Why Do People Dislike The Dark Knight Rises?

[BigLbo]

What, like a training montage or something? Nobody established why an archeologist had such rough-and-tumble skills in Raiders Of The Lost Ark either.

Master Thief in a superhero film: hit play.

master thief i can dig as being self taught, started stealing young as a way to survive and what not, but she was on some Jason Bourne shit. so no training montage, just wondering if i missed some mention of her being ex-military/secret agent/martial arts master etc

who needs to train with the league of assassins??

[Timothy Hunter]

People like Christopher Nolan's Batman movies not because they are realistic, but because they have a facade of realism. They are fun, popcorn movies first. When you tear them apart they're much better made versions of the Marvel movies and it would be a mistake to take them as seriously as they want you to.

[Joker]

Hyper Realism. That's what they are. They're not realistic. Batman is not realistic.

[superduperman]

Too high expectations from TDK. Retreading the same story from TDK. Bane wasn't a very good villain. Him going into retirement for eight years. The stereotypical ending. Bane was basically the Joker with a mask on. Expose the people of Gotham as animals. Got it. We only had two other movies that did the exact same plot but okay. It seems like all Batman projects act like Gotham is some sort of zoo or outdoor prison and that the people who live there are all cannibals or something. It's an American city. In the 21st century. This isn't Victor Hugo's France.

[Cyke]

People like Christopher Nolan's Batman movies not because they are realistic, but because they have a facade of realism. They are fun, popcorn movies first. When you tear them apart they're much better made versions of the Marvel movies and it would be a mistake to take them as seriously as they want you to.

Kinda disagree with that. Sure, the Nolan trilogy is fundamentally a superhero movie first and foremost, but audiences can take them as seriously as they want to, if they choose to do so. A popcorn movie doesn't mean it can't be a thoughtful movie or a movie ripe for discussion, analysis, and deconstruction.

No doubt a film like Black Panther or X2 are more fantastical/less realistic and more lighthearted (yes, even the darker X-Men films) than the Nolanverse films, but they're two movies that inspire a lot (alot) of sociopolitical discussion in their own right, too. That audiences bring up certain topics of discussion from their takeaways of his films is a complement of his work.

[Castle]

Kinda disagree with that. Sure, the Nolan trilogy is fundamentally a superhero movie first and foremost, but audiences can take them as seriously as they want to, if they choose to do so. A popcorn movie doesn't mean it can't be a thoughtful movie or a movie ripe for discussion, analysis, and deconstruction.

No doubt a film like Black Panther or X2 are more fantastical/less realistic and more lighthearted (yes, even the darker X-Men films) than the Nolanverse films, but they're two movies that inspire a lot (alot) of sociopolitical discussion in their own right, too. That audiences bring up certain topics of discussion from their takeaways of his films is a complement of his work.

X2 though not necessarily needed to talk about in 2003 because it came out at a different time, was a very dark movie, compared to what we have now, The third act X2 is darker than anything from the dark knight trilogy. The moment when that little girl orders Xavier to start killing his own people only for magneto to come and reverse it to start killing humans, that was a very dark moment and one and if not the most deadly planned massacre we have ever seen in a comic film. although both plots are similar,with Joker planing to have two boats one with criminals and non criminals to blow up each other.

The fantastical/Realism lined out in X2 are not equal to anything in Nolan films because Nolan never used any villain or heroes that had super powers and Batman himself had no superpowers, while Bryan Singer could not escaped that in X2 although what he did was ground how they used their powers that it looks almost invincible and very scaled down to another film like ....I don't know ...Endgame.

Jean was Phoenix at the end of X2 but it was just so blurred you have to look well to see the bird's shadow that could be mistaken for an air craft, Magneto and Storm never truly fly like Iron Man or Superman, they just levitate a bit from the ground up in one dimensional space. That was the kind of realism X2 had with superhumans.


Nolan knew his strengths, I think he tried to experiment with the dark knight rises but not everything worked. Still I would say he finished well and left the series with class and dignity unlike Bryan Singer who did not finish well by doing the quite terrible xmen apocalypse and obviously his private life issues.

