DallasTeleAg said:

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TCTTS said:

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- That, and the Riddler knew all the elite/bigwigs would either already be at Gotham Square Garden on election night, or would be sent there (it's mentioned as being used as a shelter from hurricanes). Thus, it would literally be like shooting fish in a barrel. The Riddler's goons would pick them off from above, and any they miss would be swept up by the flood.

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Exactly. Again, I personally felt there was a shift there at the end, and wish it had been handled differently. How? I have no idea, I'm not a storyteller or filmmaker. When comparing to a movie like Se7en (one of the best written movies I have ever seen), it definitely didn't have the same feel of a payoff.

The Riddler's original plan was to expose the fact that Carmine Falcone basically ran the city and had everyone in his pockets, because he had uncovered that entire situation. His next goal was to completely remove the rest of the elites, who he planned to force into the convention center. Posters saying it made no sense didn't seem to pay attention to the movie. Maybe they were too busy cracking jokes to their wives about flying squirrels to actually listen to the the movie.

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Ulrich said:

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If ~half the people who watch a movie identify the same thing, it might be worth discussing. There was a pretty big shift from a detective tracking down a serial killer to a super hero film with a villain wreaking havoc on a whole city. There might have been breadcrumbs and symbolism (which is a valuable counterpoint) but the change still happened. Not sure bringing it up merits that level of derision.

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I legit don't get this complaint, though. Previous to the flood, there was a big, loud car chase throughout the streets of Gotham, Batman literally flew above/through the city streets, there was a huge shootout outside a warehouse, a guy drove an SUV through a massive funeral, and then there were of course multiple fight scenes, in the streets and at The Iceberg Lounge. Not to mention, multiple, high-level officials fell victim to a serial killer within the timespan of just a few days. Combined with all the towering establishing shots of Gotham throughout, two-thirds of the way through, this movie already felt BIG to me. So a city-wide flood didn't seem like THAT much of leap, and all Batman did during the flood was basically fight off some goons atop a scoreboard. It wasn't like he was taking on Thanos' army or anything.

Either way, it's a superhero movie. Who really went into this expecting a "small" finale?

Well said. It's almost like if a villain went from individual revenge to world domination. That jump in scale is a little jarring. The latest James Bond did something similar.

It's also interesting that while Batman solves all the riddles, he's constantly catching up to Riddler as people get killed. Not a great showing by the World's Greatest Detective.

I suppose everything went according to Riddler's plan except for Batman joining him - so in the end, his final plan is foiled by a bulletproof guy punching all his minions. Maybe that's what makes the final 30 minutes feel like a betrayal.

I suppose it fits the theme that he needs to be more than vengeance (I guess vengeance would have given up on Gotham..?) but I don't know if I saw that theme throughout the movie, just at the intro and finale monologues. It may have been there somewhere. But at first look, it goes from detective movie to "the city is being destroyed; the solution is punching" pretty quickly.

Ulrich said:

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If ~half the people who watch a movie identify the same thing, it might be worth discussing. There was a pretty big shift from a detective tracking down a serial killer to a super hero film with a villain wreaking havoc on a whole city. There might have been breadcrumbs and symbolism (which is a valuable counterpoint) but the change still happened. Not sure bringing it up merits that level of derision.

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Put that way I wonder if this is another example of Wayne's evolution as Batman. It's year 2 of Batman in the streets. We've already discussed that his tools are still relatively "primitive" and early in development (ex squirrel suit, batmobile).

So, you could argue that this event might just be Batman evolving from "the greatest detective in the world" to legitimate superhero. That's essentially what happened in the comics over time.

Could very well be what Reeves intended now that we've laid that out.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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No less off-putting than this

Quote:

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Again, I don't begrudge anyone for simply not liking this movie, or any other movie. What rubs me the wrong way is when people arrogantly sh*t all over stuff like this because THEY fail to understand the plot, intentions, theme, and symbolism.

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How exactly do you know any anonymous commenter's understanding of any movie? Perhaps the guy just really hated the movie after having huge expectations built up for years while this thing was being made. (Way back in the summer of '92, I was really loving Batman Returns, everything about it - until the freaking penguins waddled out and started launching missiles off their backs. That short sequence ruined the entire movie for me, no matter what I was thinking prior to that shot. Are you going to suggest that I didn't understand some point Tim Burton tried to make in that movie?)

I say this as one who liked the movie, a lot actually, but there are certainly things in the movie that I missed the two times I've seen it.

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He *specifically* mentioned the thing he didn't understand, something that was *specifically* addressed in the movie. I didn't just "attack" someone who innocuously disliked the movie. He was being defiantly, ignorantly obtuse and literally wasn't paying attention.

Aggie_Journalist said:

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I have a philosophy on writing. If I write something and show it to several people and one of them says, "This part doesn't make sense," I don't tell them, "You're just not paying attention! This made sense to everyone else. You're wrong." I tell myself, "Well, if that didn't make sense to one person, it won't make sense to others. I should clean that up."

This movie had a lot of moments that needed to be cleaned up. If the city is underwater, do more to communicate that. If the Riddler thinks everyone should die, do more to communicate that. If the Penguin is going to (probably) kill multiple people in a car chase and then just be let go with no consequences by Batman, tell us why.

