Be warned - this talks obliquely about the ending of TDKR. Nothing explicit but it may give something away.



Ultimately, the real problem faced by any future BATMAN films is that they will be compared to Nolan's and, if found lacking, will result in a diminution of the property. Still, since Nolan seems very unlikely to do any future BATMAN movies and WB is committed to making more, a path forward will have to be determined. And since I have been told by a source in WB that they will not wait more than 18-24 months (max) to get the next one into production, we're looking at a short window.

By the way, don't expect to see The Joker on screen in any future iteration of BATMAN unless it happens many, many years down the road. Ledger's shadow is too long for them to risk going to that well again until everyone has forgotten about his performance.

Wait a minute. If memory serves, you didn't like "Spider-Man 3". So why watch that one again if you didn't like it? I know there are a few Bond movies, like "Octopussy" and "The Living Daylights", that you didn't like so why would you watch those again?

At the risk of trying to speak for JB, it's good to maintain a sense of perspective/balance/whatever... and you can't do that unless you calibrate your understanding of what is good and what is bad. Example: if you want to know what makes a good James Bond movie, you have to include the bad ones to know what doesn't fit the criteria.

Either that, or JB is a masochist. Exposing himself to Battleship and Ghost Rider: SoV might be evidence for that.

I'm guessing this has to do with Marion Cotilard's character.


God, I am so tempted to read those spoilers highlights but I REALLY want to wait! It's just less than 48 hours away!

Yeah, same. Although, since I'm in Australia, it's a lot less than 48 hours

A bit disappointed that the trilogy doesn't close out with a 4-star Oh well but it's still a highly positive review. Though, my lead in the competition thread seems to have come to an end haha.

24 hours to go for me.

Mr. Berardinelli, would you say that "The Dark Knight Rises" is superior to "Marvel's The Avengers"?

A very good question, indeed.

I do have a rather odd inquiry, non-spoiler related. I'm curious if TDKR has any uses of the F-bomb. I ask due to the fact that no other Batman movie has used it, and TDKR was specifically singled out for language.

Only 3 stars for me, if you want to know more a short review with not spoilers below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogGab9zRlr8
Cheers

James review for The Avengers seemed like a 4 star review even though he actually gave the film 3 and half. This review obviously belonged to a 3 and half stars film at most though. So I doubt it that he would put TDKR over TA.

He also stated in the Halftime 2012 piece that it doesn't hold up as well the second time around (a point I can personally vouch for, having seen it a second time only a couple days ago). Guess we'll just have to wait and see...

People found the end of 'Inception' to be maddening? There was nothing confusing, maddening or hard to follow about any of it. Maybe paying attention is a rare skill these days after all!

I think it's more a matter of over-thinking the ending rather than not paying attention in the case of Inception, as people were seemingly reading too much into it. All I say to those people is: it wobbled.

Maybe it's maddening for people who can't accept that sometimes filmmakers don't intend for there to be a definitive answer to all the questions.

Follow the advice of Mr. Park from A Serious Man: "Please. Accept the mystery."

If this was facebook, I would have just clicked "like" for this comment.
-Jeremy

That's not the issue here, though, because normally I prefer things to be open-ended. I hate it when writers go out of their way to tie up every loose end possible, and I usually like endings that are left open to interpretation. Inception didn't feel like it was meant to be open-ended, though, and Nolan points incredibly clearly towards a negative interpretation before "it wobbled". If you're going to show it wobble, show it falling down . . . no reason to cut to a black screen except to insert an "open to interpretation" ending at the very last second where it doesn't belong.

The only other time I felt as irritated at an ending like this was reading Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, and that one at least didn't feel so out-of-place.

Well i'm a sucker for endings that tie up all loose ends, I guess that makes me old fashioned, I don't mind an ambigious ending once in awhile, but the ending to Inception just felt more lazy then anything else.

What's lazy about it?

I don't think the ending to Inception is really even all that open ended. Sure, it doesn't definitely answer whether or not Dicaprio is in "actual" reality, but the point is he chooses to walk away from the spinning top and accept where he is as reality. Whether he's in "actual" reality or not doesn't matter. That's especially true considering that movie had just spent the previous 2.5 hours showing how malleable and abstract reality is. If you need to know whether or not he's in "actual" reality, I'd argue that you're largely missing the point of the film.

I would love for you to expand on this. I had a lot of problems with Inception, but I really didn't have a problem with the way it ended.

I didn't really care much about the ending one way or the other, the film as a whole was a dissapointment for me, so a more clear-cut ending wouldn't have really done much good anyways.