Went to see this last knight

Excellent film, but it should have been called "Gotham - where Batman shows up now and again". There was very little Batman in it. A lot was from the perspective of the citizens. Again, with ideas running out, an important character was killed off. This leaves very little room for great stories to be adapted from the comics.
No-one will ever replace Michelle Pfeiffer as a movie Catwoman, but Anne Hathaway done a decent job although there was very little to make her anything other than a woman in latex. I did like the nod to the original Bruce Timm animated series.

On a personal note, I'd like to find a prison Ostiopath that could fix my shoulder in two months the way Bruce Waynes back was sorted.

Looking at the trilogy now it's finished, the cast and characterisation was spot on. I just think it would have been a better set of films if they had all been written first and then filmed. With a few tweeks, I would have swapped the stories from 2 and 3. I also wouldn't have ended it with so many "what happens now's?"

4/5

The "what happens now's" are there for a reason.

It may be the end of the trilogy, but do you think we have seen the last Batman movie?

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
The "what happens now's" are there for a reason.

It may be the end of the trilogy, but do you think we have seen the last Batman movie?

I don't think we've seen the last of Batman. Unfortunately, like Superman, all we'll see is another reboot with the origin retold. No-one seems to want to go beyond three films. There's so much scope to continue. Skip Robin and go straight to Nightwing.

Both the director Nolan and star Bale are now in that rarefied air of having finished a blockbuster trilogy with people wanting more of what they made. That would basically require the studio to give them both a huge raise for their participation any additional films in the series. It has lately been called "island money" as Johnny Depp used what he got for the 4th Pirates movie to purchase one. An island, that is. It's basically like a free agent contract in sports. They had signed for a trilogy as is the standards with blockbusters after the first film in a series is successful. The amount they were paid, while sizable, proved to be quite a bargain for the studio given the success of the films, so now a mammoth raise would be needed to get them to return. That usually why a lot of popular franchises end after 3 movies, as by then the studios have decided its cheaper to reboot than to give those massive raises in pay.

With that said, this is really well set up for Bale and Nolan to return to the Batman franchise in about 10 years time where this story could dovetail into a (loose) adaptation of Frank Miller's 1986 classic comic series "The Dark Knight Returns". Without going through the entire plot, it's basically set in the future where deteriorating situations prompt an elder Bruce Wayne to once more put on the suit. In the story, the are showdowns with a Bane-type urban gang leader, Harvey Dent, now "cured" from being Two-Face (not sure if they could bring him back), a more-murderous than ever Joker, and finally, Superman, little more than a government agent at that point who is finally sicced on Batman, who is, after all, a criminal vigilante.

Certainly because of things that happened at the end of "Rises", timelines and characters used in the next trilogy would may have to be altered some, but it could be easily done by Nolan. The guy knows how to make entertaining movies, and is quite adept as taking a mix of elements from a wide era of the comic series and melding them seamlessly together. The Dark Knight Rises used villains created in the 70's and even 1990's(!), plus a Batman, Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, John Blake, etc, that each drew bits and pieces from different eras of their characters as seen in comics.

I'd call the first movie the next trilogy one "The Dark Knight Saga: Robin and the Sons of the Batman", and Bruce Wayne might only appear in it briefly, reluctant to put the suit on as Robin/Nightwing and the orphans boys attempt to combat the chaos. The next two could be called "Hunt The Dark Knight" and "The Dark Knight Falls", those are titles of two of the 4 books in the Frank Miller comic series.

The cool thing is, if you used the title "The Dark Knight Falls" for part 3 of the next trilogy, it would be a great counterpoint to the title of Part 3 of the original trilogy, "The Dark Knight Rises".

As for my review, I loved the new movie and consider as good as the first 2 combined. I thought "Batman Begins" was good, and "Dark Knight" very good, but "Dark Knight Rises" is excellent. I'd have to think about it, but this may be the very first time that I've considered the finale of a trilogy to be the best film in the series. Anne Hathaway was PERFECTLY cast stole several scenes as Selina. Either her character or Joseph Gordon Levitt's Blake could each have their own movie, that's how well those actors did. Michael Caine and Gary Oldman were Oscar worthy, as usual. Bane is terrifying and those twists at the end sealed the deal in a movie that for me zipped by despite being nearly 3 hours long. I haven't enjoyed a comic movie that much since way back in May when "Avengers" came out.

I saw "Spider-Man" the same night I saw Dark Knight, and while it was good, seeing it next to Dark Knight, it struck me that Spider-Man is another movie about costumes and villains while Dark Knight is a movie first, and it just happens to have costumes and villains in it. No knock on "Spidey" (which was good, Emma Stone is a great Gwen Stacy), and looks to be off to a promising start, but these two movies could not be more different in tone, which is good, something for everyone and all that.

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