The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Matt (00:00:47):

Welcome to the Summer of Nolan on 1-Week Rental. 1-Week Rental is the name of our show. I’m Matt Stokes.

Laci (00:00:53):

I’m Laci Roth. We’re married.

Matt (00:00:54):

We’re married to each other.

Laci (00:00:56):

We have opinions about movies.

Matt (00:00:57):

And they come up over the course of our marriage as it might have happened in your marriage. Movie marriage. #moviemarriage

Laci (00:01:04):

Okay. Maybe you’re not married yet. Maybe it’s because of all your movies.

Matt (00:01:07):

Get married. God wants you to.

Laci (00:01:09):

Find a Christian movie loving gal

Matt (00:01:12):

For our

Laci (00:01:13):

Satanic one. That’s fun.

Matt (00:01:15):

Find somebody who will put their big stiletto heel on your face and – Crush my

Laci (00:01:19):

Balls.

Matt (00:01:19):

Eat an apple in front of you.

Laci (00:01:20):

Crush my balls Anne Hathaway right

Matt (00:01:22):

Now. So every week on this show, we dive deep into a movie over the course of seven days and then tell you everything we’ve learned. Research the movie, read interviews with the people who made it, then we regurgitate all the facts at you. If you like it or not, doesn’t matter. Then we review the movie, discuss it, analyze it. And it’s the summer of Nolan. We’re doing our sixth Christopher Nolan movie, The Dark Night Rises.

Laci (00:01:40):

Can I ask a point of clarification that I’m sure if I listen to three episodes back, you will have answered this. Are you making me watch Jun Kirk?

Matt (00:01:48):

No. Nope. That’s coming up on. I’m doing that with our friend Drew on a Patreon bonus episode.

Laci (00:01:54):

I remember liking it, but war movies are a slog for me.

Matt (00:01:56):

You know what though? That movie’s running time, one hour, 40 minutes.

Laci (00:02:01):

Mr. Christopher Nolan.

Matt (00:02:04):

I dropped to the ground and wept in 2017 when I went the running time because these ladies and gentlemen and non-binary folks, these episodes are getting longer and longer along with the running times of these movies. Longer and longer and longer.

Laci (00:02:19):

Okay. Can I drop my bombshell?

Matt (00:02:21):

I’m so intrigued to hear what you think of The Dark Night Rises. Is it about that?

Laci (00:02:25):

Yeah. All right. Yeah. Anne Hathaway’s parts in this movie are my favorite.

Matt (00:02:32):

Good. Yeah, she’s great.

Laci (00:02:34):

I love her like this. I love her when she’s a little unpredictable. I’d

Matt (00:02:39):

Say that – In

Laci (00:02:40):

That outfit. I’ve

Matt (00:02:41):

Seen this movie so many times. I always was fine with her in this movie. I think the reaction to her was mixed. The thing that has grown the most in my opinion of this movie is her. I think she’s great as this character. The character’s not a great character in the movie.

Laci (00:02:54):

Right, but she makes it her own with her facial expressions. I mean, the writing is always not, particularly in the Batman movies, the writing just isn’t at the forefront, but she’s got better lines than Christian Bale.

Matt (00:03:09):

Well, yes.

Laci (00:03:12):

They don’t ever give the women much to do.

Matt (00:03:14):

No, they don’t. And I think this movie contains Nolan’s worst woman character. And that’s saying something. Actually, come on. Who else is in the. It’s Marion Cotiard in this movie. You’re like, “What’s that Oscar winning actress doing in every single scene not saying or doing anything?” I don’t think

Laci (00:03:30):

You’re

Matt (00:03:30):

Right. Might she be a villain?

Laci (00:03:32):

No. I mean, fine. But you read movie language better than me in that way. But by the time you’re on your eighth Christopher Nolan movie, you’re like, “No, he just brings his guys.” So I’m not at all surprised to see Jordan Levitt. I’m just going –

Matt (00:03:47):

Joseph Gordon Levitt.

Laci (00:03:48):

That is exactly. When I see him show up, I’m like. Because I had never seen it. And I’m just like, “This is interesting because there’s not enough room for another cop to have a lot to do.” So I really thought Christopher just felt like, oh, this is going to be a slog. I want to bring all my people. I want to have someone to hang out with. When I saw him, I was like, “What’s he going to give them to do?” So when I see her, I’m like, “I don’t really anticipate that they need a lot to do. They just need to be in the movie.” I mean, he ends up giving them both some things to do.

Matt (00:04:20):

I think of this movie as having too many spinning parts, too many plates in the air. And maybe it does, but no one’s good and economical about giving his characters things to do and reasons to be on screen, except for Marion Coatyard, an actress I think is great. But this character, the problem with her, and it’s kind of the problem with the prestige with Fallon, where it’s unusual in a movie to never get a clear shot of an actor. So something’s up with that actor. And it’s kind of weird that this character is only virtuous in this movie.

Laci (00:04:49):

I think that you might speak perfect Nolan, and I think that is to your detriment. I don’t even think you know that you’re doing this, but I don’t know if I’ve seen a set of movies tip you off in such distracting ways. You keep pointing out how things are so distracting and obvious and you’re waiting for why is this obvious, Nolan? Clearly you’re not meaning to be obvious, but yet he just didn’t know what to. She was going to be the villain and he wasn’t very good at pulling the wool over your eyes.

Matt (00:05:16):

One issue I have with this movie is I think you have so many great possibilities and you do the least interesting thing with them. No thing are you more guilty of that. You’re never more guilty of that.

Laci (00:05:31):

I don’t know how you’re going to get that

Matt (00:05:32):

Sentence. That you are with Bane. And by adding in all this bullshit about the League of Shadows, I think way to make me care about this character less. And that is one element I feel like. Pull that element away from the movie. It’s cleaner. The movie’s more light on its feet. It’s more powerful. It’s always bugged me.

Laci (00:05:54):

Well, I just very much think this is a Nolan maybe going at three quarter speed. I don’t think he’s capable of half speed, but he wasn’t inspired by this. So he went back to the well. I think it makes perfect sense. I don’t want the series to continue, so let me make it do a perfect loop. I think it’s nice and neat that way. And I did not log my shit on Letterbox because I wanted to tell you on the podcast. So this is a four. And goddammit, Matt, if this is the first one, you’re going to have me work down because I’ve been getting my. Nolan happens to be, it turns out, a director you need some familiarity with and repetition. And I think I only. Nolan dabbled, and that’s why the first few movies just didn’t hit. I think I’d appreciate Momento a lot more right now.

Laci (00:06:41):

So I’m a little embarrassed by my very recent past opinions.

Matt (00:06:47):

Well, if you’re just now joining us, the world holds Batman begins in high esteem. Laci and I don’t like it as much as the rest of the world. Still think it’s a solid movie, but The Dark Night and then The Dark Night was like, it came out and people were like, “This is the greatest comic book movie that’s ever been made. Very important movie.” And I’ve always held that movie at arm’s length. Laci ended up loving it and has kind of talked me over. The most I’ve ever enjoyed that movie has been in recent weeks covering it for this show. But The Dark Night Rises has always been my favorite of the trilogy until recently when I watched it twice and suddenly started seeing all the scenes and got very, very annoyed with so much. Well,

Laci (00:07:30):

Don’t you think the difference between two and three are super inspired Nolan, and especially because of just a special muse in that, in having Heath Ledger, and then an uninspired Nolan that went the safest route, but his safe route’s good.

Matt (00:07:47):

Honestly, I think we could end it there because I do think that that’s kind of it. This movie ultimately feels soulless to me. This feels like he says I’m more of a craftsman than an artist. Here’s a movie where it feels like you’re gesturing at saying things, but not saying anything specific that anyone can nail down. And you know I’m given a unique opportunity to make the most expensive movie ever made. I can do whatever I want, but I don’t really have any ideas. But because he’s so good, you’re like, oh wow, football stadium, thousands of cop extras. It’s also impressive.

Laci (00:08:23):

Okay. But then the book that we’re reading where it’s an interview with him, and he is very earnest when he says that he does not take a big chunk out of his life because it’s so all consuming to do a movie, at least for him, that he doesn’t do a movie if he doesn’t think it’s going to be the best movie ever made.That’s always his mind. And I think this is the first time he didn’t feel that way. And yeah, but I just figured out what his Adam Bomb is. And just in talking about this, I think he’s known for a really long time that he knows exactly how to make a blockbuster. Just not one that’s going to blow your mind or push any boundaries or get any kind of flack. I think he learned how to be a Spielberg really early. And I think he’s always known he could make soulless movies that people just ate up because he’s got some kind of like cheat.

Laci (00:09:17):

He just knows the cheat code. That’s the bomb. He could be really dangerous by not putting his all into movies and still making tons of money. He just wouldn’t be the auteur we know him as.

Matt (00:09:29):

That’s interesting. This is the first movie that he made that was not rapturously received by critics. I think to this day, it’s the one time where critics said you kind of missed Nolan. Even take it.

Laci (00:09:42):

He kept saying, I don’t. We knew he didn’t want to do it. They knew he didn’t want to do it. I know he finally did it, and that’s on him. But to work with him at all must be to see the passion and understand that that comes from somewhere and it’s not money. He’s got money.

Matt (00:09:59):

Right. I don’t think it was they’re putting money in my pocket. I think it was, I cannot resist being given so much money to make a. The money poured into the movie. Sure. You’re saying I can film in India and take over a football stadium in Pittsburgh and shut down New York City and film in London. Make

Laci (00:10:17):

Something called a bat.

Matt (00:10:18):

Yeah. I have to do it. I can’t not do that. And all the way back in our first episode about Memento, he, I think, feels a little guilty that he’s the only person who’s allowed this freedom. You keep

Laci (00:10:30):

Saying that. I don’t know that I feel that way at all. And I don’t even know how you would. You speak perfect Nolan, so maybe you’re onto something. But if he feels guilty, I don’t even think he’s aware of it.

Matt (00:10:42):

Well then I think that we have now seen The Odyssey. And I think that between Tenet, Oppenheimer and The Odyssey, I think he’s sort of diving into his own feelings on being a person who did a huge thing. And in The Odyssey, that huge thing, their equivalent to the Adam Bomb is the Trojan Horse. Odysseus feels guilty about that while also feeling like someone was going to do something. Someone was going to break the world. The blood is on my hands, but somebody was going to do it, but I’m still culpable. Okay. And Nolan is like, somebody was going to make these huge movies. It’s not like I am uniquely talented and there are no other filmmakers who couldn’t do what I do.

Laci (00:11:27):

The unique part is his capacity for sacrifice. He’s like Odysseus, will need to be gone for years. And the older he gets, the longer those years really are. They’re not the same and time doesn’t feel the same and his body’s not the same. He will go in one condition and come back in a completely other one. I mean, he’s serving terms as the president basically, and then returning home.That’s the kind of stress, that’s the kind of physicality, and that’s the amount of years it can take for him on a project. So I think the older he gets, the more guilt we see in his movies. Or the more like, let me stress to you how much this took out of my fucking body.

Matt (00:12:09):

Yeah. This is the first episode we recorded after The Odyssey came out. We both saw The Odyssey. We’re going to be doing a Patreon episode about The Odyssey. Is

Laci (00:12:17):

Tenant what happens after this?

Matt (00:12:20):

Tenet. I’m sorry, not

Laci (00:12:21):

Tenant. Dunkirk

Matt (00:12:23):

And Tenant

Laci (00:12:23):

Are the same to me.

Matt (00:12:24):

Yeah. So after this is Interstellar, then Dunkirk, then Tenet. Then

Laci (00:12:28):

Oppenheimer

Matt (00:12:29):

Odyssey.

Laci (00:12:30):

I mean, he got them to shut up quick, right? I mean, Interstellar was immediately a smash hit. Tell me yes.

Matt (00:12:35):

Yeah, it was a huge hit.

Laci (00:12:36):

Okay. It’s just so interesting for him to get a little slap on the wrist, but I bet he didn’t mind it. I bet he was like, “I told

Matt (00:12:44):

You.” I mean, yeah. And still

Laci (00:12:46):

Eat it up, fools. Yeah,

Matt (00:12:48):

Because it did. It was a huge movie. It made more money than The Dark Knight. But two things. One, while Critics, it got mixed reviews. It’s not like anybody said it’s terrible. It’s just like, eh.

Laci (00:12:58):

That wasn’t very Nolany. Or

Matt (00:13:00):

Maybe that’s too Nolany. Or just, this is not The Dark Knight. This was a letdown. Nothing

Laci (00:13:05):

Was ever going to be.

Matt (00:13:06):

And then The Avengers came out two months before this movie and made a lot more money than The Dark Knight Rises did. And that was a little bit unexpected. So it was almost like, well, your time’s up, Batman.

Laci (00:13:19):

Perhaps. But can we make him darker and weirder?

Matt (00:13:24):

Edward. Funny to think of this like a superhero movie because I was trying to think like, how do I evaluate? Should I evaluate this comparing it to Marvel movies or other blockbusters or to other Nolan movies? Because I try to think of – Other

Laci (00:13:37):

Nolan movies. I think it just happens to be Badman, Matt.

Matt (00:13:41):

Well, you try to. When I think of what do I think or how many stars do I give this movie? I do think of how much is it achieving the kind of movie it’s trying to be? And the level of craft you see on screen, even in this movie when you compare it to a Marvel movie. I watched the Avengers last night just to give myself some context. So Rinky

Laci (00:14:00):

Dink, when you go back to the first one.

Matt (00:14:02):

There’s a helicopter crash seven minutes into that movie and Nick Fury dodges Samuel Jackson jumps out of the way of a helicopter. He’s like, oh. And it’s like, it’s nothing. And you know that if that were in a Nolan movie, that sequence would feel like something because he would’ve actually thrown a helicopter at an actor or whatever. And it’s just like, that is the difference.

Laci (00:14:21):

Yes. If there’s something Nolan does different from any other, not any other, but there’s not a movie he makes that doesn’t make you feel. You feel like you’re in it.

Matt (00:14:36):

He

Laci (00:14:36):

Puts you in the head space. Where Avengers is just so glitzy and clean and everything is a shiny thing to look at or a funny little quip to laugh at. It’s almost distracting.

Matt (00:14:51):

Or

Laci (00:14:52):

You don’t know where to look. There’s so many stars. There’s so many things. I enjoyed Avengers. I remember when it came out of that I did. Yeah,

Matt (00:14:58):

We enjoyed it when we saw it

Laci (00:14:59):

After years. Iron Man is the one that’s rinky dink. I’m sure Avengers is fine. I was just thinking, what was the very first bit of. It was just small and it seemed so not yet what it was going to become.

Matt (00:15:10):

I think that’s the one.

Laci (00:15:11):

If

Matt (00:15:11):

You watch Iron Man now, you’ll be surprised at how much it feels like you’re watching Daredevil or one of those early 2000s superhero movies. The Avengers, what I found this time was astonishingly dull until the very end. It’s just actors being bored, sitting around a conference room. And it’s directed by Joss Whedon, a TV guy. Weirdly, he doesn’t know how to direct actors sitting around having a conversation. How does he not know how to do that?

Laci (00:15:38):

He’s directing non-TV, huge, powerful actors on how to. I’m sure he was just like, “Let me not tell you guys how to do this.”

Matt (00:15:48):

I don’t know. It’s just like the nuts and bolts of a movie. How do you make a movie in terms of where do you put the camera? What are you showing? Does this make people feel something? Does it have the desired effect? The Dark Night Rises, which I think is a weaker movie than most of his other movies, is still better than basically any MCU movie. Yes, because

Laci (00:16:06):

He’s a pro and he knows to keep the crew together. When there’s a shorthand for working with each other. I mean, the conference that I helped put on twice a year with an entirely new crew, it would be a mess because you don’t realize how much is happening seamlessly because you just know what role you are. You know what certain words mean. You know what a person’s face means and when they need a break or when you need to eat. It’s in a different place every time, slightly different people attend every time. But the real pros, if they can, seem to keep the same people around them. And I think that’s so key. And everything feeling cohesive, like something they touched rather than anyone could direct an Avengers movie. Because it’s all the same actors, but it’s not the same craft each time.

Matt (00:16:52):

They also created the model of what the director’s job is to direct the actors. The big action sequences are directed by visual effects people and often start years before even a director is hired.

Laci (00:17:04):

Oh, what?

Matt (00:17:06):

Yeah. Jesus

Laci (00:17:07):

Christ.

Matt (00:17:08):

That

Laci (00:17:09):

Sounds like – It’s fast

Matt (00:17:10):

Food.

Laci (00:17:10):

Avatar. Yeah. Yes. No,

Matt (00:17:12):

No. Avatar, James Cameron directs the – All that motion. He’s got his very tight control over all the visual effects. When you direct a Marvel movie, you have very little input on the action sequences.

Laci (00:17:23):

That’s so fucking boring. Yeah.

Matt (00:17:26):

So that’s often why they hire TV people is one, they can control them. And two, it’s like, “Hey, just kind of create a good vibe. Make our actors look like they’re having fun together.”

Laci (00:17:37):

This is a little party scene. Do a little party.

Matt (00:17:41):

So we have a Patreon where we’re going to be doing an episode about The Odyssey and an episode about Dunkirk. Laci is going to join me to discuss The Odyssey. We have tons of thoughts. Fascinating to watch that movie in the middle of this series and feel like, oh, there’s inception, there’s Memento. I feel like every one of his movies is in the Odyssey. But

Laci (00:17:59):

I wish I’d gone and seen Disclosure Day because you said that it’s the most Spielberging movie that ever Spielberged. And I think I understand what you mean by that. And so I fully felt this was going to be the most Nolani movie to ever Nolan, and it was in the best way. Yeah.

Matt (00:18:17):

Oh yeah. But

Laci (00:18:18):

This just screamed to me that a man with confidence who knows what he wanted to make. There wasn’t even a twist. And maybe it’s like, oh, it’s the odyssey. How can you make it? You could make anything fucking twist. He could make a twist if he wanted to. And I feel like this is the first time where he felt like he didn’t need to do it. And I’d say The Dark Night Rises is when he tried to do the most twisty twist, and that’s what backfired. It wasn’t subtle enough.

Matt (00:18:42):

You know what? It’s good that The Dark Knight Rises was like, “Ooh, a rare miss from Nolan because he learned, oh, I can recover from that.” Because I feel like now you did Oppenheimer and then The Odyssey. The knives are going to be out for his next movie. Come on, fuck up. Fuck up. He should do Knives

Laci (00:18:57):

Out three.

Matt (00:18:58):

Yes. Knives

Laci (00:19:00):

Out four. I think he’s one of those rare people everyone’s rooting for. There’s nothing offensive about him. He’s just a nice guy and he just works his ass off and he puts everything into it and he clearly is sad. It’s just

Matt (00:19:10):

Like the law. It’s like the law of thermodynamics of art is like you have to – Quit speaking

Laci (00:19:14):

Interstellar.

Matt (00:19:15):

You need to fail at a certain point or we won’t accept it. But Martin Scorsese’s never made a bad movie. Stanley Cooper didn’t make bad movies. Some people just keep making good movies. Any other business? Subscribe, subscribe on YouTube. We need to

Laci (00:19:31):

Get to my

Matt (00:19:32):

Man. Yes. Subscribe.

Matt (00:19:34):

And if you’re only listening to us on the podcast, subscribe on YouTube so that you can watch our bonus videos, including my video about the road to El Dorado, that animated movie from Dreamworks that everyone said was so homoerotic, but I didn’t think it was very homoerotic. Could have used a little more homoeroticism. But you can hear all about that in my video. All right, let’s move on. History of Dark Night Rises. As always, we cite our sources for the episode. They’re in the episode description. And if you’re watching on YouTube, they are displayed on screen. So let us recall that in 2008, The Dark Knight, when it was released, it was a culture-defining film, biggest movie ever made. But Nolan is out in the press being like, “I’m not going to make a sequel.” I

Laci (00:20:42):

Won’t do it. Michael Kane’s dead is.

Matt (00:20:45):

So in December of 2008, Nolan gets interviewed by the LA Times to reflect on the reception of the movie. So they ask him like, “Hey, this movie was huge. What do you make of that? Why is this movie so big?” And what he said is, “I can’t get my arms around it to be quite frank. It’s mystifying. It’s terrific, but at the same time it’s a little abstract. The numbers are so big. The biggest thrill for me would be with the number of people who have gone to see the film, how the dark night stood on the shoulders of the first film, how we were able to build the audience up and build the story up from the first film. That was really exciting to see.”

Laci (00:21:15):

You know he’s just not wanting to say, “Well, a guy died.” Real helpful when

Matt (00:21:20):

The guy died. Yeah, that’s an enormous part. Yeah. The thing is that Heath Ledger died.