Black Panther is far off though, it's your standard MCU movie that maybe takes itself more seriously that the rest. The social political stuff in black panther is limited, it never overtakes the comic book stuff, whereas X2 sometimes was called too preachy about it or maybe having too much close parallels with real life events. Nolan's style was maybe more symbolic in social political topics than parallel.

[Jokerz79]

X2 though not necessarily needed to talk about in 2003 because it came out at a different time, was a very dark movie, compared to what we have now, The third act X2 is darker than anything from the dark knight trilogy. The moment when that little girl orders Xavier to start killing his own people only for magneto to come and reverse it to start killing humans, that was a very dark moment and one and if not the most deadly planned massacre we have ever seen in a comic film. although both plots are similar,with Joker planing to have two boats one with criminals and non criminals to blow up each other.

The fantastical/Realism lined out in X2 are not equal to anything in Nolan films because Nolan never used any villain or heroes that had super powers and Batman himself had no superpowers, while Bryan Singer could not escaped that in X2 although what he did was ground how they used their powers that it looks almost invincible and very scaled down to another film like ....I don't know ...Endgame.

Jean was Phoenix at the end of X2 but it was just so blurred you have to look well to see the bird's shadow that could be mistaken for an air craft, Magneto and Storm never truly fly like Iron Man or Superman, they just levitate a bit from the ground up in one dimensional space. That was the kind of realism X2 had with superhumans.


Nolan knew his strengths, I think he tried to experiment with the dark knight rises but not everything worked. Still I would say he finished well and left the series with class and dignity unlike Bryan Singer who did not finish well by doing the quite terrible xmen apocalypse and obviously his private life issues.

Black Panther is far off though, it's your standard MCU movie that maybe takes itself more seriously that the rest. The social political stuff in black panther is limited, it never overtakes the comic book stuff, whereas X2 sometimes was called too preachy about it or maybe having too much close parallels with real life events. Nolan's style was maybe more symbolic in social political topics than parallel.

Ra's was going to have everyone in Gotham go Insane and Kill each other and Joker wanted people to kill each other and not just on the boats, but with the hospital plot too and Xavier killing people with brain powers is darker? Also there was no little girl that was Jason and the audience knew it.

X2's most memorable scene was a heavily special effects scene where Nightcrawler attacked the White House so lets not act like a blue demon looking man teleporting around is "Realism".

As for Social Political messages while the Iceman "coming out" scene was a nice parallel to young LGBTQ+ coming out to their families nothing in X2 IMO comes close to relevance of this scene



Fact is right after the Iceman scene with his parents Ronnie called the cops and John went full Pyro that's the problem with Allegories and that is mutants do pose a threat while Killmonger's hate came from real injustices that millions/billions of POC suffer thru everyday. Black Panther may had been your "standard MCU film" with some dodgy CGI but what is sad is it was more relevant to the real world than one of the best X-Men films.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

I liked it but it felt less cohesive than The Dark knight. It felt like it needed another pass or it should've been separate movies.

[Joker]

People made that same argument about TDK and Two Face.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

People made that same argument about TDK and Two Face.

I could see why but I don't agree. TDK feels more self-contained and you don't need to watch Batman Begins to understand it. The 8th year timeskip TDKR started with makes me feel like there was a movie in between the two and I just skipped it.

[Joker]

There was certainly room for a movie in between. But the main argument was that Two Face was tacked on and kind of wasted.
You didn't need to deal at all with Two Face in TDK. It was already a very long movie, that could have ended with Dent in the hospital, Joker captured, and Bruce personally in shambles over Rachel's death.

Two Face would then get his own movie. Which probably wouldn't be the end of the series.

[DrNewGod]

People made that same argument about TDK and Two Face.

I get why they killed of Two-Face in TDK, and the role it played in TDKR. Still, I would have loved to see a film with Two-Face as the focal villain.

[Castle]

Ra's was going to have everyone in Gotham go Insane and Kill each other and Joker wanted people to kill each other and not just on the boats, but with the hospital plot too and Xavier killing people with brain powers is darker? Also there was no little girl that was Jason and the audience knew it.

