Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Holy whips and chains, Batman!


NOTE: THIS POST IS ONLY ABOUT THE MOVIE (NOT ANY OF THE REAL LIFE MADNESS/ SADNESS THAT UNFOLDED AROUND THE MOVIE). 

The movie has been out for a while now. It probably would have been more timely to publish this a week ago. By now, though, more people have seen the movie. I try to make jokes that would be funny if you haven't seen the movie.
BUT THERE ARE SPOILERS. DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANYTHING GIVEN AWAY.

SETTING THE STAGE: EXPOSITION THAT LASTS FOREVER
Before things really happen... the makers of this lay the groundwork for thirteen different story-lines.  

When the movie starts, Batman hasn't been seen for 8 years and Bruce Wayne has become a emo recluse. He limps around the manor in his pajamas practicing archery in the attic. For serious. He is super pathetic looking and has an awful sad looking goatee.

Meanwhile, everyone is super psyched that Gotham is at peace. There is peace everywhere! They are silly with it. Soon we won't need police-men because there is so much peace!!!

The first twenty minutes of dialogue are basically citizens of Gotham asking how things could possibly go wrong!!?

We've SEEN the trailer. We KNOW things are going to go wrong. Its kind of why we are here. Rather than be bludgeoned to death with foreshadowing- how about some more fight scenes, or cool gadgets, or Morgan Freeman, or Morgan Freeman doing a fight scene. No? Everyone gets an emo monologue instead? Cool.

Anyway, Catwoman steals some pearls from Batman.

This act of of petty thievery makes Bruce Wayne shave off his stank ass goatee (THANK YOU, CATWOMAN) and explore the city (which is peaceful!). 

He finds that his selfish pining has landed his company in the toilet and orphans are living in sewers because of him. 

Also, everyone he loves is still dead.


STUFF HAPPENS 
The plot is driven forward once again by Catwoman doing awesome things.

She dazzles everyone with her sneaky schemey brain and kicks everyone who stands in her way in the face. Awesome.

While Bruce Wayne is being a useless feeb- Catwoman is kicking so much ass. About 94% of the badassitude in this movie is provided by Anne Hathaway. It should be called Catwoman: A Tale of Awesome Air-Kicks.

At one point, she and Batman are both fighting Bane's thugs. Randomly during the fight, Batman knocks the gun out of Catwoman's hands and chastises her for using it. I'm pretty sure it is supposed to be a nod to Batman's history of being anti-gun in the comics but it carries significantly less weight in the movie when all of Bruce Wayne's vehicles come equipped with CANNONS. 

ALSO- Catwoman has an awesome lesbian subtext (AND NO ONE CAN TELL ME OTHERWISE). When Catwoman isn't being a brilliant adorable ninja- she is in the company of some nameless urchin she has taken under her wing. She is protective of random urchin and lives with her in her little hovel. GAY!

BATMAN: "Wait...... what?"
THERE IS THIS RANDOM WOMAN...
Some woman keeps popping up trying to get Bruce Wayne to support her clean energy project. The woman is played by Marion Cottilliard so she is PROBABLY significant in the future (even though Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine are in this movie and are completely pointless). But, I guess, whatever for now....

BANE
Bane lives in the sewers with his occupy Gotham posse. Bane is made of muscles and only wears leather and kevlar and wears a mask you would normally only see in a nightmare. The screenwriters, however, really want to drive home that he is a bad guy so he murders some people at random to establish his villainy. (WE GET IT!)

There is so much peace that the new police strategy in new Peaceful Gotham is to not chase bad guys. All they do is hop down the sewers and they escape. Gordon is a renegade and plays by his own rules (i.e. actual police rules) and finds out there are a crap-ton of people living in the sewers with guns.

Also, Bane sounds like a bad Sean Connery impression. 

BATMAN RETURNS?
Meanwhile, Bruce Wayne is still trying to solve the mystery of who Bane is... and what he wants. He doesn't figure much out. Alfred, however, is like some sort of super-villain wikipedia and looks up everything there is to know about him.
"All I need to fight crime is my batsuit and my serious face"

Bane seems bad and emo Bruce Wayne sighs deeply and decides to be the Batman again. Alfred rightly points out that you need muscles to be Batman but Bruce Wayne is all like, "Whatever, Alfred. I've done this before, I think I know what I'm doing!"

You listen to Alfred, whippersnapper!

Anyway- cue Batman's badass return to the scene. He's out to stop Bane from doing... something. 

(Bruce Wayne isn't awesome at solving mysteries in this movie).

Bane shoots up the exchange and Wall Street people and despite earlier established villainy-- EVERYONE IS TOTALLY ROOTING FOR HIM. Like, he just shoots some people point blank in the face and as far as I can tell and no one in the audience cared. The Wall Street Suits are later used as HUMAN SHIELDS and people still don't care. The police don't even care. They are chasing after Batman. Even Batman makes almost NO effort to save them.

