A Cowardly And Superstitious Lot...

I love Cracked. I read the magazine when I was a kid. I would read Mad as well, but for some bizarre reason I always seemed to gravitate toward their competitor. It wasn't a quality issue; Mad was clearly superior.

I was just a dumb kid who tended to hate many popular things because they were popular. I was a fucking hipster contrarian. I hitched my wagon to the Go-Bots star in lieu of the more popular Transformers, for example. Although that had more to do with finances than anything else. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, and Go-Bots were cheaper.

Hell yeah!

So I would go to school every day, rocking my Challenge Of The Go-Bots t-shirt, reading Cracked on the playground like some kind of enigmatic asshole. Needless to say, I wasn't terribly popular growing up. My carefully laid plan blew up in my 8 year-old face. Because nobody wants to come over after school and play with your Rock Lords.

What was I... Cracked! That's right, I had a point!

Several years ago, Cracked reinvented itself as a bitingly hilarious online entity. I'm reading their articles every fucking day on my goddamned smartphone, and they make me laugh so much more than that dumbass magazine ever did.

On Friday I read a particular article entitled 3 Things We Have To Accept About Life After Nolan's 'Batman'. This article didn't make me laugh. It made me shake my head.

This article is just a virtual blowjob for Christopher Nolan. It reads like blind fanaticism. Maybe there's something wrong with me, but I can't understand this mentality. None of my favorite artists, whatever the medium, are infallible.

My previous post was a love letter to David Bowie, but even he made garbage like Hours... I know he's not perfect. I would never claim that he's anything more than a flawed human being, just like the rest of us. Terry Gilliam made Tideland. Tim Burton made Alice In Wonderland. Pablo Picasso made "Guernica".

Look at this fucking thing.

Nobody's perfect. Clearly this man loves Christopher Nolan. That's fine. Who am I to tell anybody what they can and can't like? I like Showgirls. A lot. I bought it on VHS, DVD (twice) and now I am a proud owner of the 15th anniversary "sinsational" Blu-Ray. I have no shame.

This movie has so many layers...

But this... this rubs me the wrong way. Am I taking it too seriously? You bet your ass I am. And yet knowing that, I simply can not agree with what the author of this article is saying. It's wrong.

According to the article, superhero movies as a genre were basically a cesspool before Christopher Nolan rode into Hollywood on his white horse and blessed the world with the gift of Batman fucking Begins. Here's a quote from the article...

"The thing that made every great superhero movie great was Christopher Nolan."

I suppose that means the cinematic messiah was on-set in 1977, ghost-writing the screenplay for Richard Donner's Superman.

Thanks, Christopher Nolan!

And he was the real director of 1989's Batman. And an executive producer on Sam Raimi's Spider-Man 2. This guy's a fucking highlander, traveling through the ages, making great superhero movies when he's not engaged in one-on-one sword duels with other angry immortal filmmakers.

You can argue the quality of the three movies I mentioned until the world ends on December 21st of this year, I suppose. But they're in the public consciousness. They're well-regarded by fans of the genre and average folks alike. Many would argue that they are all "great" superhero movies. And they all came along before Christopher Nolan unleashed his Batman trilogy on the world.

Saying that Nolan is the "it-factor" that made every great superhero movie is short-sighted and foolish.



The Real "It Factor" Is Displeased.

This cycle of Batman films has incited a rabid and unsettling fervor in many of its fans. Obsessively devoted individuals who see these films and their director as beyond reproach, blindly and angrily lashing out at people online and in print who disagree with their opinion. Perhaps they see these films as validating their fandom in some way, and that makes them so quick to defend them.

Nolan's Batman films are dark and gritty and violent and realistic, taking something widely seen as children's entertainment (comic books) and re-inventing it as something to take seriously. This guy made Memento. He's a real filmmaker. That makes these real movies. Not disposable trash like the old Tim Burton flicks.

YOU SUCK!!!

The Dark Knight was screwed at the Oscars. The haters don't know what the fuck they're talking about. If you don't love these films, not "enjoy", not "like", but fucking LOVE these FILMS, then you're a loser whose opinion is invalid.

I'm not saying the author of the Cracked article is one of these people. I don't think he is. But it couldn't help but remind me of the rabid fandom these films have fomented among the so-called "geeks". They take this shit too seriously. And they invalidate other films in the genre because they're not serious or dark.

Now that Nolan's done with his take on Batman, maybe these people will do the rest of us a favor and fade away. I'm sick of this hostility, this closed-minded approach to fandom, and I'm sick of Christopher Nolan's Batman movies.

I guess that's my segue.

I saw The Dark Knight Rises this weekend. I didn't like it very much. The film jumps ahead eight years, and Batman's been out of commission the entire time. Not because he's finished his war on crime. No, he hung up the cape and cowl because his girlfriend blew up in the last movie, and he's spent the last eight fucking years holed up in his rebuilt mansion, listening to 30 Seconds To Mars and cutting himself.

Gotham City passed some legislation named after Harvey Dent that has single-handedly wiped out organized crime. And Commissioner Gordon is tired of living with the lies he perpetrated to save the late district attorney's reputation.

