Batman Begins mirrored the comic ‘Batman: Year One’ Bruce’s first year of estabilishing himself as Batman in a corrupt and violent Gotham.

The Dark Knight film mirrors ‘Batman: The Long Halloween’ in which it is Bruce’s second year of being Batman, he teams up with Gordon and Harvey Dent to bring the Mob families down and Dent becomes the villian Two-Face, all the while a serial killer knicknamed ‘Holiday’ is on the loose. The serial killer was replaced with The Joker and his plan to bring down Dent to his level, mirrored ‘The Killing Joke’ comic, except Gordon is The Joker’s target in that story.

8 years later in the comics, in Batman/ Bruce’s 10th year of crime fighting, Bane comes to Gotham in the comics “Vengeance of Bane’ and ‘Knightfall’.
He breaks Batman and takes over Gotham.

Nolan and Goyer used the comic ‘The Dark Knight Returns’, where Bruce has retired as Batman, for 10 years due to the death of Robin/ Jason Todd as a touchstone, to create the gap of time, when Bane would arrive on the scene. Only in the movie, its due to the death of Rachel Dawes the love of his life, that Bruce has retired.
The reason Batman comes out of retirement in ‘The Dark Knight Returns’ is because of The Mutant gang. Nolan’s and Tom Hardy’s Bane in the film ressembles The Mutants Leader more so then Bane from the comics in appearance.

I agree there was some hits and misses with the film, but I think its pretty cool to see the comics represented fairly well compared to the Burton/ Schumacher films.

I’m not sure why you’re pointing out that it felt like abuse to you if you’re also saying that I’m not abusing you.

I’m also not sure why you wonder whether or not I would take issue with someone using words imprecisely if it related to Star Wars specifically, but the answer is, yes, I would still take issue with it. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about Nolan’s Batman trilogy, the Star Wars movies, or a trilogy of student films about defecation; one cannot fairly state that they have a favorite film in the series without watching them all.

I wonder… would you question as strongly if someone said “Star Wars (the original) is my favorite of all the Star Wars movies” if they hadn’t seen whathever #3 was? (Not Jedi, the other one.)

How did you clarify? You response to my question was, “It’s my favorite because I didn’t even want to see the second one, and I did want to see this” which isn’t a clarification; it’s you restating what you already wrote in the article, which was, “I don’t even recall if I ever saw The Dark Knight (because I was upset by Heath Ledger’s passing)”.

What I’m looking for is a fair, accurate, and precise statement. As a writer, I would imagine you value accuracy and precision when it comes to words. Saying The Dark Knight Rises is your favorite in the trilogy without having seen the entire trilogy is neither fair, accurate, nor precise. The fact that you explicitly called it out as your favorite of the trilogy is the problem. If you had just said it was your favorite movie ever, then that’s fair. But by saying that TDKR is your favorite of the trilogy without seeing TDK, then you’re not giving it a fair shot. When is the last time you saw someone professionally/semi-professionally review a movie by saying, “I didn’t watch the whole movie, but I’m going to say I didn’t like the whole thing.”

That would be like someone saying they saw The Matrix Revolutions and The Matrix Reloaded and saying that The Matrix Reloaded is their favorite of the whole trilogy without having seen the The Matrix. Or that Star Wars Episodes 1-3 are their favorites without having seen Episodes 4-6. Or that Terminator 3 is their favorite without having seen Terminator 2. Or that Robocop 3 is their favorite without having seen Robocop. Etc…

I am questioning your diction and syntax. I’m sorry you are interpreting that as abuse (abuse seems rather strong a word, since I have been polite and haven’t called you names or said anything vilifying). I have been treating this as a discussion (and a civil one at that).

I think, perhaps, I would have reacted better to an approach that said something like “Oh, it’s a shame you haven’t seen Dark Knight, you might like it more than DKR” than this one, which felt like “rawr, you have bad word use, stupid!” I prefer discussion to abuse. :)

And I’m not getting up in arms over our favorites not being the same. I haven’t even mentioned which one is my favorite, so please don’t put words in my mouth (or I guess in my hands/keyboard?).

What I am getting up in arms about is you saying you had a favorite in the trilogy without watching the entire trilogy. And you running the “metaphor into the ground” is based on a faulty premise; I never mentioned anyone else saying anything about Bob, just as you never mentioned anyone else saying anything about The Dark Knight. So I don’t see how a bunch of people telling you bad things about me is analogous at all. All you said in the article was that you hadn’t seen The Dark Knight, but that The Dark Knight Rises is your favorite anyways.

But there’s no reason to get up in arms over my favorite not being yours. I’ve since been reminded that I did see Dark Knight, or at least the first hour and a half of it. I think my not recalling it speaks to how well it suited my tastes. Watching Hathaway as Catwoman was much more enjoyable for me than Ledger as the Joker.

“It’s my favorite because I didn’t even want to see the second one, and I did want to see this. I know, it’s not exactly a knowledgeable judgment, but I said that going in. :)”

It’s not even “not exactly a knowledgeable judgment”, it’s a completely misinformed and incomplete judgment. It’s like saying that between Joe, Bob, and Tim, Joe is your favorite person without having even met Bob. How can you say that? If you had met Bob, he might have been your favorite of the three.

I agree with Vantine ; the battle at the end of the movie just did not work for me. It felt too much like a video game and not enough like a movie. For that reason, I would not rate it as the best of the three.

Ralf, thanks for sharing that link — hilarious! I particularly related to the action coma one.

Vantine, I thought they explained the hobbling with the whole doctor scene (yay Tom Lennon!) saying he had no cartilage left. Made sense to me that he’d beaten himself up, so to speak. And sue me, I liked the secret happy ending. It’s nice when creators put the toys back on the shelf instead of messing them up, washing their hands of it and walking away.

Catwoman didn’t run over Bane, by the way. She shot him. Thus the whole guns wisecrack. But I know I have an advantage recalling this stuff having just seen it. Whereas I don’t remember License to Kill at all. That was the second Dalton? So if it was (let’s say) an homage, eh, I didn’t notice. At least we agree that Catwoman was great! Yay! Best part of the film.

Umm, what? How can you say one of the movies is your favorite of the trilogy if you haven’t seen the trilogy?

Then, after the epic battle with Bane and Batman recovering, I’m expecting an epic…EPIC confrontation between the two at the end. So, just as the two are about to go mano a mano in the battle of the century, catwoman runs him over with a motorcycle. The end. I mean…what?

Then you have the air heist scene. If you’re going to swipe wholesale from another movie, dont’ make it a James Bond movie. They’re too well remembered. That stunt was nearly a frame by frame reshoot of the scene in the Dalton Bond film License To Kill. The subplot of Talia/Bane was ripped off almost entirely from the Bond film The World Is Not Enough. Not mildly similar, but exactly the same.

Ugh. Needless to say, I didn’t care for it. I found everything Batman does in this film very UN Batman like. Not only unlike the comic book Batman, but unlike anything resembling the Batman that Nolan gives us in his own previous two films. And frankly, the fact that Nolan has Batman quit at the end seems to have more to do with Nolan than with the character or the story.

Catwoman was the only character I liked or who did anything that made any kind of narrative sense. I can’t wait to see her in Les Mis this Christmas.

That said, I’m glad you liked it. ;)