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Why didn't this movie make, for me, a good Batman movie? Bear with me...thiiiiiiis is gonna be wordy. Has to be if you want to understand my mindset on this. If you're a Batman fan like I am, you'll read through it.

I think you have to take a look not only at previous Batman movies (even the campier ones of the late 80s and early to mid 90s), but also the comics and graphic novels. What are the key elements that make the Batman character, and his stories, so interesting, compelling and lasting?

• He's an expert at detective work, and an almost unequaled martial artist;
  
  
• He's dark, brooding and obsessed;
  
  
• He's ONLY human;
  
  
• He's practically fearless;
  
  
• He makes use of the night, and of the shadows, to do most of his work, and to generate fear and paranoia in the criminals he confronts;

We've seen this displayed, to varying degrees, in all the various Batman movies PRIOR to The Dark Knight Rises. And with varying degrees of successful portrayal on film. But practically each of these elements are missing, or so poorly scripted that they may as well be missing, in this latest movie. We see VERY little detective work by Bruce Wayne/Batman; we see none of the dark, brooding obsession which drives Wayne as Batman (we see instead a reluctant man who has become a total recluse, and become almost resigned to having given up the Batman mantle and persona altogether after the Harvey Dent incident in The Dark Knight; his fighting skills, once he finally gets back into things (after some rather contrived and hokey recuperation from his leg injury, which has kept him house-ridden and cane-dependent for several years), mean very little against THIS version of Bane even though the Batman of the comics tended to have better skills at fighting him.

Batman was always able to overcome stronger and even larger foes because he had an uncanny ability at knowing pressure points and weak spots in his enemies...even ones he'd never faced before. He could overcome them by knowing, as any real martial artist does, that physical size and strength mean very little against an opponent who knows the weaknesses of the human body, and knows nerve pressure points. Where was this knowledge in his latest battles?

And Bane. UGH...I HATE reboots that so totally change a character and/or storyline, that the new thing doesn't even remotely resemble the original. This movie Bane is nothing at all like the original comic book one. How? Well, the original Bane:

• Has no connection whatsoever with Ra's Al Ghul;
  
  
• Is simply an ordinary, rather weak man who is dependent upon the "venom" drug. This drug is what bulks him up whenever he trips a mechanism attached to his body. That mechanism floods the drug into his body, which then bulks up by degree to substantial proportions...giving him great size and strength...and making him rather crazy;
  
  
• Is not dependent upon a mask to survive;

None of those elements are seen in this movie Bane. We instead see some freakish terrorist who has lived under the cruelty of the "League of Shadows", and was outcast from it. And then his importance to the movie story is left dangling like a wet blanket near the end when it turns out he's just a puppet for Talia, Ra's Al Ghul's daughter. While the acting job of Bane wasn't bad, if it was often perhaps a bit tough to understand him through the effects of the mask, the character himself is a horrid reboot of the original character.

The bit about Batman's back being broken by Bane? They took this from the Batman: Knightfall comic book series. In this one, the Bane character does indeed defeat Batman, and breaks his back. But it leaves Bruce Wayne a total quadriplegic, a condition which--in the comic series--requires the ministrations of a woman with magical healing powers to reverse. If we are to accept that the Batman is a totally human character, and that the Batman stories are founded on the notion of his story being one that, given the right set of circumstances and the right resources, a person in our REAL world could hypothetically achieve, then what is shown in The Dark Knight Rises is total bunk. Using ropes and gravity to heal a devastating spinal injury...one in which (according to the script) compound fractures are in evidence -- where parts of his spinal column actually have broken through his SKIN, is utterly impossible in the real world. No such method of "healing" would work. It would, in fact, only cause further physical devastation, if not death. In ANY human. Even Wayne. That was a ridiculous story concept.

The other random elements?

• The story of Gotham's police, and the heroic aspects of it? Great. Liked it...and it was nice to see police officers getting such heroic portrayal on film. The good part they gave to Gordon was especially nice. Should it have overshadowed Batman and his story? No. And I believe it did.
  
  
• This "Blake" character, the rookie cop? Nice character. Very nice. But the weak and very subtle tie-in to a possible "Robin" future (especially when each Robin started out as a preteen, and NONE of them bore the name "Blake" or started out as a cop? Lame, contrived, totally out of sorts with the history of the Batman characters and comics, and utter stupid bunk. And just what IS it with Hollywood that they are afraid to show a Robin as a preteen boy with Batman? Fears of people who don't really know the franchise labeling Batman as a pedophile or something?
  
  
• Sneaking in Talia as a surprise twist? Okay, not bad. If anyone besides the Gordon character stuck to their original design well, it was this character.
  
