The Dark Knight Falls Short: Batman

I am a fan of Batman, but it seems that every movie, besides Tim Burtons Batman movies, borderline on tolerable viewing. The last three Batman movies did one thing right. Keeping it dark and serious where most of all the preceding Batman movies went for a more colorful and comic book type approach. But the movies were peppered with inconsistencies, over acting on Batman's part, and situations of extreme convenient coincidences. The type of coincidences that leave you immediately saying out loud, "oh really? that just happened to happen that way?" Take the Dark Knight Rises early scene when Gordon gets captured in the sewer. Number one, the commissioner isn't leading a team of rookies into the sewer anyway. And when Robin takes off, you kind of assume that maybe he is going to another manhole cover to try and rescue Gordon. Gordon is taken to Bane and rolls into the flowing sewer stream that could take him ANYWHERE. One of Bane's henchman even states that, too Bane. But never fear, when Robin took off earlier, he ran straight to the location Gordon just so happened to wash up, because his Robin senses had a feeling that Gordon didn't die in the explosion in the sewer, but would probably be taken to a villain who would have set up camp next to a spill way that Gordon would obviously use in an escape and lead him to the exact spot he was found...What a butt load of Crappy Coincidence. Like I said, a moment when you can't help but say, "Really!?!" And, I am just getting started. 

Ever notice that when major characters get into trouble, Batman conveniently is all over it. Sometimes showing up in multiple areas within minutes, navigating the entire city of Gotham? Damn he's good, except he always has trouble finding that villain. Which brings me to my next Peeve on the Dark Knight Rises movie. A series of events that was so poorly constructed, I was up half the night pondering it, which led to this review. Allow me to set it up for you. 

The Crap starts when Bane captures Fox and Miranda at the Wayne building. They go to the bomb, then Bane apparently lets them go. I say apparently because later, Bane re-captures Fox AT THE WAYNE BUILDING. And, Bane seems surprised that so many people would have been there. Why? The city is capturing upper class people, Wayne building would probably be a good place to start. And why let Fox go in the first place, just to catch him again? It is here that Fox also told the Special Forces guy that they had 23 days. Scene before that, it was said that the cops been trapped for only 3 months. 3 months and 23 days does not add up to 5 months. Whats more annoying is Bruce hasn't escaped yet. So we can only assume that he has less than 23 days when he does escape to travel his happy ass all the way back to Gotham. We do not know exactly where Hell on Earth is, but Alfred said it was in an ancient land, so we can assume it is far. Not implausible Bruce made it all the way to Gotham in time, but they decided to leave out how he managed to get into Gotham and, oh yeah, just so happened to know exactly where Selena would be. Here is where things really get F'd up. 

Miranda is captured with Gordon and both are taken to City Hall where Fox is. (when Gordon is being exiled, notice they are in the back of the room, NO PILLARS. When Bane asks for Miranda, Gordon's crew is more in the middle, and a Pillar magically appears to give Bane something to lean on) Bruce is captured and taken to Miranda and Fox. Bane's henchman know Bruce is the Batman. Bane calls him out in front of everyone right before he kicked his butt. But anyway, they talk, and Bruce looks right at Miranda and says, I wont forget about you. No more than a few hours later, Batman rescue's Gordon, at this point, between the 2 of them, Bruce was the last one to see Miranda. And Batman ask, "where are they keeping Miranda?"........HUH? What do you mean, "where is Miranda!?" You just saw Miranda a few hours earlier! Good job not forgetting about her Genius! Gordon's answer, at City Hall with Bane. You idiot! that is where you just saw Miranda, at City Hall, with Fox, right before you left her and said you wouldn't forget her. And, while I was wrapping my head around the ridiculous and painfully obvious script mistake, I was futher annoyed that Batman, in his time crunch, had the time to set up a flaming Batman sign on a bridge. A bridge that was probably heavily guarded since he was Johnny on the spot in saving Robin's ass in the very next scene. 

This whole sequence of events really ruined the movie for me. Especially the "where are they keeping Miranda" thing. It was so painfully obvious that I could not focus on anything else in the movie, and for a movie that had been getting such high reviews, I was surprised that there was such a disregard to attention to detail.  Some other small things that annoyed me would include:

     -Robin figured out who Batman was just by seeing an expression on his face...WEAK. real creative.

     -What was the point in Selena blowing open the tunnel? No one used it. 

     -Bane predicting that every cop in the city would eventually be sent to the sewers to look for him. Convenient

     -After they figured it was a trap, they had a whole Star Bangled  Banner song to get out. But instead of them showing 3000 cops running for the exit, they showed them patiently marching forward into the sewer. That was just annoying. 

So, that is it. There is more stuff that annoyed me about this movie. but the above sequence was just bad writing, bad editing and pure laziness. The Dark Knight Rises was poorly executed, being saved by another great villain, a good story, and a great twist. Doesn't make it un-watchable, but it does make watching it a little annoying. 

Thanks for reading.