If many people are raising the same story issues, the flaw isn't with the viewer, it's with the storyteller.

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Honestly, I haven't at all encountered this level of confusion outside of this thread. You guys are acting like this is a major issue that half the internet is going on about, when that's just not the reality.

Great example I have is from a YouTube reactor's video. I enjoy watching many of these, but there are only a few of the channels I continually come back to, because others just spend the entire film making stupid jokes instead of actually reacting to the elements of the movie.

There was one in particular who was laughing about something and completely missed the part in Batman's monologue about how 2 years of night had turned him into a nocturnal animal. Only 3 minutes later, the reactor was asking "how long has he been batman, in this movie?" His length of being Batman was only referenced twice in the movie, I believe. So if someone is spending the entire movie cracking jokes about things, then has opinion at the end of the movie that Director didn't do a good job of relaying how long Batman has been Batman-ing, I would tell that person to pay better attention. It's not the fault of the director or writer that they don't reference something 3 times instead of 2.

I'll elaborate on that a little. Brandon Sanderson says something like "readers know when something is wrong, but their suggestions on how to fix it are always terrible and should be ignored."

Having seen a million suggestions on here (and figuring Sanderson may know a little something about writing), it seems to have some truth to it.

I'm not going to defend whoever it was that had the super spicy take, but I still have hunch there's something to the idea that if multiple viewers who paid attention are struggling with something then it probably could have been done better, even if you can technically make the case that it's the viewers who are wrong.

Here's an example from Star Wars. "It doesn't make any sense how Anakin turned to the Dark Side so fast, they really needed to build that up more." Ok. So the problem statement is that it doesn't make sense, and the suggested solution is to build it up more.

But let's think about this. A slave child, resentful of his circumstances, is taken from his mother as a child and flung halfway across the galaxy into a completely new environment. He struggles with fear and anger. His finally finds his mother as a teen, only to have her die in his arms of torture. He then murders a whole village in revenge. As he gets older, he becomes increasingly resentful of the Order that took him from his only family. He demonstrates being impulsive and emotional on many occasions. A Sith Lord manipulates his emotions and perceptions, separating him further from the Jedi, pressuring him into executing a prisoner, and planting the seeds of fear that his secret wife will die just as his mother did if he doesn't gain the power to save her.

Ok, I'm having a hard time saying they didn't build it up. It's all there and it played out over three films. But I still agree that there's an issue. Maybe it has something to do with pacing, plotting, or something else… I have ideas but there's a good chance they are bad.

Your take is similar to Aggie_journalist's, and I definitely don't argue the point. I think the main issue is how it was done and what was said. I still hold to a similar view as many, that the ending just felt off, to me. Almost exactly illustrating Brandon's point. I have no fix to what I felt was off, and I can't say exactly what it was.

I, too, love listening to Brandon's take on storytelling, plot, and world building, having spent many hours watching his lectures and interviews.

You literally said yall "couldn't stop" cracking jokes. Now it was a rare occurrence? It's this level of hyperbole that got a reaction from TCTTS. Again... trolling.

How does 2 people on this thread equate to "many people seem to have this opinion?"

Exactly. Like I said, I haven't seen this at all outside of this thread, and inside it, it only seems to be a very small number of people.

There ya go, troll. More trolling! Hope it makes you feel better!

DannyDuberstein said:

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You know what emo goose is, right? Yeah, batman got a lot of "eh"'s and "oh"s by the end of the 3 hour movie. This stuff is for entertainment. It's gonna be okay, little buddy. Might try being slightly less tightly wound.

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A quick look at your profile/posting history in just the past few days reveals endless b*tching about everything under the sun, across multiple forums. If anyone here is "tightly wound," its you.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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People who bash on the Star Wars prequels clearly don't understand and appreciate the intricate storylines and themes that George Lucas carefully interweaved throughout the main saga.

(I'm only half joking.)

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We've gotten way off topic but this stuff is interesting to me.

Who is the audience? In this thread we have people who range from not even paying that much attention, to watched it once with normal attention, to a professional who watched it multiple times. If the really intense viewer thinks it makes sense, but the middle-of-the-road viewer who watches it once is confused, did the filmmaker do his or her job? Thinking of the Star Wars example which is a little less controversial. I don't think filmmakers need to craft their movies to the viewer who really just wants to make fun of the movie, but what about the average viewer?

Most "average viewers" aren't having the issues with the movie you're claiming they're having. Again, you keep pointing to, like, two or three people in this thread, and in this thread alone, and making it out to be like all of middle America has a problem with the third act or something.

TCTTS said:

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Honestly, I haven't at all encountered this level of confusion outside of this thread. You guys are acting like this is a major issue that half the internet is going on about, when that's just not the reality.

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TC finally lets it slip that he's a super-villain in control of some sort of machine that can tell what the entire Internet is up to! Changing your name for Forty to Professor Chaos.

Ulrich must have the same machine, so you might as well call him out too.

TCTTS said:

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Ulrich must have the same machine, so you might as well call him out too.

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You're right, although I think you're both way off. The average viewer saw this movie once, thought it was good or bad, and probably didn't think about it again until it came on HBO last week. It's only we nerds that get so obsessive about *****