Laci (00:21:25):

Yeah, but how do you say that? I mean, it would’ve been special no matter what, but there is no fucking way to know what kind of juggernaut it could or could not be without the sadness and the wanting to savor the special performance.

Matt (00:21:39):

Yeah. As we said in that episode though, I think the things that The Joker was saying, like America, the world was ready to hear. And maybe that’s a failing of Dark Night Rises that the things they’re saying in this movie are – Yay

Laci (00:21:55):

Cops.

Matt (00:21:56):

Well, that’s one thing they’re saying. If this movie were made three years later, the idea about having an army of cops would not have included that.

Laci (00:22:05):

Right. Yeah. He can’t help that. I can’t even put my brain in that head space. Well, it

Matt (00:22:11):

Goes back to this. The whole idea of what we complained about with Batman McGins is his idea about crime. The worst thing about crime is that there’s dang criminals on the streets and we need cops out there to be tough on them. But

Laci (00:22:20):

How big is Gotham that there’s that many cops? The numbers don’t even make sense. I mean,

Matt (00:22:26):

Should we Google how many cops are there in New York City? In New

Laci (00:22:28):

York. Nah, let’s go on. It seems like it’s always the same cops doing everything constantly. And then all of a sudden there’s 400 coming out of a tunnel. That was all.

Matt (00:22:38):

It has always stood out to me that Dark Knight Rises feels more like it’s a direct sequel to Batman Begins. And while Dark Knight certainly gets referenced a lot, it kind of feels almost like it’s bypassing The Dark Knight. And it’s like, what if we just went directly from Batman Begins to this movie? And I was curious to see how you would react to that.

Laci (00:23:00):

Geez. I think it might be the most respectful thing to do, honestly. And you got to think a big part of it was like, I don’t have Heath for this one.

Laci (00:23:10):

Returning to it, it’s like if you keep referencing him or God forbid show footage of him no one’s ever seen from, or just put on a news clip or something. If you try to steal Valor from a man that’s passed away, I think the most respectful way and safe way of doing it was to go back before he even knew what a special thing that was going to be. So I think it was. Anyways, safe and fair. The right call. And probably when he realized he could do that, he probably finally said yes. You know what I mean? How do you get it out of your mind? They want a sequel to the dark night. They don’t want a sequel to the first Batman movie. It wouldn’t probably even occur to you for a long time like, oh, I can just. That’s

Matt (00:24:00):

A great point. But I now watch this movie and think the movie makes a lot more sense if The Joker is Bane. If everything that happens in the movie is The Joker. And we talked in the Dark Knight episode about this character seems like he’s on a journey and the logical place he would end up would be doing something like Bane does in this movie. Yeah. And I hate that Bane, everything he says is a lie, that all the stuff about taking control of your city is a lie so that he could secretly serve the League of Shadows. Burn, golf them to the ground. Well,

Laci (00:24:31):

That is very in line with the League of Shadows is that everything’s allowed as long as it reaches the end goal. The most moral thing to do is to completely kill this random United States city. Are they going to Chile next? I mean, is there different little places that they’re wiping at? The most decadent place in the world. Yes. It’s so fucking –

Matt (00:24:52):

Windsor, Ontario.

Laci (00:24:54):

I get it. If New York is a sub for Gotham, it’s fine. Oh, you know what was weird in the movie? The president gets on the news and he goes, “Our greatest city is under attack right now.” And I’m like, “If the fucking American president got up and declared any city or state America’s greatest?” Wait,

Matt (00:25:20):

I think they’d do that with New York. I’m certain after nine eleven they were doing that. I

Laci (00:25:25):

Think they said stuff like this great city. I don’t know. I just feel like, Kay, you can’t do that. And when Katrina happened, they didn’t say what a good boy we were. We’re good boys.

Matt (00:25:37):

America’s

Laci (00:25:37):

Sweetheart.

Matt (00:25:39):

Swab City. What’s funny is in this movie, the president is played by William Devain, who always plays government guys. And in the next movie, that same guy will play the head of NASA. So he got a demotion between movies. I wanted to say to everybody, if this turns you off, this episode will have a lot of politics because this movie’s packed full of politics. Carly. Sorry. Sorry, everybody, if you don’t like that. I think we’re kind of annoying when we talk about politics, but – Matt can’t

Laci (00:26:06):

Seem to stop himself. How

Matt (00:26:07):

Do you talk about this movie without talking about politics? It’s full of them. So on the politics of the dark night, Nolan said, “It’s funny. I’ve been asked a lot about the politics of the film. I dismiss all analogies. It really isn’t something we think about as we put the story together. Myself, David Goyer, and Jonathan. But I would point to the interrogation scene with Batman and The Joker. Not that there’s a specific political point per se, but then I was interested in getting the actors to explore a paradox. How do you fight somebody who essentially thrives on aggression?” And I included that because if he’s telling the truth, which I think he is. He does too. We don’t intend for the Joker to represent any real world ideology, but I think he accidentally made a character who really connected with people because of the timing of the financial crisis and the war on terror and everything the world had gone through.

Matt (00:26:56):

And

Laci (00:26:56):

Because of how absolute and easy to follow his rules are, it’s so simple. Just point out hypocrisy. That is my whole thing. When you understand something so fully, so quickly, it’s easy to. Yeah,

Matt (00:27:09):

Bane. How’s he going

Laci (00:27:10):

To do that here? But how’s he going to do that there? Bane is

Matt (00:27:13):

Hard to follow. Bane will ask you to sacrifice. No, you have to go down with this plane. Sorry. But I though we were just going to have fun and point out when people are being hypocrites.

Laci (00:27:20):

No. Especially because Mad Max is next and he’s basically asking the guys to Valhalla and witness me. When does burn? It’s a little distracting. His voice is distracting. I think it’s a cool, interesting choice. It’s very unique. But we did have to turn on subtitles. I think it kind of sucks when you have such an interesting actor and you can’t see his face. It’s my same issue with The Green Hornet. The Green Grassupper. With the Green Doblin. Yes. The Green. I know Tom Harvey’s not like. He’s amazing in Mad Max. He was amazing in Interstellar and they’re totally different characters. Inception. Yep. Inception, sorry. And then you take his little mouth away and I’m like, “Who’s this fucking guy?” Well,

Matt (00:28:06):

You and Max, Max, our teenager watching with us, pointed out, what does he do? He’s doing so much caressing people and the actor is compensating by doing all this other physical stuff.

Laci (00:28:17):

When I would have to wear a mask during COVID, I was doing all kinds of touching. Well, you can’t touch, but a lot of arm stuff to compensate for You Can’t See My Mouth.

Matt (00:28:27):

But this performance really resonated with people. I think it’s a great performance. And I think that the presentation of the character is so cool and iconic. Looks great, sounds great. Great

Laci (00:28:37):

Name. It’s a

Matt (00:28:37):

Big letdown, what they ultimately do with him in the movie, but he is great. And I think that Tom Hardy makes the most of you won’t see my face. What else can I do to communicate to you who I am? And I love that the

Laci (00:28:55):

Scarecrow is in all three movies and he’s just more and more in the background. Now he’s just a guy with a lot of desks on top of a

Matt (00:29:00):

Desk. Yes. Love it.

Laci (00:29:02):

He’s going to be a little shit to some degree in every movie, but he’s okay. You can demote him.

Matt (00:29:08):

I don’t know where. I think I heard on a podcast somebody say, “That was what The Joker was going to do in the sequel was be the judge.” And I couldn’t find that anywhere in my research. So that just seems like one of those things somebody says and then you just ingest and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s true.”

Laci (00:29:23):

Wait, but that’s also assuming Christopher Nolan had any idea what a sequel will even look like when he never wanted to make one. So why the fuck would he be holding in his mind during the Heath Ledger part? Right, because

Matt (00:29:33):

As soon as he-That’s stupid. As soon as he actually starts thinking of a sequel, Heath Ledger’s dead and that’s the reality he lives in. Yes.

Laci (00:29:41):

I get it. I know.

Matt (00:29:43):

The Joker wouldn’t do that. That’s way too small of a role for the Joker and I don’t think The Joker wants that role. But

Laci (00:29:49):

This is also why it’s beautiful that it ended where it ended in the second one. Where does he go? I know you’re saying he goes to the Bane stuff, but he’s so visible He’s made himself so known. How could he orchestrate something that big in Gotham? Batman’s going to get him. If he didn’t get him in the second. He is such an urgent fire to put out. You can’t expand him. He’s colossal already.

Matt (00:30:15):

He’d

Laci (00:30:15):

Have to leave, you’d have to go underground, but really.

Matt (00:30:18):

Yeah, I get it.

Laci (00:30:19):

I don’t know.

Matt (00:30:21):

In 2018, Heath Ledger’s sister gave an interview where she talked about how he said he loved playing the character and would be excited to play the character again in a future sequel. The article said, “The actor’s sister has continually refuted claims the role had anything to do with her brother’s death.” Adding, “I spoke to him the night before he died and we were laughing and joking. He loved working with Chris Nolan and Christian Bailey and Gary Oldman. He just had the best time ever doing that film. When he came home at Christmas, he couldn’t wait to tell us about it. And he was doing the voice and laughing, showing me all the rushes. We had a great time.” People, Nolan keeps saying, “I don’t know if I’m going to make another one.” And people keep asking, “Really? Really? Come on, Chris. Come on.” I

Laci (00:31:00):

Mean, but when you know how close he gets with his actors, and you know he probably was watching Heath and thinking, “This is going to be another one of my guys. I’m taking you everywhere.” I mean, you got to think how. I don’t know what he said about his death, but he had to be crushed.

Matt (00:31:16):

It

Laci (00:31:16):

Had to be so hard on him. And he’d never had that before. I mean, I guess I don’t know about production and stuff, so surely people die and have accidents and stuff. That’s

Matt (00:31:27):

A good

Laci (00:31:28):

Point. He does. But he’s such an empathic. He’s a teen guy.

Matt (00:31:32):

Except for his leading men. He seems like once you play a lead in a Nolan movie, then you don’t come back after that. Except for Christian Bale, but that’s because it’s three Batman movies. Guy Pierce, Al Pacino, Hugh Jackman. Wait, hold on, hold on. Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConick, none of them ever come back for another Nolan movie. Isn’t that kind of interesting?

Laci (00:31:51):

I want to prove you wrong, but Christian Bale was a leading man in the prestige. Yeah,

Matt (00:31:55):

I know. I mean, Hugh Jackman’s the lead of the prestige, but yes. But yes, maybe at that point he hadn’t realized. I like to bring back all my supporting actors, my lead. So is Killian Murphy going to be back because now he’s played the lead in a Nolan movie.

Laci (00:32:10):

That’s true. But maybe it’s more like a scheduling thing.

Matt (00:32:13):

These

Laci (00:32:13):

Nolan movies take a really long time and you just made these guys a superstar. They’re going off.

Matt (00:32:19):

I love him bringing. He’ll work with an actor and then 15 years later the actor comes back. Elliot Page is back in the Odyssey. I love

Laci (00:32:25):

That.

Matt (00:32:26):

Robert Pattinson, Hamesh Patel, the guy who plays Urilicus, the Odysseus’s right-hand man. He was in Tenet.

Laci (00:32:34):

Oh, yes, yes, yes.

Matt (00:32:35):

And Hathaway.

Laci (00:32:37):

Yes. But okay, wait, what did – Robert

Matt (00:32:40):

Pattonson’s a tenant. Oh, John David Washington, the lead of Tennant hasn’t been in another Nolan movie. Nolan says he’s not good. Anyway, so Nolan, come on. Here’s what he said. This is in 2008. Let me think how to put this. There’s two things to be said. One is the emphasis on story. What’s the story? Is there a story that’s going to keep me emotionally invested for the couple of years that it will take to make another one? That’s the overriding question. On a more superficial level, I have to ask the question. How many good third movies in a franchise can you name? At the same time in taking on the second one, we had the challenge of trying to make a great second movie, and there haven’t been too many of those either. It’s all about the story, really. If the story’s there, everything is possible.

Matt (00:33:18):

I hope that was a suitably slippery answer. I think it’s a

Laci (00:33:20):

Perfect answer. I think it’s an honest. It makes so much sense. He says he’s a craftsman, but no, if you’re not inspired, nothing’s pulling you through the hard stuff. And once you say yes, you’re just sitting there with a bag of cash and you’re going to be blackmarked in some kind of way in the industry if you have any kind of reputation for backing out or costing a project more money than it was supposed to. So once you’re in, you’ve got to be all the way in. I’m telling you, it’s got to be because the story clicked. He probably got with his brother and he was like, “Yes, I’ll do it.”

Matt (00:33:56):

Here’s what he says about that.

Laci (00:33:59):

Damn it.

Matt (00:34:00):

And I said earlier, the dump truck of money, they make it impossible. If that’s true, I can’t find any reporting on that. Because it

Laci (00:34:07):

Doesn’t. Yeah. I didn’t agree with you about that

Matt (00:34:09):

At all. But I think there are no good third movies. That would certainly weigh on me of what are the chances this succeeds? How many? Every third movie in a trilogy’s bad or at least it’s, “Oh, that’s the weak one. Return of the Jedis is not as good as the first

Laci (00:34:26):

Two.” Right. It comes with a compare. It’s like being born a triplet. Don’t be the bad one.

Matt (00:34:30):

And it’s just hard to close out. You have to bring this all to a close that people are going to find satisfying while not repeating yourself. I’m not

Laci (00:34:38):

Going to say he didn’t repeat himself because there’s this little nolanishness about the way he did it, but I do love the way it ended. I love it.

Matt (00:34:45):

The last shot?

Laci (00:34:48):

That we know who Robin is and especially the last shot. And of course it’s like Michael Kane, you are going on and on. I wonder if this will come back.

Matt (00:34:57):

Yes. There

Laci (00:34:58):

Are – But it’s lovely. It’s great. Yeah.

Matt (00:34:59):

There are teases where you’re glad you’re teased like, “Well, I wonder if this is how the movie’s going to end.” And then you’re happy that you knew it was going to end that way when it. There’s something very satisfying about that. You’re

Laci (00:35:09):

Happy you know what it means. They’re not on a mission. They’re not like pickpocketing in London or something. He’s a happy family man and she’s happy too. It just does a lot. He set up that little story and you know from just them existing right there, they’re both happy.

Matt (00:35:22):

So are they there every single day waiting for operations? I think so, yes.

Laci (00:35:25):

I think he specifically said every Saturday, so give him a day.

Matt (00:35:28):

Every fine evening.

Laci (00:35:29):

Oh shit. Today, would you call it today a fine evening catwoman? I kind of. All right. Back to the fucking same rotisserie rotisserie. Is that what they have there? Lots of

Matt (00:35:39):

Rotisseries. Yeah, lots of rotisserie chicken in Florence. Just needed to find a good enough story. In an interview with Tom Schoen from the Nolan Variations, that’s the book that Laci and I are reading. Very good book. I wish every single director would do this, just a series of interviews where he’d talk about each one of your movies. It’s incredible. Although Nolan is very long-winded, sorry. And now you’re being fucking long. All right. “I don’t have a favorite of any of my films, but I think The Dark Night Rises is an underrated movie. There are things in there that we did that are pretty subversive and pretty shocking. It’s as close as I’ll get to adapting a tale of two cities. “He does seem miffed by the –

Laci (00:36:20):

You guys missed all the cool shit.

Matt (00:36:23):

He does seem a little wounded by the first time I’ve ever gotten any negative reviews. It’s actually pretty subversive and shocking. All right. Don’t you think

Laci (00:36:31):

About it? It was edgy as fuck.

Matt (00:36:33):

This is where I start to get my bones to pick with you, Chris.

Laci (00:36:36):

Uh-oh. Going by your Christian name.

Matt (00:36:40):

So the way that they make these movies is he comes up with the screen stories with David Goyer, the comic book veteran. They brainstorm for a few months and then he brings in his brother and he and his brother write the screenplay together. Or maybe his brother will write a draft and then he’ll revise it. Anyway, so they do that with him too. So this time too. So he’s brainstorming ideas with Goyer. And Goyer said that the first thing they had in mind, he told this to Dan Jolen of Empire, said they were struggling to come up with something. And then he said, “Something suddenly occurs, not a beginning or even a plot, not the villain or villains, but literally the final scene of the film and of the trilogy. And the final scene of The Dark Night Rises is exactly the scene we talked about then.

Matt (00:37:19):

It remained completely unchanged. We both knew in our hearts that we were onto something special. I have to tell you, having finally seen everything strung together a little while ago and seeing that scene, I got a little lump in my throat.” Which is the scene of Joseph Gordon Levin on the platform.

Laci (00:37:34):

Oh, I thought it was. Because I really though it was hammered home very much by Alfred in this one, obviously, that Bruce Wayne, you are a tortured soul. You are so depressed. You staying in this manner, you being Batman, you’re getting older, you just need to find a way to be happy and to be okay with being happy. I thought that might have that scene of them at the cafe.

Matt (00:38:00):

That’s

Laci (00:38:00):

Always what I was talking about is the cafe. I didn’t know

Matt (00:38:02):

Jordan

Laci (00:38:03):

Levitt. Okay. I mean, that one also, that got goosebumps like a fucking moron whenever that happened. But I was like, how are you going to get. All you have is the cave. What are you going to do in there, Jordan Levitt? I

Matt (00:38:12):

Think Nolan really does believe. Nolan really does believe anyone can be Batman. And that’s stupid. And I’m going to read some quotes to you that I think point to a big blind spot Nolan has. But that is the idea is this whole thing has been, it’s a symbol. I need to be a symbol and someone else can take up the mantle. And so.

Laci (00:38:32):

If they can have Lucius and all your fucking money.

Matt (00:38:35):

That’s the thing. And when I say missed opportunities in this movie, Bruce Wayne going broke, that’s a great idea for a Batman movie. Yes. Now find out how hard it is to be Batman when you don’t have a billion dollars. Alfred, buy the ballet. Alfred, give me a jet to swallow another jet. All you have is a fucking suit and a suitcase. Because being rich is the most important thing about Batman. It is not about doing lots of pushups and being a smart detective.

Laci (00:39:05):

I mean, being rich, yes. But also having a military weapons manufacturing company that you happen to already own.

Matt (00:39:14):

I run Blackwater. Yes, of course. I

Laci (00:39:15):

Mean, without Lucius, he has zero things. He has eggs and toast. Thank you, Alfred. You’re a lovely man, but you’ve got no body armor.

Matt (00:39:24):

And he gets back to Gotham City at the end of the movie and he’s like, “Get me to Lucius. He can make me Batman again. How about no? How about let’s see what you can do without all your shit?”

Laci (00:39:35):

How about no?

Matt (00:39:36):

Yeah. Okay, what

Laci (00:39:39):

Does Nolan say?

Matt (00:39:40):

“There are no good third sequels. Rocky three, maybe, but they are very difficult.” I love that he said, Rocky three, maybe.

Laci (00:39:46):

Maybe. Fuck Godfather.

Matt (00:39:48):

So my instinct was to change genres. The first is an origin story. The second is a crime drama, very much like Heat. And the third one, we needed to blow up bigger because you can’t scale down. The audience doesn’t give you any choice, but nor can you go back and do what you did before. So you’ve got to shift genres. We went for the historical epic, the disaster film. The Towering Inferno meets Dr. Jivago. And so in addition to all these movies he’s citing as inspiration, he and his brother are constantly talking about The Iliad and The Odyssey. And then for more direct inspiration, Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities. The 1859 novel chronicling the French Revolution. And Jim Gordon reads it at Bruce’s funeral at the end of the movie. Far, far better thing to do. Yeah. Last lines of the novel spoken by the protagonist, Sidney Carton, as he goes to the gallows to sacrifice his life in the name of a greater good and no one will ever know what he has done.

Matt (00:40:40):

So Bruce Wayne is the Sidney Carton character, but the novel is also about Paris exploding in revolutionary violence and retribution and trials of rich people and stuff. And it is clear that all terrifies Nolan. In discussions with David Goyer, they also talked about this movie needs to explore the consequences of the big lie at the end of the dark night about Harvey Dent. But also, they don’t say it, but also Alfred’s lie about Rachel. And Laci’s dead on when she said, Alfred, now is the time to tell him. Tell him everything at once. Rachel doesn’t love you, Bruce. Save everyone. Eight

Laci (00:41:16):

Years of depression that you caused.

Matt (00:41:20):

So who would be the villain? Goyer said that at the premiere of The Dark Night, a studio suit came up. This is from Empire Magazine. Goyer recalls studio suits at the dark night premier saying of the next villain that obviously it’s going to be the Riddler. And we want it to be Leonardo DiCaprio.

