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[Shinra]

His reaction to the singing kid is the only time we see him thinking about anything other than His Work.

I really liked this moment. It felt very human and fragile, which is kind of impressive given how over the top Bane's character is.

[Thad]

Yeah the glorification of the police and privileged feels a little bit tone-deaf if you're not given to glorifying the police and the privileged (which, unfortunately, Batman writers seem to tend to be).

Right; Bane's POV is completely unsympathetic in the context of DKR itself.  The preceding two movies are absolutely essential to remember that, oh hey, yeah this WAS a corrupt-as-fuck police force, and all these people in prison got there because of a law hurriedly passed based on a lie.  (The latter, at least, gets some emphasis, but it's really easy to forget how corrupt the Gotham cops were in the first two flicks given how squeaky-clean they are in this one.)

If you manage to keep that stuff in mind, it's a little easier to see the villains' point and think that maybe if they'd, you know, tried to settle it with lawyers instead of nuclear weapons they'd have been sympathetic.

There's another point that's in the novelization that's been making the rounds:

Blackgate Prison was a maximum-security penitentiary located on one of the smaller islands in Gotham Harbor.  Now that the Dent Act had made it all but impossible for the city's criminals to cop an insanity plea, it had replaced Arkham Asylum as the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons.  The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham's sole remaining inmate.

Or perhaps he had escaped.  Nobody was really sure.

Not even Selina.

So if I'm to slap some boldface on a couple of bits:

the Dent Act had made it all but impossible for the city's criminals to cop an insanity plea
the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons

So yeah we're actually looking at some pretty shady stuff going on here -- I just mentioned that Batman is a story about a rich man beating up the mentally ill (a point REALLY hammered home in Arkham Asylum the game; the bits where gibbering madmen run at Batman and he just fucking brutalizes them are really pretty chilling).  Well, here we have a city which, at least if we're to take what we know about the Batman mythos for granted, is populated by a BUNCH of violent crazies, and...now, based on a lie, none of them can actually get remanded to psychiatric care, and indeed they don't even wait for a TRIAL to throw suspects into goddamn Alcatraz.

And oh yeah -- it's CO-ED!

(In fairness, it's not like Arkham was ever a state-of-the-art mental healthcare facility.)

(Also in fairness, this is a pretty good representation of Bane's creators' viewpoint; they actually did an arc where a namby-pamby liberal tried to explain that all Batman's rogues were just unfortunate victims of mental illness.  As you might imagine, he was not the hero of the story.)

(Also also in fairness, Dark Knight Returns did that years before.  And is one of the most politically-schizophrenic superhero stories ever.  Hard to dismiss it as a right-wing fantasy when it spends so much time depicting Reagan as a fascist.)

But... he didn't grow up in a pit.  He's just a big kindhearted guy who ended up there and... got facestabbed trying to keep a child from getting raped and became a nihilistic terrorist, I guess.

I assumed he was born there, same as in the comics, but I guess that's a point I'm taking for granted.

[Ocksi]

Well, he did say he was not only born there, but lived there and fed there until he was well-on into adulthood. I don't think it's taking it for granted, at that point...

[Royal☭]

Yeah the glorification of the police and privileged feels a little bit tone-deaf if you're not given to glorifying the police and the privileged (which, unfortunately, Batman writers seem to tend to be).

Right; Bane's POV is completely unsympathetic in the context of DKR itself.  The preceding two movies are absolutely essential to remember that, oh hey, yeah this WAS a corrupt-as-fuck police force, and all these people in prison got there because of a law hurriedly passed based on a lie.  (The latter, at least, gets some emphasis, but it's really easy to forget how corrupt the Gotham cops were in the first two flicks given how squeaky-clean they are in this one.)

If you manage to keep that stuff in mind, it's a little easier to see the villains' point and think that maybe if they'd, you know, tried to settle it with lawyers instead of nuclear weapons they'd have been sympathetic.

It's not such a big deal to me that Bane was coming out against what he saw as a corrupt police force and system, but more that this element is only used to further the plot. We, as the audience, don't really get to see anything about how the regular, day-to-day worker of Gotham feels about anything other than football (they love it!). And Bane himself never seemed to spread any populist message up until that point. It just seems silly that the citizens of Gotham would suddenly form a mob and storm the prison. Seemed more like he was hitting that Storming the Bastille plot point from Tale of Two Cities than making things fit.

The real kicked is that they then proceed to start pulling rich people out of their houses and basically descending into violent anarchy. That scene has got to have been far more terrifying to stuffy executives than it was to me.

Also every single inmate of Blackguard picks up a rifle and starts waving it in the air as soon as they get out of the prison. So I guess the Dent act was getting all the right criminals or something? That is what I meant by inept.

There's another point that's in the novelization that's been making the rounds:

Blackgate Prison was a maximum-security penitentiary located on one of the smaller islands in Gotham Harbor.  Now that the Dent Act had made it all but impossible for the city's criminals to cop an insanity plea, it had replaced Arkham Asylum as the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons.  The worst of the worst were sent here, except for the Joker, who, rumor had it, was locked away as Arkham's sole remaining inmate.

