Nah, Dark Knight Rises was poorly-thought mish-mash of various Batman stories, characters that didn't need to be there and Christian Bale's ridiculous voice.

The only good thing it did was have a conclusion which meant those films don't have to leak into any more DC movie fiction, and even that ending horribly sucked.

It's satisfying to know the Dark Knight series isn't the start of the DC film universe and Bale isn't returning to be Bruce in the World's Finest movie.

Those films took themselves too seriously, and they suffered for it.

I don't even know what you're talking about in half of this post but I've seen very few people address Avengers long long list of flaws but I have seen many a person rave like it's the greatest film ever made.

There is no put up or shutup, just me here wondering how you can hate one movie, love another when the only differences between the two are in name.

:lol

But exactly, I cannot fathom why Transformers is so derided while Avengers gets a free ride, despite doing NOTHING to make it any better than Transformers. In many ways I'd say it was worse because at least Transformers intended to be a big dumb explosionfest, not a film that had been built up over years.

Because there are no similarities between the films aside from genre. Unless someone can swap the films behind your back and you legitimately can't tell the difference, because there's no point in bothering if you can't.

I'd love to hear the flaws Avengers is so abundantly filled with.

Okay.

No plot or characters. Everything is lifted from the comics, with no new takes, angles, imagination or well anything. Not only does it directly lift but it also does it in such a way that a majority of what is here will mean nothing to people who have never read the comics.

Loki had no motivations and was taken down in a gag.

We never really find out what the Tesseract is, what it does or how it works. Everything in this film works how it's supposed to do in the scene with no sense of coherency or continuity with the tech, magic, myths and rules.

Black Widow was useless and they gave her stupid Spider-Man like agility which only further showed how useless she was. Hawkeye was useless, so they made him evil which was stupid. Captain America does nothing. Thor, despite having the most amount of emotional investment in all this, has the emotional range of frying pan. Maria Hill is added to the cast to get shot at and do nothing. SHIELD are turned into the Red Shirts from Star Trek.

Minus a few interesting in fights, the movie rests on an action sequence with the Putty Patrollers with no real identifiable villain or truly epic final showdown.

The film is written like a bad comicbook balancing all action with lengthy and unnatural exposition.

The film doesn't need Loki and his unclear motivations, the film doesn't need a bloated action sequence straight out of a Michael Bay movie, the bringing together of The Avengers and then their subsequent squabble for power amongst themselves makes for a far more interesting story, much better set pieces and much more emotional involvement.

Ultimately, that is one of the greatest failings with the film for me. There is no tension. The Avengers are the most powerful weapons on the planet, their only threat is themselves, since the movie went for one villain and an army of goons, there is never any sense that the heroes will lose. I mean we all know they won't regardless, but even aside from the heroes never fail thing, even in the movie itself everything that is thrown at the Avengers barely causes a scratch, to the point where it becomes almost a metaplot point. Coulson claims he needed to die, and he does, not just in the movies narrative to bring the team together, but in the movie externally too, to provide tension and emotion, it's the only moment the Avengers stop steamrolling through everything. That is why The Avengers needed more squabbling and less Putty Patrol. In the end however I can't help but feel his death doesn't really work, the first hour and a half is basically a pulpy, pantomime not all that far away from the 1940's Superhero serials..then Coulson dies and it is like we are in an entirely different movie, like his death was slotted in at the end when Whedon realised reading back that his screenplay was actually pretty boring, although there are a few throwaway lines here and there that The Avengers are loose cannons and so on, there is no real sense that they are inexperienced idiots, throwing their weight around without thinking of the wider picture leading to Coulson's death which brings it all into focus which would have worked, it just feels like, as I said 'Wow this is boring, let's kill a beloved character!' with the last hour meandering around seemingly unsure of what to do with itself, so explosions!

No, it's not. The Avengers film shares little in common with the comics, with the characters being quite different iterations of the characters. From Cap not being part of the original Avengers to Fury being the Ultimate version that was only created in 2000 to Antman's complete absence, the film was all it's own, not just a comic plot brought to life.

This is more how one felt concerning Loki. To some, it could be argued that his entire motivation is to be the king and conqueror that his father once was, to others, it could be his ego that makes him want to be seen as someone with value and power, to another it could him being a petulant child doing stuff with no rhyme or reason.

It's a source of power. They made that incredibly clear, and they only used it as such. They weren't breaking their own rules, it only did one thing, and it was only used for one thing. As a power source.