Laci (00:41:38):

Oh my God. What would he. Leo.

Matt (00:41:43):

But I also read Robin Williams also got thrown around because he’s always wanted to play Joker and Riddler. I see it without seeing.

Laci (00:41:53):

God, I don’t know. If Leo kind of leaned in his jango, kind of just real greasy, real fucked up ways of thinking, I could see him being a whole other kind of Riddler. Yes.

Matt (00:42:05):

Yeah, he’d be good. It’s just – Yeah, he

Laci (00:42:06):

Did do

Matt (00:42:07):

It, but – It’s just always Riddler’s too similar to The Joker. You got to do something else.

Laci (00:42:10):

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (00:42:12):

But who? So in the Shone book in Nolan Variations, he said, “The same way we looked at genre, we did the same thing with villains. You have to go, okay, what different types of villains are there?” Raz Algul is very much this Bond villain, an intellectual who’s got a philosophy he’s trying to put on the world. The Joker is mad. He’s a serial killer. Bay needed to be the monster. It’s Jack Palates and Shane. It’s Darth Vader. It’s Kurtz. He’s a soldier. The first time Tom did the voice for us, it was scary. It gets into your head. I had him do at least one scene dead straight with a more Richard Burton voice, just like a deep, nasty villain sort of voice, and it just wasn’t the character. Everybody working on the film would do the voice constantly. He’d be on the dub stage and one of us would be like, “Behind you.” There’s almost a –

Laci (00:42:51):

It’s like Yoda, behind you I am.

Matt (00:42:54):

There’s almost a colonial aspect to it too. It’s like someone speaking English who learned it and mispronounces words every now and again, but not obviously. There’s no foreign accent, but there’s a precision to the language that’s off.

Laci (00:43:04):

Yes.

Matt (00:43:05):

It’s hard to compete with what Heath did. They’re apples and oranges, but it’s a pretty amazing character. It really is an incredible performance. And I’m very proud of some of the writing we did for the character as well. Some of it’s Jonah’s, some of it’s mine, but there’s a couple of bits that really stick with me where he talks about the darkness. You think the darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. That turned out so well. But yeah, all I can think now is that this should be The Joker, that everything in this movie makes more sense if it’s The Joker.

Laci (00:43:30):

I just don’t think he’s got. If he went underground for eight years and then. If he had faked his death and it turns out he’s alive, then yes.

Matt (00:43:39):

It’d have to be something like that. Or you don’t have to jump eigt years ahead. That’s a pretty – You need to

Laci (00:43:42):

Jump though. He needs time to have worked. I’m just saying they would be so onto him and so fearful of his existence that unless they though he was dead, Batman would not have stopped.

Matt (00:43:53):

Especially

Laci (00:43:55):

He killed his lady.

Matt (00:43:56):

And my objection to Bane is just he’s saying all this stuff to the crowd, but then in private he’s like, “But all that’s bullshit. This is just stuff I’m telling the Rubes. This is actually so I can fulfill my Raza Gould destiny.”

Laci (00:44:10):

But that’s their moral code. Do whatever you have to do. Lie however you have to lie because the only moral thing is to get this done.

Matt (00:44:18):

Yeah. And what I’m saying is the League of Shadows sucks. I think it’s boring.

Laci (00:44:21):

It’s very boring. And I don’t understand their. You don’t explain. Why do you know who should die?

Matt (00:44:27):

A Marxist revolutionary who takes over Gotham, what if they just played that straight? What if we got to look at a Gotham where like, whoa, there’s no cops in it. And I don’t know.

Laci (00:44:38):

Everything’s The Purge.

Matt (00:44:39):

Everything’s kind of better now. That would be interesting. You’re not allowed to do that in a Hollywood movie and you’re not allowed to have him have any actual specific critiques. So everything he says is like, “Take this city back from the corrupt.” Corrupt. What does corrupt mean? Right. You can’t say from the rich. You can’t say from the wealthy. I mean,

Laci (00:44:57):

He does prove that you can go four months in a city and live with every convict out on the streets. I think that’s an interesting. These men aren’t what you say they are. They’re not their worst day. A lot of these men should be free.That’s an interesting. Explore that. When we put a

Matt (00:45:14):

Label

Laci (00:45:15):

On somebody and then we lock them away forever.

Matt (00:45:17):

Well, instead – When you

Laci (00:45:18):

Prove that you can live with them.

Matt (00:45:19):

Exactly. Instead, they’re like, “These are the worst of the worst. And I’m going to prove it because they each come out and we give them each machine gun.” So Bane, Bane. Bane was a much newer character to the Batman lore introduced in the comics in 1993 wears the Mexican Luchidors wrestling mask. He’s in the ’90s animated series. He speaks with a Latino accent. In the 97 Batman and Robin movie, he’s there as a big dumb idiot who just repeats the last word he’s heard. That is

Laci (00:45:46):

What I thought he was in this. I though he was from the movie we were watching.

Matt (00:45:49):

And

Laci (00:45:50):

I was like, “Oh good, that’s not him.”

Matt (00:45:52):

Yeah. Everyone hated that because Bane’s like a really smart character. It’s not fair what they did to Bairn. So they want to take him very seriously, go to his comic roots. He’s an ideologically driven revolutionary. And they cast 31-year-old English actor, Tom Hardy, who Hollywood had been trying to make happen for a long time. The project of Tom Hardy was decades in the making. Many spurts since you’ll see Tom Hardy in movies in the late ’90s, in the early 2000s. He’s the villain in one of the Star Trek movies. And it’s just like, we keep pressing the Tom Hardy button and it’s not working. Then it starts to work. Bronson in 2008, then he goes on his run with Inception and Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy.

Laci (00:46:32):

When does he do Mad Max? And then all

Matt (00:46:33):

Up in there? 2015, three years after this.That’s when people started making the jokes about he only likes to be in movies where he wears a mask. Because he’s also in Dunkirk where he’s a pilot and he has a flight mask on the whole movie until the last scene of the movie where he takes it off and it’s so triumphant. You like, “There he is.”

Laci (00:46:49):

Well, and this happens in this movie too, just for a moment. You get to see his face down at the end while he’s getting his ass kicked.

Matt (00:46:55):

He idolizes Marlon Brando and Marlon Brando was the inspiration for this performance. Things like petting the cat, crushing the cat. Marlon Brando’s just always doing business. If he’s caressing Eva Marie Saint’s glove, he’s just always got to be doing that. And it’s so striking in this movie.

Laci (00:47:13):

I will say this movie does have one too many white men. They introduced the guy that procures the fingerprints, the guy that they’re for, and then this little whiny bitch cop that’s going to replace Commissioner Gordon. I don’t even know who works with who or who knows each other because one of them’s a shareholder. That got annoying.

Matt (00:47:36):

I know all these actors, so it’s least easy, but I’m like, wait, is he the. No, he works for Ben Mendelson. Or does Ben Mendelson work for him? No way.

Laci (00:47:43):

They’re all kind of slimy looking. They all have an off-putting way of talking. I’m just like, I don’t.

Matt (00:47:50):

Bane still lingers in the public consciousness. Few villains. I mean, maybe this is the most impressive thing about the movie is that The Joker is the most iconic superhero movie villain of all time. And Bane’s right up there with them. Yeah,

Laci (00:48:02):

But how pissed is the French lady for being like, “It was me. I was that. I was saying all those things. Bane was seeing them for me.” No.

Matt (00:48:13):

She gives the most long-winded speech about, “It is the knife that cuts when you put the knife in your body and the knife.” Well, sounds like maybe the knife didn’t go that deep this time. I think that this screenplay, everyone in this movie has mush mouth or something. They have so many long things to say. And this is a movie that gets worse the more times you watch it. The first time you see it, you’re like, “Oh, it’s all so cool.” And then you start to notice all these things.

Laci (00:48:40):

I believe you. You’re reading an article from Teen Vogue. Cool.

Matt (00:48:44):

Well, 2012, this movie comes out and Rush Limbaugh says Christopher Nolan is a leftist because he calls his villain Bane. And Bane is the name of the company that Mitt Romney runs because it was the 2012 election, Mitt Romney versus Obama. Now –

Laci (00:49:00):

Yeah, not because he’s in the comic books

Matt (00:49:02):

For fucking

Laci (00:49:02):

Decades.

Matt (00:49:03):

After the movie was written, but during its production, a very fortuitous thing happened for the movie’s fortunes was happening in the world, specifically on Wall Street. You recall what that was? 2011? Yeah,

Laci (00:49:16):

Occupy Wall Street.

Matt (00:49:16):

Occupy Wall Street. Yes. It gives this movie the sheen of like, oh, this movie’s about something. It’s saying stuff.

Laci (00:49:23):

When really they just needed to hack in and take all of Batman’s money. Yeah, this movie’s

Matt (00:49:26):

Not saying anything.

Laci (00:49:27):

But he’s the ultimate person to take the money with. If you’re trying to show how none of us are actually that different, look what happens when you take away Batman’s stuff.

Matt (00:49:36):

Nothing. Nothing happens.

Laci (00:49:38):

He got hurt real bad. His lumbar came out.

Matt (00:49:42):

Yeah. And then he went to the worst prison in the world where you have your own twenty four seven doctor rehab guy.

Laci (00:49:48):

I don’t understand. I mean, I get it. Bane’s trying to torture him with hope. But are you sure this feels very bond villain? You really want to leave him alone for a long time just to prove a point because he’s just going to get out again.

Matt (00:50:01):

Yeah. I know. Which is why I like at the end of the movie, Bane’s boss, Marion Cotiard, says, “Let him live until the bomb goes off.” And she leaves and he’s like, “Yeah, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to kill you now because we both know.” But Bruce Wayne going broke, there’s so many possibilities. And what the movie does with it is he goes home and his power gets turned off.

Laci (00:50:25):

Then gets a fuck. The best thing ever happens to him when the power goes off.

Matt (00:50:30):

How about this? How about you go broke and then you find out I’m too rich to go broke? And that kind of radicalizes him. I lose all my assets and immediately the system, I get bailed out by the government or a bank’s still willing to give me money.Because Lucius Fox says like, “Well, long term, we’ll be able to prove fraud, but in the meantime, going to have to tighten your belt, Mr. Wayne.” Then during the rise of Trump, a lot of people were pointing out, “Hey, Trump’s kind of like Bane, isn’t he?” In the Nolan variations. “The Dark Knight Rises could take some credit for intuiting the seismic shifts that would lead to the election of Donald Trump, whose black plate glass tower on Fifth Avenue provided an exterior for the front of the Wayne Enterprises building. I’ll tell you it was really terrific, “said Trump in a review of the film posted on YouTube, praising its cinematography and pointing out that most importantly, Trump Tower, my building plays a role.

Matt (00:51:23):

I should have gotten that video. His best movie review since his Citizen Kane movie review. It’s about a guy who goes through a lot. Well,

Laci (00:51:33):

He always says it’s his favorite movie. Citizen Kane and Bane.

Matt (00:51:37):

Trump’s 2017 inauguration speech. People were pointing out,” Hey, it sounds like you sound like Bane. “When he said,” Today’s ceremony, however, has a very special meaning because today we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another. We are transferring power from Washington DC and giving it back to you, the people. But here’s what Nolan has to say about the politics of this. Of all of my films, The Dark Knight Rises is the one that’s been pushed and pulled in the weirdest number of directions. I think you have to go out of your way to look at the film and attribute to it right wing characteristics. If anything, it’s specifically left wing. When people listen to Bane and say he sounds like Donald Trump or that Donald Trump sounds like him, well, it’s about a demagogue. He’s the bad guy. What was I afraid of when I made The Dark Night Rises?

Matt (00:52:20):

I was afraid of demagoguery. Turns out I was right to be afraid. The film was not supposed to be political. It’s not intended to be. It’s about primal fears. At the time we were writing, there really was this sense of false calm. Everybody thinks everything’s okay. We got through the financial crisis, but there are underlying things brewing that could lead to difficult places.” What do you see with a problem with that, Laci?

Laci (00:52:43):

As if that was the only thing wrong with America. I mean, I guess we got through the. We.

Matt (00:52:50):

Who? Exactly. Who’s the we we’re talking about there, Chris?

Laci (00:52:52):

You did.

Matt (00:52:53):

You did. Yes. Golden

Laci (00:52:54):

Parachutes did. Wall

Matt (00:52:56):

Street

Laci (00:52:56):

Did.

Matt (00:52:57):

My dad was an ad executive in the ’70s. He’s not lived – Not your dad. Christopher Nolan.

Laci (00:53:02):

Because if you want to bring up your dad, you could give an example of how we did not all make it out of that crisis.

Matt (00:53:09):

Oh yeah. Yeah. My dad’s business.

Laci (00:53:10):

Your dad’s

Matt (00:53:11):

Company. Yeah. Well, not – An

Laci (00:53:12):

Oil business. It doesn’t make it through all the wars. It doesn’t make it easy

Matt (00:53:17):

When you’re

Laci (00:53:18):

Selling that commodity.

Matt (00:53:19):

It wasn’t a hurricane. He sold gas at

Laci (00:53:23):

Right. But it was teetering on an edge

Matt (00:53:26):

Because it

Laci (00:53:27):

Had gotten hurt.

Matt (00:53:28):

Yes. Just that phrase is, oh, we got through the financial crisis. No, we didn’t. The world still is not over the financial crisis. The jobs never came back. And if you believe that, it shows. It shows which side you’re on. And it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, you’re just blind. Yes. Which is the ultimate privilege of wealth is not having to notice that you have all of this privilege. And to a person like Christopher Nolan, the system is good because the system has rewarded you. You rose in this system, therefore it’s good. And the ultimate fear is, oh God, what if the slobs out there, the blue collar pleabs on the streets decide that they don’t like this system and they want to burn it down?

Laci (00:54:08):

Well, because I think people feel that way because they think deep down or they understand deep down that they’ve had to step on people and have probably injured people. And just a couple people removed from themselves, downwind of them is a lot of shit they need to say they’re sorry for, but they keep their blinders on. I don’t know who outsources what in my company. I’m sure it’s fine. But what I thought you were going to say is all these wars and all these places we’ve occupied and all these lies we’ve told as to why we do it and the good we’re causing and the more the internet exists and the more TikTok exists, the more that is really being shown to everybody that America is not good. I thought I lived in the most moral, powerful country until my 20s probably. I really thought everyone wants to be born here.

Laci (00:55:06):

And to know how disgusting we really are, it’s just give something money and power and it will be corrupt. So yeah, in that sense, the other shoe was going to drop. And I feel like we’ve been stuck in the drop for a while.

Matt (00:55:26):

This fear is demagoguery. Fear of a dem, meaning he’s afraid of a figure like Trump who

Laci (00:55:36):

Wasn’t elected.

Matt (00:55:38):

Or like the comparison, the stupid comparison they’d make. Or like Bernie Sanders, getting people all fired up. And they’d compare them.

Laci (00:55:46):

Oh, like a cult personality? That’s all it means? Is that what a demagoguery

Matt (00:55:50):

Is? In a way.You’re appealing to their base emotions.

Laci (00:55:55):

Yeah. The need

Matt (00:55:55):

For support. You’re not appealing to their logic like we do, like good liberals do. Oh

Laci (00:55:59):

God.

Matt (00:56:00):

So to me, Nolan’s politics are extremely clear. He’s a sort of bland rich liberal. Thinks like, yeah, the system could be improved. We need to get together and make sure that it’s fair and just for everyone. But ultimately I kind of like the way things are going and want it to keep going that way and we’ll all be fine together. But that’s not the reality that most people in the world live in. And this movie gestures at that and gets kind of thrilling like Catwoman telling Bruce Wayne a storm is coming for you.

Laci (00:56:32):

Even those words. That

Matt (00:56:33):

Was

Laci (00:56:33):

Before QAnon.

Matt (00:56:34):

Exactly. Yeah. But then when the sort of retribution of the rich people get pulled out of their luxury condos and get put into show trials, it’s shown like a horror movie.

Laci (00:56:46):

But because you can’t help it. All it takes is doing that to someone and then you see their humanity. You see how little power they have and they seemed so capable of crushing you like a bug and maybe they were and they would’ve. But when you see someone pulled out by the hair and their mansion and clothes and pictures of their family all burned or whatever, and then exile or death, they turn real human real fast.

Matt (00:57:11):

Of course.

Laci (00:57:12):

So anyone with empathy will have a hard time with that being the storm. All we want is a little bit of their money. We don’t want them to be fucked up and villaged.

Matt (00:57:23):

No, no, no. I mean, I do want a lot of them to go be put on trial. Sure, but

Laci (00:57:27):

Not that kind of trial.

Matt (00:57:28):

Not a kangaroo court with a scarecrow to show that this is the villain’s master plan, this thing happening. It’s just so disgusting to me. It’s so

Laci (00:57:39):

Baby brained. Yeah. It’s like, oh, only an evil person would. I really thought he was going somewhere with that, like eat the rich. There’s interesting shit behind that. And for it to be like just a madman, just the whole civilization crumbles once the rich people can’t have their money anymore. I don’t think that’s why civilization got weird. I think it’s because people aren’t working their jobs. And I think it’s because lots of people are dead and missing loved ones. They’re not getting any resources. It’s an island all of a sudden. It’s not getting shit.

Matt (00:58:11):

I just keep coming back to this. What’s frustrating is it’s a cool plan to separate Gotham from the rest of the world. Now we’re on our own. Let’s see what really happens. But because he’s doing it all as just like, I’m just buying time until the bomb goes off, because I want to torture them. That sucks. Just do the thing you’re saying you’re doing. You say you’re doing, and it’s way more interesting.

Laci (00:58:34):

Right. The League of Shadow’s mission was to destroy all of Gotham. It didn’t say torture them first.

Matt (00:58:41):

Right. But

Laci (00:58:43):

I guess you had to build all the underground shit. So you’re like, “Well, I guess we got to fuck around down here.”

Matt (00:58:47):

Well, he’s tying it to like, “Well, I was in this prison and I learned that the worst thing is hope. And if you hope that-” Yeah, the

Laci (00:58:52):

Prison story is just like, even though it’s neat, I enjoy it. And you wonder what’s going to. Batman always needs to go through a trial. He can’t just have a movie. He’s got to go through something. So that was it. I get it. We need to have the pushup scene, but it’s one location too many? He says you have to go bigger. Well, you did go bigger. You went bigger with the damage and the message, I guess. I don’t know that we needed more set pieces.

Matt (00:59:26):

Yeah. And especially when he says this is a prison on the other side of the world, but because of the way he edits the movies, in Gotham one second, in that prison the next second, then Bane’s back in Gotham the next frame.

Laci (00:59:38):

Yeah, I didn’t know it wasn’t in America.

Matt (00:59:40):

Yeah. No, it’s not. It’s in, they say the Middle East. It was filmed in India. I don’t remember which country it’s supposed to be.

Laci (00:59:47):

There’s no mention of having rebuilt Wayne Manor, but clearly they have because now they’re back in that setting. And then they’re back in the old Bad Cave. He spends time there. But now because that one is unavailable, now they go back to this Second movies underground fucking FedEx ass looking way too bright area. It’s just like, we get it. We were going to a lot of places in this movie.

Matt (01:00:11):

We really do.

Laci (01:00:12):

We even go to Catwoman’s apartment. Why?

Matt (01:00:15):

But you liked this movie a lot. You and the kid were very – Yes, but look what

Laci (01:00:18):

You’re doing to me.

Matt (01:00:19):

Sorry.

Laci (01:00:19):

It was enjoyable. I love how it ended.

Matt (01:00:22):

And watching the movie, even though you two are very annoying, you squawked like birds the whole time talking and I keep going, shut up, shut up. When you two are really into a movie, it makes me think like, oh no, this movie’s good. What am I talking about?

Laci (01:00:35):

We were having fun picking on it toward the end there. I mean, but because it was a

Matt (01:00:40):

Fun to watch.

Laci (01:00:41):

It’s a dumb movie for smart people. That’s good.

Matt (01:00:44):

I was going to ask, where do you qualify this? So I mean, the movie had the biggest budget of any movie ever, $260 million, shoot all over the world. First thing they shot was in India for the scenes where Bruce comes out of the prison, gets out of a big hole. Oh, there’s rope here. All right.

Laci (01:00:58):

What a weird thing. I really understand what I went through for that, having done this first in the movie.

Matt (01:01:05):

An hour of it is shot in IMAX. That was an unprecedented amount of IMAX photography to do. Of course, The Odyssey, the entire movie was shot in IMAX. I mean, IMAX Lace is just an enormous camera that’s really heavy and loud. So it’s very expensive and difficult and produces extremely big, high quality images.