  
• The Selina Kyle/Catwoman thing? Okay, not bad either. But I didn't like Anne Hathaway in this role, as much as I like her in others (such as the White Queen in Alice In Wonderland). The part she was handed had little of Catwoman's story developed for her, and little of Catwoman's panache. It simply felt to me like the character was tossed into the mix to maintain some romantic tension for Bruce Wayne and to add one more Batman "villain" in before this particular trilogy and reboot came to an end. Not good. Not good at all. And a very significant misuse and disrespect of the character.

Is this a good action/suspense movie? Certainly. There's plenty of that. And it might even be considered a good COP movie. But as a good BATMAN movie? Nuh uh. Hell, the cop story almost seems to compete with the Batman one, and even overshadow it. And neither Batman nor Bruce Wayne show much of the elements that define each character. This movie could just as easily have been another Die Hard one, and you could have replaced Batman/Bruce Wayne with Bruce Willis. Or perhaps even Steven Seagal. Not AS Batman/Bruce Wayne in either case...but as their own character types. And it still would have worked. And that's the problem. It shouldn't be so easy for a Batman movie to be considered interchangeable with a Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal movie. Batman is not Police Officer John McLane, and he's not any of Steven Seagal's cop or military characters. He's Batman, with all that makes the character special. And with what was, in my observation, sorely LACKING in this movie.

I SO wanted this one to work. I WANT DC movies to work against the Marvel ones. Not that I don't like Marvel characters, but I like the DC ones much better. And they have been largely beat to a pulp on screen by the Marvel ones. Especially with the recent Avengers movie which, to me, was the best superhero movie on screen to date. Hands down. Even the various individual characters' movies beat this latest Batman movie in my opinion. And I hate to say that, because I love the Batman character most especially, like most DC and superhero fans.

This THIS THIIIIIIIIIS. The Batman I know would have figured all that plot twist out before having it revealed to him. ...And tell me Bane really looks like he could be the child of Al Ghul. He looked too old for one. And the child wasn't disfigured when "he" jumped, so don't you think the flashback clips ALONE gave that away?! I was skeptical through the whole movie about this, and I wasn't all that surprised when it was revealed he was the protector and not the child.


Okay. I'll confess I don't read a lot of the comics (and none of the ones read having Bane in them), so I was only 50% certain about all this said above, but even after watching 'Batman Forever' and a select few other animated series that have Bane in them, I was completely confused. THIS is not the Bane even I am slightly familiar with. The look was good and he made a great intimidating villain, but whatever/whoever that was, was NOT Bane. That was Sean Connery.


Having Robin as a cop was in interesting twist, but... wat. That's just not Robin. The requirements to be thus are having acrobatic abilities when fighting/chasing down your enemy. ...And a cop? The only part they got right for this "character" was the orphan bit.

And can I just add how far fetched and ridiculous the idea of how he figured out who Batman really is was. I mean. Having been obsessed with the character of Bruce Banner and understanding the levels of anger and how to deal with them, okay sure I can understand this 'angry face' that (...let's call him 'Robin' as I forget what his name really was) Robin was talking about means. But it still seems a bit far fetched to me. And it was bit too deep. I can't really explain it other than it just seemed to... far... fetched... Moving on.


Though I actually LIKED this character, I feel Catwoman from Batman Returns was much better portrayed. But again. Not a big comic reader, so I can't account for accuracy. I just know the Catwoman from DKR was a skilled fighter and entertaining to watch, with character that really shone when the time came that made her quite likeable. But I also feel she was more used and thrown in there for a quick and pointless love interest for Bruce so he had a reason to live and not die alone. (Did Disney have a hand in this?)

Oh... And how the heck did Bats survive that blast? Never explained. And I didn't care for the abuse they put poor Alfred through. THAT really got to me.

Well, in that "Blake" character there are bits and pieces of a few Robins. I only mildly and occasionally follow the comics and animated series, but I know that, when the first Robin (Dick Grayson) became an adult, he took a job as a police officer in "Bludhaven", a city near Gotham City. Because he's not independently-wealthy like Bruce Wayne is in spite of being his ward.

The second Robin, Jason Todd, was a street urchin turned petty thief, who was caught by Batman trying to steal the wheels, or at least the hubcaps I think, off the Batmobile while Bats had stepped away from it for a short time. Bats "gave him" to Bruce Wayne as another ward, if I recall the story right, and Jason figured out through his own deduction that Bruce Wayne was, in fact, Batman. Thus, impressed with his detective skills, Batman made him the second Robin...though he ended up being a hot-tempered and maintenance-heavy kid, and wasn't Robin long before the Joker tricked the kid and ended up beating him to death with a tire iron...using the kid's mother as partly-complicit bait.