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.

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

I still have no desire to re-watch The Dark Knight (I don't *dislike* it; but...well, I've already said it: too grim for me), but while I found The Dark Knight Rises unsettling, I need to see it again. For the last half hour alone.

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.

It still makes me laugh that there's one throwaway line in Avengers about S.H.I.E.L.D. wiretapping/scanning all laptops/spectrometers, etc., to look for the Flebotunum Cube. Like, "Yup, we do this shit all the time, but it's cool: we're S.H.I.E.L.D."

Same thing with the difference between Bruce and Lucius being all "This clean energy project could DESTROY THE PLANET," and Tony Stark being all "Check out Stark Tower, BITCHES."

I love Marvel.

I do think it helped me on a second viewing to understand that

Yes, very much so. He's posturing. The crowd reaction to him is not positive, especially after he kills off the Russian scientist.

All of which makes me wonder about his rationale for waiting to destroy Gotham. He told Wayne that it was to allow Gotham to start hoping again before destroying it, or something like that. Which he would achieve by... rendering the city a war zone cut off from the rest of the world? That'll bring back the will to live.

The problem is that right after the stadium scene, we get a montage of nice old Jewish ladies on Fifth Avenue being pulled out of their homes and beaten up by what look an awful lot like regular average people. And there's no counter-montage of regular people being upset that their city has been taken over by terrorists.

Way too much of this movie is 9/11 porn for me not to take that shit personally.

So I went to see Beasts of the Southern Wild last night, and... had to rush out of the theater halfway through and into the restroom to [deleted for TMI].

Second movie this year I've had to leave because of motion-sickness caused by the hand-held camera technique (the first was The Hunger Games). At this rate, I'll be forced to ahem all the new releases, although I had no problems at all with The Avengers.

... PJ isn't shooting The Hobbit with handheld cameras, right?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I remember that happening after Bane 1) reveals the truth about Dent, and 2) opens up Blackgate. Which is why we see Selina & Holly in the trashed mansion later.

I don't know, I mostly think if Nolan intended to make an explicit propaganda piece, he'd do a better job of it.

billytea - It's not that he wants to restore hope, exactly, but he wants to maintain a sliver of it. So they'll be tortured the way he was. (It's also easier to maintain control that way, of course.)