Some bad dude named Bane shows up in town, claiming to be leading a revolution that will upend Gotham's social structure, but really all he wants to do is blow the city up. That's a spoiler, I guess. I forgot, I'm going to spoil the entire fucking movie in this bloated carcass of an article.

Bruce Wayne gets burgled by Catwoman Selina Kyle, has a fling with the woman who saved his company, and decides this Bane situation is big enough to bring Batman out of retirement. He gears up, does some shit, causing Alfred to blubber like a scolded little girl and tell Bruce about the letter he burned in the last movie, then he fucks off until the epilogue.

By the way, I'm taking the fucking car!

Catwoman Selina Kyle leads Batman into a trap, he gets all busted up by Bane and thrown into a subterranean prison for months, where he can conveniently watch the continuing deterioration of his beloved city on TV.

Bane blows up the bridges leading in and out of town, raises an army and takes over Gotham, telling the federal government to keep their distance, otherwise he'll blow up the fusion reactor/nuclear bomb he's got stashed in a truck somewhere. But the bomb's core is decaying, meaning it's going to blow up anyway. There's even a helpful timer on the side of the damned thing, just in case we forget.

Chaos reigns in Gotham as the fucking Scarecrow holds court over those who misbehave. Every single fucking cop not played by a recognizeable actor is trapped in the sewers. Joseph Gordon-Levitt teams up with Gary Oldman to lead a counter-revolution or something. Matthew Modine shows up to remind audiences that his transformation into Treat Williams is complete.

I loved you in Deep Rising!

Bruce Wayne gets the urgent chiropractic care he needs and climbs out of the hellish prison, showing up in Gotham and teaming up with Catwoman Selina Kyle to free the sewer cops and stop Bane from blowing up his hometown. Bane V Batman, round 2 ends with Bane down and out, Batman finding the inner strength to perservere by punching his opponent's ridiculous facial appliance until he falls over.

Batman croaks at the laid-out Bane, demanding to know where the mobile nuke's detonator is stashed, then the woman who saved his company sticks a knife in Batman's gut and twists it around, telling him that she's Ra's Al Ghul's evil daughter and that Bane was just her attack dog the whole time. She fucks off to ensure the nuclear devastation of the city, and Catwoman Selina Kyle bursts in on the Batpod, unceremoniously blasting Bane into the infinite before cracking a joke.

Bleeding Guts Batman crawls into his flying car-thing and tracks down Lady Ghul, wrecking her bomb truck with a shit-ton of missiles. Then he straps the bomb to his flying car-thing and flies out over the sea, blowing up in a radiant mushroom cloud that will haunt Gotham City with a precipitous rise in various types of cancer and birth deformities for generations to come.

Sorry about all that cancer - XOXO The Batman

Alfred comes back to quiver over Wayne's fresh grave, babbling about how he failed his employer. Morgan Freeman discovers that the previously-faulty auto-pilot in the flying car thing had been repaired by Bruce Wayne sometime before he got his back blasted by Bane, and realizes the crazy prick must still be alive.

Alfred goes on holiday in Europe and sees Bruce hanging out with Catwoman Selina Kyle, smiling because Master Wayne is finally in a healthy relationship with a mostly-reformed cat burglar who likes to strut around in skintight body suits in her spare time.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is told that he's inherited some underground property from the "late" Bruce Wayne, and discovers that he now has a Bat Cave of his very own. Smash cut to credits, and the sounds of throngs of fanboys staining their skivvies can be heard echoing across the Rocky Mountains.

Did I already say that I didn't care much for this movie?

Where do I start? How about Bane?

This asshole.

He sucks.

His voice is off-putting, sounding like a bad Sean Connery impression piped in through blown speakers. His physical presence is never intimidating. He's supposed to be a bad motherfucker, but he never feels like one. He's snapping necks and choking people to death with his hard fucking knees, but there's no impact to any of this.

A combination of poor camera angles and lame sound effects manage to no-sell his savagery. It all feels like poorly choreographed, poorly acted stunt work, not brutal violence. This is a problem if your villain is supposed to be an unstoppable force of nature, tearing through anybody in his way in order to reach his goals.

His goals suck, too. He claims to be a revolutionary to the people of Gotham, isolating them from the world at large to create an anarchic city-state out of the blasted city, inciting the people to rise up and pull the wealthy out of their beds in an act of poetic justice for the 99%. But aside from a few short snippets of people looting, we get almost nothing else out of this sub-plot.

The people of Gotham aren't fighting alongside Bane in the big climactic fight against the sewer cops. It's just Bane's League of Shadows cronies. He wants to blow up the city because it's "beyond saving", fulfilling Ra's Al Ghul's plan from the first film. Okay.

Look at that codpiece!

Why wouldn't he just steal a nuclear weapon from some poorly-guarded facility in one of the former Soviet republics and smuggle it into Gotham City, blowing it up before anybody had a chance to draw up plans against him? This muddled, poorly-thought-out plan was the better idea?