RANDOM WOMAN BECOMES RELEVANT!
Random woman (Marion Cottilliard) takes over Bruce Wayne's fusion reactor which can power all of Gotham with clean free sustainable energy (but can also be weaponized) so he didn't turn it on. 

BANE MAKES HIS MOVE
Bane shows up at the Wayne Enterprises board meeting and steals the reactor and uses it to give Gotham free sustainable energy. 

JK- he totally uses it for evil.

Also, that shoot out at the stock exchange, stealing all of Bruce Wayne's money, and a couple of random scenes with Catwoman-- that was all to gain access to the fusion reactor. With Bruce Wayne gone, Bane could replace him with his people. I like how Bane is a violent terrorist and just shoots and kills people to get what he wants but in order to get a fusion reactor- it is imperative that he gain majority access on the shareholder's board. 

BATMAN FIGHTS BANE AND LOSES SO HARD
It is hard to watch.

They have a pity party over who had a tougher childhood. 

I'm guessing the guy who has to wear a mask in order to breathe.

Batman is then banished to the Middle east to learn how to be less of a pussy.

The Middle East.

Bane blows up a football field (and the mayor) and lays siege to the city. He can basically do all of this because he trapped the entire police force underground

JUST TO REVIEW...
So, just to review: Batman is in the middle east, the people of Gotham are just being assholes, the entire police force is just chilling underground, and the outside world is completely useless. 

And it is like this for a LONG TIME.

Winter happens.

CUT TO THE MIDDLE EAST
So Bruce is in the  Middle East to re-learn how to be a badass and it takes him FOREVER. He is in a giant pit with other forgotten rabble. It isn't really guarded- it is just impossible to escape. Getting out of the pit requries an impossible jump that no one has ever made-- oh, except a child did it this once.

Bruce Wayne's time in the middle east is basically a montage of him doing sit-ups and pull-ups while he is told the story of this little child who made the jump. Two magical arabs tell him the story.

The reason the child made the jump is that their life was filled with pain and hatred. Growing up in the pit, the child was surrounded by darkness, sickness, and the worst parts of man. The child had nothing to loose. Bruce Wayne lost both his parents as a child and fell down a well once so he figures that is practically the same thing.

Bruce Wayne makes the climb. 

(*Also, for someone only eating gruel, he certainly bulked up during his time in the pit.)

When he emerges, he negligently tosses a rope down into the pit. Did that free everyone from the pit? It is unclear!

Also unclear- how the FUCK Bruce got back to Gotham city from the friggin Middle East.

Sooooo... Batman's major action sequence is climbing out of a giant well.

THERE IS A BOMB THREAT BECOMES RELEVANT STARTING.... NOW!
Suddenly, the bomb is a threat. Like, it was a threat before now but now it is even more of a threat.

A SERIES OF EPIC FIGHTS
For anyone who thought this movie was going to be pro-occupy, they would be seriously dissapointed. Bane uses the same rhetoric as the Occupy Movement does and is against pretty much the same things but he is a violent psychopath. His vision for Gotham is one of chaos and violence.
This is actually a candid shot.

The movie doesn't really paint cops in a great light- but the people who stand up to Bane are the cops and in the end it feels very pro-cop.

Bane fights Batman. Batman tries to redeem himself but it is Catwoman who dispatches Bane (with an effing CANNON).

EVACUATING GOTHAM
Joseph Gordon-Levitt is tasked with evacuating Gotham which is no easy task since Gotham is a metropolis. 

First place Levitt goes to is the boys home to rush the orphans to the bus and then he goes to the NOWHERE ELSE.

He pulls four orphans aside and tasks them wtih knocking on as many doors as you can in 15 minutes within a two block radius of the bus.

THAT is his EVACUATION PLAN.

If you are in the other 98% of the city, you don't even get a heads up.

And if you do happen to be in that 2 block radius- your warning is a street urchin hollering at you to go to the bridge because Batman said so.

Surprisingly, no one listens to them and the 13 orphans are the only ones to leave on the freedom bus.

You guys, The city is under siege! 

I wouldn't open the door for Batman.

So... super ineffective evacuation plan.

GETTING RID OF THE BOMB
For what is supposedly a mega-unstable substance, it actually seems to be the most durable device ever. While attempting to manuever that reactor out of the city, it gets flung against the ground, shaken up in a bus, and smashed against several walls before it is airborne. It explodes off the coast having no effect on life at all.

Batman sacrifices his life for the city.

And thus the movie ends not with a bang but with a whimper.

SO IN THE END...
Wrong is righted? 

The movie manages to be anti-establishment, anti-rich, and anti-rabble. 

If you are ever in trouble, don't count on the cops or the government or your neighbors or even your local super-hero (he might be to busy pining over his dead girlfriend).

Was the lesson that everyone is awful and pointless?

Also- renewable energy is bad because it can be weaponized (which someone rightfully pointed out is becoming a disturbing theme in movies...).

The only thing that seems to be good are orphans and sexy ninja thieves.

...And I was already on Team Hathaway.
I am awesome.