Laci (01:01:24):

Can you imagine the Ram needed to download that file? Oh my

Matt (01:01:27):

God.

Laci (01:01:28):

They’re the reason. They’re the reason.

Matt (01:01:30):

Well, they shoot on film, but then of course it has to get transferred and transferred to yes. I like when you read about a movie and it says, “This movie took up 18 quinterabytetillion of whatever.” I always like hearing the storage that it takes up. And people, if you look up external hard drive prices, they’re going sky high these days. Thank

Laci (01:01:48):

You, AI. Pieces of shit, fucking data centers.

Matt (01:01:51):

Shoots at the New York Stock Exchange. Shoots at the Pittsburgh Steelers Stadium with tens of thousands of extras and real football players.

Laci (01:01:59):

Lots of underground tunnel stuff that looks real, very real with a water ride included, plus outside sewage footage and different fucking streets to play on.

Matt (01:02:08):

Hundreds of cop extras with snow coming down on a city street.This is all so, so impressive. A

Laci (01:02:14):

Giant ice lake to go die on. Yeah,

Matt (01:02:16):

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, comes out two months after the Avengers came out.

Laci (01:02:19):

And then all Perry. I’m sorry, Florence.

Matt (01:02:21):

Florence.

Laci (01:02:22):

Florence. Oh,

Matt (01:02:23):

Funny. He’s having

Laci (01:02:23):

A little chocolate. Whatever he called it.

Matt (01:02:27):

A

Laci (01:02:27):

Chuckleberry.

Matt (01:02:28):

What? I don’t know

Laci (01:02:28):

His drink. He called it something crazy.

Matt (01:02:30):

A Frene Branca.

Laci (01:02:32):

Chuckleberry. I think I was right.

Matt (01:02:34):

A drink and a Frene Branka. But because the Avengers had made so much money, it was always already like dark night. That was like, we’re kind of done with you. We like this bright colored, fun Tony Starka. Yeah, they have an army now. They’re

Laci (01:02:50):

Right behind me, aren’t they?

Matt (01:02:52):

Army.

Matt (01:02:53):

We’re kind of into those kinds of movies now. And of course the Aurora Court Colorado shooting immediately cast a shadow over this movie. And I said on our Dark Night episode, I had to do an addendum to correct the record that the shooter in that case did not wear a Joker mask, never declared I am the joker. That was an entirely a fiction made up by the New York City police commissioner commenting on a thing happening that he was not involved with in any capacity. But everybody’s like, “Ooh, it just sounded so good and so true.” So obviously still like – Fake

Laci (01:03:26):

News.

Matt (01:03:27):

I mean, I remember hearing that news. We were at your apartment. I slept over at your apartment. You

Laci (01:03:31):

Sexy kid.

Matt (01:03:32):

And I was up before you scrolling on my phone and finding out about this. And this was back when mass shootings were still shocking. But that definitely cast a shadow over the movie. But the movie makes $1.1 billion. It makes more money than The Dark Knight. Jesus.

Laci (01:03:50):

I know, but inflation. Well,

Matt (01:03:51):

Right. They made it out. The

Laci (01:03:53):

Crisis, Matt.

Matt (01:03:54):

But it’s just so funny. Disappointment. It didn’t become the biggest movie of all time. So fair. It

Laci (01:03:58):

Didn’t have Heath. This was never going to happen. But what about the Tale of Two Cities I put in it? Like Chicago and London.

Matt (01:04:09):

We don’t have a Heath Ledger, but we have Charles Dickens.

Laci (01:04:14):

A Doll’s Chickens. I could read him every day. All

Matt (01:04:17):

Right. You ready to talk about The Dark Night Rises, the film itself? I

Laci (01:04:20):

Do know

Matt (01:04:20):

I am. Let’s do it. I think right away in The Dark Night Rises, which opens very, very briefly with Gary Oldman giving a press conference. I believed in Harvey Dent. I believed in Harvey Dent, the greatest man who ever lived. Yeah. And we talked endlessly about all this adulation for this symbol of hope. Remember when the district attorney was so great and he’s dead?

Laci (01:04:56):

Everyone’s favorite guy? He

Matt (01:04:58):

Inspired us all to be better. You

Laci (01:05:00):

Know who I know more than I know the District Attorney of New Orleans? I know Morris Bart, who is the number one plaintiff attorney. The car

Matt (01:05:07):

Accident. That advertises

Laci (01:05:08):

Everything.

Matt (01:05:09):

God bless you, Morris Bart.

Laci (01:05:10):

Yeah. There’s so many other people I know.

Matt (01:05:13):

Fighting for you.

Laci (01:05:16):

I feel like maybe, is this the movie saying. We know that was stupid. That’s why

Matt (01:05:20):

We’re – No, I think it so believes in that, but I think that you raised a great point of Heath Ledger’s dead, so we kind of have to pretend Dark Knight doesn’t really exist because anything that we reference from Dark Knight, we then have to mention The Joker. And then we’re all like, oh, Joker.

Laci (01:05:36):

Right. So we will really get into the Dent stuff because that happens at the end. Yeah, because that does happen in the second one, the Dent situation. But it’s like they’re pretending that’s the only thing that happened during that time. They mentioned the mafia and they don’t mention him at all. Wouldn’t

Matt (01:05:52):

Everybody be constantly talking about the

Laci (01:05:54):

Joke? Constant. There would be shirts, like Chavez, like Shea Riveras or whatever. Yeah. Guys survived it. Well, and then nine eleven, 20 years goes by. Now can we start joking about it? They’re

Matt (01:06:05):

Painting Tiny Lister’s face on murals.

Laci (01:06:08):

Yeah. He didn’t push the button. I don’t know. That’s almost a little too sentimental. I guess eight years isn’t quite enough to go by for people to start making sarcastic jokes about it. You just need one or two generations of kids to come up who did not experience it for it to start being like.

Matt (01:06:28):

Yeah. When they’re like, “I heard Harambe did the fairies.”

Laci (01:06:33):

Yeah, like that.

Matt (01:06:34):

That’s what the kids say about nine eleven now when they’re. You don’t understand what it was like, kids. You Zoomers, you whippersnappers who were born after nine eleven. And

Laci (01:06:41):

Alpha.

Matt (01:06:42):

And Alpha. You

Laci (01:06:44):

Know who you are. I don’t

Matt (01:06:45):

Know. I think

Laci (01:06:45):

The Twin Tower jokes are funny. Yeah,

Matt (01:06:47):

I do too.

Laci (01:06:48):

Yeah.

Matt (01:06:48):

Yeah, like when I said Skeeter Valentine from Doug died in one of the towers. All right. So we open, “Like how Dark Night opens with a grand IMAX sequence that they played in theaters, six minutes in theaters to wet your appetite for the movie. They did the same thing with this plane sequence.

Laci (01:07:07):

They showed this in front of a movie? In

Matt (01:07:09):

Front of a movie. What

Laci (01:07:10):

Front? What movie front?

Matt (01:07:12):

I don’t remember what in front, but everyone had the exact same reaction. I can’t understand a fucking word that guy’s saying. And they remixed his audio. The original audio filter they had on him made it much more garbled. It was like the first time because everyone’s always complaining about Nolan. You can’t understand a damn word than anyone’s saying in these Nolan movies, but especially true of Bane. He’s

Laci (01:07:33):

Got a thing on his mouth. I mean, I think we all underestimate how many people are a little bit hearing impaired. I think even the people who are impaired underestimated. And then you go covering someone’s mouth and you’re like, “I’ve never felt more deaf. Oh my God, I’m going insane.”

Matt (01:07:46):

I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Laci (01:07:48):

Okay. You are so in denial that it’s frustrating. I know that was a joke, but we have to have a talk.

Matt (01:07:54):

Here’s what happens in this opening, this prologue. Aiden Gillen, Littlefinger. I’m CIA, he says. He announces. They have this Dr. Pavel, a nuclear physicist who’s along with these hooded figures and little fingers like, “Who are those hooded guys?” And they’re like, “The work for the masked man.” And he’s like, “Bane, welcome aboard, everybody.” And then they’re in the flight and he starts shouting into. He’s interrogating them. “Tell me what you know about Baneer. I’ll fucking shoot you and throw you off the plane. “And then Bane is under a hood, but he starts talking. I

Laci (01:08:29):

Must be wondering they are. He sounds like Yoda to me. He does.

Matt (01:08:33):

He does.

Laci (01:08:34):

Why would one shoot someone, then throw them off a plane? I don’t know, to be sure.

Matt (01:08:38):

Yeah, that doesn’t seem like a stretch to me. Shoot him and then throw them off. Even

Laci (01:08:42):

Throws them off the plane, maybe put them out of misery so they’re not terrified all the way down.

Matt (01:08:46):

What if they land on a trampoline?

Laci (01:08:48):

Exactly. It’s

Matt (01:08:50):

Called a

Laci (01:08:50):

Double tap.

Matt (01:08:52):

And like in the last movie where the Joker, we first meet him behind a mask. Here we’re meeting him behind a pillowcase. It’s kind of cool.

Laci (01:09:00):

But you see it coming a mile away. I

Matt (01:09:03):

Mean,

Laci (01:09:03):

There’s three of them for a reason. And this

Matt (01:09:05):

One seems really giant. Tom Hardy’s so quiet. He’s actually only five nine, but they- They shoot

Laci (01:09:10):

Him from down

Matt (01:09:11):

There. They shoot him like he’s enormous. And he did bulk up. Tell me about Bane. Why does he wear a mask? Why

Laci (01:09:17):

Is that your question?

Matt (01:09:18):

That’s his question.

Laci (01:09:19):

Does he have an underground layer where he’s going to destroy a city? Was he in some sort of shadow league? What’s with the jewelry though? How

Matt (01:09:26):

Does he order his steaks?

Laci (01:09:28):

Boxers are preached. Chop it.

Matt (01:09:30):

Perhaps he’s wondering why someone would shoot a man before throwing him out of a plane.

Laci (01:09:35):

That’s highly

Matt (01:09:36):

Specific, sir.

Laci (01:09:37):

Okay. Who

Matt (01:09:38):

Are you? It doesn’t matter who we are. What matters is our plan. So little finger pulls off the mask.

Laci (01:09:45):

Jane.

Matt (01:09:46):

Jane. It’s Tom Hardy in this mask. No one cared who I was till I put on the mask, which goes to what you said, Laci, about the Joker. No one cared who I was until I started doing Joker shit. In a Bruce Wayne world, you got to become a little mad. You got to become a little theatrical. Right.

Laci (01:10:02):

You have everyday complaints, you’re an everyday person and they see the poverty, they see the lack of education, they see the lack of support with childcare. What do they see it? They see tired, sad adults who cannot get to the middle class or get beyond it. But they don’t really see you at all. To them, they’re making it through that financial crisis. Let’s go Nolan. We got through that.

Matt (01:10:28):

It was rough, but we got through it. Yeah,

Laci (01:10:30):

Yeah. Together hand in hand with those people who are in the back of the plane. Why are they?

Matt (01:10:34):

Now you have to listen to our plan. Wow, okay.

Laci (01:10:39):

Weirdly, the thing you put on your face, sir, makes it hard for me to listen, but that’s fine.

Matt (01:10:42):

If I pull that off, will you die? And he says, “It would be extremely painful. You’re a big guy for you.” Now, this has been an intense debate on the internet for decades now. Is he saying – Dick and

Laci (01:10:58):

Butt.

Matt (01:10:58):

Is he saying, “You little finger are a small guy, so you think I’m a big guy?” Or is he saying, “If you pulled my mask off, it would be painful for you?”

Laci (01:11:06):

Oh, is he completing his sentence? Yeah. Well, because it does seem like it should need to be completed. I took it as like, for you, I’m big, you fucking. See,

Matt (01:11:14):

This is funny because this is a dress thing or a yen or see it. I only ever thought it makes sense it would be painful for you. He does

Laci (01:11:23):

Seem like the kind of guy that’d be perturbed that you interrupted him. I wasn’t done finishing my little talk. And

Matt (01:11:30):

I thought that nobody actually thinks he’s saying you only think I’m a big guy. You shrimp? All right. So was Getting Caught Party your plan? Like the Joker in the last movie?

Laci (01:11:39):

He’s so hyped. He’s such a nerd. Just hurry up and die. You are annoying me.

Matt (01:11:47):

So is Getting Caught Party your plan? Roof Girl. Rough girl. And then another fucking plane comes out to eat their plane. This is definitely inspired by You Only Live Twice, the fifth James Bond movie. Subscribe to Pod Job, a James Bond podcast.

Laci (01:12:03):

I did appreciate that he put the Bond shit right up front. It’s never my favorite part. It’s cool. It’s a very interesting thing to do, but I’m like, get to the story, get to the story.

Matt (01:12:12):

This is the story, Laci. That

Laci (01:12:14):

This man has access to two planes?

Matt (01:12:16):

Yeah. It’s all part of –

Laci (01:12:18):

Who’s funding him? It’s a

Matt (01:12:19):

Tapper. You know how Penelope weaves the thing? It’s like that. I

Laci (01:12:23):

Do know now. Can

Matt (01:12:24):

I put it in lady terms that you might understand?

Laci (01:12:26):

Yeah. Tell me about my bridal shroud. Where the fuck?

Matt (01:12:29):

So shroud. I don’t know. It’s just such a –

Laci (01:12:32):

It’s cold.

Matt (01:12:33):

I know, just such a like a. Yeah, go back to your shroud. So this You Only Live Twice is our next episode, which has spaceships eating smaller spaceships. So what’s the next step of your plan? Graduate there’s plane with no survivors. And then the thugs to infiltrate the plane and shoot everyone. And fucking love it. Love the plane going into a nosedive and its wings flying off. I

Laci (01:12:57):

Love that piece by piece. It’s being more digestible to this other bigger plane.

Matt (01:13:02):

Yeah. Now, can you tell me what exactly they’re doing as tactically what they’re hoping to achieve here?

Laci (01:13:09):

Yes. They want it to look as though the only doctor that can make a nuclear bomb out of the machine that he wants to get his hands on has died in a plane crash. That’s it.

Matt (01:13:19):

And the way they do that is by taking some of Dr. Pavel’s blood and squirting it on another guy?

Laci (01:13:25):

They knew Dr. Pavel was in this plane. Yeah,

Matt (01:13:28):

But they pull out a body bag to be the body of Dr. Pavel. They take Dr. Pavell’s blood. What do they do with the blood though?

Laci (01:13:34):

Yeah, I’m Dr. Pavel. Yeah, that’s stupid. He’s still got his own fingerprints and his own face. It’s a fucking. I mean, and if he’s flying out, then he’s just landing and getting mangled. He’s not being burnt alive. He’s just some fucking guy sprayed with Pavel blood. Pavel killed this man and then the plane crashed. But

Matt (01:13:55):

Of course the CIA flight manifest lists one of the thugs, so they’re going to expect to find one of the thugs. So as we see, the devotion pain inspires. It’s really

Laci (01:14:03):

Stupid though, because you’re just taking pieces of the plane off one by one. Sure, it’s a weird crash, but do you think anyone is going to be like, “I think thugs from the sky in a bigger plane kidnapped this plane and toured piece by piece.” Why leave a thug? Just let it be a crash. No bang needed.

Matt (01:14:24):

Wait, so you’re saying.

Laci (01:14:26):

All they need is for that guy to be dead. So you don’t need to leave one of your guys with it because it could just be that the plane crashed, not that you made it crash. It could have nothing to do with you or these thugs. It could just be like, “Well, that plane went down.”

Matt (01:14:39):

I guess this was the most practical way to get another guy who they could say, “This is Dr. Pavel dead.” It’s all about Dr. Pavel and his death because he’s the only nuclear scientist in the world.

Laci (01:14:51):

I mean, I get it that they need him dead, but why would. A plane crash would kill him. You don’t need a thug to crash the plane. Planes crash all the time. Because

Matt (01:15:00):

It’s fun because he’s got a plane. I’m

Laci (01:15:02):

Sorry, but you find a fucking random guy that has nothing to do with the flight manifest in a body bag, have you? Sprayed with the blood of Pavel and he’s among the wreckage, but not Pavel’s body? I think you’re raising more questions. Now

Matt (01:15:15):

I believe in the movie they say this is in Uzbekistan. So I think this is just part of the world.This is like former Soviet Union and Putin’s having planes go down all the time with his political enemies. So you’re not asking too many questions. I got you,

Laci (01:15:29):

But you also didn’t need to kill your man. Yo didn’t need to kill your guy. Quit killing your guys. That was needless. He seems

Matt (01:15:34):

Very happy to be. He just

Laci (01:15:35):

Wanted to see.

Matt (01:15:36):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The guy’s so happy to oblige. No, they expect one of us. Have we started the fire? Sure. It’s

Laci (01:15:43):

Raging in my lords. Of

Matt (01:15:44):

Course. The

Laci (01:15:45):

Lady who likes fires likes this one. The

Matt (01:15:47):

Fire rises. All right now. He

Laci (01:15:50):

Doesn’t even answer and he’s just like fire. No, he

Matt (01:15:53):

Says. I know,

Laci (01:15:55):

But.

Matt (01:15:55):

Yeah.

Laci (01:15:56):

Poor little guy.

Matt (01:15:59):

Said it before. I’ll say it again. It sucks that the whole thing with Bane is he’s a liar. I just wish he was – He’s

Laci (01:16:04):

Not a liar. He believes everything you say. No,

Matt (01:16:06):

He doesn’t. He does not.

Laci (01:16:08):

But it’s not a lie. It is him convincing the city to torture itself. He

Matt (01:16:13):

Lies to the city. He says he does not tell them you’re all going to die in five months. He’s telling them I’ve liberated you. Take revolutionary action. Who

Laci (01:16:21):

Cares? He is a torturer. H says that. He tortures with

Matt (01:16:24):

Hope.

Laci (01:16:24):

Yes, he

Matt (01:16:25):

Does. No, he does not tell the city. He tells Batman that.

Laci (01:16:28):

Because that wouldn’t work. He’s torturing the city with hope. He’s torturing Batman further by making him four months watch a city not accepting that they’re going to die and trying to get out. And a city thinking they’re going to make it is going to stay right there, have hope, and then Batman can slowly watch them die. He’s not lying because he’s a liar. He’s lying so that he can further torture Batman who is the ultimate betrayer.

Matt (01:16:57):

He’s lying about his ideology. This is Batman. Don’t

Laci (01:17:00):

Do this, Matt. Yeah,

Matt (01:17:01):

And this sucks. I hate this. Yes, but

Laci (01:17:03):

He’s not a fucking liar. He’s a crazy person who wants the maximum amount of pain inflicted on these people and mostly on Batman. And to that end, he beats it. And what I’m

Matt (01:17:12):

Saying is that’s less interesting than the Cafeb lie he tells the crowd. It’s way more interesting. Like Magneto, what’s compelling about Magneto is he’s right. I think that the things Bane tells the city he’s right about, it would be interesting if he believed them. No one isn’t

Laci (01:17:29):

That deep. Nolan isn’t that political. No, I

Matt (01:17:31):

Know. Nolan is not political.

Laci (01:17:33):

Nolan just recognizes that politics are good stories. So he gets political adjacent all the time. And you’re like, oh wow, he’s really going for a deeper meaning here. And then you hear an interview and it’s just like, I was just following a good story. He’s like, yeah, I guess politics are in all stories. Yeah,

Matt (01:17:47):

It’s political-ish. It gives you the. And then people can watch it and see what they want to see and take away what they want to take away. You

Laci (01:17:53):

Need old butts in the seats.

Matt (01:17:56):

So immediately you get one of those Nolan cuts. Now it’s New York City, unlike Chicago last time. Can I

Laci (01:18:02):

Ask a question? How many funerals have you been to where someone bothered to make a giant framed picture of the person dead? Two of them? The exact same framing the people talk.That man did not take a second photo.

Matt (01:18:19):

Well, this isn’t a funeral. This is Harvey Dent Day. It’s now eight years later. Get

Laci (01:18:22):

Another picture. How about when he was sworn in, maybe a meaningful picture to

Matt (01:18:26):

His

Laci (01:18:27):

Fucking office? Him walking in a courtroom, something.

Matt (01:18:31):

Doing a walk and talk. Yeah. Things are a little bit different now. It’s almost like we’re in a different city. Mayor Garcia is talking about how it’s Harvey Dent Day. This is actually the things when I said right away we see the problem, I was mixing it up with this right here.

Laci (01:18:46):

Yeah.

