Dark Knight Rises

[EvanED]

...I like to see people move their mouths. Maybe I subconsciously lip read, I don't know.

I'm in the same boat and had problems understanding some lines because of that. (I also have problems with song lyrics.) It's a bit weird, because I'm pretty sure my hearing is good; it's something with the interpretation.

Spoiler:

The supposed passage of time in this movie was so weird it broke my suspension of disbelief.

You make some good points and I wouldn't have thought about most of what I say below without your post, but

Spoiler:

the only time I actually noticed anything timewise was when several months had passed somehow, and they indicated it... basically by saying "several months have passed."

(Incidentally I also didn't think the LOTR movies did a good job indicating the passage of time. Before I read the books, I'd have guessed that the folks hung out in Rivendell for a couple weeks or something. But no, it was two months from the Council of Elrond until when the left. Etc. The whole of Fellowship probably took 5-10x longer than I'd have guessed.)

Spoiler:

Given that Bane superficially looks younger than Bruce

I'm not sure I'd agree with that, especially once Bruce cleans himself up. But whatever.

Spoiler:

Talia is supposedly both rich enough and wields enough influence in Gotham society to host a successful charity ball. Reaching such a position takes time.

Spoiler:

That could easily be explained by saying that either she had some money before the prison or she got access to League of Shadows resources, both of which are believable. If you see things like I do, the money situation isn't unbelievable, and money can lead to influence with some work. Surely that time is enough, especially if she started work before the events of The Dark Knight.

[natraj]

Spoiler:

That could easily be explained by saying that either she had some money before the prison or she got access to League of Shadows resources, both of which are believable. If you see things like I do, the money situation isn't unbelievable, and money can lead to influence with some work. Surely that time is enough, especially if she started work before the events of The Dark Knight.

Spoiler:

well, she was born in the prison so she couldn't have had money before (i imagine that her mother was, uh, cut off from family wealth when she got chucked in a prison) but i think it is pretty likely that she may have had access to some league of shadows influence/money/power, given who she was.

[Deep_Thought]

Spoiler:

I agree the money bit can be hand-waved, and that money can buy influence, it's just that I'd expect a sophisticated society hostess who can afford to throw away money into Bruce's "Save the World" project, and then be immediately accepted onto the board of a major company to be at least in her 30s, if not older. Which makes Bane like over 40, given their apparent relative ages in the scene where she escapes from the Pit. I am probably over-thinking this.

Oh - and another thing I've just thought of. Why did she bother to remain "undercover" during the siege of Gotham? Bane assumed that Batman would never get out of the pit. So who is she hiding from again? There's zero point in her maintaining her facade at that point!

Of course, on the whole time issue, I haven't even mentioned the amazing daytime stock market raid followed by the instant nighttime bike chase scene. Which also happens while Catwoman is watching it live on TV but gives Batman time to be in exactly the right place to rescue her.

[freakish777]

Spoiler:

Oh - and another thing I've just thought of. Why did she bother to remain "undercover" during the siege of Gotham? Bane assumed that Batman would never get out of the pit. So who is she hiding from again? There's zero point in her maintaining her facade at that point!

Spoiler:

Why would you not remain undercover?!?! There's no reason whatsoever to expose yourself. Remaining undercover gives you the benefit of your foes trusting you (because they don't know you're behind it). So that you can get Luscious Fox and US Special Forces dudes to tell you their plan, and then have Bane show up to stop them.

Think of it as a game without perfect information. There's zero reason to reveal information to your opponents, especially when you don't necessarily know all of who your opponents are.

[roband]

Spoiler:

Talking of the special forces guy...

"Oh, I'm a special forces man and there's people on the other side of this concrete pillar shooting at me. I'll just wander round the pillar, without my gun ready to shoot. I wonder if I might die INSTANTLY?"

[Deep_Thought]

@freakish777

Spoiler:

True, but remember that Talia had the detonator. If any part of the plan goes wrong, just press the damn button! A better explanation would possibly be to further torture Bruce/Batman by making him believe his love in trapped in Gotham. But given how horrified he is when her treachery is revealed, it would seem finding out he was betrayed is the even bigger torture.

@roband

Spoiler:

Yeah, they were pretty tragically bad for special forces guys.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Spoiler:

My main problems with it are, surprisingly, the same problem I had with Spiderman - every character is a genius (certified or otherwise), and yet they make stupid, stupid decisions. It feels like lazy writing.

Spoiler:

Oh, she took my fingerprints? Ah, well, that's all right. It's not like those give you total access to my billions of dollars of assets or anything.

[charliepanayi]

You guys really know how to overanalyse a film.

[Zohar]

You call that over analyzing, but to me it's about writing believable characters and a sensible story. Just because the characters here are wearing capes and other suits doesn't give the writers an excuse to have them do illogical things.

[Dark Avorian]

Well, I'm going to be a bit blasphemous and say I actually enjoyed this film more than the Dark Knight. I think the Dark Knight is a better film, but I enjoy TDKR more. Each of these films takes on a different way of attacking the Batman. The first deals with the ways of attacking the psychology of the man behind the mask. The second shows how a man so well prepared as Wayne can be baffled by a man who "just wants to watch the world burn", and the third has him face down Bane who is physically stronger than him, and an even more meticulous and ruthless planner.

