Original Airdate: 7 - 23 - 12
Let the hazing begin; neither the Boom or I were particularly impressed by The Dark Knight Rises, something that has already resulted in at least one Facebook brouhaha:
"I just unfriended you. Your comment was lame and I'm such a huge Batman fan I even saw the Adam West movie in the theatre."
Guess what, weenis? That's not an argument. If anything, it means your Batman obsession is so delusional that you won't brook any criticism, and going to bat (har har) for a flick in which Batman wrestles a rubber shark while dangling from a helicopter with a bomb isn't doing you any favors. But the gauntlet has been thrown down: the more desperately nerds cling to the untouchability of their favorite franchises, the more vitriolic they are going to get when you tell it like it is. I thought TDKR was bloated, long, and mostly uninvolving. Nolan only had a tenable connection between comic book outlandishness and the dark "realism" he used as an apology for it, but things really flew out of his hands on this one. Nolan's films were one of the (if not the) only attempts at comic book realism, as if such a thing is possible. Whether or not it worked was another matter, but I think it gave his franchise a bit of heft and tension in the first Batman film; credibility was stretched but mostly maintained in the second. But here, in the final piece to this triptych, nothing makes any goddamn sense, to the point where the part of your brain reconciling something you like to something that makes sense goes kerflooey. And on a minor point, I also felt like the film was politically offensive, a criticism also launched against The Dark Knight. But where TDK was a Bush/War on Terror apologia, TDKR is full-blown fascist glee intent of parodying any kind of Marxist/syndicalist type of organization as Anarchism criminality and horror; there's even a scene of undetermined significance evoking the French Revolution. So, Batman is Napoleon? I'm not saying this is a coherent political statement of any kind, but it doesn't have to be. Nolan has thrown his hand in with reactionary goobers like Frank Miller who have nonsensical critiques of movements like OWS just because they're cranky. Disappointing.
We heard music from:
Inception, 2010 - Hans Zimmer
Requiem for a Dream, 2000 - Clint Mansell
Breakin', 1984 - Various
The Bourne Identity, 2002 - John Powell
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