My biggest problem with The Dark Knight Rises... [spoilers ahead]

[elvor0]

I had a ton of problems with this movie.

1 - Bane turning into a mindless goon with a nonsensical motivation.

2 - Talia not being properly introduced as a villain in favour of her being a stupid twist for twist's sake.

3 - Bat-Man is a boring character and nothing like the Batman we know. The fact that he wants to stop being batman because he's afraid he will die is stupid. The Batman I know is always teetering on mentally ill, he's addicted to his life as Batman - The role of vigilante is personal to him, fuelled by his past pain and revenge lust. This Batman, as Nolan stated in the film, is merely a mask - Anyone can wear it. And Batman just wants to give it up before he gets hurt so he can run off to an idyllic retirement. Pathetic. Batman is a psychosis, not a day-job.

4 - The whole lower-class upheaval sub-plot that lead nowhere and meant nothing. The first act is filled with people complaining about the rich and the second and third acts show anarchy failing completely so I don't know what they were trying to say. It reeks of Nolan just slapping a bunch of symbolism around everything so it looked like the movie was actually about something and had a powerful political message. It would have been much easier and more effective to just make an engaging character story.

5 - As the OP said, Batman killed someone. Catwoman does this multiple times. Catwoman hates killing and abhors the idea of murder. I think she's done it once in the comics, where she killed Black Mask after being pushed to the edge. In this she just blows people away. Cool beans.

6 - Blake's real name is Robin.
Fuck. Me. Stupidest fan service ever. It would have made way more sense to just call him Drake instead of Blake. He was basically Tim Drake's character anyways.

Pretty much this, I was hoping someone would touch on some of these points, and you've just summed up everything I was thinking. Especially #4.

However I will say that Batman accidently killing one mook doesn't really bother me, I know Batman "doesn't kill",but it was to save a whole city. He has in fact killed Darksied at point blank with a gun, I might add. Obviously that was for the fate of the entire multiverse, but he has killed. And to be fair, during No Mans Land, he broke a lot of mooks, who given there were no hospitals, likely died from bleeding out and multiple broken limbs. He doesn't directly kill people sure, but I'm sure quite a few people have died as consequences of his intentional actions.

To add to this, the fact that Batman was still alive at the end was pants. The ending was so sad, most of the cinema started breaking up, and then he's magically alive! After somehow getting away from a 6 mile radius Fusion Bomb, despite being shown to still be in the plane 30 seconds before it exploded. Bruce Wayne is fucking insane, he's a psychopath who fights for the good guys, even more fucked up than some of his rogues gallery, there's no way he'd give up and just go live Florence like that. There's even an episode of Batman Beyond that implies he calls himself Batman in his head, and never uses Bruce. That guys nuts!

Also, Robin managed to deduce Batman as Bruce Wayne after seeing him /once/? Before he was Batman and when he was a small boy? Get outta town.

And damn Christian Bale, he just can't play Bruce Wayne. Ruins the movies for me, he just seems crap in the role.

Like I enjoyed the film after watching it, but under inspection it begins to fall apart quite rapidly, so I try to avoid putting it under scrutiny.

 

[majes]

My biggest gripe is that Bane sounds pretty much exactly like Deckard Cain.

 

[The Heik]

You're only partly right there Redingold. While Hydrogen bombs do have short-lived radiation, that's only if it stays in the atmosphere and doesn't come into contact with such things such as water or land, where they'd combine with that matter. If the bomb had blown up in an airburst, then a lot of the radiation would be in the atmosphere and reduce the fallout of the explosion. But in DKR the bomb was a surface explosion. A LOT of that radiation is going to be in the water and the soil, so Gotham will still resemble Chernobyl at the end, no matter what type of nuclear bomb was used.

I'm not sure about Gotham necessarily being Chernobyl. The movie said that it was a 'four-megaton bomb' but the visual appearance of the explosion suggests a much smaller device than that. I also recall something about it being 'six miles out to sea,' though that could be my imagination. If we accept the four-megaton figure Gotham is still pretty screwed, but if we dial it back to the submegaton range (one wonders, are Nolanverse fusion reactors dial-a-yield? XD) I think Gotham is safe, especially since it was essentially a surface burst, and even moreso if the wind was blowing the other way. Granted, no swimming in the ocean, and there will definitely be cleanup, but I don't think Gotham would be ghosted based on a single detonation; on that note, while the detonation would certainly induce radioactivity in the water supply it wouldn't be the same mechanism as Chernobyl anyways; as a fusion 'reactor' it IS essentially a 'clean' bomb, whereas Chernobyl was a rather large uncontained graphite-moderated uranium reactor exposed to open air and doused in thousands of gallons of water. Honestly, I'd rather go with the fusion bomb.

