Yeah I'm mixed about that, don't want them to ruin it but at the same time there is potential as the ending of the second [spoiler]suggests Dafoe would be back in it which can only be a positive, the whole issue of the saints in prison and what mob related story they can do for a third time without it getting old is another thing though[/spoiler]

Quality film. One of my favourites too. Apparently they're making a third one. Way to ruin it.

Love it, I'm not usually one to single individual films as my favourite but Boondock Saints would be one of the first films to spring to mind for me, have scene it more times than I can remember and love it each time

The Dark Knight Rises – our thoughts on the six-minute prologue
Ryan Lambie



Will The Dark Knight Rises be 2012’s blackest summer blockbuster? The prologue certainly suggests that it will be.We caught the opening six minutes of The Dark Knight Rises. Here’s what we thought of them…
Published on Dec 14, 2011


Warning: for anyone who wants to watch The Dark Knight Rises’ prologue without foreknowledge, the following contains mild spoilers.

[spoiler]Directing a blockbuster movie, I suspect, is a bit like pulling off an intricate conjuring trick. Having won the crowd with one remarkable feat, you’re faced with the difficult task of dreaming up something even more spectacular stunt to follow it.

The Dark Knight opened with an audacious bank heist that provided a thrilling entrance for the film’s villain. How could Christopher Nolan possibly improve on that tautly directed introduction to the Joker and his showman-like brand of anarchy?

This dilemma’s compounded by the director’s choice of villain for The Dark Knight Rises. Most filmgoers were familiar with the Joker before The Dark Knight even began, but how many viewers, other than those who read Batman comics, know who Bane is? At a push, some might know him as the absurd muscle-bound and mute character from 1997’s Batman & Robin.

Nolan is therefore faced with the dual task of creating an opening even more grand and audacious than his 2008 film, while also introducing a new villain who, for most, will be an enigma.

These thoughts were no doubt in many people’s minds as the lights went down for a preview screening of The Dark Knight Rises’ prologue – the first six minutes of Nolan’s third and final Batman movie.

I won’t spoil what happens by describing these six minutes in detail, since you’ll be able to see them for yourself if you head to one of the IMAX cinemas screening it ahead of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.

What I will say, though, is that in terms of pure spectacle, The Dark Knight Rises manages to top the first six minutes of its predecessor. In a sequence that could quite easily have been conceived for a Bond movie, an aeroplane hijacked in flight provides the stage for Bane’s grand entrance. It’s a seamless fusion of what is surely a mixture of practical and digital effects – I fail to see how else you could film a bullet-strewn duel between two aircraft, one of which is disintegrating in midair – but the joins between the real and the computer-generated were impossible to see on first viewing.

As a gonzo, high wire stunt, it’s mesmerising, its use of the IMAX 70mm format dizzying. But as an introduction, it’s a bit confusing. The Dark Knight’s prologue worked so well because what was going was clear within seconds: some bad guys in masks were robbing a bank. Quite why they were killing each other at the same time may have caused a bit of confusion among some, but the gist of what was happening was nevertheless clear: it was a heist, straight out of Michael Mann’s Heat.

The Dark Knight Rises’ opening is murkier and more perplexing. There’s a tense verbal exchange between a CIA agent (Aidan Gillen) and Tom Hardy’s hulking Bane, but it’s not obvious why either of them – or the various other characters crowded into the fuselage – are there or what they’re talking about.

And to make things even trickier to follow, Bane’s mask renders much of his dialogue impossible to make out. Of the dozen or so lines Hardy utters in these six minutes, I only clearly understood one or two. In the worst instances, I only understood one word in a sentence. This may be an intentional move on Nolan’s part – a way of adding mystery to an already unknown character (it’s clear that Nolan’s version of Bane is very different from the one familiar to comic book readers), and it may also be the case that Bane will be easier to understand when his voice isn’t accompanied by the drone of jet engines.

In this sequence, though, Bane is like a villainous equivalent of Kenny out of South Park. If Batman finds Bane as difficult to understand as the audience does, I can imagine at least one sequence in the finished film panning out as follows:

BANE: “Hmmmff, brrbrrm, brrmmff, Batman.”

BATMAN: “What?”

BANE: “Hrrm hrrm, hmmmff, brrbrrm, brrmmff, Batman.”

BATMAN: “I’m sorry, I really don’t follow you.”

BANE: [Tears off mask] “Oh for the love of God. I said I’m going to beat you up a bit, Batman.”

This dialogue issue aside, though, the Rises prologue is genuinely gripping. Bane may be a man of muffled words, but it’s his physicality that’s important – the Joker was a homicidal sociopath, but we all knew he probably couldn’t beat Batman in a punch-up. Bane, meanwhile, carries with him a hulking, unholy presence.

Nolan’s one of those directors who’s brilliant at menace. It’s something that lurks in all his films, but in The Dark Knight Rises, the air’s thick with doom, and this may be his coldest, bleakest film since Insomnia. The mood, even in these six minutes, is apocalyptic – Bane looks like a beefed-up grim reaper, and one look at him makes me wonder just what terrible things this film has in store for the Caped Crusader.

Will The Dark Knight Rises be 2012’s blackest summer blockbuster? The prologue certainly suggests that it will be. Even Anne Hathaway, who looked so healthy and slinky in the preview images released a few months ago, looks wan and disturbed in her brief appearances here.

A recent poster carried the striking image of a shattered Batman mask lying in the rain – and a sequence very like it is briefly glimpsed at the conclusion of the preview. Whatever Nolan has planned for Batman, it’s sure to test his abilities to the absolute limit[/spoiler]

:lol: Olivia Wilde playing Justin Timberlakes mother is just a tad weird.

Well considering that is set YEARS later and he comes back from retirement and is middle aged, I doubt Dark Knight Rises will be anything like it (would be an interesting movie nonetheless).

That poster basically confirms they are going to follow Batman/Bane's "encounter" in the comics.

I have a TPB of The Dark Knight Returns. Written by Frank Miller. If this movie comes close to that, I will cum in my pants. Seriously awesome. Sees the death of Batman, by the hands of a friend. [-o<

And um..... as said on another thread, do I have to start a new comics thread, or can the old one be revived??

Edited by villaboy: 11/12/2011 11:18:46 PM

Boondock Saints.

Jizz.

[-o<