Maniacal laugh supercut: [link]

I went with my sister to see TDKR again (she hadn't seen it yet), and wow, do all the scenes where Bruce is in the pit getting the "child who climbed out of the pit" story have a "Ben is Glory?"/"Who's On First" quality to them the second time around.

Old Guy: There was a child who climbed out of the pit
Bruce: Yes, I know Bane!
Old Guy: Uh...yeah, the child had a protector. Anyway, back to my story.
Bruce: Bane!
Old Guy: I AM TALKING ABOUT THE CHILD YOU IDIOT STOP SAYING BANE
Bruce: So...we're still talking about Bane, then?
Old Guy: Oh for fuck's sake, I'll skip to the end - ditch the rope, climb out.
Bruce: Thanks for telling me about Bane!
Old Guy: ARGH.

I'm still hugely impressed by what a well-constructed trilogy this is. Each movie stands pretty well alone, but together they tell one MASSIVE story, which I love.

The politics are still weird, but being prepared for them this time around, I wasn't quite so squicked. I still would like to hear Nolan clarify them a bit, because I honestly can't tell if this is an incredibly offensive movie, or just an incredibly confusing one. I mean, does he really think that lobbying for the 1% to pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate is equivalent to hauling old ladies on 5th Ave out of their homes and forcing them to walk across a frozen river to their death? Or are we supposed to believe that THOSE people were all criminals to begin with, and that there's an unseen population of regular people in Gotham who are hiding terrified in their rent-stabilized apartments?

The politics are still weird, but being prepared for them this time around, I wasn't quite so squicked.

I came away feeling that the kind of anarchy we saw was being shown as a natural (if Bane-accelerated) end result of the kind of runaway class division we have today. I also did get the idea that there were a lot of people just holing up in their homes and waiting for everything to just go away. I got a major French Revolution vibe off the whole thing.

Will came up and surprised me today so we went and saw Total Recall. It was good, although I think I like the Bourne Legacy slightly more.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler but I thought it was weird that in Future Britain and Future Australia everyone had American accents.

I mean, does he really think that

I thought (having now finally seen the film) the latter. I didn't get the feeling that Bane's forces really included anyone other than his original followers and maybe the people he released from prison. I mean, I figure there'd be a few locals who'd go along with him, there's one in every crowd and such like; but for most Gothamites, I think Bane would be the guy who cancelled your holiday plans forever, then gave you war-zone level institutions, well-armed thugs of dubious discipline prowling the streets, empty shops offering only subsistence-level handouts, and a nuclear bomb possibly leaking radiation doing regular circuits of the city. Oh, and who introduced himself to Gotham by declaring war on football. Worst demagogue ever, is the point.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a spoiler

It would certainly spoil the movie for me, so I think it counts.

Finally saw it. FINALLY.

I also got a lot of French Revolution, to the point of looking for throwaway shots of knitters in the krazy kourtroom scenes. Which would've made me laugh a dark bitter laugh, but also confirmed the uncomfortable weirdness a little too literally. I have absolutely no read on what message was intended to come from it, largely because I'm confused by what message actually WAS coming from it.

The Talia thing didn't surprise me at all. I was spoiled that she was in the movie, but didn't know that she was The Child In Cave OMG PremonitionCakes -- but on the other hand I've known for, fuck, ever that she's Ra's Al Ghul's child, so. BTW, If there's Talia/Assassin's Creed crossover stuff out there, I need to know. For reasons.

Gotham absolutely fascinated. I thought it was a strange and rather amazing choice to make it so obviously NYC when it's so constantly but barely disguised in the comics -- "Gotham" is essentially a glass closet; in comics canon and the movies up until now, they've always very carefully filed off all the serial numbers -- changed maps just enough, rearranged neighborhoods, shot whole movies in Chicago. (Among other things, it's always been one of the clearest contrasts with how Marvel does things.) So I was surprised when they *didn't* change subway signs, shop signs, all the things that are there in a zillion other movies to signal "this is a hip contemporary urban shot on location in the real actual NYC movie". From every single previous Batman movie, I would've expected, I dunno, prominent shots of highway signs pointing to the tunnel to Bludhaven. This did not help AT ALL when they blew up my parents' block, and I so get the triggeriness for those of you who live there.

The Trilogy: I felt it this time, much more so than the second movie. The second one was kind of flat for me, I think partly because the Joker expectations were set so impossibly high after Ledger's death, but also because the Harvey Dent story didn't hit the emotional notes that I needed it to in my personal headcanon version. So I came away with a lot of "hey, lots of crazy explosions, but don't really need to see it again" and didn't think much about how the whole Nolanverse was coming into place underneath it all. This one fit with the first enough to carry the second along with it for me (and enough to make it more of a Harvey movie and less of a Joker movie; it's still not entirely my Harvey movie, but the centrality of that side of the plot to this one makes it all fit.)