Matt (01:18:47):

So it’s this speech that he gives and over and over and over again, the people in this movie deliver the most long-winded and circuitous dialogue. Yeah,

Laci (01:18:57):

Yeah.

Matt (01:18:57):

Also,

Laci (01:18:58):

Is it weird that the mayor’s still the same mayor this many years later?

Matt (01:19:01):

Eight years later.

Laci (01:19:02):

I mean, who knows how long he was the mayor before?

Matt (01:19:05):

We don’t

Laci (01:19:05):

Know.

Matt (01:19:07):

I think that is like he’s riding the wave of having won the war. The war against crime.

Laci (01:19:14):

The RICO thing that will expire in I thought 18 months. Are the people not just right back out? I don’t get it.

Matt (01:19:22):

Yeah, that was like we can keep the lower level guys in prison, but they hadn’t passed the Dent Act yet, Laci. The Dent Act gave –

Laci (01:19:29):

Dent Act. Really roils off the tongue. It

Matt (01:19:32):

Finally gave law enforcement real teeth to go after criminals. We

Laci (01:19:36):

Needed them to have more power. And we needed more hazy judgments to be able to. Or laws to break so that the maximum sentence for minimal crime. You have an Italian last name. Get out of here.

Matt (01:19:54):

Loitering. Sorry fucker. That

Laci (01:19:56):

Was mob

Matt (01:19:57):

Loitering.

Laci (01:19:59):

That looks like mob jaywalking. Get in the asylum. Yeah,

Matt (01:20:02):

You were on a bench with a known mob associate. Guys,

Laci (01:20:05):

We already built a really big tower. It’s circular and it has many, many layers. We’re going to look stupid if we can’t fill it up. So

Matt (01:20:13):

Here’s what he says. And it’s like you could diagram this sentence and be like, that’s Harvey – That’s one

Laci (01:20:18):

Sentiment.

Matt (01:20:19):

Uncompromising stand against organized crime had made Gotham a safer place than it was at the time of his death eight years ago. Okay? Wow. The city has seen a historic turnaround. So listen, he had just begun his fight against crime. Then he died. Okay. In the time since big fight against crime. It’s gone really, really well. Okay. No cities without crime, but this city is without organized crime because the Dent Act gave law enforcement teeth in its fight against the mob. Now people are talking about repealing the Dent Act. And to them I say, not on my watch. I

Laci (01:20:51):

Do want to say something about the Dent Act though. It’s mob specific, but who gets to decide who’s in the mafia? No, that’s what I’m – So I mean, it’s totally just like what they do with calling every Black person a person in a gang.

Matt (01:21:04):

Yeah. An associate of a gang. Oh, so a neighbor? A

Laci (01:21:09):

Black person. A person –

Matt (01:21:10):

A fourth cousin of –

Laci (01:21:11):

Right. They use the same gas station. So

Matt (01:21:15):

That’s a gala on the grounds of Wayne Manor. Bruce, as we know, rebuilt Wayne Manor, brick by brick. That’s what he’s been doing these eight years, holding a clipboard, hard hat on. I

Laci (01:21:24):

Truly think it’s just like this is where Nolan felt safe and I need to ground myself in the thing that I was really inspired to do before. And I needed to be apart from Heath so that I can focus on this story and pretend that never happened. So we need to go back to the manor. No discussion of how long it took to build, how long we’ve been back in here. How is it that it is as exact as it. It should be a little different. Well,

Matt (01:21:50):

All that’s. Okay. Yeah, you can rebuild it brick by brick, but the thing is inside it looks like it’s a hundred years old and all this stuff is under blankets and stuff as if it’s. This would all be new stuff.

Laci (01:22:00):

Exactly. Right. You can buy antiques all you want, but that’s not building anything brick by brick. That’s becoming an insane collector of. And that would mean you’d have to have the mind of an architect, like an inception. Well,

Matt (01:22:12):

I guess the defense is like, yeah, this place is not haunted in the way that old buildings feel haunted. We built it brand new and Bruce Wayne is such a ghost that he has infected the place and made it seem more haunting.

Laci (01:22:23):

We bought brand new furniture and then he just put a bunch of sheets on it. Yes, he

Matt (01:22:26):

Did. He did. He’s the grandma

Laci (01:22:28):

With the plastic sofa.

Matt (01:22:29):

I just talked myself into it because when we see Bruce in the bat cave, he does look like Phantom of the Opera at a piano in that shot when he’s at the back computer. Yeah, I’ve talked myself into it.

Laci (01:22:39):

And that room does look a little new. He’s not in the old part of the bat cave. Yeah. No, no, not the cave. Sorry. When he finds her stealing, he’s in some kind of weird storage area. He bought all the furniture to match because he was inspired by that, but then the love of his life died. And so he was like, “I guess I’ll just keep buying all this stuff, but put sheets on it. I don’t want to decorate with it. I just want it to be here in case I ever get happy again.”

Matt (01:23:06):

Just in case. He’s a

Laci (01:23:08):

Member in the mood.

Matt (01:23:08):

But on the other hand, Rachel washing.

Laci (01:23:11):

Okay. But also you rebuilt this manner and you only have Alfred. What the fuck? I’m sure you had other, except for Suarez where you have these random people dressed as maids. He’s the only person that answers the door, only person. No, no, no, because he says they make your bed. There’s other staff. He doesn’t

Matt (01:23:31):

Say they make your bed.

Laci (01:23:33):

He says, “When are you going to stop letting whoever’s over here in this side of the manner as soon as you learn to make your bed?” So Alfred’s not making it. He has some help. But then when Alfred leaves, it’s like he takes everyone with him. But

Matt (01:23:49):

This is just. Nolan movies never have a moment like this, but wouldn’t it be interesting if Bruce got home and Alfred’s gone and we just had to sit with him for a minute of like, “Holy fuck, I’m without Alfred for the first time in my life.”

Laci (01:24:01):

Except for him being just a little bit inconvenienced by answering his own door.That’s all they do to address it. He needs to be sad. He’s not sad enough when Alfred leaves and there’s never a moment of him reflecting or even mentioning him. You’re in a prison for a really long time. Maybe talk about some stuff. Same

Matt (01:24:21):

With Rachel. It’s like once he fucks Miranda by a fireplace, Rachel, her death has ruined his life, but then it’s like he saw one pretty girl and he’s like, “Ooh, sorry.” And then

Laci (01:24:34):

He never mentions her while he’s in prison. Yeah. And then he comes back from prison and he’s like, “I’m going to get to you so soon. But first, Lucius.”

Matt (01:24:42):

And he has the really dark moment he sees his dad, but it’s like, shouldn’t he be seeing Alfred saying? Yes. There should be a moment like that. Like, oh fuck, I ruined the one peer relationship.

Laci (01:24:53):

Alfred has given him so many opportunities to return the sentiment of. Alfred in every single movie has some kind of line about how he’s raised you since you were a little boy. I love you so much. Someone I love since they were a little boy crying out. You can almost see Bruce’s eyes rolling when Alfred’s like, “From the time I first heard your cries in these halls, oh, here we fucking go again.” That’s what he’s acting like. Alfred keeps telling you how much he thinks of you as a son. Can you please call him something other than fucking Jeffrey, whatever? Not Joffrey, Jeeves.

Matt (01:25:28):

There’s a new Batman cartoon. It’s like a dark and gritty Batman cartoon. It’s actually really good. Batman, the Cape Crusader. And this one, Alfred is. This Batman’s a lot more distant from Alfred and he always calls him Pennyworth. Okay, Pennyworth, his last name. Until the last scene of the last episode of the season, he’s like – Spoiler. Alfred. Thank you, Alfred. And you watching at home, you’re like, oh.

Laci (01:25:52):

Well, I guess I do a better job of showing how broken he is. But for him to smile and laugh and be so chummy with Lucius and Alfred, it does imply that he has a heart. He does have caring feelings for them. And then all of a sudden he’s like, no, I’m dark about stuff. I don’t talk about my feelings. You’re going to leave me. Just leave. Goes

Matt (01:26:12):

To the party and stands in the corner. I don’t want to talk about it. Leave me alone. Right. All

Laci (01:26:18):

You guys are just here for the party. You’re going to leave. I knew it.

Matt (01:26:23):

The mayor is talking about, he’s just complaining about Batman until a thug showed his true nature after all that good that we worshiped him for. That we

Laci (01:26:32):

Let him do. He

Matt (01:26:32):

Killed those five people. Which

Laci (01:26:34):

I don’t even know which five they are. Mostly

Matt (01:26:37):

Mobsters. Yeah. So thanks for cleaning up the

Laci (01:26:39):

Streets.

Matt (01:26:40):

Murderers betrayed the trust of this great man, Harvey Dent. And yet when Batman comes back later, everyone’s rejoicing. Seems like everyone likes Batman.

Laci (01:26:50):

It takes a little bit of time, but that’s after the city’s completely under. They’re probably relieved.

Matt (01:26:56):

Before the siege begins, this cop is so excited that Batman’s back, but it could just be finally things are interesting again. No, I don’t think he’s given a name. Oh, the old

Laci (01:27:04):

Guy. The old guy’s like, “You’re in for a show.” It’s just to let us know. He was there eight years ago, even if these whippersnappers weren’t. All right.

Matt (01:27:11):

Anne Hathaway is a waitress and we like her in this movie. I think she’s really, really good. Serving deviled eggs and stuff at this party. I

Laci (01:27:23):

Wish.

Matt (01:27:24):

I wish I could watch her serve divilege. No,

Laci (01:27:26):

I just love deviled eggs.

Matt (01:27:28):

Gordon, Gary Oldman gets up to give a speech. He’s decided, “I’m finally going to spill the beans on Harvey. I’m going to sing like a canary up at this podium.” But why

Laci (01:27:35):

Now? Why on this day? Just

Matt (01:27:37):

Do it on any

Laci (01:27:38):

Other day. But

Matt (01:27:39):

Then he hears you say that and he’s like, “Maybe now’s not the time.”

Laci (01:27:44):

These old men are being given too much responsibility with when the right time for things are. That’s

Matt (01:27:48):

True. Yeah. They should

Laci (01:27:49):

Start a little club, Alfred, in the commission and Lucius guys when they sing. Like

Matt (01:27:55):

How my dad gets together with people who drove trains for a living now. My dad didn’t drive a train for a living, but he gets to listen to their stories. It’s the soul of one. At Dunkin Donuts every Saturday morning. Isn’t that adorable? That’s adorable. Of Lucius, Alfred and Gordon get together for Dunkin Donuts? Talk about

Laci (01:28:09):

Wayne stuff. Oh, Bruce

Matt (01:28:10):

Wayne. Oh, Batman. So did he put

Laci (01:28:12):

You in charge of the entire police of force? He did. Did he make you a CEO? He did. Did he make you his dad? He did. God, he’s always doing that.

Matt (01:28:22):

This movie suggests that Gordon Levitt’s going to be the new Batman. Imagine how shitty Gary Oldman’s going to be toward him. Yeah, no. I don’t know. It’s just not the same anymore. Something different about you. You really laid

Laci (01:28:34):

An egg on this one.

Matt (01:28:37):

Yeah. So I’m going to put this speech in my pocket and I don’t know, enjoy the food. And you

Laci (01:28:41):

Want it a little too much, Robin. At least Batman kind of didn’t want it. That was kind of hot about Batman.

Matt (01:28:48):

In comic books, Peter Parker will no longer be with Spider-Man. Someone else will be and people will revolt. And it’ll be just like that in the world of Batman. They’re like, “I don’t like this new Batman. Get the fuck out of here, man. I want the old guy.” They’re all just

Laci (01:29:02):

A little jealous. Anyone could have just gone in the fucking cave and just. Batman.

Matt (01:29:08):

So Alfred is barking orders at the waitstaff. Yo, Selena Kyle, go upstairs to the Ace drawing room. Drop off this fucking plate of food. I lock the damn door. And

Laci (01:29:18):

Don’t you dare talk to Miranda Priestly when you’re up there. Give the book to the table and be done with it.

Matt (01:29:24):

She can’t help herself. She has to linger. She hears

Laci (01:29:27):

The twins, even though they’re not there. No, no. She totally just steal the pearls. She’s

Matt (01:29:31):

Ghosts of cats. Everyone

Laci (01:29:32):

Else steals the pearls.

Matt (01:29:34):

Marian Coatiard here is Miranda Tate, but Mr. Wayne won’t see her, nor will he see this slime ball played by Ben Mendelson. No one sees Bruce Wayne anymore. He’s got fingernails that are eight feet long and he pisses in a jar. Nolan has always been obsessed with Howard Hughes and has always wanted to make a Howard Hughes movie. Scorsese beat him to it. Maybe he’ll make one anyway. So Havami goes up to the east drawing room. She’s looking around for the jewels because there’s a jewel thief and then a fucking air shot to scare her and it’s Bruce Wade.

Laci (01:30:03):

She acts really. I thought she’s just a maid.

Matt (01:30:06):

Yeah.

Laci (01:30:06):

I really was like – Playing very good with me. I thought she really was scared. And then when her eyes go evil, because they have to do a closeup of her dead eyes, those little fishbowls, those oblong fucking circles that make no sense. Be a circle over an oble. Don’t be neither. But oh, but when they’re mad, those fishies are really swimming. Everyone’s tracking what I’m saying.

Matt (01:30:27):

Yeah, because he’s like, “Oh, Mr. Wayne, I’m so sorry, but you don’t have long nails like they say you have long nails. Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be in here.” And he’s like, “That’s a beautiful necklace. Looks just like one my mother had, but it could be because hers is in the safe right here. What’s this? The safe is open.” And then she’s like, “Eps.” And he’s like, “Blood rushing to my dick for the first time ever. Oh my God.”

Laci (01:30:53):

Meow.

Matt (01:30:55):

And then she kicks the shit out of him. Well, she kicks his cane out from under him because he’s got a fucked up knee. And then she back flips out of the room. And runs and gets into the car with this congressman who doesn’t know her, but he’s like, “Hello, sweetheart.” He

Laci (01:31:08):

Can’t hit on her already at the party below. And can I get a ride? You’re raiding my mind.

Matt (01:31:13):

I would love to see, what do they get up to over those days? Catnip, I think.

Laci (01:31:17):

He’s just patting at toys and running around in a circle chasing a little ball thing.

Matt (01:31:22):

He

Laci (01:31:22):

Seems so tired.

Matt (01:31:24):

Well, yes, but it also is like, he’s too old for it, but this is the best three days of his life.

Laci (01:31:28):

Yes. There’s been sex and drugs. And she’s just been

Matt (01:31:32):

Torturing his mind. Ginger, Sharon Stone in casino. I think it’s like that. She just slips the pill into the man’s mouth and is like, “You have fun for five days and gamble all your money away.” But it’s the most fun time you’ve e had.

Laci (01:31:43):

Lotus in his mouth. He’s so distant.

Matt (01:31:44):

Exactly. The party’s over. Alfred comes up to Bruce Wayne and he’s like, “There’s a lovely fucking woman, Miranda Tate. She’s quite lovely.” In fact, what are you doing down in that goddamn seat? He’s so mad in this movie. So angry the whole time.

Laci (01:31:57):

He’s like, “Christopher, I did not want to do this one, Christopher. I’m so fucking cranky. It’s way past my nighttime cordial.”

Matt (01:32:06):

I got to have my nighttime cordial. I

Laci (01:32:08):

Need a cordial. A livation.

Matt (01:32:12):

What are you doing in that safe? And he’s like, “I’m dusting.”

Laci (01:32:15):

It’s my room, Alfred. Stop yelling at me.

Matt (01:32:19):

No, I’m on Alfred’s side. This guy’s a fucking twit. Yeah. It’s like, I’m dusting for fingerprints. I got to. Yeah, I don’t know. I wasn’t dusting for fingerprints. She was dusting for fingerprints. And I’ve triangulated her location to this house.

Laci (01:32:36):

Which you can do with whitepages.com.

Matt (01:32:39):

That’s all he did was go to –

Laci (01:32:41):

I triangulated with this compact computer you gave me 20 years ago.

Matt (01:32:46):

Joseph Gordon Levitt as John Blake.

Laci (01:32:50):

Who doesn’t name their child? Robin

Matt (01:32:52):

Jonathan Blake. Robin John Blake.

Laci (01:32:54):

It’s probably Jonathan.

Matt (01:32:56):

Probably Jonathan, you’re right.

Laci (01:32:57):

Robin Jonathan.

Matt (01:32:59):

Talking to Gordon up where the bat signal used to be.

Laci (01:33:01):

RJB.

Matt (01:33:03):

This is what Gordon does. He just comes up here and pines for Batman and caresses the bat signal that he destroyed eight years ago, but they haven’t removed. They keep talking about removing the bat signal. He’s like, “No. No.”

Laci (01:33:14):

No, it’s my special friend.

Matt (01:33:16):

So this guy, he meets Gordon for the first time and says like, “Hey-” It’s a big

Laci (01:33:20):

Police force.

Matt (01:33:22):

Congressman’s disappeared. Run away.

Laci (01:33:25):

Why is he the one delivering that message?

Matt (01:33:28):

And Gordon’s like, “Yeah, the police are so. Things are going so well in this city because finally we’ve made crime. We have teeth to fight crime.”

Laci (01:33:36):

Right. I just want to give a dyslexia moment here. It doesn’t help that his name is Gordon, and that guy’s name is Gordon. And I keep calling him Jordan and I don’t know what to do. Warden?

Matt (01:33:47):

Jogo.

Laci (01:33:48):

JoGo. Yes, his name is Jogo.

Matt (01:33:51):

So Jo Go, because the police don’t have anything to do these days. Commissioner –

Laci (01:33:57):

Jaywalker.

Matt (01:33:59):

Commissioner, a congressman’s run away and his wife’s real mad at him. The roast is getting cold. And he’s like, “Yeah. Yeah. I miss when things used to be real bad around here.”

Laci (01:34:07):

Look at his face. He’s like, “Knock, knock. Does somebody want to get glazed? I got compliments for you, sir.” He’s been dying for this moment.

Matt (01:34:16):

And Gordon consensus, he’s like, “You have something you want to ask me, don’t you, son?

Laci (01:34:19):

You want to be my best friend, boyfriend, kind of my son, don’t

Matt (01:34:22):

You?” Always calling him son. Son.

Laci (01:34:24):

He does miss his child.

Matt (01:34:26):

My son doesn’t live here no more. He was my

Laci (01:34:27):

Favorite of all three humans that I interact with, but –

Matt (01:34:30):

My damn wife, Barbara, took the kids away to Cleveland.

Laci (01:34:33):

You tell a girl that the son’s your favorite and she’s all mad at you. You fake your death and it’s the end of the world. Women.

Matt (01:34:43):

I want to know about the night he disappeared. Why did he just vanish? Don’t you want to know who he was? I know exactly who he was. He was the Batman.

Laci (01:34:52):

You know what though? This tracks, this guy, he’s come of age. He went through the group homes and he has this anger in him and he’s been put through the system and he’s just trying to find. I just want a sliver of respect. And so being a cop makes perfect sense. I have anger and I need respect. I’m going to be a cop. And that he had this moment where he just really thought he figured out who Batman was and it’s just been itching him for eight years or however. That’d be long. At first I’m like, “This is some handy fucking talk you’ve got planned for this guy you’ve never met.” But I’m like, “No, this is probably where you’d start.” I’m dying to know if it was Bruce Wayne. That’s what my money’s been on. So Gordon, I haven’t met you yet, but Bruce Wayne?

Matt (01:35:39):

Yeah. And I think Gordon does know it. I read a comic book. I’ve been reading lots of Batman comics. Batman year one, which Nolan was very inspired by. And it’s at the beginning of Batman’s career of working with Gordon. And Gordon is told very early on, “Hey, maybe it’s Bruce Wayne.” And he’s like, “Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.” And then basically Batman saves his kid. So he has decided he probably is Bruce Wayne. I’m not going to investigate any further into that. Of course.

Laci (01:36:07):

Right, right. He’s safe. I know he’s a good guy. I don’t want to know. He’s doing the lawyer thing. Don’t tell me, don’t say it in front of me. He wants plausible deniability. And if he’s ever tortured, he wants to be able to say, “I don’t know.”

Matt (01:36:20):

And he just likes the idea of the Batman. Wants that to just exist as its own thing. A symbol.

Laci (01:36:24):

Right. Let’s not complicate things. Plus, even if I know it’s Bruce Wayne, he’s still going to talk like this for some fucking reason. Man, does he do that a lot in this movie? Because I even made the comment like, everyone fucking knows who he is in this movie, but in front of everyone, don’t touch the thermostat.

