TDKR: SPOILER-RIDDEN!

Here there be spoilers.

Damn.  Absolutely worth coming to work on 3 hours' worth of "sleep."

I'm generally pleased with how they grew Alfred in this one.  Him taking a strong stance on Wayne's well-being is respectable, and I was honestly kind of surprised at how he stood his ground by leaving.  Lucius Fox taking a backseat this time was also pretty noticeable, and the levity he usually brings was missed.  Hopefully that was intentional.

I actually wanted more Bane; he was a really fun villain.  He was methodical and charismatic, and that pleased me greatly.  Much better than "Boooooomb" Bane from the Bat-movie we don't discuss.  He was fun, and the tie-in with the League of Shadows was an excellent callback to Batman Begins.  It was good to really show how things could have gone had Wayne played ball with the League's plan.

It's good that they made a conscious effort to make Bane larger-than-life.  It was a good break from the Joker's approach of bringing out the darker part of every person's humanity, and it nicely tied back into the whole "if you make yourself more than just a man" bit from Liam Neeson's recruitment monologue in Batman Begins.  Having the whole Bane theme of "I will break you" symbolized with the shattering of Batman's mask was nice...it's a shame they put it in the damn promotional material, though.  Batman then turning that around at their final fight was great...it really helped sell the idea that Batsy was following in Bane's footsteps, which was great misdirection for the twist.


Then there's Selena Kyle.  I guess you could go ahead and call her Catwoman, but I like that the movie just barely toys with the motif.  It was a pretty decent approach to a character that could have come off super cheesy or really flat.  I appreciate that they didn't really pound the "look, she's sexy!" angle at inappropriate times.  Well, except for the gratuitous ass shots in the final confrontation..that was a little unnecessary.

Or was it?

Still, they took the time to give her some depth, and I'm glad for that.  The banter between her and Wayne (before she finds out about his little habit of being the goddamn Batman) is fun and playful.  That's good, and I think it helped lay a foundation for the not-so-surprising bit at the end.  I don't have lady parts or think like ladies, but I'm pretty sure the humor and coyness was necessary to start up a romance there, for her...I mean, if you need her to go from the selfish Robin Hood to "oh, hey, I wanna have your babies," you need more than "he's the goddamn Batman."

Then again, maybe not.

I know I'm not the only one that wasn't surprised by Robin.  Seriously, once they spent more than 2 minutes developing him and showing that he was a good guy, I figured it was going to be Robin or Batman Mk II.  When he revealed that he knew who Batman was, the conclusion was cemented.  THEN he mentioned he was an orphan...at that point, you're just handing it to anyone in the audience that knows the basic Robin origin.  Or that, you know, remembers Batman Forever.

Like you could ever forget it.

I'm glad for it, though...the whole "here's the Batcave, have fun" bit was nice and saves the poor guy a LOT of trouble.

There was a LOT in this movie.  I liked it.  Maybe after I've had more than 3 hours of sleep, I can tap out something more than a rehash with a couple of thoughts attached.  For now, though...work work.  Also, zug zug.