Also, what the hell is a four-megaton neutron bomb? NEUTRON BOMBS ARE GENERALY NOT FOUR MEGATONS, MR. NOLAN.

For the Chernobyl statement, I meant more in terms of the level of radiation. Granted a good chunk of the radiation will be in the atmosphere (as such less intense), but seeing as 4 megatons is a larger yield of radioactive material than Chernobyl, it evens out to comparable levels of irradiation.

As for the 4 megaton bomb, the movie's actually not so far off in terms of figures. Megaton level nuclear bombs actually do [a href="http://www.strategic-air-command.com/weapons/nuclear_bomb_chart.htm"]exist[/a], and a 4 megaton bomb has 7.65 mile blast radius for 7 psi overpressure, which is the threshold for complete building destruction (excluding reinforced concrete structures). While the movie's radius is a little short, it's still in the right ballpark for power. The approximately 30 mile fallout radius (which I think is the parameter Nolan and his team missed) is the thing that will kill Gotham, as if Batman had 3 or more minutes, he'd have been able to get the bomb out roughly 10 miles which is beyond even a real-life 4mgt nuke's primary blast radius at the rough max speed of 200kts for a rotor lift aircraft. Sure a lot of windows in Gotham are going to be blown out and quite a few people are going to be heavily deafened but it's still doable in terms of "saving Gotham". But that still leaves roughly 20 miles of Gotham's main city in the line of radioactive fire, in fact moreso because on coastal cities the wind almost always comes from the water onto the land (part of why surface waves exist), pushing more of the radiation back towards land.

And as stated to others, you misunderstand the term "clean" when used for fusion reactors. They are still radiation spewing nuclear reactions, they merely cannot catastrophically fail due to the minute amounts of matter actively used at any point in time. But if there were 4 megatons worth of nuclear material it would still proverbially give everything for a good distance around a bright green glow, whether it's fission or fusion (in fact fusion having more effect due to a better mass to energy ratio)

 

[Thespian]

-reasonable argument snip-

Regarding Bane and Talia: I still think Bane's motivation is ludicrous. I don't see why he's so invested in the goals of this group he was totally spurned by and hasn't been a part of in years. Ra's Al Ghul totally screwed over Bane because of "the monster he saw in him" (Read: He looked ugly because he got the shit kicked out of him when protecting young Talia in a selfless act of heroism). Now Bane is going to kill himself, Talia, and an entire city because of that dead man's desire. And yeah, maybe Gotham was sort of a bad place, but for fuck's sake, there's a hell of a lot of worse places in the world, and a hell of a lot more stuff you can do with an army of trained mercenaries. But no, Gotham is a giant pit of everything evil and bad in the world.

The whole point of Talia's character was that she became so obsessed with revenge that she lost her own identity and became her mask. This is meant to contrast with Bruce and show him where an inability to get over the death of his parents will get him.

Regarding Batman: Ugh... But that's what's so great about Batman's character. He can't lay these issues to rest. I don't like the way he has to get over it and be a normal person already. For a movie that borrows so heavily from The Dark Knight Returns, it has a really odd message. Dark Knight Returns is all about how Batman can't let go of it, won't let go of it, and isn't really even obliged to let go of it. In that comic, Bruce Wayne stopped being Batman for ten years, but because he was forced to. He was bitter and angry about it and leaped back in at the first chance. Bruce Wayne in the movie gave up being Batman when he really could have continued if he so chose and then he had to throw a big fuss about putting on the cowl again.
Also, there's a scene in the movie where it's clearly stated that the Batman is just a suit that anyone can wear. I mean, in those exact words. Batman Begins was all about Batman being hung up on revenge for his parents, yes, but it was also all about him getting over that and just becoming a symbol of justice. To me, Batman Begins was about escaping the psychology of the Batman identity.
Y'know what movie did the whole trying-to-get-over-his-past thing way better? Mask of the Phantasm.
There you can see Batman pulling Wayne in using the avatar of his parents. You see him pleading with himself to be let free. Of course that's not how it ends up. Because without that element of vengeance to his character, he's not really batman. And the idea that Batman can just get closure and then skip off to some idyllic café to have a glass of sherry with Ms. Kyle is an almost offensive take on the character in my books. I don't know why he's so desperate to stop being Batman throughout this movie, it's rather irritating. He just can't wait to either hang up the cowl or die with it on, which is just not as badass or as interesting as the Batman I'm used to. This Bruce Wayne is basically just a normal guy desperately trying to have a normal life. Which is Spider-Man territory, really.

