Yea...30 more minutes would've helped. Coulda had a scene of Bruce asking Alfred for help getting back into the city and Al pleading with him to give up on Gotham. That's 2 birds with 1 stone. I wanted more than just "surprise, lemme tell you bout paradise and Bane's whole backstory...deuces for an hour or 5 months or so...tears."
It just felt like...oh yeah, I forgot you never died, when he popped up again.
And with JGL, it was just getting over my preconceived notions about what the film was gonna be and how much time they'd invest in basically an entire cast of new faces and characters, this late in the game at the cost of more time for Bruce, building up Bane or explaining _______. You wanted your big 25th hour plot twist, fine. I get it. But you're willing to paralyze the 2 most important characters' arcs and motivations until the very end of the film, where you completely emasculate one just to be disposed of and finally make one compelling just to paint the film with fail at every turn to the bitter end.
Act like you expected Matthew Modine in every other scene or JGL to keep giving him reasons to be in every other scene. They didn't fit JGL into the film that well imo. In TDK, there was air to breathe. They had new cop faces and characters floating in and out of the movie effortlessly. This is the end of a trilogy. In TDKR, they threw so many strange twists and changes to Gotham, Gordon and Bruce...then introduce Bane and Selina with mysterious motivations...It didn't feel like there was enough air for the little, seemingly unimportant, cop work and side missions JGL was doing. Esp. all the time they were giving to them and him...they just stuck out and didn't really flow into the story outside of...either it's obvious what you're doing, or you better have something clever up your sleeve. And as good as his explanation was, the kinda cheap way he knew _________, had me like
. I get it, but they couldn't use that accountant or something? At least it's better than how Gordon...
And the 5 months thing...I get it and even like the idea, but it's a lot better in concept than what was realized. I'm fine with how they turned Gotham into No Man's Land, the poor rising up against the wealthy and the gangs and mercenaries running the city, but a 3 minute montage for a city of millions over months wasn't enough. And every part of how that relates to Bane and _______'s plan is ******ed. On it's own, if this was the big testament to some type of social injustice they showed us explicitly, sure...but without a real city's story getting shown from the ground up...without real reactions from the gov't or even the cops/people/gangs that didn't get trapped, then what was this? He didn't even say this was gonna stop the bomb, he told them the bomb was just his way of keeping the gov't from stepping in and stopping the people from getting theirs.
Without any of that, all of this was just to give Bruce something to watch on TV? He's just the Joker 2.0? Cuz the Joker did the same thing with the boats and bombs, and when no one flipped the switch, he was gonna. But he didn't talk up false hope and Gotham as a metaphor for the Pit. He didn't wait half a year for something that would've been good and done with in weeks. And for what? So when Bruce turned off the TV, that's it, game over?
And the bomb...exactly 5 months and change? Because you might as well leave it up to nature as to when this big experiment is finished? Exactly when the Pit stuff is done with? And waiting on something to kinda randomly happen, when you've got a switch you can hit when you're ready? Why would you have that? Why would you wait until the last minute to push it? Why would you sit there and wait for it to happen right in your face? Why would you drive it around town, when no one knows how to turn it off? And that something happened has a countdown to the second, to what sounds like a random unstable event that's more likely to happen later than sooner? So unstable and ready to go off any second that you could crash it and drag it across the asphalt of downtown Gotham? Besides, how could it be almost every cop and 5 months, when I see dudes crawling out of manholes, like Batman
just put em there?
damn...didn't mean to write that much[emoji]8482[/emoji]
...long story short..er...the movie was epic, IMAX made a really great experience...the sound and music and cinematography were so on point, and it really is a lot of good ideas, good acting and strong characters. The screenplay had a lot of problems, but it goes down easier the 2nd time and I can't recommend IMAX enough. And it's not like it was bad like Prometheus' screenplay...just a lot of sacrifice for themes instead of the story and character arcs, and not enough attention to how things got from A to Z rather than any problems I had with Z.