Ah, The Dark Knight Trilogy. Often praised as one of the greatest, of not THE greatest Batman movies to ever be made. Sadly, that doesn't make them immune from moments like these.
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Batman Begins
- SAMAS: The first time hearing Bale's Batman Voice. Keaton, Kilmer, and Clooney didn't try, but came across as Batman. Conroy and Bader tried and pulled it off, and definitely became Batman.
- Animeking 1108: The end of Batman Begins. Not only does Scarecrow get the short end of the stick (despite being advertised as the Big Bad), but Ra's Al Ghul was defeated in the most anti-climactic way possible. Basically, the bridge on the train went out, and Batman just left Ra's for dead. Okay, Batman has killed in both the movies and the early comics before, but "I'm not going to kill you, but I don't have to save you" was such a gigantic Writer Cop Out. Now, I don't have a problem with Batman breaking his Thou Shalt Not Kill rule. The problem was that unlike the Tim Burton movies, Bruce kept claiming he wasn't an executioner. At least in The Dark Knight, Two-Face's death was somewhat accidental.
- Umbrage: Yeah, it was a cop out to try and give Batman a cool one-liner. They could've claimed that Gordon killed him since he shot out the rail, or had Batman admit to killing him because there really was no other option, but they went with really shitty logic to try and make both Batman and Gordon look good.
- RAZ: There's one thing I absolutely hate about this movie. After The Reveal where the real Ra's reveals his true identity. He defeats Bruce, leaves his mansion on fire, and has him trapped under a giant beam. As Bruce struggles to get out, Ra's looks at him and says "You destroyed my home and left me to die. It's only fair I do the same," and walks off. All I can say is "What the fuck?!" Did the writers just... not even look at their own script before they started filming?! While the first point may be true, the second couldn't be further from the truth. Bruce most certainly risks his life to save his enemy, and ultimately leaves him in the care of a female villager before taking off. Why the hell would Ra's think that Bruce just casually to left him to die?! Even if the woman decided to be a bitch and not tell him at all that he was saved, Ra's shouldn't be that stupid to think that someone didn't come to save him considering that he happened to be unconscious at the time, and his men had already all escaped by that point so Bruce was the only one who could have saved him. Now if the line was something like, "You let the man you thought was me die," since the fake Ra's was dead by then, or "you may have saved me/showed me mercy, but I won't be as forgiving" it could be understandable, but the line as is makes absolutely zero sense.
The Dark Knight Rises
- Mightymoose101: Bane's defeat in The Dark Knight Rises. The film builds up Bane as the biggest threat Batman has ever faced, possibly even more so than The Joker. He figures out his secret identity, he breaks into his armory and steals all his equipment, he ruins him financially, and he even beats him physically and nearly breaks his spine. So of course you'd expect the film to give him an extremely satisfactory and epic showdown at the end? No. After getting thoroughly beaten by Batman, Talia is revealed to be the Man Behind the Man and the child who escaped the prison, not Bane.. This undoes practically all the mystic and buildup behind Bane's character, revealing him to instead be some lovesick puppy. Bane himself is demoted to a Giant Mook (again), and is ultimately killed by being shot with his pants down by Catwoman of all people. This was by far the most anticlimactic final showdown in the Batman film history, and an extremely unfitting way to send off one of the best villains in The Dark Knight Trilogy.
- morninglight Seconded. What makes his incongruous is that every other villain got a sendoff. Jonathan Crane is reduced to a posh thug. Ra's al'Ghul accepts his defeat and meditates before his death. The Joker laughs as always when he's taken into custody. Harvey Dent tragically becomes a murderer who Batman is forced to push to his death. Talia, who was a villain for all of five minutes, gets a death scene. Bane is... shot by Selina Kyle and promptly forgotten about. He's not even the center of attention, he gets lost in the shuffle. This movie was nearly three hours long, couldn't they spend one minute on Bane's death?
- Tropers/legomaniac90: Thirded. The reveal of Talia is barely foreshadowed, comes out of nowhere, and isn't really necessary to the main plot: Bane was already built up to be Ra's successor, and the only one Batman could actually defeat. Having Talia be the Big Bad takes all that away and misses the opportunity to have Bane and Batman go at each other with nothing holding them back.