 

[Eppy (Bored)]

For the Chernobyl statement, I meant more in terms of the level of radiation. Granted a good chunk of the radiation will be in the atmosphere (as such less intense), but seeing as 4 megatons is a larger yield of radioactive material than Chernobyl, it evens out to comparable levels of irradiation.

As for the 4 megaton bomb, the movie's actually not so far off in terms of figures. Megaton level nuclear bombs actually do [a href="http://www.strategic-air-command.com/weapons/nuclear_bomb_chart.htm"]exist[/a], and a 4 megaton bomb has 7.65 mile blast radius for 7 psi overpressure, which is the threshold for complete building destruction (excluding reinforced concrete structures). While the movie's radius is a little short, it's still in the right ballpark for power. The approximately 30 mile fallout radius (which I think is the parameter Nolan and his team missed) is the thing that will kill Gotham, as if Batman had 3 or more minutes, he'd have been able to get the bomb out roughly 10 miles which is beyond even a real-life 4mgt nuke's primary blast radius at the rough max speed of 200kts for a rotor lift aircraft. Sure a lot of windows in Gotham are going to be blown out and quite a few people are going to be heavily deafened but it's still doable in terms of "saving Gotham". But that still leaves roughly 20 miles of Gotham's main city in the line of radioactive fire, in fact moreso because on coastal cities the wind almost always comes from the water onto the land (part of why surface waves exist), pushing more of the radiation back towards land.

And as stated to others, you misunderstand the term "clean" when used for fusion reactors. They are still radiation spewing nuclear reactions, they merely cannot catastrophically fail due to the minute amounts of matter actively used at any point in time. But if there were 4 megatons worth of nuclear material it would still proverbially give everything for a good distance around a bright green glow, whether it's fission or fusion (in fact fusion having more effect due to a better mass to energy ratio)

I understand the existence of four-megaton bombs (and 50 and as much as 100 if the Soviets ever deployed a fully loaded version of the Tsar Bomba). I'm saying that, by the visual impact of that explosion, that reactor-bomb looks much smaller than four megatons. If the bomb actually was four megatons Gotham is of course completely screwed (and, assuming Gotham is New York, so is much of New Jersey. YES!) I will accede the the matter of wind direction, though, that's completely sensible.

I also certainly understand the meaning of the term 'clean,' and however big the bomb that kind of neutron activation will make sure that Gotham glows green for a while. What I'm saying is that it's a more salvageable situation than an actual bomb, where the city will also be coated with the lovely remnants and fission products of one or more highly unpleasant uranium tampers. I don't think that the radioactivity induced by a fusion reaction is going to be nearly as severe as the material disseminated by a four-megaton bomb's tamper.

So, what I'm saying is that I think Gotham won't be radioactive enough to prevent me from going to see musicals once or twice a year. I won't let a little thing like an improbable fusion bomb stop me from seeing The Book of Mormon!

 

[LordGarbageMan]

Besides all the plot stuff sucking I thought a lot of the camera angles got old. I mean I get that filming a fake pit would be hard (I'm assuming it's fake) but they showed the same exact angles a shitload of times. Then there's Bane being shorter than batman, and whenever they showed him it was always from an angle to make him look bigger, idk I didn't like that. Also crappy stunts, the bat-bike jump scene in particular was pretty crappy.
brb bane is biggest white knight ever
brb thanks for the scarecrow cameo
brb overdramatic
edit: STRONG LURKER^^

 

[The Heik]

For the Chernobyl statement, I meant more in terms of the level of radiation. Granted a good chunk of the radiation will be in the atmosphere (as such less intense), but seeing as 4 megatons is a larger yield of radioactive material than Chernobyl, it evens out to comparable levels of irradiation.