You're judging a character's worth by how big of a laser they can shoot? Because Hawkeye called shots and made sure the team knew where the army was moving, Black Widow, while not the most vital member during the climax, was relatively important in gathering the members, most notably Iron Man and the Hulk, and Captain America lead. He kept his mind on the mission, he made sure civilians were safe, and he always stepped up.
Thor is a fair enough point, and Maria Hill was always like that.

Just because Loki wasn't the ultimate fight during the climax doesn't mean there wasn't an identifiable villain. Additionally, the point of the team dynamic is just that, a team. It reduces the impact when it goes down to a 6 on 1 showdown.

Obviously not if you didn't know what the Tesse-"Greatest power source on the planet"-ract's purpose was.

I'll agree that the film's best strength was the initial lack of synergy and clashing personalities of the characters.
I don't think it would have been the better direction to take the film in, though, because if it was written in a more realistic manner, Thor, Cap, and Iron Man would not get along in the slightest, with Thor and Stark being hard headed enough to just up and leave if not given everything demanded.

That's the point of the Avengers. They're not the X-Men, they're not the Fantastic Four. They're a group of individually recognized and decorated heroes who join together to stop [X]. They're supposed to be the unstoppable force that charges in. The squabbling over ideals, the scale of their threats, the essential arm twisting until they become team players is what the Avengers handle. Where the X-Men's personal issues stem from their love dodecahedrons, where the Fantastic Four's infighting comes from Reed being the worst leader imaginable, the Avenger's personal problems come from clashing ideals because these are people who don't need the team to succeed as a hero, and they know it, but the threat is large enough for them to realize they need to team to win this particular problem.

They mixed up the team and smashed together different versions of the heroes from different stories, granted, but I have no fucking idea why and it doesn't make it original or fresh to smash in classic heroes with Ultimate ones, it's just baffling.

Not just the tesseract, it's been a while since I've seen the film, but Loki's staff if I remember correctly had six very different powers over the course of the film with not a single explanation as to why.

Hawkeye's strengths were there, but his personality was ripped out in doing so, and that rubbed me up the wrong way. Hawkeye has a much bigger personality than basically everyone on the team bar Iron Man, so to take that away from him was a shit, shit move.

You could have achieved just as much with just Iron Man, Hulk and Thor, the movie made little to no attempt to establish why the others needed to be there. Often bending their own rules to make them fit.

I never identified Loki as a focused villain because he had no motivations and was taken out in a gag, only for the Putty Pattrolers to be chucked in at the end lining up to be knocked down. There is a reason you fought the Putties BEFORE the monster of the week.

The Avengers always had villains who put up a fight, who would kick their asses, Loki was completely useless and no villain ever provided any kind of tension or put the Avengers on their toes so the film was boring.

I think The Avengers greatest strength was the prequels. The prequels did a fantastic job of building this world of heroes, villains, and science, enough so that when a movie-goer walked in having watched them, they were already invested. Now, that's not the case for everyone, (my friend had only watched the first two Iron Man films before The Avengers,) but it was for many.

I feel like The Avengers was more like the final act for a very long play in some respects. We've seen the characters go through their journeys, conquer their inner demons, and now we want the epic conclusion. I loved The Avengers, but I also loved the Transformers trilogy. They were works of illusion and story-telling that kept me entertained, and I appreciate their existence for that. They were not ment to teach me anything, they were meant to entertain me, a high-school freshman (soon to be sophomore).

I did a Star Wars OT day today. Since these movies have been discussed before, I'll just leave my scores of:

Star Wars: 8/10
Empire: 10/10
Return: 9/10

BTW, completely disagree on the Dark Knight Trilogy. Them taking themselves seriously is what makes them so great. It was finally a Batman series the way he should have been done on movie format 60 years ago. And the ending to Rises was great because it was an ending. I don't agree with how everything happened in the movie (such as Marion being Talia was not a twist, it was expected the moment she was casted), but the ending was one of the best parts of it. Regardless, The Dark Knight is the greatest super hero movie to date and will probably not be topped for at least 50 years.

Oh, Bale's voice is not by his choice, but rather the suit. Bale explained in an interview that the mask is extremely tight, making it impossible for him to breath from his nose, so he sounds that way because that is the only way he can sound. He also said the costume retracts in the cold, so that makes it even worse.