Spoiler:

I suppose I enjoyed this one merely because Batman is one of my favorite heroes ever and Bane is in many ways Batman's evil image. He is the one who can break the bat. Although I can enjoy the genius and artistry of Heath Ledger's Joker, Bane's attack is just far more satisfying to watch. A city burning, crushed, and trampled.

I also loved the way that the main character of this movie was more Gotham (now merely Manhattan under a new name) than it was the Batman. That to me was a beautiful thing. This trilogy has really taken on what Gotham has become under the influence of the batman/Wayne.

[Deep_Thought]

Fair enough if you enjoyed it. It's one of those things where I walked out thinking it was okay but there are enough things that bugged me about it to keep thinking it over, and when I do it makes even less sense!

Spoiler:

I suppose I enjoyed this one merely because Batman is one of my favorite heroes ever and Bane is in many ways Batman's evil image. He is the one who can break the bat. Although I can enjoy the genius and artistry of Heath Ledger's Joker, Bane's attack is just far more satisfying to watch. A city burning, crushed, and trampled.

Spoiler:

This bit I do disagree with though. I didn't think Bane's attack was that satisfying because it relied on what felt like several Deus Ex Machinas, because in a 2 hour film there isn't time to show his years of planning. The Joker's plans felt very realistic and tense to me, because they only needed a small cabal of people to pull off. Bane's plan required an entire construction company, the rebuild of a public stadium, and his sworn enemy to develop a completely new technology that then someone else discovers can be conviently weaponised. You see years of planning, I see lots of luck and coincidence

[Dark Avorian]

Spoiler:

Okay, I sort of buy that line of reasoning, although the fact that Batman can just use Wayne enterprises and a scene where he talks with Lucius as a foil for anything makes me wonder why Bane should be getting so much crap. I mean seriously, Miranda was in a position where she was ready to take over Wayne enterprises, I don't know why it's unacceptable for the criminal conspiracy she leads to be able to pull off feats like that. Hell, if Gotham is so idiotic that they don't notice that the Batman with technology only the absurdly wealthy and absurdly big companies can afford appeared in Gotham about the same time Bruce Wayne, a man orphaned by crime, returned. Or the fact that his going into hiding coincided totally with the disappearance of the Batman...why are we expecting them to notice bane putting in explosive concrete?

Also, it's less that Bane's plans are 'better' than the Joker's. It's more that the things Bane does just are more interesting. I can see a shit ton of explosive chase scenes and bombings in plenty of other movies. What you don't get to see so often is a city being ground down into rubble. Oh yeah, and the entire Harvey Dent part of the Joker's plan was just as unlikely as anything else. Seriously, the likelihood Harvey would have died or lived unharmed was TOO DAMN HIGH, and what if Batman had gone for Dent and found Rachel, I find it hard to believe she could have been turned into a supervillain.

[Deep_Thought]

Spoiler:

Yeah, the whole of Gotham not spotting the links between Bruce and Batman isn't that believable either. Especially when rookie cops can apparently work it out from a smile That's another reason I got fed up with the 8 years, it's too long for people not to start asking questions. 2 or 3 would have been better!

Personally I still go for the Joker over Bane. You're right about the likelihoods with the Harvey Dent plan, but I kind of thought the point with the Joker is he didn't care that much - he'd role with whatever Batman managed to do. Provided he's causing chaos he's happy (well, not happy, but, er satisfied?).

[Christo]

I'm just really stuck on Bane's planning not making a damn bit of sense. I mean, The Joker delighted in "watching the world burn." Bane's pseudo-morality was just a confusing mess.

[Lucrece]

Bane did not plan.

Spoiler:

He acted as a puppet for someone else. If you should be questioning the logic, it should be Tania's, which was some phlegm logic. The girl who lived through hell, only to turn into a suicide bomber to fulfill the legacy of the sperm donor who got her mother killed.

I liked the movie mostly, but I still prefer TDK. What I did not like:

Spoiler:

1- Catwoman should never be domesticized. Moral ambiguity is catwoman's quality; while she could see Batman's idealism as a charming thing about the man, catwoman's character would never be swayed to just abandon her edgy life full of thrill to become a "kickass girlfirend" archetype. That's just not who she is. The relationship Batman had with her is one of grudging respect and different worlds; when Batman had a romance with her, he did not change her core character -- he had to maneuver around it.

2- Surviving a nuclear explosion and the radiation afterwards is pretty phlegm. Even for that aircraft.

3- Bane was indeed hard to understand at times, and poor Tom Hardy won't be remembered the way Heath Ledger was because of all the production effects that make the character, whereas Heath Ledger embodied the best Joker imo to date.

4- Tania, while a nice twist, went out with a whimper. Her desire for revenge just does not make sense.