As for the 4 megaton bomb, the movie's actually not so far off in terms of figures. Megaton level nuclear bombs actually do [a href="http://www.strategic-air-command.com/weapons/nuclear_bomb_chart.htm"]exist[/a], and a 4 megaton bomb has 7.65 mile blast radius for 7 psi overpressure, which is the threshold for complete building destruction (excluding reinforced concrete structures). While the movie's radius is a little short, it's still in the right ballpark for power. The approximately 30 mile fallout radius (which I think is the parameter Nolan and his team missed) is the thing that will kill Gotham, as if Batman had 3 or more minutes, he'd have been able to get the bomb out roughly 10 miles which is beyond even a real-life 4mgt nuke's primary blast radius at the rough max speed of 200kts for a rotor lift aircraft. Sure a lot of windows in Gotham are going to be blown out and quite a few people are going to be heavily deafened but it's still doable in terms of "saving Gotham". But that still leaves roughly 20 miles of Gotham's main city in the line of radioactive fire, in fact moreso because on coastal cities the wind almost always comes from the water onto the land (part of why surface waves exist), pushing more of the radiation back towards land.

And as stated to others, you misunderstand the term "clean" when used for fusion reactors. They are still radiation spewing nuclear reactions, they merely cannot catastrophically fail due to the minute amounts of matter actively used at any point in time. But if there were 4 megatons worth of nuclear material it would still proverbially give everything for a good distance around a bright green glow, whether it's fission or fusion (in fact fusion having more effect due to a better mass to energy ratio)

I understand the existence of four-megaton bombs (and 50 and as much as 100 if the Soviets ever deployed a fully loaded version of the Tsar Bomba). I'm saying that, by the visual impact of that explosion, that reactor-bomb looks much smaller than four megatons. If the bomb actually was four megatons Gotham is of course completely screwed (and, assuming Gotham is New York, so is much of New Jersey. YES!) I will accede the the matter of wind direction, though, that's completely sensible.

I also certainly understand the meaning of the term 'clean,' and however big the bomb that kind of neutron activation will make sure that Gotham glows green for a while. What I'm saying is that it's a more salvageable situation than an actual bomb, where the city will also be coated with the lovely remnants and fission products of one or more highly unpleasant uranium tampers. I don't think that the radioactivity induced by a fusion reaction is going to be nearly as severe as the material disseminated by a four-megaton bomb's tamper.

So, what I'm saying is that I think Gotham won't be radioactive enough to prevent me from going to see musicals once or twice a year. I won't let a little thing like an improbable fusion bomb stop me from seeing The Book of Mormon!

Ok first, neutron bombs are designed to [a href="http://www.manuelsweb.com/sam_cohen.htm"]kill things with radiation[/a], so that the infrastucture of the target remains intact and usable once the conflict is won and the radiation goes away. One would certainly turn Gotham bright green because that's how it's supposed to work. And even if Gotham the city is radiation free in a relatively short time (in comparison to standard nuclear devices), the populace (the part of Gotham that actually matters in this context) would still be dead, as evacuating 12 million people in a couple days or less (as the radiation would definitely have affected the city in less than 48 hours) is an impossible task, especially considering that Bane explicitly stated that any substantial US forces, the only organization with enough transport boats and aircraft to move massive amounts of people at one time, weren't allowed within a pretty large radius of Gotham. A lot of people would die and Gotham, in the metaphysical sense at least, would still be destroyed.

Though yes you would be able to see the Book of Mormon, provided it isn't being shown in the first few months after the detonation (which I'm assuming is sometime in February due to the first indication of winter being approximately 83 days into the bomb/hostage ordeal)

 

[Thespian]

You're confusing adaptation with slavish dedication to source material. Nolan has always been clear that this is his take on Batman and the films have been even clearer that it's a story of a man attempting to rid his personal demons by creating a physical manifestation of a demon. Just because the story takes the setting that Batman has been gone for years, doesn't mean it owes something to the fascist stylings of Frank Miller - just as it didn't owe anything to Alan Moore or Jeph Loeb or Tim Sale for The Dark Knight.

As far as thematic arcs go, Dark Knight Rises was a coherent and satisfactory ending to the story started in Batman Begins.