Lastly, I have no idea how you can compare Avengers and Bayformers at all. One is a movie that was full of lovable characters who received development even though they already gained it in their own movies vs a movie about insect looking robots that have no development at all and do nothing but show off their balls with a horny kid screaming, "Nononononononononononononononono" all of the time. Oh, and we learned what the Tessarac was IN CAPTAIN AMERICA!!! Did you not watch it? It sounds like you were just nitpicking it just to nitpick it. Loki's staff is that way because HE IS A GOD!! Do you not know anything about gods? Grab a f'ing book on mythology and read.

Although the Dark Knight was a great, great film, I dunno whether it's gonna be 'the best for 50 years', largely because the Batman trilogy weren't really superhero films. Sure there was a hero in a costume, a villain in one as well but most of the time the whole 'superhero' part of the movies felt tacked on at best, and it all went downhill in Rises when Nolan actually read the comics...

Picking out individual, tiny, inconsequential details from the two films doesn't make an argument. They are similar in the wider picture, big budget, soulless CGI titans built entirely around selling merchandise and entertaining masses with explosions. Just because the two films are wearing different outfits, doesn't make them any less the same.

And okay if you want to reduce my whole argument down to 'nitpicks' - to which you clearly have no idea what that word means - we're done here, so maybe you should go read a 'f'ing book' called the dictionary.

That just sounds like a really pathetic excuse for something he's been ridiculed for repeatedly. Not being able to breathe through your nose would not make you sound like that not matter how tight a mask was.

What?

Wow, now who is pulling what out of their ass? YOu do realize that Begins had pieces taken out of Year One, The Long Halloween, and an individual comic story about Joe Chill, right?

THe second movie adapted more of The Long Halloween and Dark Victory while Joker was a combination of Moore's, Miller's, and O'Neil's Jokers. Rises adapted Knightfall, No Man's Land, and The Dark Knight Returns.

BTW, Batman is a super hero, so no matter what, his movies are super hero movies. V for Vendetta is a comic movie because it is not a super hero comic.

And quite clearly the Adam West movie too :D

But what exactly makes Batman "super" in comparison to V? You could use the argument that Batman has super powered villains, but the films don't so your argument doesn't have much logic to it.

Plus where are you getting these comics from? Minus the characters, and the vaguest of plot details, I fail to see how they are adaptations of any of these stories.

Have you not read them? Using the sonar to bring the bats to Arkham is ripped directly out of Year One. As is most of Gordon's character and Flask. Falconi is from THe Long Halloween. And the other comic deals with Bruce studying abroad talking about how Joe Chill was the one who killed his parents.

The Dark Knight Return is Batman had retired for 10 years. No Man's Land is an earthquake hit Gotham, and all of the villains started to section off their portions of Gotham, Gordon had to lead a small band of resistance fighters, etc. Knightfall is obviously when Bane broke Bruce's back and he had to spend time recovering from that.

Harvey becoming Two-Face due to Joker came right out of TLH, as Joker gave Harvey a present to him and his wife for Xmas that blew up their home, killing his wife and scaring Harvey.

Everything in the Nolan movies were taken from the comics. Nolan put 70 years worth of Batman history into those movies no matter how much you don't want him to. They were far closer to the comics than the Tim Burton movies and even that Adam West garbage was.

Christopher Nolan's films reinforce the entire Batman is Invincible mindset that DC Comics has now. I've seen it in the animated movies where, if it has Batman anywhere near it, he's the only one that knows what to do. I've seen it in DC Universe Online where you can't even fight him if you're a Tech (Joker Mentor'd) villain. And in Nolan's Batman.
Not that the movies were unwatchable. Heath Ledger's Joker was masterful, and Bane was something truely Epic. They were good movies (If you ignore they mispronounced Ra's Al Ghul throughout the entire trilogy. It's Reash, like Reach but with a sh. Not Ra's. Nolan, you are an idiot).
But I miss Keaton's Batman. He was vulnerable, He nearly died once a movie, and only won because he was just slightly smarter than everyone else. In Batman Returns he only won because Penguin lost his mind towards the end and Shrek was taken out by an enraged Selena.
I enjoyed Batman Forever. Yes I know, Shumacher is a moron and should be shot into the sun for Batman and Robin. But I loved Batman Forever. I loved Two-Face and Riddler, I loved Nicole Kidnman, and I even loved Val Kilmer as Batman.
Batman and Robin can rot.