And his death? Holy shit, talk about an anti-climax. This brutish bastard nearly killed Batman earlier in the film, then Catwoman Selina Kyle shows up and kills him with the Batpod's mounted guns. That's it. He's thrown into the background by a hail of gunfire and bye bye Bane. What a wet fart of a conclusion.

I love Tom Hardy, but this movie does not. He said he agreed to act in this film without even glancing at a script because he trusted Christopher Nolan. Next time, maybe he should take a gander at the script. Then say no.

Christian Bale is... I don't even know. I don't give a fuck about his Bruce Wayne. I never did. His portrayal never registered with me. And his Batman? Oh boy. I've never gotten past the hurdle that is his "Bat Voice".



Never. I've tried. Honestly, I've tried. But it just doesn't work for me. Every single time he opens his mouth and starts gravel-whispering at people, I can't help but laugh. It's like a nervous condition with me. His gruff, cancer-throat badass voice tickles my funny bone. And that's bad news, because I'm supposed to take it seriously.

Aside from the voice, his Batman is okay, I suppose. I hate the costume. I've hated every iteration of it throughout the trilogy. Sure, it's more realistic and practical. Absolutely. Michael Keaton couldn't even turn his fucking head in his Batman movies. Nothing practical about that. But Tim Burton  worked around that, and made his caped crusader look fucking iconic.

What a suave son of a bitch.

This version of Batman's costume is too over-designed and just awkward-looking to ever approach iconic.

I understand that's the angle in these films. Everything has to feel plausible. But it's a fucking superhero movie. Why is it anathema to be a little silly? A little over-the-top? That's ultimately my problem with this whole trilogy. They're too fucking serious.

Playing dress-up is serious business, kids.

I don't need every single fucking detail hand-fed to me in order to believe that a crazy guy is dressing up as a bat and beating up criminals in a fucking movie. It's called suspension of disbelief.

The last Star Trek movie had a garbage story, but the acting and the dialog and the production design and the special effects helped me forget that the story made no fucking sense for a few hours. These Batman movies keep trying to shove this plausible, believable scenario down my throat with ham-fisted dialog and subdued, "realistic" performances, and I just end up puking it all back up.

What was I talking about? Christian Bale? Eh, fuck him. I'm done with his tumor-voiced, armor-plated, po-faced performance. Go act in something worthwile, so that I can like you again.

Maybe I can say something positive about this movie.

Anne Hathaway is good as Catwoman Selina Kyle. She seemed to know what kind of movie she was really supposed to be in, over-acting just a bit and managing to make a shockingly underwritten character rather memorable.

Yep. That's memorable.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was good as the disillusioned police detective who may or may not inherit the mantle of Gotham's Dark Knight. He has something approaching a complete character arc, which I did not expect. Also, he's just a good, charismatic actor. His final moments in the film, discovering Batman's subterranean lair, put a smile on my face, which shocked the hell out of me.

I'm being out-acted by that kid from 3rd Rock From The Sun?!

Although I'm glad we'll never see that sequel. At this point, I highly doubt it would turn out well.

I loved that Bruce Wayne ended up with the girl in the end. His final scene sharing a table with Catwoman Selina Kyle in a quaint European bistro was well done. Good for him.

I think that's about it, really. There were some decent moments sprinkled throughout the film, but they never really roused anything in me. On a few occasions, I began to feel something as the music would swell and the action would build, but then something would inevitably happen that pulled me right back out of the narrative. This movie never failed to disappoint me.

Alfred leaving just felt cheap. I don't know what else to call it. He's the only family Bruce has left, and he just shrugs and abandons him? That entire scene just felt stiff and awkward. The lazy dialog certainly didn't do it any favors.

What kind of fucked-up Batman movie is this?!

I don't want you being Batman anymore because it's going to kill you and by the way the dead broad you've been pining over these past eight years was going to leave you for Two-Face and I burned the only evidence to support this claim because I wanted to spare your feelings and I can't take it anymore I'm leaving because I can't just stand by and watch you kill yourself and blah blah blah plot contrivance.

This doesn't feel like it should have happened. Why would Alfred leave? He fucking wouldn't.

What else am I supposed to say? The film's too long, and it feels too long. It drags for nearly three hours, and it's trying to be large and epic, but it just feels bloated. The story stutters and staggers to an unfulfilling climax, and the main players are largely forgettable. The only reason why I wrote this review so quickly is because I was afraid if I waited a few more days, I would completely forget large chunks of the film. The Dark Knight Rises sucks. End of story.

If these movies worked for you, that's great. Good for you. They just don't work for me.

I'm not saying that this interpretation of Batman is incorrect. A fictional character that has existed since 1939, being re-invented in print more times than I can count has no one definitive iteration. I'm simply stating that Nolan's interpretation of Batman is not my cup of tea.

I loathed his first attempt. I enjoyed his second attempt. And this final act just makes me yearn for what's next. If I want a good Batman movie, I'll just watch Batman Returns on Blu-Ray.

I'm glad Christopher Nolan's done with Batman. I'm glad Warner Bros. is already developing a new iteration of this franchise. Maybe next time, somebody will make something I can actually enjoy.

"RISE" indeed.