See, the thing is I totally agree with you here. At least to the extent that Nolan never had any obligation to write his movie the way other Batman stuff has been written. I'm not saying, nor have I said, that he owes anything to any other writer, or that he has to make his movies true to the comics. The Nolanverse is of course an adaptation. I'm not saying he has no right to make these movies in this way.
All I'm saying, is that I don't like his interpretations of the character, don't enjoy them and I really don't think very highly of them. And explaining my reasons for such things. It is completely a difference of opinion and taste and subjectivity and all those other buzz-words for internet arguments, and I'm not accusing Nolan of anything, I'm criticizing him. I hold the Batman I know from the works of, say, Bruce Timm and his team, or Frank Miller, or Jeph Loeb, (not so much Alan Moore >_>) in a much higher regard than Nolan's. And that's all, really.

Again, you're misinterpreting and reading into things that aren't there. Batman isn't JUST a suit, that is never said, Bruce says that it was meant to be a symbol - what kind of symbol depends on the person wearing the suit. In the context of the conversation it was clear that Bruce was seeing the same anger, aimlessness and destructive behavior in Joseph Gordon Levitt's character that he knew that Batman would be a step in the right direction for him.

You're also skipping entirely what the Dark Knight was. If Begins was him accepting the life after his parents' death, the Dark Knight was him realizing that he hadn't actually done anything more than move the pain into another form and his actions had consequences he couldn't foresee. Rises was then all about him finally coming full circle, completing everything that began in... well, Begins.

I didn't get any of that about the mantle of Batman from the movie, to be honest. It seemed like Bruce was very invested in the fact that the role be continued, but not very invested in whether or not he is the one to do it. I found the whole relationship between Bruce and Bat to be far, far less personal and intimate than what I think is appropriate.
You make a good point about the Dark Knight though, I hadn't really considered that.

 

[Mr Mystery Guest]

The Dark Knight was a masterpiece. There was not one plot hole, dud line or wasted frame. It was a self contained re-invention that understood it's themes and motivations and executed them perfectly.

The Dark Knight Rises is fantastic but it really suffers from clunky exposition. Example one:

Alfred telling Bruce all about Banes backstory. Alfred wouldn't know. I realise that it would be taking lines away from Michael Caine but Alfred wouldn't know unless Bane gave an interview to Time magazine. And no, i don't think he spends his free time on the bat-computer.

Alfred also mentioned Ra Al Gaul for no real reason and so when she showed up with a non-discript foreign accent i instantly knew she was Talia. That is why the previous film was so good, any twist was story related not character related and being a fan of the comics wasn't a drawback.

But the crowning turd in the water pipe of terrible exposition was when "Robin" tells Bruce that he knew his identity. The actor sold it well but here is a alternative. There could have been a flashback. Robin chasing Batman with dogs on the night Harvey Dent died and thinking that he lost him. He runs down twisting allyways and comes to a building on fire. There are children clinging to a balcony and Batman is reaching out to them but they won't go to him because he looks so scary. He takes his mask off to show them that he is just a man and so they reach out and he saves them. Robin lets him go and keeps his secret believing that he is innocent. Either that or when Robin was a traffic cop he clamped Bruce Wayne's Lamborghini and saw a batarang in the back seat. Anything is better than "you came to my orphanage and could tell that you were Batman as I SAW IT IN YOUR FUCKING EYES"!

Also where were the people of Gotham? Bane said he wanted the people to reclaim their city. Did that happen? When he released all the prisoners how did people deal with that? If he wanted them to do what they want why did he rule the streets like a fascist state?

It really was a great film but the awful exposition really detracted from my enjoyment.

 

[FieryTrainwreck]

TDKR simply tries to tell too much story. Most of its flaws (plot holes, awkward exposition, pacing, etc.) can be characterized as compromises arising from Nolan stubbornly trying to do too much in the space of one film.

It's important that Blake knows Wayne is Batman, and the story behind that knowledge is somewhat believable (assuming Blake has the instincts to become, as he apparently does, the next Batman). The issue is that we're TOLD about this revelation rather than SHOWN, and that's a classic storytelling compromise when you're dealing with a limited run-time.

It's important that time elapses between Bruce landing in the pit/the siege of Gotham and his rise/eventual victory. In a well-paced film, you'd have multiple instances of slow-fade, rising action (including establishing shots big and small), and other subtle indicators for the realistic passage of time. Nolan didn't have enough run-time to do these things, so we got jump-cuts, a drastic change in the weather, and some lame TV news reports claiming "day 83".