Or perhaps he had escaped.  Nobody was really sure.

Not even Selina.

So if I'm to slap some boldface on a couple of bits:

the Dent Act had made it all but impossible for the city's criminals to cop an insanity plea
the preferred location for imprisoning both convicted and suspected felons

So yeah we're actually looking at some pretty shady stuff going on here -- I just mentioned that Batman is a story about a rich man beating up the mentally ill (a point REALLY hammered home in Arkham Asylum the game; the bits where gibbering madmen run at Batman and he just fucking brutalizes them are really pretty chilling).  Well, here we have a city which, at least if we're to take what we know about the Batman mythos for granted, is populated by a BUNCH of violent crazies, and...now, based on a lie, none of them can actually get remanded to psychiatric care, and indeed they don't even wait for a TRIAL to throw suspects into goddamn Alcatraz.

I like that, if only because the novel seems to take a second to actually explain what the Dent Act does . The movie just kind of hand-waves it by showing that the protagonists think it's a bad idea but that everyone else says it's effective. Ugh, everytime I think about the film I feel like the Nolan's hadn't quite hammered home the final draft.

[Doom]

It's not such a big deal to me that Bane was coming out against what he saw as a corrupt police force and system, but more that this element is only used to further the plot. We, as the audience, don't really get to see anything about how the regular, day-to-day worker of Gotham feels about anything other than football (they love it!). And Bane himself never seemed to spread any populist message up until that point. It just seems silly that the citizens of Gotham would suddenly form a mob and storm the prison. Seemed more like he was hitting that Storming the Bastille plot point from Tale of Two Cities than making things fit.

The real kicked is that they then proceed to start pulling rich people out of their houses and basically descending into violent anarchy. That scene has got to have been far more terrifying to stuffy executives than it was to me.

Also every single inmate of Blackguard picks up a rifle and starts waving it in the air as soon as they get out of the prison. So I guess the Dent act was getting all the right criminals or something? That is what I meant by inept.

I thought Bane's goons stormed Blackguard. Hence the availability of rifles. And yeah I practically laughed at the start of the anarchy with rich folks being attacked at the hotels and stuff.

[Royal☭]

Well, there's the scene where he gets on top of the tank and is like "PEOPLE OF GOTHAM! FREE THE UNJUSTLY PRISONED AND TAKE BACK GOTHAM" and then cuts to like scenes of the Blackguard prisoners escaping AND and unruly mob coming up the streets of Gotham. Seems like the real problem with Gotham is that any ol' nudge will send people flying off the deep end. Hell, as Thad pointed out, most of them are just one-parking ticket away from completely snapping and attempting to kill everyone with giant pennies and shit.

[Brentai]

I assumed the Dent Act was something from TDK that I had forgotten about. Everybody in the movie seemed to think it was totally awesome though, until Bane reads from a bundle of papers and immediately Robin and Gordon get into a philosophy shouting match.

The fatal flaw of the Vagina Dentacta is never portrayed as "they're mistreating those poor convicts!"  The only problem anybody ever sees is "B-but Harvey Dent was actually a bag of dicks!"

[Ted Belmont]

His reaction to the singing kid is the only time we see him thinking about anything other than His Work.

I really liked this moment. It felt very human and fragile, which is kind of impressive given how over the top Bane's character is.

Gail Simone did a pretty good job of humanizing him in Secret Six, much in the same way they did in DKR; in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least partially inspired by that interpretation of the character.

Bane and Deadpool are two great examples of my belief that there are no inherently bad characters*, just bad writers.

*Except for Cable.

[Thad]

I like that, if only because the novel seems to take a second to actually explain what the Dent Act does . The movie just kind of hand-waves it by showing that the protagonists think it's a bad idea but that everyone else says it's effective. Ugh, everytime I think about the film I feel like the Nolan's hadn't quite hammered home the final draft.

In another movie, you could probably excuse that as an "As-you-know-Bob" kind of thing that the characters really SHOULDN'T be explaining to each other.

In this movie, however, the characters are constantly explaining things to each other anyway, so it's not really much of an excuse.

The fatal flaw of the Vagina Dentacta is never portrayed as "they're mistreating those poor convicts!"  The only problem anybody ever sees is "B-but Harvey Dent was actually a bag of dicks!"

Right; it's another one of those things that's kinda left for the audience to infer.

But:

Never pass any legislation named after a recent victim in the news.  It's always going to be a kneejerk overreaction.

I think TA's post from an unrelated four-year-old thread raises a good point.  (Jesus Christ, has it been four years already?)  It's really easy to see how "Let's preserve Dent's memory so he can serve as an inspiration" could turn into "Let's use Dent's death as an excuse to ram a gross power grab through the legislature."

...you know, I can see why stuff like that gets glossed over as boring, but I would LOVE to see a courtroom drama, political thriller, police procedural, medical drama, WHATEVER set in Gotham.

(I hear Marvel's looking to do a street-level TV series set in the Marvel Movie Universe...)

