that knowledge and access, and thirdly, when he'd gotten all trained up, whether he'd become Batman or his own person (Nightwing/Robin).

Also, Bruce in Paris doesn't mean he's hung up the cowl for good, right? I mean, he couldn't leave Gotham City forever?????

I'm with Juliebird. Dude's got the chops and now he starts training.

But where is he training? The first movie made a huge deal of Batman's training--it was the whole point. He had to give himself over to a man who wanted to raze cities to the ground. Blake has the keys to a lab and some nifty cars. That he can't afford to gas up. I'd rather have seen him in a barebones loft somewhere, studying arcane mysteries of fucking one's shit. Those are the tools that make Batman capable of what he is.

I'm with ita. And the more I think about it, I would have liked an ending more like Dark Knight Returns (the graphic novel, just to be clear to people who aren't as obsessed as I am), where Bruce has to stop superheroing because he's too old and beaten up (plus the whole faked-his-own-death thing), but sticks around to train his Robin and other proto-vigilantes. He could have totally stuck around to train Blake.

And Jesse's right -- he can come back. I get that. But I still would have liked to *see* him training Blake. Unf. Actually, I would have liked to see that A LOT. Many times.

Actually, I would have liked to see that A LOT. Many times.

Yes, I would pay to see that movie in the theater myself.

I was hoping Alfred would show up at the end for an "I'd like to test that theory" moment. OOC to be sure, but still.

TDKR dropped 76% from last Friday. Ouch, although the first Friday did include midnight showings. Olympics surely didn't help. It's not going to beat TDK, let alone The Avengers.