I think the best way to think of this film, and its flaws, is in terms of game design theory. When everything within a film serves a very specific purpose, everything becomes telegraphed and lifeless. It's like entering a virtual video game building and knowing, ahead of time, that every room will contain some item or NPC - because that's why they bothered to create the room. There's no negative space or breathing room to give the proceedings a sense of realistic time and space. This is why the best word to describe TDKR, to me, is "suffocating".

 

[Eppy (Bored)]

Ok first, neutron bombs are designed to [a href="http://www.manuelsweb.com/sam_cohen.htm"]kill things with radiation[/a], so that the infrastucture of the target remains intact and usable once the conflict is won and the radiation goes away. One would certainly turn Gotham bright green because that's how it's supposed to work. And even if Gotham the city is radiation free in a relatively short time (in comparison to standard nuclear devices), the populace (the part of Gotham that actually matters in this context) would still be dead, as evacuating 12 million people in a couple days or less (as the radiation would definitely have affected the city in less than 48 hours) is an impossible task, especially considering that Bane explicitly stated that any substantial US forces, the only organization with enough transport boats and aircraft to move massive amounts of people at one time, weren't allowed within a pretty large radius of Gotham. A lot of people would die and Gotham, in the metaphysical sense at least, would still be destroyed.

Though yes you would be able to see the Book of Mormon, provided it isn't being shown in the first few months after the detonation (which I'm assuming is sometime in February due to the first indication of winter being approximately 83 days into the bomb/hostage ordeal)

Oh, I understand perfectly what a neutron bomb is, but whether or not the weapon in question is or is not a neutron bomb seems dubious to me. I recall hearing the term specifically, but only once, and the rest of the time it's referred to simply as a traditional nuclear weapon. If it were indeed a four-megaton bomb it wouldn't make much sense for it to be a neutron bomb; I don't know about the Soviet weapons but I know the Americans fielded three of them, all with a yield of less than ten kilotons and generally about one, give or take.

Now, if it IS the equivalent of a four-megaton neutron bomb everybody in Gotham is definitely dead, and probably dead by the time Joseph Gordon-Levitt got back on the bus. Again, I am doubtful that the bomb is a neutron bomb or four megatons, because I don't think the movie has any idea what it's talking about; I'm pretty sure that some scriptwriter just decided to throw the word 'neutron bomb' in there once since it sounded cool and has no idea what it means. Since it's been established that the movie has no credibility when it comes to nuclear weapons (e.g. fusion reactors cannot be bombs) it's really a matter of whether or not you want to take the movie at its word or not, or how much of the movie's word you want to take. I am choosing to suspend my disbelief only so far as the reactor's viability as a bomb, since it is at it's heart nothing but a big MacGuffin. Again, my criteria for Gotham surviving is that I can come back in a few years and see Book of Mormon (which, if Les Mis and Phantom are any indication, will survive on Broadway so long that it can certainly take a nuclear blast at a distance), though if either of my conclusions are correct enough The People of Gotham may not all be dead. That said, if it IS a four-megaton neutron bomb, you are no doubt correct, but on the bright side New Jersey is now uninhabitable! The state that produced Chris Christie, ruined my last relationship and created the culture around Jersey Shore is dead forever!

This brings up a couple of interesting tangential questions: What is the effective high-energy-neutron-radiation range of your average neutron bomb (Wiki says 'past 1400 meters' but I'm thinking more long-term habitability as well), and what would it be if you did construct a theoretical four-megaton neutron bomb?

EDIT: By the way, have you read through that link you posted? It's got a bunch of conspiracy theories and factual facepalms in it , like that whole 'Red Mercury' thing and South Africa's stockpile of neutron bombs (they constructed six conventional fission weapons, untested). Your description of ERW weapons is accurate but I wouldn't cite that to back it up.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Spoiler: spoilers, natch

1. Unless I missed something, Bane only has about 100 guys in his personal army.

Sure, there are 1000 thugs from Blackgate, but they are loyal to themselves, not necessarily the man who let them out. Even with his charisma and physical prowess I find it hard to believe Bane would get more than half of them under his control.

Bane controls an area the size and population of Manhattan using only 100 disciplined soldiers and 500 rowdy criminals? Nope, sorry. I don't care if they do have three Batmobiles. It's just not plausible.