[TA]

...you know, I can see why stuff like that gets glossed over as boring, but I would LOVE to see a courtroom drama, political thriller, police procedural, medical drama, WHATEVER set in Gotham.

Gotham Central is still my favorite of the old Batman tie-ins.  They should make that a thing.

[Brentai]

The movie actually STARTS with an As-You-Know explaining the Dent Act.  It just doesn't actually EXPLAIN anything, Gordon mentions that it gave the police "teeth" and leaves it at that.  You don't get the "denied parole" line until 2 hours later.

Const's right; it's a shame to see a followup to The Dark Knight that hit every note perfectly EXCEPT the writing.

[NexAdruin]

nolan denies the film being political and although the connections to the real world are obvious I don't actually think he's making a statement either way. he just used it as a facet of society to be exploited.

[Thad]

"Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?"

[François]

The movie actually STARTS with an As-You-Know explaining the Dent Act.  It just doesn't actually EXPLAIN anything, Gordon mentions that it gave the police "teeth" and leaves it at that.

I honestly came away from the movie with the impression that the Dent Act was fundamentally a good thing, that it represents recycling Dent's memory into a force for justice (wasn't this the point of the second movie anyway?), and that it's even what allowed Batman to retire, since the police were finally able and equipped to do their job right. I can't pinpoint why exactly but learning that this wasn't actually the case makes me think less of the plot somehow.

[Miss Cat Ears]

[Thad]

Yeah by the end there I don't think he was really doing much of anything to try to conceal his identity.  It's less about who's under the mask than what it represents.

[Brentai]

I like the bit where he basically tells Gordon "It's not important who I really am BUT I'M TOTALLY BRUCE WAYNE WINK WINK"

I like how in TAS he has somehow offscreen cultivated such a pansy image that when somebody straight-up tells it to the Rogue's Gallery their first reaction is to think the idea is utterly ludicrous, instead of kind of obvious.

[Thad]

I also like the bit (in the one with the Joker Casino, if I'm not mistaken) where Joker goes, "Wait a minute.  I know that jawline.  You're -- Bruce Wayne!"  I mean, yeah, it's cribbed directly from The Simpsons ("That voice!  I know that voice!  ...Why if it isn't little Bart Simpson!") but it's still a good gag.

But yeah, Bruce cultivating the image of a playboy layabout goes all the way back to the very beginning.  There have been some rather good bits of it over the years; the beginning of Dark Knight Returns where he and Gordon are sipping drinks and Gordon reminisces to the old days when Bruce used to drink ginger ale and fooled everybody into thinking he was a lush.

There's an old Silver Age story too (frequently reprinted because the backup story from that issue is the first appearance of Martian Manhunter) where Batman goes out of town and, while he's gone, they let ordinary citizens of Gotham each take the role of Batman for a day.

Course, things get sticky and Robin has to get Bruce to come back and help him stop some dangerous criminal or other, and because this is the Silver Age instead of just calling the whole thing off and saying "Hey guys, Batman's back early and can take it from here" they just TELL everyone it's Bruce Wayne as Batman today, and he keeps acting like he's clumsy and inept and keeps "accidentally" tripping the bad guys and such.

Hell, even Dark Knight had that "What, try to beat the light?" bit.

[Mongrel]

I also like the bit (in the one with the Joker Casino, if I'm not mistaken) where Joker goes, "Wait a minute.  I know that jawline.  You're -- Bruce Wayne!"  I mean, yeah, it's cribbed directly from The Simpsons ("That voice!  I know that voice!  ...Why if it isn't little Bart Simpson!") but it's still a good gag.

But yeah, Bruce cultivating the image of a playboy layabout goes all the way back to the very beginning.  There have been some rather good bits of it over the years; the beginning of Dark Knight Returns where he and Gordon are sipping drinks and Gordon reminisces to the old days when Bruce used to drink ginger ale and fooled everybody into thinking he was a lush.

There's an old Silver Age story too (frequently reprinted because the backup story from that issue is the first appearance of Martian Manhunter) where Batman goes out of town and, while he's gone, they let ordinary citizens of Gotham each take the role of Batman for a day.

Course, things get sticky and Robin has to get Bruce to come back and help him stop some dangerous criminal or other, and because this is the Silver Age instead of just calling the whole thing off and saying "Hey guys, Batman's back early and can take it from here" they just TELL everyone it's Bruce Wayne as Batman today, and he keeps acting like he's clumsy and inept and keeps "accidentally" tripping the bad guys and such.

Hell, even Dark Knight had that "What, try to beat the light?" bit.

That's played really well in Year One too. Gordon actually begins to suspect Wayne and goes over to interview him, but he plays the clueless layabout to the hilt. I think that might actually be the source of the Ginger Ale thing, because Alfred and Bruce refer to it after Gordon leaves.

[Royal☭]

That's played really well in Year One too. Gordon actually begins to suspect Wayne and goes over to interview him, but he plays the clueless layabout to the hilt. I think that might actually be the source of the Ginger Ale thing, because Alfred and Bruce refer to it after Gordon leaves.

Other way around, Miller wrote Dark Knight Returns before Year One.