The following post is made of SPOILERS. I don't even know why you'd read this thread anymore if you didn't want to read SPOILERS. In particular, these are SPOILERS about the film's ending.
Warbler said:
I think Bane's mask hindered too much his ability to emote.
True, although it also imbued him with a certain level of creepy. Early in the film, his eyes are totally emotionless but his voice is great. Later in the film, even his eyes start to show things.
I also felt let down by the fights between Bane and Batman. I wanted the climax of this movie to be an epic knock down drag out fight to the death between Bane and Batman. The fights weren't bad, but they could have been better.
They were indeed just two big guys punching each other. I can't think of a different way to do it, though, given that we have two big guys and they gotta punch.
I am appalled with what they did to Alfred in this movie. Having him all of the sudden wish Wayne had not come back in Batman Begins and having him want Wayne to stop being Batman feels shoved in. Neither movie showed any indication that Alfred felt anything close to this way and yet he supposedly felt this way the whole time.
I didn't have this issue at all. It's been pretty well established that Alfred wants Bruce to be a normal person, well recovered from the death of his loved ones and no longer overcome with grief. When he talks about having hoped Bruce wouldn't come back, it's only in the context of Bruce not coming back because he's found a new, good life somewhere else. When he doesn't want Bruce to be Batman, it's because he thinks Bruce will die as Batman. While the details like that haven't been spoken by Alfred previously, the motivation behind them was certainly present.
I liked the John Blake character, but I didn't like the Robin thing. For one thing, Robin wasn't Robin's real name. His real name was Dick Grayson. Also Robin is supposed to be the boy wonder. In the movie he is a grown man. I also don't buy how he knows that Bruce was Batman. Finally Robin is Batman's assistant, not his replacement.
In terms of Batman continuity, this is certainly the only really awful thing in the film. But goodness, I'm impressed enough that Nolan put anything remotely related to Robin in one of his movies. It's a pretty good way for Robin to exist without Bruce essentially kidnapping and conscripting a child into service.
And the brings us to the thing I hate most about this movie. Bruce Wayne leaving Gotham with Catwoman. That is so wrong on so many fronts. Bruce Wayne would never stop fighting crime in Gotham, you'd have to kill him or disable him permanently to stop from crime fighting.
Remember what Alfred said, early in the film, about how he hoped that Bruce would find peace. Bruce being at the cafe means that that's happened.
And I certainly can't see him leaving Gotham in the condition it after Bane and Talia were defeated. Gotham was still a mess and criminals were still on the loose and police power was limited at best. No way he'd leave it in that condition when Gotham still needed him.
This is exactly why he gave Robin the Batcave. Also, notice the part where he restored the Batsignal. He knows Gotham still needs a protector, and he didn't leave it protector-less.
And to go away with the Catwoman??? She is a criminal! She set him up to get his ass beaten by Bane! She is partly responsible for all the death and destruction that he caused. Also she is a thief, like the guy that murdered his parents!
No, there's more to her than that.
I don't really think that I need to say much more than that about her. She redeemed herself and proved which side she's on when she blew open the tunnel and then came back instead of escaping.
I understand that they wanted to end the Batman series here, but they could have done it without this stupid ending. They could have killed him off, exactly as they apparently had. Having him die to save the city he loved would have been an excellent way to end the thing. Mind you, I am not saying the movie is bad, it just has flaws. But it still kept me entertained for two hours, so I would still say it is worth seeing.
The best thing about this movie is where they leave everyone at the end. You've made a lot of assumptions about where people have to go in life after this film, assumptions which, while possible, are not necessary.
Bruce can, now that he's a bit more sane and in control, return to being Batman when he chooses. Publicly, he's assumed dead in the Bane revolution, but he can return to Gotham with a story about not being on the island when the bridges blew and then hiding out in the rest of the world for awhile. Heck, maybe he'll even become a good businessman now and restore Wayne Industries. Alfred would certainly rejoin a stabler Bruce, when the time came.
And who's to say that Selina would stay clean forever? The Catwoman/Batman relationship has always been tumultuous, and it really isn't hard to imagine her going back to thievery, if you really want to enter into the endless-conflict state of comic books.
One of my favorite parts is how ambiguous they've made Ra's al Ghul's status. Is he alive or dead? Was Bruce hallucinating, or did he slip in and out of consciousness just long enough to enjoy a short visit from his former mentor? Nolan doesn't tell us, which allows him to avoid fantastical elements like Lazarus Pits without actually making al Ghul's fate definitive. At the end of Nolan's trilogy, all of Batman's classic villains are potentially alive and useable, except for Two-Face (a real loss, unfortunately, but necessary) and Bane.
Other than the whole Dick Grayson thing, the film leaves its world in a very good state. You can either imagine that this is the end of Bruce as Batman, it's all over... or things could return to a more familiar state. It's beautifully open ended, but not in a way that demands sequels.