2. How could four months go by without those cops being dug out? Were we supposed to believe they didn't try digging out on their own? Do none of them know what shovels are?

There's always work going on somewhere in the subways, which means there will be construction equipment lying around -- jackhammers, welding torches, heavy saws, sledgehammers, I could go on. Hell, Bane's own guys built a whole infrastructure down there, we see it happening on screen. Did they blow up all their tools when they left?

The map we are shown indicates a quite large area of tunnels for the cops to get stuck in -- is there not a single manhole anywhere in that area? Could they not have simply climbed out?

3. Why is everyone so concerned with Dent's status?

Perfect example: My grandfather won a medal in the service for running into a burning plane (on the ground, of course) to extinguish it before fuel or ammo could start cooking off. He's kind of a hero of mine. If someone showed me proof that story was wrong, that he had started the fire in the first place, I would certainly be upset. On the other hand, my grandfather died years ago, and I have many happy memories. I would not be anywhere near violence.

But apparently millions of Gothamites will grab the nearest heavy object and riot in the streets because some big dude in a mask tells them a guy who died eight years ago wasn't really a hero. Who is Bane to these people? He is no one. His credibility is zero. "A letter from Gordon"? That should raise questions! Even if the letter is real (highly doubtful given the aforementioned credibility issue), how did Bane get it? If Gordon had a friend who was six and a half feet tall with a steel mask welded over his face, somebody would have noticed.

4. Is it just me, or is Bane's speech the same one the Occupy movement likes to use -- the 1% are bad, everything belongs to us, blah blah blah. Consider the hypocrisy. Bane is a natural leader: brilliant, strong, charismatic, motivated, disciplined, and in charge. Contrary to Occupy's belief that the 1% are not special, the 1% usually do have these sorts of traits in greater supply than the rest of us. That's how they became the 1%. You don't get rich and powerful sitting on a sidewalk, holding a sign that says give me free stuff, you do it by being strong, motivated, etc. The point I'm trying to get to here is that Bane is one of the very people he himself is railing against.

 

[The Heik]

Ok first, neutron bombs are designed to [a href="http://www.manuelsweb.com/sam_cohen.htm"]kill things with radiation[/a], so that the infrastucture of the target remains intact and usable once the conflict is won and the radiation goes away. One would certainly turn Gotham bright green because that's how it's supposed to work. And even if Gotham the city is radiation free in a relatively short time (in comparison to standard nuclear devices), the populace (the part of Gotham that actually matters in this context) would still be dead, as evacuating 12 million people in a couple days or less (as the radiation would definitely have affected the city in less than 48 hours) is an impossible task, especially considering that Bane explicitly stated that any substantial US forces, the only organization with enough transport boats and aircraft to move massive amounts of people at one time, weren't allowed within a pretty large radius of Gotham. A lot of people would die and Gotham, in the metaphysical sense at least, would still be destroyed.

Though yes you would be able to see the Book of Mormon, provided it isn't being shown in the first few months after the detonation (which I'm assuming is sometime in February due to the first indication of winter being approximately 83 days into the bomb/hostage ordeal)

Oh, I understand perfectly what a neutron bomb is, but whether or not the weapon in question is or is not a neutron bomb seems dubious to me. I recall hearing the term specifically, but only once, and the rest of the time it's referred to simply as a traditional nuclear weapon. If it were indeed a four-megaton bomb it wouldn't make much sense for it to be a neutron bomb; I don't know about the Soviet weapons but I know the Americans fielded three of them, all with a yield of less than ten kilotons and generally about one, give or take.

Now, if it IS the equivalent of a four-megaton neutron bomb everybody in Gotham is definitely dead, and probably dead by the time Joseph Gordon-Levitt got back on the bus. Again, I am doubtful that the bomb is a neutron bomb or four megatons, because I don't think the movie has any idea what it's talking about; I'm pretty sure that some scriptwriter just decided to throw the word 'neutron bomb' in there once since it sounded cool and has no idea what it means. Since it's been established that the movie has no credibility when it comes to nuclear weapons (e.g. fusion reactors cannot be bombs) it's really a matter of whether or not you want to take the movie at its word or not, or how much of the movie's word you want to take. I am choosing to suspend my disbelief only so far as the reactor's viability as a bomb, since it is at it's heart nothing but a big MacGuffin. Again, my criteria for Gotham surviving is that I can come back in a few years and see Book of Mormon (which, if Les Mis and Phantom are any indication, will survive on Broadway so long that it can certainly take a nuclear blast at a distance), though if either of my conclusions are correct enough The People of Gotham may not all be dead. That said, if it IS a four-megaton neutron bomb, you are no doubt correct, but on the bright side New Jersey is now uninhabitable! The state that produced Chris Christie, ruined my last relationship and created the culture around Jersey Shore is dead forever!