Matt (01:36:41):

You could figure it out. If you’re somebody like John Blake, and for him, it’s just, I looked in his eyes and I knew. But if you lived in this world, especially if you had the internet, it’d be pretty easy to figure out.

Laci (01:36:52):

Well, and if you really cared about it.

Matt (01:36:54):

Right. So it’s the next day and Alfred is taking Bruce’s continental breakfast, his picture of OJ, but

Laci (01:36:59):

Bruce is in his bed. No, he did not. Oh, okay. I was just saying this starts the SAS train because he in a different movie would bring that plate down and he’s like, “Oh, this motherfucker here.” He could at least leave a note. And he made his bed just to fucking tell me how much he doesn’t need my help.

Matt (01:37:16):

I was going to ask you, do you think he made the bed himself or does this say he hasn’t been to bed?

Laci (01:37:20):

No. This is him saying, “Alfred, I don’t need you. I asked you why you let this woman up here because I do not want people to know I’m up here. I don’t feel like dealing with people. You keep letting him up here and you give me sass Alfred by saying, well, baby, if you made your own bed. And guess what? I made it. So now you’ve listened to me and you keep people away from me. He’s being a dick. That’s why Alfred doesn’t bring him any food.

Matt (01:37:42):

Get your own damn fruitloads this morning, Master Wayne. So he goes to the bat cave, hasn’t been here in years, but there’s Bruce looking like Phantom of the Opera at the big computer terminal. Look, Alfred, I pulled her up. Selena Kyle, she’s a great jewel thief, but the ground’s shrinking under her feet. And Alfred has no fucking time for this. He’s like, just call the bloody cops then. But he’s like – Have you

Laci (01:38:04):

Seen yourself lately?

Matt (01:38:06):

He’s like, no, listen, she wasn’t after the necklace. She wanted my fingerprints. The necklace was a bonus.

Laci (01:38:13):

Oh, he’s so edging. He’s like, that’s hot as shit.

Matt (01:38:17):

One of the crucial elements of Batman is he’s the world’s greatest detective. And that’s been something Nolan has not emphasized at all in his movies. I think this is him throwing the fans a bone. Look, Bruce is doing fucking computer work and stuff. So see how smart he is.

Laci (01:38:31):

He went on Duck Duck Go and typed in

Matt (01:38:35):

Gotham.

Laci (01:38:35):

Jewelthy.

Matt (01:38:37):

Look, Alfred.

Laci (01:38:39):

Fuck.

Matt (01:38:40):

They’ll buy my gold. No questions asked. Oh. Yeah, he’s doing detective work and already the movie feels way more like a sequel to Batman Begins Than The Dark Night. We have so much of the iconography from Batman Begins. I

Laci (01:38:53):

Think that’s why they did it. They needed to place you in the first one.

Matt (01:38:57):

But Alfred’s not behaving like it’s Batman Begins. He’s not going along with it anymore. He’s like, “Can you bloody well go outside, my God?”

Laci (01:39:03):

He only has one person to interact with and that guy’s been in a fucking mood for eight years. He’s tired.

Matt (01:39:08):

He’s like, “But Alfred, I can’t. Rachel, she’s dead and I loved her. You know she loved me.”

Laci (01:39:14):

Also read between the lines, Bruce. He swore to your parents that he would take care of you. It didn’t say once you became an adult, he’s free to go. And he doesn’t work like that. He has expressly told you he didn’t want you to come here and he wants you to go live your life. You moping around in that fucking nasty ass robe for eight years means he is here for eight years. He’s not getting a break. He’s just taking care of you. Release him.

Matt (01:39:39):

Yeah. I should be in fucking- Fucking

Laci (01:39:41):

Release him.

Matt (01:39:41):

He should be in hospice right now, Master Wayne, and you’re taking care of him and wiping his ass, but he has to be wiping your ass. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t

Laci (01:39:47):

Get a retirement because you are a sad little boy.

Matt (01:39:51):

And you’re right, it’s a life dead. Yes. If he could just speak to the ghost of Thomas Wayne, release me.

Laci (01:39:57):

Because he does care and he does want to know that Bruce Wayne is fine, but him just soaking around and staying in Gotham, it just means. Yeah, he has to stay too. I don’t even know that he takes a holiday.

Matt (01:40:10):

He used to when Bruce was gone when he was partying with pina coladas with Morgan Freeman in the mansion. Every following evening I go to a cafe and order a frene pranka.

Laci (01:40:20):

That’s another fucking clue that he is saying, “When you weren’t here, I actually got days off. And now because you fight crime or when you did, I was on call all the time. And now because you’re suicidal, I am on call all the time. And you keep hosting things here and you’re not attending them. So be a shut-in and be easy to take care of or fucking be a socialite and be fun to be around. Why are you both? I have to keep up this manner. I have to hire extra help after. Make sure there’s a buffet. I am the fucking liaison for all this shit.”

Matt (01:40:59):

In the dark night, I didn’t mention this in the episode. There’s just a moment where Bruce is getting ready for his party for Harvey Dent and Alfred catches up with him and it’s the happiest you’ve seen Michael Kane in any of these movies. I don’t know, he seems so joyed to be throwing this party. I think Alfred wants Bruce, he wants all the action. You’re having fun. We’re having all these people over. I get to order all the staff around. It’s so much fucking fun.

Laci (01:41:26):

Yes, but I’ve got a happy master who

Matt (01:41:28):

Wants to

Laci (01:41:28):

Be doing it. But instead you’ve given me this halfway bullshit where I’ve got all the responsibility, none of the fun.

Matt (01:41:35):

Yo look at me and I look at you. We won’t say nothing, but we both know. You were happy. And I finished my friend and I bring God. All right. So there’s a boy’s home where Jo-Go goes because Jo-Go finds a body washed up in the sewers. It’s a teenager from the boys’ home. Goes to the boys’ home.

Laci (01:41:53):

Because he tells this brother. Yeah. So he died. Yeah, he dies

Matt (01:41:57):

Sometimes. Yeah. We can’t keep kids after age 16. The Wayne Foundation money dried up. And he’s like, why? Why would Wayne do that? Well, there was this kid who was the younger brother of the guy who drowned. So he’s like, “Why was your brother in the tunnels?” And his brother’s like, “Yeah, they say you can live down there.” They say there’s work down there. And he’s like, “Okay.” And the kid’s drawing a bat symbol. It

Laci (01:42:22):

Reminds them of him.

Matt (01:42:23):

The legend of Batman lives on. Anne Hathaway, Selena Kyle is going to meet with this slimy crime guy. She’s delivering Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints. And this is the best Anne Hathaway scene in the movie because they threatened her. They’re going to kill her right there. We don’t keep loose ends. They’re about to shoot her. But she brought in the missing congressman and she’s like, oh, they’re looking for that guy. And

Laci (01:42:46):

You just used my cell phone,

Matt (01:42:47):

You

Laci (01:42:47):

Fucking idiot.

Matt (01:42:49):

And the cops arrive. Well, she outfights them and shoots some of them dead. And then the cops arrive and she instantly drops to the ground and screams like a. And it’s perfect use of Anne Hathaway, the most expressive face ever, screaming and hysterics.

Laci (01:43:03):

It’s like a cock while door, “You will be okay.” He leaves her.

Matt (01:43:07):

So then the cops arrive, including Gordon, and he’s like, “Look, there’s a manhole. Let’s go down this manhole to look for the crooks.” And it goes down into the sewers and then immediately gets captured by sewer thugs. And we see their little sewer empire where you can get work. The footclan is there. Shredder is there ultimately. What

Laci (01:43:24):

Is the good of being a commissioner if you got to do all this shit? Can you just send guys down the hole?

Matt (01:43:28):

So bored. So bored. He wants this so badly.

Laci (01:43:31):

Oh my God, yes. Sewer crime. Fuck yes.

Matt (01:43:33):

Finally, sewer crime. Batman

Laci (01:43:34):

Plus sewer crime. I was always promised this. I was promised this. If you’re not going to give me a penguin or a two-face who lives in the sewers, you got to give me –

Matt (01:43:41):

Would it kill you to get me a two-face?

Laci (01:43:43):

We got so many sewers in this city.

Matt (01:43:46):

Bane is there and starts lecturing him. No, no, no. Bane is there and starts, he’s mad at one of hions.He’s like, “Look, boss, I brought you the police commissioner.” It’s

Laci (01:43:54):

Like, well, now I got to kill three of you stupid

Matt (01:43:56):

Ass. You killed. You brought the police commissioner? You brought him here to my house. But Gordon escapes, flees into the sewer, washes out. She’s

Laci (01:44:07):

Like, “I gave you all boys a set of jacks. That way, in case anyone caught you in the sewer, you could crouch down and pretend you were just playing jacks and you were doing some kind of synchronized dance with each other.” Anything to tell them like, “No, there’s not a city down here. We’re just guys who hang out in this sewer.”

Matt (01:44:25):

What are you doing at that computer station?

Laci (01:44:27):

We got jacks. We’re just playing mine sweeper.

Matt (01:44:31):

Well, first, Bane searches his person and finds his speech from the other night. The Truth About Harvey Dent by James Gordon. And he’s like, “Watch this. Ooh.” So Gordon water slides out of the sewer and is found by John

Laci (01:44:44):

Blake. I though he was fine. I didn’t know he was near death when he’s rushing around.

Matt (01:44:50):

Yeah. And I don’t even know what hapened. He just bumped his butt.

Laci (01:44:52):

Just a

Matt (01:44:52):

Lot of business

Laci (01:44:53):

Water. He was hitting things and then he slid out face first. That’s not going to feel good.

Matt (01:44:58):

He can feel it. The evil is rising and there’s only one person who can help us, and that’s Batman. And there’s only one person who could help the commissioner, and that’s Batman. And I know who Batman is. So he goes and knocks on the door and Alfred’s like, “What the fuck do you want?” And he’s like, “I’d like to see Bruce Wayne now.” And he’s like, “Oh yeah. Well, how about I get a warrant for the investigation into Harvey Dent’s murder?”

Laci (01:45:19):

Yikes. And

Matt (01:45:19):

Alfred’s like, “Rock de Swaisha.”

Laci (01:45:21):

Meow.

Matt (01:45:22):

So Blake goes to see Bruce, tells him about Commissioner Gordon being shot. He was babbling about an underground army and a masked man called Bane. Shouldn’t you be telling your commanding officers? He’s like, “No, they don’t take me seriously.” They didn’t

Laci (01:45:37):

Take him seriously either, Gordon.

Matt (01:45:39):

Yeah. Right. Well, didn’t they?

Laci (01:45:41):

No, because he apologizes for it. I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you.

Matt (01:45:44):

That’s right. Th’s right. It’s not that they’re

Laci (01:45:46):

Not taking Jogo seriously. He doesn’t even exist to them.

Matt (01:45:50):

Right. There’s the whole thing with –

Laci (01:45:52):

He’s just

Matt (01:45:52):

Who found them. Yeah. There was that whole thing where Gordon is, he’s a wartime commissioner.

Laci (01:45:58):

We’re in peace time. We don’t need that storyline. That storyline is. And then he goes and gets him and he’s like, “Come on, you got to fight.” “No, no, I’m going to stay here with my wife. You got to fight. “And he shows up in his blues with his fucking white gloves because he’s finally learned,” Yes, if I’m going to really lead these cops, I got to show up. All of it. Delete it. Who cares about this man? Who cares that commissioner was going to get to retire one day? Fucking

Matt (01:46:25):

Give a

Laci (01:46:25):

Shit.

Matt (01:46:26):

I mean, there’s too many things in this movie. It’s too long of a movie. That’s

Laci (01:46:31):

One

Matt (01:46:32):

To delete. I like the idea and nolan is obsessed with the idea of you just get too old and it’s not like you change, but suddenly people no longer need you because of what you did. It happens to Oppenheimer in that movie, the whole of you either die here or live long enough. Yeah.

Laci (01:46:53):

Yeah. Yeah.

Matt (01:46:54):

Or like Winston Churchill getting voted out of office right before World War II ends. You led us through the war and then they voted him out. Now

Laci (01:47:02):

You just remind us of the stinky

Matt (01:47:03):

War.

Laci (01:47:05):

Sure. It’s well observed and it’s meaningful to him. But if there’s a thread to cut, that’s really the only one except for the plot to get his. Okay. So the plot to get his fingerprints is two things that it does well. It shows all that Anne Hathaway can offer in her planning and what she’s capable of doing. And then it gives the reason for Bruce Wayne to be broke. But what you can take out of that is I don’t need the scene of you at the fucking shareholder house and this weasely man trying to give you this, but then Bane killed. I don’t need the shareholder guy. There’s someone I got to cut from this.You could steal that, steal Bruce Wayne’s money, have that plan without this man. There’s too many white men in this movie. There are white men who are someone like an actor I’ve seen before.

Laci (01:47:55):

That’s what’s distracting. You

Matt (01:47:58):

Got Ben Mendelsohn and you’ve got the. I don’t remember the guy’s name, the guy who works for him. He plays Dagot. And I always in my memory think, oh, he’s a mobster. No, he’s not a mobster. The mob’s gone. He’s just a crooked businessman. He’s just like, oh. Which just means he’s a mobster by any other name. So Blake tells him Gordon needs you. He needs the Batman. Yeah. I know you’re the Batman. One day Bruce Wayne came to my orphanage. Okay.

Laci (01:48:20):

You don’t have to

Matt (01:48:20):

Say the whole thing. Yeah. And

Laci (01:48:22):

I – But I’m tracking it. It’s not stupid. I like these moments they have together. They do seem to get each other.

Matt (01:48:30):

It’s very good. It’s about I could see the lie behind the face you were wearing in public because I understood because my dad was murdered.

Laci (01:48:38):

Sure. And just the links you went to to get out your rage in a helpful way, I am doing that too. I became a police officer. I’ve got rage and that’s not going away because therapy doesn’t exist in this world. But I need a place where I can be a good person and still have rage and that not make me bad. And that’s not saying a lot about what the fuck cops are. I need someone to take this out on and not be the bad guy.

Matt (01:49:03):

Yeah.

Laci (01:49:03):

That’s fucked.

Matt (01:49:04):

The movie isn’t saying that though because the movie thinks cops are good.

Laci (01:49:08):

Yeah, but it’s saying it and thinking it’s okay to feel that way. Because these are bad guys, Matt. Bad guys deserve rage.

Matt (01:49:14):

Of course. Of course.

Laci (01:49:16):

You need to meet rage with rage, not with a level head and resources. You need angry, angry boys who became angry, angry men.

Matt (01:49:24):

Sure. Yes. And-

Laci (01:49:26):

And it’s talking normal and thinking it’s okay.

Matt (01:49:29):

And as an orphan, what the hell else was I going to do? This is one of the only jobs available to anybody. The only –

Laci (01:49:36):

Right, I didn’t get an education.

Matt (01:49:37):

Yeah. I couldn’t become a Batman even though – Could be an

Laci (01:49:40):

Angry, angry doctor.

Matt (01:49:41):

We need the Batman to come back. And then he leaves. And also he’s like, “Hey also, Wayne Foundation stopped funding the boys’ home.” What’s up

Laci (01:49:48):

With that?

Matt (01:49:49):

Write some more checks, please. Okay, thanks. Thanks. Love you. Bye. So Bruce talks to Alfred. He’s like, “Alfred, you ran that name Bane.” He’s like, “Yes, Master Wayne. He was behind a coup in West Africa that secured mining operations for our friend John Gaggett. Now John Daggett’s brought him here. By the way, why did we stop funding the boys’ home?”

Laci (01:50:08):

Just the one, the giant ass city and there’s one.

Matt (01:50:11):

And he says, “That’s because the boys’ home is funded from the profits from Wayne Enterprises and we don’t have any more damn profits at the company because you’re a business genius and you’ve absented yourself. The company needs your expertise, Master Wayne.” They have a whole

Laci (01:50:24):

Board of directors. How are there no profits?

Matt (01:50:28):

What Morgan Freeman says is like, “Because all we do is direct all our profits into R&D. I’m just making fucking weapons for a Batman who doesn’t exist anymore. I guess that’s what he’s been doing for eight years.” Well, and then the whole-What

Laci (01:50:41):

Is everybody else

Matt (01:50:41):

Working on? The stupid, the fucking the nuclear arc reactor thing.

Laci (01:50:45):

Don’t hate it. I hate it. It’s such a dumb. It shouldn’t exist. It is just the fucking nuclear bomb. You literally made Oppenheimer before making Oppenheimer. It’s so boring.

Matt (01:50:55):

Because I watched Avengers also on the same night I watched this. The phrase Arc Reactor is also used repeatedly in that movie. Jesu Christ. No phrase will make me fall asleep faster than Arc Reactor. So Bruce is like, “You know what? I’m thinking I’m back. Make me a doctor appointment, Alfred.” And he’s like, “Okay.”

Laci (01:51:11):

You can’t fucking pick up the phone yourself. You made your bed.

Matt (01:51:14):

Hello, doctor. It’s me. So he goes to see the doctor.

Laci (01:51:19):

I only want to see a doctor that is one floor up from.

Matt (01:51:23):

Yeah. Make sure it’s at the same hospital that Jim Gordon’s at. Okay? But they

Laci (01:51:26):

Picked the guy from Reno 911, who I love. Why are you the doctor?

Matt (01:51:30):

He played the doctor in Memento as well, which we didn’t mention back then. Shame on us, Thomas Lennon. I love him. As the doctor. And the doctor’s like, “Yeah, your knee’s all fucked up in a million places. Also, you have scars all over your body and your dick don’t work. Yeah, man, you got problems.” He’s like, “Well, okay. Thanks so much. Leave me in this room, won’t you?” And he’s like, “Yeah, okay.” And then Batman puts on a ski mask and rappels down out the window and into Jim Gordon’s room. And Gordon’s in his hospital bed and he’s like, “It’s my old friend Batman in a different mask.” But I’ve always loved Batman visiting him without his Batman mask on. It’s like, “Yeah. Oh yeah. Hey, hi.”

Laci (01:52:06):

It’s me. I don’t have the black stuff around my eyes, but pretend to do okay.

Matt (01:52:11):

There’s evil rising from where we tried to bury it. The Batman has to come back. So Catwoman’s going to get ready for a cool night out of being Catwoman at a big gala. And then Bruce Wayne shows up at the galley like, Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne, what a scoop. Snap the pictures. It’s an ice wide shut party. Everyone’s wearing plate masks. And then Maryanne Coatiard comes up and she’s like, “Oh, Bruce Wayne, you could do so much with your money.” She’s always harassing him about donations and you could do so much good well, don’t you know? It’s a clean energy. And he’s like, “Yeah. Okay, I guess.”

Laci (01:52:45):

Basically he’s like, “I know you’re the most eligible bachelorette. I’m the most eligible bachelor. You want to do good shit. You’re a nice lady. Alfred seems to like you. I’m supposed to date you

Matt (01:52:55):

Now.” Alfred won’t stop talking about you, but I’m really worried

Laci (01:52:58):

About catwoman. I’m listening. I’m listening. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matt (01:53:02):

So he goes and he starts dancing with Selena Kyle because he sees her and she’s wearing a mask that looks –

Laci (01:53:08):

And his pearls.

Matt (01:53:09):

His mom’s – Especially like a cat mask and his mom’s pearls. Well,

Laci (01:53:12):

It is helpful that her goggle she uses to see slide up her head and then become cat ears. She’s the first kind of gamer. The gamers now that on YouTube, they all wear the cat ears on their cans. I didn’t

Matt (01:53:24):

Know

Laci (01:53:24):

That. Oh, she started that.

Matt (01:53:26):

She’s dancing with a guy and he just comes and he’s like, “Let me borrow her.” And he starts dancing with her and she’s like, “Jesus Christ, are you as fucking wet as I am?”

Laci (01:53:33):

I like how this happens all the time in movies. And it’s one of those things that should be added to the list of nobody drives their car like this. All the things where it just doesn’t make sense in real life. But that guy’s like, “Come on.” And then whenever she leaves, he’s like, “You wore her out.”

Matt (01:53:53):

Say a word about Christian Bale. I think he’s excellent in this movie. I think this is the best he is in any of the movies.

Laci (01:53:58):

He’s got the most to do without the mask

Matt (01:54:00):

On. Yes, that’s true. Still, all Batman movies have the tendency where Batman slips into the background because it’s more interested in the villains and more interested in other stuff. And I think that’s true of this movie too.