.

Xavier nearly succeeded in killing everyone, part of the cynicism and darkness of the movie is Kids never should be portrayed as villains, Stryker ordered the death of his own son and the mutant race, which made things very personal. to give another 4th dimension of Stryker's beef with the mutants. You can add a 5th dimension, that Jason killed his Wife his own mother, or a 6th dimensional of Xavier promising to help Jason and failing or a 7th dimension that Xavier helped wolverine, who Stryker saw as a failed Weapon X experiment but Xavier could not help his son. There were many layers to X2 that earned the darkness and heaviness of that film but if I remember correctly, X-Men is a soap opera and not a very light one.

X2's most memorable scene was a heavily special effects scene where Nightcrawler attacked the White House so lets not act like a blue demon looking man teleporting around is "Realism".

The nightcrawler scene is the most memorable VFX of the movie. the most memorable scene of X2 was Bobby coming out , the themes of that scene is also very well explored with many characters POV, unlike Killmonger where the he mentions slavery but none of that gets explored.

To say nothing come close to that scene is laughable, black suffers from the save problems as civil war, MCU loves to bait themes, they never care to explore them. the entire plot of X2 is mostly lifted from the events of World War 2 and usual day to day prejudice experience. Stryker is very much like Hitler, coming into power and using politics and government to wipe out a particular race. Black Panther follows other Disney movies ,Lion King and Thor 1.

Fact is right after the Iceman scene with his parents Ronnie called the cops and John went full Pyro that's the problem with Allegories and that is mutants do pose a threat while Killmonger's hate came from real injustices that millions/billions of POC suffer thru everyday. Black Panther may had been your "standard MCU film" with some dodgy CGI but what is sad is it was more relevant to the real world than one of the best X-Men films.

It's funny how you bring up Killmonger. Killmonger is a Magneto-lite character. Who is Jewish. . that came up every time in X2 that some could argue it was too preachy.

Black Panther's story telling is not up to that level, if I remember that film correctly, the main plot of black panther was a country that is very rich and don't want to share resources and a cousin wanting to be king. prejudice and racism are not the focus of that movie at all like X2. so no offence, saying it did it better than X2 in that area is a lie.

I cant even remember any other character from black panther talking about prejudice like Nightcrawler or having to leave home and not come back like Bobby or another character like Jason, just loose everything and die. all because they are mutants. the characters in black panther are very rich, have access to power, in control, loved and very comfortable. they are not hiding, hated by the public or living in fear or fighting against their own holocaust like mutants.

Now back to the dark knight rises, a movie I would say had more realism in comparison to X2 than Black Panther and I am not just talking about the type of cinematography, sound, or the choice of VFX. Nolan had already seen X-men 1, one of the movies he used as a template to make his batman movies and to many did things better.

[the illustrious mr. kenway]

There was certainly room for a movie in between. But the main argument was that Two Face was tacked on and kind of wasted.
You didn't need to deal at all with Two Face in TDK. It was already a very long movie, that could have ended with Dent in the hospital, Joker captured, and Bruce personally in shambles over Rachel's death.

Two Face would then get his own movie. Which probably wouldn't be the end of the series.

I could see that but I feel Two Face worked better because Batman was distracted by the Joker. He flew underneath the radar while enacting his revenge.

[Castle]

People made that same argument about TDK and Two Face.

what argument was made about two face? one of the arguments i heard that can be easily debunked is his story was rushed. well yes and no is the answer.

When Batman Begins came out, I dont think Nolan decided what the second movie will be, he had ideas sure but not developed. going back , there is a good chance Nolan may have introduced two face in the first film and created a real love triangle with bruce, By the time the dark knight came around and Rachel dies and two face goes insane , it will have been more earned because batman begins would have provided the back drop for two face. However this and this is only if you don't want to see TDK as a pure 100% stand alone film.

Catwoman and Thalia from The Dark Knight Rises were better characters than Rachel in TDK.