- Crazyrabbits: The time skip. It's revealed that Bruce Wayne stopped fighting crime (and became a recluse for eight years) because of Rachel's death. In The Dark Knight, he wasn't so broken up over her death that he stopped fighting altogether (to the point that he was even bantering with Alfred the day after). Batman has retired in several different continuities before (Knightfall, Batman Beyond, A Death In The Family, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns), but all of those instances were either caused by Wayne being physically unable to fight anymore, or having a significant crisis of faith. Yet, in this film, he apparently up immediately after the Two-Face confrontation (and after a year of fighting crime), undermining the entire "escalation" and "freaks like me" themes from the first and second film, respectively. Even more nonsensical is that this time skip also results in the crime rate in the city dropping to non-existent levels for close to an entire decade - so Dent basically succeeded in his crusade because of - no, in spite of - Batman's presence?
- Baeraad555: Less a particular part of the plot of The Dark Knight Rises than the... odd choice of theme for the movie, in comparison to the other two. To explain, each movie focuses on a specific problem afflicting the society of Gotham. In the first movie, it's fear: someone needs to be brave enough to stand up to the mobsters and the crooked cops, or else nothing will ever change. In the second, it's cynicism: in order for change to endure, the public needs to start believing that at least some people will play fair by them. In the third, it's... ingratitude. Apparently, the problem is that the rabble does not appreciate how much their betters do for them, and if they don't get over themselves they will be manipulated into destroying their own city in an orgy of thuggish entitlement. Now, it's not so much it's overtly political (and feels like a reaction to the Occupy Wall Street mania that was going on at the time rather than a more general message), though it's true that I'm not happy about either. No, the problem is that it's such a whiny, petulant message ("you don't appreciate me! It'd serve you right if I disappeared and you had to make do without me - then you'd be sorry!") that it completely ruins the epic feel of the trilogy. Batman should be many things, and not all of them pleasant or admirable, but whiny is not one of them.
- Retloclive: Miranda Tate, Talia, suddenly having sex with Bruce early on in The Dark Knight Rises. Even if this was an attempt for Talia to seduce Bruce into giving her what she wants, this is a character first introduced in this movie that has had one prior scene of screen-time until this point. There's literally no build-up whatsoever to there being a possible relationship here that it just comes off completely out of nowhere. The kicker is the sex-scene being a badly implemented plot-device just to try to play with the viewer's emotions that we should feel bad when the betrayal happens later on. No movie. You can't do that.
- Sinister_Sandwich: The sheer idiocy that is the GCPD sending the every single police officer in the city into the tunnels at the same time. Not only would this be a logistical nightmare, it makes it easy to lure them into a trap (which Bane does) and arguably would hamper their effectiveness in capturing Bane. And they only did this because Gordon (who was off-duty at the time and injured) yells at them a few times. You can see the writers struggling to think of a plausible way to stop the GCPD interfering with Bane's plan (which goes to show how poorly-thought out his plan was,) and this
Idiot Plot was the result. - Gemidori: As someone who overall enjoyed the film in spite of some of the issues listed above, there was one other scene that throws me off, and it's to do with both Gordon and - sigh - Blake, who I dislike. Bane publicizes Gordon's note confessing the truth of Two-Face's crimes and that Batman voluntarily took the blame for it despite Gordon's urging to not go with it. When confronted, Gordon could easily have just told Blake that he didn't want Batman to take the blame, but it had to be done to ensure Harvey's actions stood for at least a while...but instead just goes on this rambling tangent that basically ends up being "one day you'll be like me, sonny!", which not only makes Gordon really irresponsible looking for essentially glorifying this fuckup, but it just entices Blake's ultra-condescending demeanor and causes him to just leave, not even asking why this Dent Act had to happen. Gordon couldn't have forgotten details about Two-Face's death and the fallout, because near the start he has flashbacks of The Dark Knight's final scene with Two-Face capturing Gordon's family. It honestly made me feel satisfied to see Bane let loose and drive the city into chaos, because if Gordon can't manage this lie very well, then it should've been torn down long ago. Plus I get to see Blake being pushed down a slope of rocks. Put simply, if Gordon just told Blake the why and how of the Dent Act, then he wouldn't have made an ass out of both of them.