Laci (01:54:13):

He’s kind of a villain in this one though. He’s a part of the problem. He is in no position, not as the fucking head of Wayne Enterprises, nor as just the ward of Alfred, to be depressed for eight years. That is selfish. Just because Batman had to go away doesn’t mean Bruce Wayne did. And you let your company go under, and that means that things like the boys’ home are no longer funded. And it means I don’t get to take a vacation. I think they’re spending time a little bit saying, “You’re kind of a bad guy.”

Matt (01:54:44):

Yeah. But he’s doing it. I think that it’s also absolving him because of the lie that Alfred told him. It’s Alfred’s fault. He should have told him Rachel’s dead. Yes, of course it’s stupid. But I think that it is, if you look real hard, you can realize that when you, like his dad said, “I leave the company to the running of the company and more interested men and that’s what he’s doing. And what do you know? They’re developing nuclear weapons and stuff without me there to check up on things.” Well,

Laci (01:55:11):

I mean, to be fair though, what he developed was the world’s most advanced spying system.

Matt (01:55:16):

Yeah, he’s also not.

Laci (01:55:17):

Right. Now that you forgot how to do that.

Matt (01:55:19):

You

Laci (01:55:20):

Guys, if we’re out of ideas, I do have this one thing.

Matt (01:55:23):

So they’re having some sexy dancing and we get a sense of who Selena Kyle is. She steals from rich people and she starts lecturing Bruce about the ruling class is about to face a reckoning. A storm is coming, Mr. Wayne. And all the people who have so much are going to wonder how that happens.

Laci (01:55:42):

Okay, okay, okay, great.

Matt (01:55:44):

And he’s like, “Hey man, don’t judge the people in this room. Looks can be deceiving. They’re actually nice fellows. They’re my friends.” And is shot really cool. It does look apocalyptic as we look around at these rich fucks in their masks as they crack crabs. Giant crab

Laci (01:55:57):

Loss. The biggest crab loss. Yeah. They seem real down to earth.

Matt (01:56:01):

Yeah. So she’s like, “A storm is coming. Wow.” Do

Laci (01:56:04):

You think she’s. I mean, she doesn’t know who Bane is yet, right?

Matt (01:56:07):

No.

Laci (01:56:08):

Yeah. So she

Matt (01:56:08):

Just thinks this is

Laci (01:56:10):

Going to end.

Matt (01:56:11):

This is what annoys me about this character is it teases her as having an ideology that it abandons, including I think her being Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend at the end. The person that suggests she is here seems to me would not be okay being the girlfriend of a billionaire running around. Fine.

Laci (01:56:33):

But then she gets the storm that she thinks she wants and her weird little best friend says, “This is what we wanted. It’s chaos. It’s crazy.” And you can tell in her eyes, she’s like, “Yeah, I’m also not fulfilled with this.” I think she thinks she knows what she wants and it’s her life to be different and for other people’s lives to be different so that we’re all a little more equal. And then she sees it and it happens. And then she’s looking through the rich people stuff and she sees just a family. She doesn’t see a rich family. She sees a family with a broken photo. And those people who were drug out of here and terrified and now who knows where they are and they were probably exiled and they didn’t deserve that either. They were born rich. That’s not their fault. We’re all just people.

Laci (01:57:09):

I though this would equalize things instead of just swung the pendulum the other way and I still feel empty inside. This is injustice. So anyway, I think she just needed four months of going, okay, I didn’t like the storm. Let’s go be cats and bats.

Matt (01:57:23):

And let’s just hang out at cafes and stuff.

Laci (01:57:25):

Until Alfred finally fucking sees. Can’t you just call him?

Matt (01:57:30):

She’s not actually with him. He’s just like, “Can you go to the cafe with me every day please?” I need

Laci (01:57:33):

Him to think I’m fine. I’m going to wear like a Tommy Bahama shirt,

Matt (01:57:36):

So it’s like I’m just chill. You don’t have to say anything to me, but yeah, he just pays her to do that. A storm is coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batting down the hatches. I think that maybe this is the beginning of Nolan’s fascination with the end is coming. Everything is about to come crashing down. In the next movie, Interstellar, the world’s about to end. Dunkirk, literally, we’re on the beach and it’s Armageddon. That is World War II. Tenet, the future is attacking us. Oppenheimer, we’re building the implement of our destruction. The Odyssey, the Bronze Age is about to end and the Greek dark gauges are about to begin. So I think this might be the beginning of ever since then, he’s been kind of making movies about everything ending.

Laci (01:58:17):

Yeah. Rather than just about exploring people’s minds and what makes a person a person.

Matt (01:58:22):

Yeah. So it’s becoming more external. What makes

Laci (01:58:24):

Reality a reality? What makes a person a person? All that kind of stuff.

Matt (01:58:27):

So Bruce goes to the office the next day to visit Lucius and Lucius Fox, Morgan Freeman’s like, “Mr. Wayne, holy shit.” And he’s like, “Hey, why’d you lose all my money?” I’m like, “Well, you funneled your whole budget into a fusion project that you muffball. Your company’s unlikely to thrive. You got to turn on the machine.” And he’s like, “I can’t, Lucius.” And he’s like, “Oh, well –

Laci (01:58:46):

Why? Why?

Matt (01:58:47):

Miranda Tate’s a big supporter or whatever. You should really go on a date with her, Bruce. Go. Show her the machine.”

Laci (01:58:53):

They are so ready for him not to be a bummer. Everyone’s just in limbo right now. We’re all just milling away at this giant tower of a company that isn’t really doing anything or making any money. Alfred is milling around at the fucking mansion. You are the juice. Do something.

Matt (01:59:11):

You’re right. Yeah.

Laci (01:59:13):

Pass it on or go away.

Matt (01:59:15):

Just row after row of symmetrical empty buildings. You built this place? Yeah, for 50 years, me and my wife. It is. It’s limbo from inception. Yeah. A mausoleum to me because I’m so sad because Rachel’s dead. So yeah, turn on the machine, Mr. Wayne. I just can’t. All right.

Laci (01:59:34):

But you can be Batman for a little bit. Asshole.

Matt (01:59:37):

Anything else? And he’s like, “No, why?” He’s like, “Usually when you come here, you ask me to do some Batman shook.” And he’s like, “No, I’m retired.” “Well, let me show you some cool shit anyway. Okay? “So they go down to the armory and he’s like,” Yeah, I’ve spent years just buying weapons to keep them from falling into the wrong hands. So I just bought tons of weapons and here they are safely here in this warehouse. “Right. It’s

Laci (01:59:58):

Not like a bad guy could get in here and You’re the old

Matt (02:00:00):

Bee. Never. So convenient. And guess what, Mr. Wayne? We got this. I call it the bat. And yes, Mr. Wayne, it comes in black and it works fine except for the autopilot. I

Laci (02:00:12):

Wonder why we’re bringing this up more than once.

Matt (02:00:14):

We keep bringing up the autopilot that doesn’t work. So Bruce is like, I’m getting kind of excited again about maybe being Batman. Alfred – It’d

Laci (02:00:26):

Be weird if Bruce Wayne took that to work, right? It’d be weird.

Matt (02:00:30):

Alfred, what would you think if I was like Batman again? No.

Laci (02:00:34):

I think we were in a vicious cycle. I told you about my cherry bottoms.

Matt (02:00:41):

He’s like, Mr. Wayne, if you’re going to confront Bane, you should know there’s a pit in an ancient part of the world that Bane is from. Okay? Why

Laci (02:00:50):

Does he know that? Because he

Matt (02:00:51):

Googled it. Well, he knows how to do research. In a way that Bruce doesn’t. Tells him about this pit in an ancient – It’s got a

Laci (02:00:57):

Child block on it. Alfred.

Matt (02:01:00):

Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Damn it.

Laci (02:01:03):

Zero, zero, zero, one. Damn it.

Matt (02:01:05):

In a more ancient part of the world, there’s a pit. And occasionally men go in and then the pit sends something back. And you’re like, okay, he’s being metaphorical. He’s like, no, I’m being very, very literal. Sometimes the pet will send out Bane. Born and raised in hell. No one knows how he escaped, but they do know he was once trained by your mentor, Razao Goul.

Laci (02:01:24):

They know all that, but you’re telling me that that fucking bitch knew how to do all this misinformation across the internet? You know this story, but it’s not even the story. That’s not real. She came out of the pit.

Matt (02:01:36):

Yeah. I mean, he came out eventually, but he didn’t escape like the – Right,

Laci (02:01:41):

But this is not his legacy, it’s hers. Yeah. So what? She did a bunch of counterintelligence of herself online in case someone researched her? Yeah.

Matt (02:01:51):

It’s like a restaurant that gets a bad review. Hey, we need to remove this. So let’s flood the gates with five star reviews. Yeah. Actually, it was Bane who escaped the prison, not me. See

Laci (02:02:01):

How it looks like a little boy? It’s a twiny little boy. Looks like a little boy.

Matt (02:02:04):

Anyway, it’s excommunicated. Any man too extreme for Rajaku is not to be trifled with. And I like this whole thing of like, you want to be Batman, but you’re old and shitty and washed up and your brain don’t work and your dick don’t work. And I don’t think you have it in you. And he’s like, you’re afraid I’ll go out there and fail? No, I’m afraid that you won’t do. Alfred disappears from this movie after about 45 minutes, but I think he has way more to do in those 45 minutes than he did in the dark night. I think Nolan makes it up to him for not giving him much to do in the last movie. All right, so the stock exchange. Glen Powell’s there. He’s like, I’m a stockbroker. Man, here I am. Yeah. I’m thinking of shortened Wayne Enterprises stock because I’m a bitch.

Matt (02:02:48):

Bruce Wayne went to a party and then the stock exchange gets invaded and Glen Powell’s like, “This is a stock exchange, man. There’s no money you can steal.” And Bayne’s like, “Rauler, then why are you people here?”

Laci (02:03:02):

And

Matt (02:03:02):

He hacks into the mainframe and he does some stock shit. And now he’s in an emptied Wayne enterprise of all its money or something. And

Laci (02:03:09):

You’re telling me that at the stock exchange, it requires Wayne’s fingerprints. He has to go there to sell his own shares. They needed the fingerprints there at the stock exchange. Because there’s a little Wayne booth where he goes, he goes, “I’m selling three.”

Matt (02:03:25):

Look, I don’t know how the economy works. If you’re a financial expert, weigh in and tell us how this is wrong. It all checks out to me.

Laci (02:03:31):

Is there a Wayne room? Whenever you wanted to sample music back in the day, you’d go in a little booth. Is there a little booth? If you have a certain amount of income, you get a little stock exchange booth. And

Matt (02:03:40):

Then Bane flees with a motorcycle and a little laptop. He’s still doing some hijacking, some hacking as he’s on his motorcycle. And fucking car chase ensues and the old cop’s like, “I bet Batman’s going to come back. Yep. There’s Batman. Now Batman’s.” No,

Laci (02:03:55):

He saw that Batman was back and then said, “You’re in for a treat.”

Matt (02:03:58):

Batman has arrived 46 minutes into the movie. Batman is here. And then Catwoman. People are watching it on TV. Catwoman’s watching it on TV while she’s burgling. She’s like, “Bergle, burgle, burgle. Oh, say. Okay.” Batman, he catches one of the motorcycle guys, steals his palm pilot, and he’s like, “Oh no, he’s doing bank transfers. It’s my

Laci (02:04:20):

Bank.” Wayne Bank. Not the Wayne Bank.

Matt (02:04:24):

And we get to see the bat copter fly. It is really cool. I love the way that it moves. All right. So later that night, Catwoman is going to meet Dagot, Ben Mendelson. And she’s like, “Hey, I brought you Mr. Wayne’s fingerprint, I think.” Right.

Laci (02:04:38):

Going to dress him again and be like, “Look, you guys fucking dicked me out of this thing. Said it doesn’t exist or whatever.You didn’t give me what you said you were going to give me. Now I’m here in person and I’m serious. Give me the fucking thing.”

Matt (02:04:49):

And the thing, it is this McGuffin. I think this is another element that the movie could lose, but Nolan’s so obsessed with this idea. But

Laci (02:04:56):

No, but this goes to your thing. Her ideology doesn’t make sense, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, she was born in a place that made her do things that are bad. Now the bad thing follows her around. What she really wants is a clean slate now that she’s got money. She can go have that clean slate and not be this thing and do what she would’ve done if she’d been born with money. So I think that’s always there, Matt. This desire for her to leave this, not do crime.

Matt (02:05:19):

Yes, I agree with that. Go to

Laci (02:05:20):

Petty or Florence. I keep

Matt (02:05:22):

Forgetting. Florence, this thing, I want a USB stick that you stick in a computer, it makes all the bad things I just go away. She doesn’t

Laci (02:05:30):

Know what it looks like, Matt. Okay. Well, it’s the phone call from fucking inception. It’s the

Matt (02:05:34):

Fucking widget. And he tells her like, “You really thought that exists, you dumb idiot?” She’s like, “It doesn’t exist. No, no, no.” And so all these thugs show up and they’re going to kill her. But then Batman shows up and she’s going to shoot the guys. And he’s like, “No, no guns. Don’t do that.” And she says, “Where’s the fun in that?”

Laci (02:05:53):

I love all the stuff she does with them. If you’re going to make a person or a woman wear some kind of thing that seems detrimental to her job, at least show why they’re not. And I like it. Yeah,

Matt (02:06:03):

That she can pin his hand up against the wall and he’s – She

Laci (02:06:07):

Puts it around the neck at some point. She uses it on the motorcycle in a cool way.

Matt (02:06:12):

He’s like, “Usually I have to pay for this.

Laci (02:06:14):

Step on my naughty, naughty boy balls.”

Matt (02:06:17):

So Alfred’s still upset because Bruce has been gallivanting around the town in his bat cycle and his bat copter and running over cops and hitting pigeons and stuff. And he’s like, “Listen, man, you’re fucked up. You don’t have it in you anymore. You led the place on a merry chase with a loader new fancy toys from Fox.” He’s like, “But Alfred, I had to get the data to analyze it. Only we can analyze the data.” And he’s like, “No, just give the data to the cops.” And he’s like, “No, because then the cops can weaponize the data.” So Alfred is like, “All right. I can’t –

Laci (02:06:49):

I just want to go home. I want to go to Forwards. Let me leave.”

Matt (02:06:53):

I’m seeing you for the first time, man. I’m starting to really see what a little twit you are. And yeah, you think you can be trusted? You get to make these calls? No, I don’t have to turn this data over to the police. Only I’m smart enough and special enough to analyze it. So no. No. And then Alfred shows Bruce footage of Bay and he’s like, look at this guy. He’s fucking incredible. 10 feet tall. Biceps like pythons. You don’t stand a chance, you bloody fool.

Laci (02:07:17):

Yes. Also, you being around makes it more like him come more often. You already created a joker. Now that legacy created a Bane. And actually you created a bane. You are the reason actually. And you keep making bad things happen to Gotham. Gotham is supposed to go away. And it’s just like what the goddess says in the Odyssey. It’s like, the men are going to die. You just keep prolonging it. Why do you think you get to control this? You are the reason they’re going to die. They’re just going to die. Let Gotham go.

Matt (02:07:51):

Let it burn to the ground. We burn London to the ground.

Laci (02:07:54):

I mean, I know he’s not the reason they needed to get rid of Gotham. They already felt that way. But he’s definitely the reason it went like that. Yeah. It went in a way that was not quick.

Matt (02:08:04):

Bruce is looking at his PDA and he’s like, look at this. All these stock trades in my name, I didn’t authorize this. So Alfred’s like, no, I’m done. I’ve buried enough members of the Wayne family. You’ll leave me? You say only one end of your journey. Leaving is the only way I can make you see that you have to find another way. He’s like, but Alfred, Rachel’s dead. I can’t move on. I can’t do it. And so another very, very, very long-winded, weird, windy thing. What if I told you that Rachel, before she died, she wrote a letter. And in this letter, she said she did not choose you. She chose Harvey dead. I burned that letter. What if I told you that? Are you telling me that?

Laci (02:08:45):

I said, what if?

Matt (02:08:46):

How dare you use Rachel to stop me? And basically, I know I’m saying this to you and you’re going to hate me because of it, but now we can. It might mean saving your life. And he’s so good here. He’s crying. Michael Cain is. And Bruce is like, yeah, well go on then. Get. I don’t want you anymore. And he’s out of the movie. He’s

Laci (02:09:11):

Out of the fucking movie.

Matt (02:09:12):

Until the very, very end. So it’s the next day and Bruce is at his house all alone. No Alfred, no staff. The doorbell rings. Answering his own door. He’s like, “What’s that sound?” And he answers the door and it’s Morgan Friedman. He’s like, “Hey, you don’t have any money anymore, right? They did all this. They bought all the stock and now the stock is in the hands of John Daggett. And now he owns the company. And we can’t let Daggett get his hands on applied sciences because then he’ll have all our weapons.” And Morgan Freeman’s like, “No, no, no. All that stuff’s off the books. But the arc reactor thing, that’s a different story. So we got to get to the office. Look at he split.” Miranda Tate, she’s so beautiful and nice. She’s so

Laci (02:09:54):

Nice. You heard her accent? She’s so good and trustworthy. She

Matt (02:09:57):

Has so much money and we can trust her. She has a board seat. If she gets the shares, then she can steer the company in the right direction. She’ll steward your parents’ legacy. Bruce, she can do it. We can trust her. So they have to show her the arc reactor and the arc reactor is so stupid looking. It looks like Ed 209 from RomOC. I don’t even

Laci (02:10:14):

Care what it fucking looks like. It’s just like with multiverse stuff. You shouldn’t be allowed to have a multiverse.ou shouldn’t be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. It’s just boring. Oh,

Matt (02:10:22):

But it’s not a nuclear weapon, Laci. But it

Laci (02:10:24):

Can be put.

Matt (02:10:25):

Sustainable, free, clean energy. Wow. Fine.That’s

Laci (02:10:28):

What they’ve been saying for years. There’s

Matt (02:10:29):

No

Laci (02:10:29):

Such thing.

Matt (02:10:30):

This is billionaire propaganda. We got to let the billionaires do this because maybe they can come up with free energy forever.

Laci (02:10:35):

They’ve been saying four years that nuclear energy is our way to free. That’s not free. Uranium mining is really, really bad on the fucking environment. It kills everyone within miles and miles. The energy isn’t even that fucking impressive. It’s just a different energy source. That’s it.

Matt (02:10:53):

But the thing about this arc reactor is if you flip a few switches on it, it’ll turn into a bomb.

Laci (02:10:58):

If you have a doctor, he can turn it into a bomb. It’s a very specific doctor. Don’t worry, he’s dead. And look, this thing, we’ve got so many things in place to make sure it’s safe and you can flood it and yay. Okay.

Matt (02:11:11):

But Bruce is broke now. And Morgan Freeman explains like, “Yeah, I mean, long term you can probably prove fraud, but until then, you’re not very liquid, Mr. Wayne.” He’s like, “Well, goddamn. Okay. Can you give me a ride?” So he goes home and his power gets turned off, but Miranda Tate’s waiting for him there and she’s like, “Here I am, a nice lady for you.” Thank

Laci (02:11:31):

You for all the shares. “Thank

Matt (02:11:33):

You. It was very nice of you to give me those chairs. Let’s go sit by the fire. “And they light a nice fire and they have sex that we don’t see. It cuts way past that. And they’re just –

Laci (02:11:44):

And they’re very affectionate with each other though. They seem like they really are into each other. And so I am a little bit confused because I’m feeling all this catwoman energy. But then she’s like,” Let’s just leave. “Then I’m wondering,” Do you mean that? Do you really want to go right now? Are you changing your mind? “Probably not. It’s a test. It’s just so that we think she’s good, I guess. Yeah.

Matt (02:12:06):

It’s just, oh, this is such a good lady. She just wants to be nice to him and take him away to a beach or something. And plus he’s starting to relate to her. Look, you have a scar on your back. That means something, I think. It

Laci (02:12:16):

Means you lived in a hole. When

Matt (02:12:18):

I was a kid, my family had nothing. And when we had a fire, we had everything. He’s like, huh? Okay.

Laci (02:12:25):

I

Matt (02:12:25):

Fell in a hole too.

Laci (02:12:27):

It’s just outside. Your hole’s further away.

Matt (02:12:30):

It’s just like the idea of Bruce Wayne going broke is a good idea to explore in a movie. The movie spends 30 seconds on it and he’s not actually broke. Just his power was turned off. He beat the sister – It’s just

Laci (02:12:43):

Alone, right? Yeah. He

Matt (02:12:44):

Can’t

Laci (02:12:44):

Pay the people who do his stuff, so he’s got to fend for himself more. He’s

Matt (02:12:49):

Fenned

Laci (02:12:49):

For himself a bunch of times, just in very dramatic ways, a way out of the country ways. He doesn’t know how to run a manner. That’s a whole other kind of skill set. I don’t

Matt (02:12:57):

Know anything about running a manner.

