The Dark Knight Climbs a Well

Today I went to watch 'The Dark Knight Rises' for free, because of some SAFRA competition that I won. Pretty easy contest, just email them saying that you want the tickets and presto! They replied saying 'Congratulations! You have won... etc'.

I must say, the show was pretty draggy and confusing, and seemed to be filled with plot holes. The movie was about 2 hours 45 minutes long and many scenes felt pretty redundant or draggy. And I was relying on the Chinese subtitles for many parts to try to decipher what they were saying in their try-to-act-cool-mumbling, and given how bad my Chinese is it doesn't always work. I'm going to give my interpretation of what was happening for the movie below... spoilers ahead! Don't read on if you don't want to be spoilt for the movie!



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(I may have got the first two scenes mixed up) So the movie opened with three 'hostages' with bags over their heads being forced to talk by the supposed bad guy, by leaning them over the edge of the plane. I had no idea how they were supposed to talk with a bag over their head but the supposed-bad-guy just kept pushing him to talk. Finally one of the hostages spoke up in a Deckard Cain voice (Diablo 3 fans should recognize this. He sounds totally like Deckard Cain!)  and he is revealed to be the movie's villian - Bane.

I didn't really understand the whole point of this opening scene besides for the one humorous line from Bane -

Supposed-bad-guy: 'What happens when I remove that mask?'

Bane: 'It'll hurt.. a lot'

Supposed-bad-guy: "oh"

Bane: 'For you.'

The scene was so rapid and I only saw the person they were kidnapping undergoing some sort of blood transfer to someone who I thought looked like Bruce Wayne but apparently it wasn't, and it ends with Bane and that person  dangling in midair.

The next scene was some memorial scene for some dude whom noone will recognize unless you watched 'The Dark Knight' (Harvey Dent). In fact, most of the references (e.g. the letter which the commissioner didn't want to read) are lost to those who did not watch The Dark Knight, which made the whole scene redundant. They could have at least tried to explain it a little bit better to help the newbies.

Then there came a scene where Anne Hathaway, who you will later learn to be Catwoman, steals a pearl necklace from Bruce Wayne (Batman) and escapes easily because he's terribly crippled (again, no explanation as to what happened, or maybe I just couldn't catch it.) And somehow later on in the show he puts on some magical brace which miraculously cures his crippled legs! Wonders of money/technology!

I can't really remember + don't really understand the next major scene when Catwoman lures some people to be caught by the police and she escapes with the only bit of acting she did in the show, and somehow the commissioner decides to enter the sewers (why enter the sewers?? Are they chasing the Teenage mutant ninja turtles??) and some merry men knock out the entire police squad in the sewers and brings the commissioner to Bane.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="356"] TMNT makes a cameo to lure the police commissioner into the Gotham sewers[/caption]

Then Bane here demonstrates his ruthlessness by killing 2 of his own men while the commissioner escapes by rolling into the gushing water while semi-conscious.... only to be saved by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (playing as an eager cop Blake) who miraculously knew where the commissioner would wash up at. How did he know?? Even the super intellectual Bane had no idea and needed to dump his own man into the water to trace him.  And Blake just somehow knew that the commissioner would jump into the water and also where he would end up at.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="210"] Cute, charming, and has an intricate knowledge of Gotham's sewerage network.[/caption]

Batman makes a return later on, only to fail to terminate some sort of online transaction (their data connection is really good! They can speed all around Gotham without the connection being lost. Singapore needs to learn) after a long chase. If I'm not wrong this made Batman almost bankrupt, which totally contributed to the flow of the storyline.

Catwoman later manages to trick Batman into being captured by Bane - the two (Batman and Bane) engage in a fist fight which Batman eventually loses out because Bane... doesn't react to punches to his face for some reason.

Oh, and upon checking up Wikipedia, I learnt that "Bane's mask feeds him a steady flow of gas which relieves pain from a debilitating injury", which they must have mentioned in the show but I didn't catch. My only thought is, where does this steady flow of gas come from? He wasn't carrying any gas tank around. Magical! Man, I can't keep up with these newfangled toys.