Most of all, it's an amazing trilogy because it's a JIM FUCKING GORDON trilogy.

On Batman, and my eternal ambivalence thereon: The best thing about this for me (and I know it sounds weird, except that y'all have seen me flail on the subject for how many years now?) is how much of the movie happened without Batman. My Batman fandom at its peak is always about not-Batman: the batfam that forms around him sometimes in spite of himself, the GCPD, the city, the Gordon axis, the relationships among successive Robins and their shared... I dunno, thing that they've been through, and how wonderful and freakishly wrong it is at once. The storylines where Bats is often absent or out-of-scene (Murderer, Fugitive), or just not the most important thing that's going on (No Man's Land), are always the most interesting to me. He's more compelling the more he's a cipher, a focus for all the other characters and incidents to organize around (as a signal in the sky?) rather than an onscreen character in his own right -- and too many movie/tv versions are All About Batman to be interesting Batman stories.

(or maybe I was just glad to hear as little as possible of Bale's crappy Batvoice)

I wanted Blake to say his real name was "Richard" when he picked up his bag at the end. But there would've been audible orgasm noises if that had happened.

NO, THERE IS TOO MUCH. LET ME SUM UP.

I LESS THAN THREE THIS MOVIE even while finding it unsettling and strange. Or, much more likely, because.

One thing I wrongly thought through most of the movie was the issue of the random person having the trigger to the bomb. Up until the whole "Bane would never hand over control over the trigger" conversation I didn't realize that this random person was supposed to be working with Bane. I was thinking it was more like - someone is going to act like the trigger and s/he doesn't know it. Like one of Bane's people implanted something into someone and Bane would press a button whcih would trigger the trigger. Which is way too complicated but that's what I was thinking for awhile.

Heh, amych, those are some of my favorite Batman stories too, but the lack of Batman in the movie did bug me. I suppose I like it in the comics, but in a big-budget movie, GIMME MORE BATMAN. Probably because in the comics, telling non-Batman stories is a welcome departure. In the movies...that's all you have. Use your time wisely, sir.

I've also now gone back to skim y'all's reactions. I totally missed Fernet!! And haven't begun to process my many feelings about Alfred's leaving. And so, so right about sealing up the house entrance to the cave before a jillion teenage boys move in! Stupid life, not letting me see movie sooner!

And it also strikes me that I haven't had fannish-brain-ENGAGE like the above wordspew in a good while; even when I've been reduced to a happy pile of squeeble (White Collar, I'm looking straight at you, and don't you look cute in that jaunty little hat), it doesn't make me do That Up There.

Jessica -

re: the whitefont: hee! That is totally Nolan loving puzzles, which I enjoy, but it is a bit much on a second viewing.

I know he wanted to shoot some footage of OWS at one point but... the movie had already been in production for months before Occupy started; I'd be genuinely stunned if they were rewriting at that point. I've seen political readings elsewhere that are much more extreme, so this isn't all directed at you; I'm just venting the arguments I keep writing and deleting elsewhere... But in order to see it as a condemnation of OWS I think you have to ignore how the One Percent (and authority in general) is presented.

Like, Dagget's certainly not there to demonstrate that the free market is awesome. Mayor Batmanuel is disloyal, Gordon's a liar, the Dep Com is a coward, the Senator is a slimeball, the President is useless, and the state cops are SUCH dicks. Oh, and Wayne's a lunatic, obviously. Frankly, Blake could twiddle his thumbs through the movie and still come out of it a hero.

I do think it would have helped to some average-Joe non-orphan characters, but... then you also have to work them in, and the movie's even longer. I'd be fine with that personally, but I felt that way about TDK and am not a representative sample.

I do think it helped me on a second viewing to understand that Bane's speeches aren't meant for the people in Gotham. They're performances for the rest of the world, so that they believe this is a populist uprising. And what Anne said with less babbling: I don't see it so much as "this side is good and that side is bad" as "if the system is this corrupt, eventually there will be a reaction."

Sort of an aside but this is why the phone-shenanigans in TDK read to me as a question, not propaganda. If it was an endorsement of wiretapping, Lucius would say, "I know you're a good person and won't abuse this power, so it's fine." Instead Bruce goes out of his way to give control of it to Lucius, who thinks it's terrible, and destroys it once it's served a specific purpose. That doesn't map to what happened in reality. Although if the NSA said "We're gonna let the ACLU decide when we're have a good reason to eavesdrop," I'd be cooler with it.