Laci (02:13:00):

Or a fucking company.

Matt (02:13:02):

She looks at a picture of Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s like, “Who is this?” He never

Laci (02:13:06):

Answers. Does he? He

Matt (02:13:08):

Doesn’t, no. Since the first time I saw the movie, I though – Why

Laci (02:13:12):

Wouldn’t you know who that is? She tragically died in a really fucking public way. Yeah,

Matt (02:13:16):

I don’t –

Laci (02:13:16):

It was a big deal to this place.

Matt (02:13:18):

That’s a good point. But I’ve always thought, because she appears in multiple pictures. Wouldn’t it be funny if some of the pictures were of Katie Holmes? Half and half. So yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s like, “Hey, I’d love to stay naked with you all day, but I got a date tonight. I got to go do some stuff with Catwoman.” Oh, I’m nothing. He’s got to go meet up with Catwoman that night because she’s going to help him get to Bane. So they meet up in the subway station. He’s like, “This clean slate. Dagot said it doesn’t exist, but it does. My friend Bruce Wayne bought it. He can give it to you. Just show me the way to Bane.” She’s like, “All right, great. Follow me. Follow me. We’ll go see Bane.” But she sells him out. Sells him out to Bane. So

Laci (02:13:56):

Sad.

Matt (02:13:57):

He’s like, “Why?” Selena, why? She

Laci (02:14:00):

Stays and watches and she’s sad. I

Matt (02:14:02):

Had to find a way to stop them from killing me. And this is always the Catwoman Batman dynamic is he’s like, “She’s good. She’s turning things around. She’s being a good person now. Oh, Catwoman.” She

Laci (02:14:13):

Comes from a different place. She’s got to look out for number one. That’s

Matt (02:14:16):

Her.

Laci (02:14:16):

And in her reality, men fuck her over or want to fuck her, and that’s it. I

Matt (02:14:20):

Guess that’s the other thing about them ending up together is these movies are not the comics. These movies are not the Batman mythology. It’s just sort of taking stuff. But the idea that Batman and Catwoman could be happily together – I like

Laci (02:14:33):

That.

Matt (02:14:34):

Doesn’t jive with who they are.

Laci (02:14:36):

That’s not true. That just means that you don’t think growth can happen. And I think he proved himself to her by forgiving her for what he did, for what she did.

Matt (02:14:44):

No, that’s true. And – She

Laci (02:14:45):

Wants forgiveness. She wants a clean slate. That’s her whole fucking thing. And he gave her an amazing thing to be forgiven about. That’s

Matt (02:14:53):

True. That’s a good point. And the whole thing is like, well, but we’re going to treat them like human beings and not icons and symbols and ideas. We’re all

Laci (02:15:02):

Victims of our circumstances. She does not necessarily want to become a criminal. She’s very good at it. She would’ve probably been good at anything she tried to do, but she wasn’t born in a place to do that. So her whole thing is, just treat me like I’m a person. Treat me like I deserve respect and I should be forgiven for all this shit I did because I did it because I had to. And you don’t know what that’s like, Bruce Rillion.

Matt (02:15:25):

It’s just taking out the freak element. And I know that Nolan isn’t interested in that.

Laci (02:15:30):

Meanwhile, look at Bane. He’s

Matt (02:15:32):

Not interested at all.

Laci (02:15:33):

So

Matt (02:15:34):

The big confrontation with Bane here, and Batman is just no match for Bane. He beats the fucking shit out of him instantly. It’s very easy. And Bane tells him, “Beace has costed you strength. Victory has to free to do.” And he starts talking about boring League of Shadows shit. He’s like, “You betrayed us. You betrayed the League of Shadows.” Us, you were excommunicated by a gang of psychopaths. “No, I am the League of Shadows. I’m here to fulfill Rajal Destiny. Another reason I hate that is it just makes the world feel small.

Laci (02:16:05):

Yeah. Here’s this loose end you didn’t tie

Matt (02:16:07):

Up.

Laci (02:16:08):

I’m back. How

Matt (02:16:09):

About expand the world, make it bigger, make this something new. No, no, no. It’s the thing we already knew about. It’s just – Because

Laci (02:16:15):

Bane in the comics is apart from all that, right? He’s just this other.

Matt (02:16:21):

He starts away from all that. Then he does join, and this is just going by Wikipedia, does join a version of the League of Shadows, but it’s not like this. In the comics, famously, Bane broke Batman’s back as we’re looking at this panel right here. And they do it in the movie. He breaks his back. Takes him away to a prison. To a prison. The worst place in the world, this prison. Here’s where I learned the truth about despair, as will you. Long,

Laci (02:16:49):

Long conversation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I love to torture people with hope. Here’s a TV. Watch how I torture your people with hope. It’s all –

Matt (02:16:57):

Here’s your doctor.

Laci (02:16:58):

Okay. But he was only asked to keep him alive, not to heal him. The keeping him alive is part of the torture. It’s the hope.

Matt (02:17:06):

Yeah. So this is supposed to be on the other side of the world, but because the movie’s so shittily edited, you don’t know that. And I’m not complaining about that in a plot hole way. I’m saying you should get a sense distance is being traversed so it feels like something. Instead, we’re just cutting. Now we’re here.

Laci (02:17:22):

Even just holding a little bag of Southwest peanuts when he comes back. Clearly it was an air train.

Matt (02:17:27):

Yeah. I’m just saying, I just want Raiders of the Lost Dark. I want a map of the globe, but them flying on a little plane with the red dots of behind them. So the next scene we’re in Gotham and Selena Kyle is going to prison because she got arrested by Jogo at the airport because Bruce Wayne has disappeared. And John Blake is like, “We got to find Bruce Wayne. Ooh, that woman right over there, Selena Kyle might know.” So arrests her at the airport. You’ve got quite a record, Ms. Kyle. Been in and out of prison since you were 16. And

Laci (02:17:59):

I’m a cop, so that means I get to treat you like fucking anything and use you for fucking anything. And I’m going to put you in the big boys prison. It really is taking a lot of fucking privileges with her.

Matt (02:18:09):

Well, because she breaks out of women’s prisons. They’re not tough enough on her. So she has to go to this prison, Blackgate Prison. But the cops, the guards following her are like, “She’ll do fine here because-” As long

Laci (02:18:20):

As she can cartwheel her way out of whatever. But she’s got to shower with these guys. It’ll be fine. Cartwheels are not sexy. It’s not your spread out pussy just dangling around these men.

Matt (02:18:32):

Back at the prison that Bruce Wayne’s in, he’s being taken care of by Tom Conti, who will go on to play Einstein and Oppenheimer. And he’s telling him, he’s like, “I also, in addition to giving you physical therapy, am here to deliver a lot of exposition.” Yeah, this place, this place, there was a child who was here, a child born into this hell. And Bruce Wayne is like, “Bane.” And the guy doesn’t confirm it.

Laci (02:18:57):

And

Matt (02:18:57):

I hate this. I hate all the weird misdirections about who Bane is and who he was and who the child is and who the mercenary is. Right.

Laci (02:19:05):

Because what do they know? I mean, well, Bane is the one that operates this prison for some reason. He didn’t free everyone for some reason as well. And so he says he’s being paid to keep him alive, but mainly it’s just like, this is so Bane doesn’t kill me as I’m keeping you alive. I

Matt (02:19:21):

Guess so.

Laci (02:19:22):

I don’t know.

Matt (02:19:23):

Yep. Yeah. The thing about this prison is it’s just a giant open hole in the desert and we have a rope and you could climb to your freedom, but no one’s ever successfully made the climb. Because we don’t

Laci (02:19:34):

Have a rope out. We have a rope up. I don’t

Matt (02:19:36):

Know how this rope works.

Laci (02:19:39):

It’s just a harness to make sure if you fall when trying to jump, that you don’t fall to your death. You just fall halfway and the rope catches you.

Matt (02:19:45):

It’s a safety

Laci (02:19:46):

Net.

Matt (02:19:47):

So the people who run the prison set that up for them? No,

Laci (02:19:49):

They just have a fucking rope. The guy

Matt (02:19:51):

In the next cell over says like, “No, someone did escape that hole one time. It was a child.” And Tom Conti’s like, “No, that’s a legend. Nothing more. Here, watch this TV they’ve set up for you to…” It’s Gotham TV News from halfway around the world.

Laci (02:20:03):

Yeah, right. But look, it’s believable because it’s just a little tube TV. Back

Matt (02:20:07):

In Gotham, Miranda Tate and Lucius Fox go to a board meeting, but Bane’s taken over the board. Things are going to be quite different around here. And he demands, “Take me to the reactor. I need you two and I need one more board member to go down to the reactor because that’s the protocol for operating the reactor or whatever.” Right.

Laci (02:20:27):

We need two of y’all to slap it.

Matt (02:20:29):

Yep. And then they slap it and then they bring out Dr. Pavel and he’s like, “Dr. Pavel, can you turn this reactor into a bomb?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” And he goes and he’s like, “Here’s the switch. Bomb. No bomb.”

Laci (02:20:38):

He comes back

Matt (02:20:38):

With

Laci (02:20:39):

Messed up hair and he’s like, “I’ve done it.”

Matt (02:20:41):

It wasn’t easy. And I

Laci (02:20:42):

Swear, look how it looks right here. It looks like kind of like a basketball court, the little reactor inside of there. Yeah.

Matt (02:20:50):

Oh, it does. Yeah. I

Laci (02:20:51):

Swear when he’s done, it’s just like scrambling. It’s just a green light. He’s like, “Did it? Now it’s a

Matt (02:20:56):

Bomb.” So he’s done all that and he’s like, “It’s done. It’s now a four megaton nuclear bomb.” And he’s like, “All right, great.” Pow

Laci (02:21:04):

Pow. “No,

Matt (02:21:05):

Not yet.

Laci (02:21:06):

Move

Matt (02:21:06):

It.” And Dr. Powell’s like, “No, if you move it, it will decay over the course of months and then go off.” And Bane’s like, “Five months to be exact according to my calculations, I’m a genius.” Right.

Laci (02:21:17):

I just note that Miranda’s not very sad about her missing boyfriend, but whatever. I guess a lot of things are going on.

Matt (02:21:24):

Yeah. So the board, I think John Blake goes up to Gordon in the hospital and he’s like, “The Wayne Enterprise’s board has been kidnapped.” And he’s like, “You seem to know a lot of information. You work for me now, son. You’re now a detective.”

Laci (02:21:38):

And Matthew

Matt (02:21:39):

Modine is in the room with him and he’s like, “Jim, I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you. Bane is a bad guy. All right.” He is

Laci (02:21:44):

Under these grounds. He is the mold people. Order

Matt (02:21:48):

An all out assault on the sewers. It’s time to declare war on the sewers. Yeah,

Laci (02:21:52):

We don’t need those for anything else. Infrastructure’s infrastructure.

Matt (02:21:56):

So they send in thousands and thousands of cops into the sewers, and this is going to end well. So then we go to Hinesfield in Pittsburgh where the Pittsburgh Steelers are playing the Gotham City Rogues, taking on Rapid City. I

Laci (02:22:11):

Just like that they very explicitly show you Manhattan Island as being where all of Gotham is taking a place. And there’s no sign of a giant stadium anywhere. All there’s a Central Park. So it’s just like, no, no, we have this too. We have suburbia and we have a Walmart. We

Matt (02:22:30):

Have all of

Laci (02:22:31):

New Jersey inside of here.

Matt (02:22:33):

Yeah. I think they do mix in some B-roll of Pittsburgh to trick you. But yeah, Manhattan doesn’t have a football stadium. Not an NFL stadium anyway. And we’re mixing between showing the football stadium. The mayor knows that all the police are going down into the sewers and the reporter’s like, “What’s up with all the cops going into the sewers?” Training

Laci (02:22:52):

Exercise. Nothing

Matt (02:22:53):

More training. No, I’m going to go watch our boys kick the shit out of Rapid City. I’m

Laci (02:22:57):

Just a regular guy. Love

Matt (02:22:58):

The pig skin. And goes in to the stadium. This was Hines Field. They paid 11,000 extras or they didn’t pay them like, “Hey, come be in the Batman movie.” And then they digitally quintupled them to fill out the stadium. And they have real Steelers players and real Seahawks players. I could tell

Laci (02:23:18):

That. You could tell those are extras.

Matt (02:23:20):

They’re no

Laci (02:23:20):

Warrant actors.

Matt (02:23:21):

It was like Ben Roethlisberger’s there. Mike Wallace, Marquis Pouncy, and this kid is singing The Star Spangled Banner. I’m like, “Is

Laci (02:23:28):

That like a Trump? Is that like fucking Barron? That’s

Matt (02:23:31):

Barron.

Laci (02:23:31):

Someone want to make a wish? What is this kid doing? Why did we watch him sing the entire thing?” Because

Matt (02:23:37):

It’s about a merit.

Laci (02:23:38):

No, this is someone’s fucking kid trying to get a break or gotten one.

Matt (02:23:42):

This is Magnus Nolan maybe. And Bane is sure to everybody tell us. I want to find

Laci (02:23:47):

Out who this kid is. His voice did not merit us listening to the whole fucking thing. All right,

Matt (02:23:51):

Look it up on your phone. And Bane’s like, “Oh, it’s a lovely, lovely voice.”

Laci (02:23:55):

Is it? It was fucking decent. And actually little mid. Charles Jackson Coney. Coney. 11-year-old student. Coney

Matt (02:24:07):

2012.

Laci (02:24:07):

11-year-old student from Pittsburgh area and a member of the Children’s Festival Chorus of Pittsburgh at the time of filming was chosen by producers right before Bane’s attack. I know that. Kid’s in a course. I don’t fucking know.

Matt (02:24:21):

That guy, he’s in his mid-twenties now at bars. He’s like, “Hey, Bane told me I have a lovely.”

Laci (02:24:28):

Want to hear it?

Matt (02:24:31):

So it’s the opening kickoff, and you better believe that I was one of these annoying football people who’s like, Heinz Ward doesn’t return kickoffs. What’s he doing? Come on, he’s like 38 years old. Heinz Ward, nah, nah, nah, nah, nah, honey. But he returns the kickoff as the field explodes behind him and football players are, woo, woo, woo. And then he turns around and looks, he’s like, “What happened to the four year old?” I

Laci (02:24:51):

Guess I really tore it up. But

Matt (02:24:54):

This rules, this is awesome. The big aerial shots of New York City getting blown up. This is the rare instance of CGI in a Nolan movie. Only when you do it from a distance, you’ll see bridges exploding and stuff. And Bane goes out on the field, and I love that he picks up the referee’s headset.

Laci (02:25:11):

I know how these work. He’s

Matt (02:25:12):

Like, “False stallet. Gotham City. 10 yard penalty.”

Laci (02:25:17):

Okay.

Matt (02:25:18):

Gotham, take control of your shitty.

Laci (02:25:22):

Now? That

Matt (02:25:22):

Gives him a big speech. Look at this man. He’s a nuclear scientist. Tell them your credentials. I am Dr. Lenin Pavel, nuclear physicist. And what of this nuclear bomb? This whole

Laci (02:25:35):

Part is annoying. It’s just messy. It’s sloppy. I blew up all this shit so you’d listen to my little speech. You could have just given him the speech and shown him the bomb. Why this first? Well,

Matt (02:25:49):

Now listen, there’s a trigger man.

Laci (02:25:52):

What the fuck does trigger man mean? I really didn’t know what he meant. I mean, I understand in theory, but he doesn’t explain enough that. What is it like Oprah where you don’t know you’re the trigger man, you got to reach under your seat?

Matt (02:26:07):

It’s one of you is the trigger man. I would get

Laci (02:26:09):

Why someone wouldn’t want to admit they are that, but what I thought was forced upon someone. Not that it’s some fuck. Yes, it’s so messy. It’s so complicated.

Matt (02:26:18):

It’s a lot

Laci (02:26:19):

Unnecessary.

Matt (02:26:19):

So the whole thing with this movie, everything with this movie is it requires too much explanation. Right. Number one, I blew up this field. Number two, not today. Tomorrow, take control of your city. Number three, this bomb will go off if anyone tries to intervene. Number

Laci (02:26:35):

Five. Why am I announcing it here? Also, I’m not sure you guys can get to the parking lot considering what I’ve done to the infrastructure of this. So I might be explaining this to a crowd of people that are dead tomorrow. I know he’s on the fucking news and everything and that’s why he’s doing it, but you could have done this from any place you blew up.

Matt (02:26:55):

Martial laws in effect. Still observe the traffic laws and regulations. Click it or ticket people. And by the way, Dr. Pavel, who is the only man in the world who can disarm this bomb? I am Dr. Leonard Pavel. Like okay. And then snaps his neck and he’s dead. And everyone freaks out. Who

Laci (02:27:18):

Was the only man? We knew his credentials. Gotham. You might be wondering why did we decide to do this when the next four months are a snowstorm or this is during the winter months when famously the lake will freeze over and you can’t use your boats. What

Matt (02:27:34):

About the people who have boats? The lake

Laci (02:27:36):

Is frozen over. Yeah, but

Matt (02:27:37):

Right now it’s not. Get out of there on your boat. From

Laci (02:27:40):

Where we can see.

Matt (02:27:41):

So return home. Be with your families. Tomorrow you claim what is rightfully yours. And he slams the headset down. But

Laci (02:27:49):

Why would we believe you? You’re very scary. You have that thing on your face. You clearly just did this, but you’re giving us back our. This is truly like when we go into Iran or wherever and we’re like, “Destroy, destroy, destroy, kill half the people. We’re giving this to you.” Yeah, we did it for you. That is so grateful. We fixed your fucking. Isn’t it awesome?

Matt (02:28:08):

Batman’s watching all this on the news in his prison bed and the President of the United States gets on the line. “Get the president on the line, “they say. And they do. And he gets on the TV and he’s like – Our favorite

Laci (02:28:18):

Little town. Our

Matt (02:28:19):

Best city. Our best

Laci (02:28:21):

Boy is under attack. But

Matt (02:28:23):

Yeah, we don’t negotiate with terrorists. That being said –

Laci (02:28:27):

We’re with you. We’re just not with you. Yeah.

Matt (02:28:29):

I don’t know. You figure it out. All right. They told

Laci (02:28:31):

Us we can’t go in there, so we’re just trying to help you guys out. I mean,

Matt (02:28:35):

I keep complaining that Gotham, they never acknowledge that Gotham’s part of a larger world. So this movie’s like, okay, well, we’re going to make that literal. Now it’s literally disconnected from the rest of the world. So the next day he’s like, “This is the prison. It’s the symbol of injustice in the name of this man, Harvey Dent. But what if I told you that Harvey Dent was not so nice? Listen to this speech by Permissioner Gordon.” Oh, there’s this thing where Gordon is like, “Oh no,” because John Blake, Jogo, goes and gets him out of the hospital and they’re driving around in a car together being buds. And Gordon’s like, “You got to get me onto a TV camera. The pulley pull of Gotham need to know I can lead.” And he’s like, “They’re telling us we’re in charge of our city now.” And he seems to say something like, “Yeah, so they need to know I can lead.” It’s kind of like he’s announcing his candidacy.

Laci (02:29:24):

Yeah.

Matt (02:29:25):

Yeah. And Jogo seems to take him seriously like, “Yeah, we’re going to keep you on the move until we can get you in front of a camera, commissioner.” But then they watch Bane’s speech and Jogo’s like, “Is this true what he’s saying about what you said about Harvey Dent?”

Laci (02:29:40):

Is it true about Harvey Dent or is it true about that you think this about Harvey Dent? Is

Matt (02:29:44):

It true that you wrote on loose leaf paper that Harvey Dent tried to kill my boy and I praised the man, man? No, I resign as commissioner. And Joseph Gordon Levitt is so pouty about this. He’s like, “I believed in you Ban, I think you’re as filthy and disgusting as all the slugs out there on the streets. Okay. So Bane opens up the prison, arms all the prisoners. This is supposed to be like the storming of the Bastille in the French Revolution when they freed ordinary working class people and armed them against the royalty. And here it’s we’re freeing mobsters and giving them guns. So courts will be convened, spoils enjoyed, blood will be shed. The police will serve the true justice. And Batman’s watching this and getting real upset about it.

Laci (02:30:33):

That’s my gotham.

Matt (02:30:35):

That’s

Laci (02:30:35):

My dad’s.

Matt (02:30:37):

And I’m all the way over here and I can’t do anything about it.

Laci (02:30:39):

Guys.