The scene climaxed with Bane breaking Batman's back.... which doesn't seem to really break his back because he still manages to recover and do pushups and crunches like all was fine in that well-prison of his. I thought it was quite funny actually, how after doing some pushups and pullups and crunches, Batman is able to climb up the well which none of the other 12087 inmates who have been there forever couldn't. Plus his back was supposed to be recovering from being broken (and by recovering I mean it was snapped back into place or something by another dude in the prison... I didn't know you fixed broken backs that way!)

And another funny thing was how young Talia (initially we thought it was young Bane) was able to make that leap which 21037 other fully grown, fit, muscular men could not, JUST BECAUSE she was BORN and RAISED in the prison. Yes yes, I think they forgot to mention the part that being born in that prison gives you special abilities like making a further horizontal leap. Oh right, plus you cannot have a rope harness, because otherwise you don't fear death enough! You need to fear death to jump an extra few inches! Because the jail dude said so!

While all this was happening, Bane was involved in some big master plot which involved trapping ALL of Gotham's police force underground (I have NO idea why they would send the ENTIRE POLICE FORCE underground just to catch Bane. Makes perfect sense! Why not! /sarcasm) and blowing up some nuclear bomb thingy. He explains his grand scheme and why he was doing but I couldn't really understand his Deckard Cain, attempted-to-be-menacing voice. Something about the citizens ruling over the corrupt authorities or something.

Oh and of course throw in the obligatory 'innocent children escaping' bit because it makes the whole situation more urgent! I mean, it's innocent children!! They don't deserve to die! And also, there is noone else interested in escaping the city that's about to BLOW UP TO SMITHEREENS besides the children on the bus + Blake because.. they're interested in fighting the police force head on! Yea!

We get treated to a nice shot of the big mass of policemen marching up against the big mass of rebels/citizens and a massive fist brawl ensues because noone knows how to use guns and fist brawls are more dramatic for a movie.

Batman also miraculously walks back to Gotham from the well-prison which I suppose was actually nowhere close, judging by the desert-like terrain which he came out from after he climbed the well. Also, aren't the exits from Gotham blocked by some outside police? (remember the scene with Blake and the other policeman who blew up the bridge when he stepped closer) Well of course, he's Batman, there are no obstacles he can't overcome, even without his suit or batmobile or any technological aid, + a recuperating broken back.

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="240"] Hi guys, I have nice abs and arms and pecs, which means breaking my back has no effect on me whatsoever[/caption]

So back to that massive fist brawl - Batman and Bane engage in another punching match because weapons are too mainstream, and this time round Batman's punches to Bane's face manages to dislodge some of the tubes - something that he didn't manage to do in the previous fight even though he landed significantly more punches on the mask - which severely weakened Bane and allowed Batman to 'win' the fight.

But lo ho ho, this mysterious woman who doesn't appear much in the show pops up with a dagger into Batman's body to contribute to the show's major plot twist - she is the young child who climbed out of the well-prison, who had a significant bond with Bane because he helped her escape.

I can't really remember the rest of the events because I was getting restless waiting for this mess of a movie to end, but basically Catwoman returns to save Batman (and also shares an obligatory kiss - everyone likes a kiss between the main characters of the show especially if they're as good-looking as Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway), Batman manages to fly to and dispatch of the nuclear bomb by flying it far from Gotham (despite having a severe stab wound which had a dagger in it  + twisted around).

But is Batman dead?

Of course he's not, as revealed in a scene later where Bruce Wayne (Batman) is seen having brunch with Catwoman, and Blake is revealed to have another name which he doesn't like - 'Robin' - thrown in to cause some last-minute excitement for no reason at all, and the show ends there. Quite a good trick, to make you feel that surge of recognition/excitement at the end of the show (known as recency effect in Psychology), no doubt to try to convince you that you didn't waste your time for the past 2 hours 45 minutes.

Frankly, I felt quite disappointed after the show ended (and no secret scene?! How can there be no secret scene post-credits!! It's almost mandatory to have a secret scene nowadays!), and I didn't realize how many loopholes there were until I started writing this blog post. Or maybe I just wasn't following the show closely enough. Maybe everything I was confused about had been explained already in the show.

Maybe I need to discard my safety rope to make the leap of understanding. Ok I tried to have a fancy ending but fell short, just like this entire movie. Good night.

EDIT:

I just found a better ending to this post. This is directly from wikipedia, found it when I was checking out what Bane was all about:

 

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[caption id="attachment_1674" align="alignleft" width="429"] How do you defeat him now?[/caption]