This brings up a couple of interesting tangential questions: What is the effective high-energy-neutron-radiation range of your average neutron bomb (Wiki says 'past 1400 meters' but I'm thinking more long-term habitability as well), and what would it be if you did construct a theoretical four-megaton neutron bomb?

EDIT: By the way, have you read through that link you posted? It's got a bunch of conspiracy theories and factual facepalms in it , like that whole 'Red Mercury' thing and South Africa's stockpile of neutron bombs (they constructed six conventional fission weapons, untested). Your description of ERW weapons is accurate but I wouldn't cite that to back it up.

You know what? I think we may be debating over nothing.

We both seem to agree that the parameters as set for this thing just don't work (ie the reactor being turnable into a bomb, it being 4 megatons, it having a 6 mile blast radius and still working the way we've seen in the film). I think the issue here may just be that we have different definitions for "gotham is saved". You are coming from a structural viewpoint (ie is the physical city still there) viewpoint, while I'm coming from a populace perspective (ie it's citizenry). Both are valid viewpoints on the situation, it just comes down to personal perspective.

But in answer to your question in regards to the yield of your average neutron bomb I've checked the wiki article on neutron bombs, and under the history section there are three different mk.'s of neutron bomb (the W66, the W70, and the W79), all of which have yields of a few kilotons or less (meaning a full effect radius for all of them of less than ten miles), which makes sense seeing as neutron bombs are designed to kill personnel of a target only. Wouldn't be that good an idea if one irradiated a large chunk of an entire country just to take over one measly military base of missile silo? Just goes to show how inaccurate the DKR writers must have been if they thought that 4 megatons was an appropriate yield for a neutron bomb huh?

So if we do consider all the parameters of the bomb stated in the film as null and void, then had Batman 5 minutes to evac the bomb he would have been able to get the bomb completely clear of any effects it would have had on Gotham.

Aside: Yes I read the full post I linked, but I should have specified which part specifically I was referring to (which was right after the bit with Doolittle, regarding the capabilities of neutron bombs). Though in hindsight that specific post might have been the wrong one to use for contextual information. My apologies on that mistake.

 

[Eppy (Bored)]

You know what? I think we may be debating over nothing.

We both seem to agree that the parameters as set for this thing just don't work (ie the reactor being turnable into a bomb, it being 4 megatons, it having a 6 mile blast radius and still working the way we've seen in the film). I think the issue here may just be that we have different definitions for "gotham is saved". You are coming from a structural viewpoint (ie is the physical city still there) viewpoint, while I'm coming from a populace perspective (ie it's citizenry). Both are valid viewpoints on the situation, it just comes down to personal perspective.

But in answer to your question in regards to the yield of your average neutron bomb I've checked the wiki article on neutron bombs, and under the history section there are three different mk.'s of neutron bomb (the W66, the W70, and the W79), all of which have yields of a few kilotons or less (meaning a full effect radius for all of them of less than ten miles), which makes sense seeing as neutron bombs are designed to kill personnel of a target only. Wouldn't be that good an idea if one irradiated a large chunk of an entire country just to take over one measly military base of missile silo? Just goes to show how inaccurate the DKR writers must have been if they thought that 4 megatons was an appropriate yield for a neutron bomb huh?

So if we do consider all the parameters of the bomb stated in the film as null and void, then had Batman 5 minutes to evac the bomb he would have been able to get the bomb completely clear of any effects it would have had on Gotham.

Aside: Yes I read the full post I linked, but I should have specified which part specifically I was referring to (which was right after the bit with Doolittle, regarding the capabilities of neutron bombs). Though in hindsight that specific post might have been the wrong one to use for contextual information. My apologies on that mistake.

I think you're right, we're fighting over thin air. So, conclusions: Not only did the Dark Knight Rises writing staff not do their homework, they may not have gone to school at all. XD On that note, everybody to the bar! Nothing of value was lost.