this is mainly tv.: redbeanbun goes to the movies: BATMAN, nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh nuh BATMAN edition

SPOILERS

Okay, guys, this is going to be the mother of all spoiler posts - I'm hesitant about even writing this, putting it out on the internet, where some poor schmuck who hasn't seen the movie yet accidentally comes across it and then is like NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

BUT I HAVE A DUTY TO YOU, MY LOYAL READERS, WHO HAVE STUCK IT OUT THROUGH LIKE THREE BILLION POSTS ABOUT THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER.

So I'm just going to warn you again, if you have not seen this movie, do not read this post, because it is nothing but a mess of spoilers because I have feelings, okay, and those feelings are mainly spoilers.

Dude guys I'm not kidding, if you haven't seen the movie yet I think you should close this window immediately. I'm so serious.

Are you still here? WHY. NO. CLOSE. CLOSE THE WINDOW.

Is it just people who have seen the movie now?

Yes?

Are we sure?

Yes.

Okay.

So.

ANYWAY.

I would like it to be known that I TOTALLY CALLED THE WHOLE THING.

About 10-15 minutes into the movie, I leaned over to my friend Scout and was like, "AHHH. SHE IS THE VILLAIN."

from thebatmanuniverse.net

Her face is totally like, LOL WHY YES I AM THE VILLAIN LOL.

And then I turned to Scout and said, "OH MY GOD, SHE'S TALIA AL GHUL. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THIS IS AMAZING" and then I may have punched the air several times for emphasis. (My excitement was more, YES SERIOUSLY THEY ARE DOING TALIA AL GHUL IN THIS MOVIE and less MARION COTILLARD AS TALIA AL GHUL because that's kind of like, ?, I mean, she could look like, mildly ethnically ambiguous? Maybe? I don't know. Shhhhh.)

And then I may have also said, "God, Batman, are you seriously taking the Villain into your secret hiding place for a friggin' NUCLEAR WEAPON?" Yes. Yes he did. God. How stupid was that? I swear to god, it's like Batman does zero reconnaissance on anything ever. Ra's al Ghul was your MENTOR for like YEARS, you idiot, how do you not even know 1. that he had a child and 2. that that child was a daughter? SHAME ON YOU for assuming such badassery could only be from a little boy.

Also, I know that Joseph Gordon-Levitt was completely obviously going to be Robin, but I still called it.

hahaha, thank you, comicbooked.com, for already having done this so I didn't have to

I wasn't actually convinced going in that he wasn't going to be a sneak-bad guy, because I had heard rumors that Christopher Nolan had managed to keep the actual villain under wraps, which, I mean, clearly he did. And after some early obsession led to knowing more than I wanted to about the movie, I avoided the Dark Knight rumor mills as much as possible. They probably already called everything; probably knew that Marion Cotillard was in the movie and all that jazz. I try to avoid as much as I can knowing anything about a movie before I go in, because that gives me more of an opportunity both to be surprised and also to call the ending and feel awesome because I did that with my very own brain.

Anyway. I was going to say. I don't think that Talia al Ghul would've been a surprise to anyone that knows a bit about the Batman universe(s), but will probably be a shocker for those who get their superhero kicks solely in movie form. It was kind of hilarious, because I went with a few friends, and to my right was my friend Scout, who is also a general nerd like me, and to my left was my friend's sister, who has maybe seen the other Dark Knight movies and that is the sum total of her Batman knowledge. She was freaking out. It was awesome.

Alright, so, my other feelings about the movie, in no particular order, to which I would love it if people would respond and give me depth or confirmation or physics or whatever on them:

Marion Cotillard must not have ever died in a movie before, because that was the least believable death. Of possibly all movies. (If you can think of a better awful one, I would really, really love to see it.)
Bane's accent thing? I just. I don't know. I vastly preferred the first run of the trailer, where everyone said he was too difficult to understand. I thought the way he ended up sounding was just sort of bizarre.
A coworker pointed out this morning that in the last movie, Batman's tank thing withstood everything short of a nuclear blast, and then in this one, the tanks the bad guys were in (which were from Batman Labs, Inc) got hit with like a bullet from the BatBike and exploded to bits. Good point, coworker.
How would that fall, with the rope around the midsection, NOT immediately break the spine? I mean, seriously. I don't understand how that doesn't kill you. Someone run the physics on that and get back to me.
Wouldn't there be radiation/fallout from the thing in the water? If not to the isle of Gotham, then certainly to Batman. How fast can his Bat fly? Can it fly over twelve miles in less than like 11 seconds, because that is what I have as what he would need to do to 1. get it far enough from the city and 2. get himself far enough away from it. Again, physics. Someone physics this. I need to learn physics.
What was Bane's face-hose situation doing? Because when it sort of broke, you know, it sounded like there was gas leaking, but like, where was that coming from?
I want Bane's coat he wears in the football stadium. That needs to be a thing that I own.
OH MY GOD, guys, probably my favorite thing in the entire movie was the Scarecrow showing up on his giant throne of desks to mete out sentences. That was amazing. I had sort of completely forgotten about him, and I guess I thought he died? But he hadn't. Because he was awesome. And the best.
For a secluded desert prison that contained the al Ghul family, there sure weren't many non-white people in the pit thing.
For that matter, for Gotham being a fictionalized New York, there sure was pretty much only Lucius Fox that wasn't white.
Oh, and, PS, Bane is supposed to be latino, and also in the comics he carries a teddy bear (okay, with a knife hidden in it) named Osito and ISN'T THAT THE MOST ADORABLE THING YOU HAVE EVER HEARD, much as I love Tom Hardy and his abs and his arms and everything, I really wish Bane could've been, like, like, oh man, how great would it have been to have had Danny Trejo be Bane? I mean, he was supposed to have been an adult who took care of Talia in the prison (which, let's not even get into why that is not true, but whatever, liberties), so why would he be approximately her age in the present? Danny Trejo with a teddy bear named Osito. In love with Talia al Ghul in like, a very sad way. That would be the best. Let's redo these movies with some mild recastings.
I really hope that there is a Batman and Robin movie forthcoming. I really do. I also wouldn't mind seeing JG-L in some Robin tights. Mhmmm. If he can say that pretty women aren't funny, I can say that I would like to objectify him in a movie. Right? That's how objectification works. I'm pretty sure.
Also my hearing isn't the greatest in the world, and I may have spent entire scenes sort of squinting (because for some reason I feel like that will help my hearing) when the dialogue was just between Bane and Batman.

Okay, so those are pretty much my feelings. I just saw it last night, so I can't totally unpack it yet, I guess. This was more of a spurt of feelings than a legitimate post of thoughts.

In conclusion:

In a lot of ways, this was a really great movie, both in script, concept, execution, complexity of characters, female characters getting to be interesting and bizarre and what have you; but also, there were some ways it definitely could've been improved upon.

Oh, and a last thought - did anybody else think that the guy who played Leonardo da Vinci in Ever After was an extra in the pit-prison thing?