But Adam West and that original 1967 movie will always be a classic of pure fun and classic camp. Romero's Joker alone makes it worth the watch.

What? Nolan's Batman is anything but invincible.

It also doesn't help that Nolan can't direct an action scene to save his life.

I thought the final fight between Bane and Batman was good. But that could be because I love Bane :lol

I think the low point of the franchise is when Bane and Batman have that fist fight before the iconic back break, it was like watching two obese pensioners playing pattycake.

I thought that was a good fight actually, even if Batman is getting a bit on by that time. Then again, I am used to fights in classic Star Trek where the main characters were usually above 50. :lol

By those standards, it was fine, but such a static, sluggish fight scene had no place in today's superhero cinema.

I felt it did fit in the context of Nolan's brawl-like realism, but I too was not a huge fan of this style. There's a place for realism but even for Batman I'd like to see some fancy stuff.

It could have worked fine, if they had shot it in an interesting fashion or given any sense of intensity or brutality, but the camera just slowly bobbed around two static figures wailing on each other with impactless and sluggish hits.

Gotta agree with you, the fights with Bane were rather boring to watch, they simply felt badly done.

Bane sucked period. His design looked stupid. That voice was stupid. He was taken down in a really shit fashion. None of the fights with him were interesting. He basically was Bane only in name, Bane is a shit character in the comics as well, and the fact that I missed comics Bane while watching this says everything.

Worst of all is I'm a huge Hardy fan, love the man and his acting, but he was completely wasted here. Nolan is such an overrated director it's unreal.

Bane is actually a lot better in the comics, being of genius intellect as well as having the physique of a super human.
Honestly, Bane is the better nemesis to Batman, but people just latched onto the Joker.

I never cared for him, too 90s for me, but like I say I adore him compared to whatever the fuck Nolan aborted.

I think one thing most of can agree on is that the 1989 Burton Batmobile is amazing.

Designs may be good and all but in terms of story, characters and plot pacing I think Burton's "Batman" films are just as awful as Schumacher's.

Someone else who gets it.
I think Batman has a larger body count in Batman Returns than the Penguin did.
Burton doesn't "Get" Batman. It's clear that Burton has more interest in the villains than Wayne, and that leads to unguided movies.

I think Inception proves you wrong, but whatever. I'm not going to waste my time explaining why the Nolan movies are the truest adaptation of Batman thus far because you won't listen anyway. OUtside of mispronouncing Ra's as Raz, they were accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TULYXGYz02c

I watched Life of Pi. I'm glad I'm not in a boat right now, because there's a lightning storm going on outside right now.

I just watched Prometheus for the first time. I enjoyed it over all but I think it could've been a little shorter and still been a good movie. The story was there, and it was an excellent prequel to the Aliens Franchise. Spiritual or Direct.

Here's hoping we get an updated rebooted Alien movie now. Which if they do better have a strong female protaginist like Ripley.

I guess I could cross this over into the anime thread, but I just went to my local arthouse cinema screening of From Up on Poppy Hill. I think Goro Miyazaki has made up for Earthsea with this, which is potentially one of my favourite Ghibli movies yet.

Are they doing that where you live to? We have that going on at a local theater here in CO as well.

Yeah, just as well I have one nearby because no multiplex is carrying it despite them all playing trailers for it ¬¬

Percy Jackson and the Sea of Mediocrity - This movie was not all that great. If you hated the first one, you will not even want to waste your time with this movie. If you liked the first one, it could go either way, but I found it to be very subpar. The plot of the movie was pretty simple and easy to follow, but the execution was just so boring. For a movie called Sea of Monsters, we didn't really see that many monsters. In fact, there was hardly even anything show in the actual sea. Not to mention the acting seemed to regress from the previous movie, as the guy that played Luke was terrible. It also did not help that the cast sometimes did not even react to a Manticore jumping in front of them. Even the action was boring because most of it was over quickly and sometimes, with Kratos-like kills that made no sense. There is also something that happens to another character towards the end, but the problem was fixed so quickly, it was pointless to even bother with because the drama did not even have time to develop. Overall, the movie was a vast disappointment. It isn't bad enough that I wouldn't go see a third movie if there were to be one, but I would not care if there is not another one either. I give the movie a 4/10.

Its out already? Holy crap I know what Im going to see next weekend :lol

I get free tickets, so I might go see that if it sucks.