5- Nolan's politics came heavy-handed in here. Bane and the disenfranchised were turned into a villainous caricature that was just a stand-in for communism, and while the movie kept touching on the corruption, it just reverted to the status quo by showing the agents of change as ruinous and that the corruption would not continue if everything went back to normal. The guys who condemned the financial sector and the government turned out to be psychopaths, while the cops and authorities were heroes. I don't know -- the communism scare element rubbed me the wrong way.

I loved Blake, though. JGL makes for a charming rookie.

[Dark567]

On your point 2:

Spoiler:

The aircraft didn't survive. The movie hinted that Batman wasn't in fact in it and it was on autopilot. How he escaped isn't shown, but the film implied he wasn't in the aircraft at all.

[Various Varieties]

Someone on reddit drew a comparison...oh fuck it, here's the pic. Haven't watched the last one so I can't really opine.

Spoiler:

On the subject of trilogy comparisons, here's something I noticed:

Spoiler:

The Dark Knight Rises continues the trend of third films in movie trilogies tending to look back to the first film in the series for inspiration, more than the second. For example:

Return of the Jedi – After a second film set in entirely new locations, the third film returns to the setting (Tatooine) and threat (Death Star) of the first film.

Back to the Future Part III – After a second film featuring the characters undertaking lots of easy time-travel hops, the third film is like the first in that it’s mainly set in a single past time period, and the characters face a big challenge in getting back home.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – After a second film with a completely different villain, the third film returns to Nazis hunting a Christian relic (and they’re defeated when their faces melt or crumble).

Superman Returns (which I’m classing as a sequel to Superman II!) – After a second film with a completely different villain, the third film returns to Lex Luthor with a land grab scheme.

Die Hard With a Vengeance – After a second film with a completely different villain, the main baddie in the third film is is the brother of the villain killed in the first film.

Spider-Man 3 – After a second film with a completely different villain, one of the baddies in the third film is is the son of the villain killed in the first film.

The Dark Knight Rises – After a second film with a completely different villain, the main baddie in the third film is the daughter of the villain killed in the first film (and her allies belonged to that villain's organisation).

Another amusing Reddit stolen comparison for the finale (spoilers obv)

Spoiler:

Spoiler:

Kim Newman opened his Sight & Sound review by pointing that out.

He also spotted another comparison that I missed: that Bane's death and his link to Talia is broadly similar to that of the two Bond villains in The World is Not Enough.

[Weeks]

IT WAS FUCKING AWESOME, and I feel the analogy fits perfectly.

Spoiler:

distrust of the Fusion generator to the general pubic

Spoiler:

"Exposure to skin might cause allergic reactions", eh?

Also, did anyone else think he sounded like Deckard Cain?

I remembered this just as I came out of the theater and laughed out loud.

[pseudoidiot]

Only then can you stay awhile and listen.

[Izawwlgood]

I may have missed a few spoiler boxes, so, sorry if I repeat stuff that's already been said;

Spoiler:

I really enjoyed this, but felt there were a few story arcs that were completely superfluous. Talia had no real reason to be included in the storyline other than to be yet another counterpoint to Bruce, a 'le twist!' point later on, and a reminder that Bruce can never, ever, enjoy anything in life.

Now, I know I've expressed some anti-Occupy movement sentiment around here. This film made me uncomfortable at times with how absurdly heavy handed it was taking the 'Occupy movement gone too far' rhetoric. My friend claimed that it was a sort of Rorschach test on the viewer, that it was intentionally ambiguous as to whether or not Bane or Batman was the true liberator in such circumstance, but man, on a first pass, I was wincing, feeling like my Republican relatives had written this part of the script.

Ultimately, it was pretty good, I felt, with Alfred stealing the show in terms of emotional speeches, but the story arc of these films is just too tired at this point; someone comes in who haves everything planned, and wins the day. Batman steps up to the plate, gets his ass beat, and goes into hiding. Gotham suffers, hard, and then Batman comes and rescues everyone, and then some cut scenes reveal cool stuff about the story, like le gasp, things aren't what we thought they were! Sigh.

Oh, also; the action was very poorly done. CQC was weak and uninspired, and Batman's gadgets were hardly used. At one point, he even pulls out some neato looking raygun, and a cop apologetically shoots it; I felt this was some kind of shoddy foreshadowing, a statement that 'In this film, Batman will have no cool gadgets or trickses up his sleeve, because, well, for no reason at all'
Can someone explain to me why the Scarecrow guy (Killian Murphy?) was the arbiter in the mock court? That seemed WHOLLY random.

[Lucrece]

When the whole Romney-Bane fiasco with Limbaugh came out, Nolan admitted it was absurd because he was a conservative, and I think either the other producer or director as well. So, yeah, what you get from conservatives is always the "if you complain about financial states and taking the wealthy to task, then we end in communism and anarchy" kind of rhetoric. It's one of my main annoyances with the film and an aspect that made me like TDK much more. Anne Hathaway was spectacular as catwoman, but her character died out pretty soon for some reason; at the beginning she was rather involved and challenging, the next she came off sort of pathetic and muted.

Spoiler:

She would mess with Batman himself, but suddenly was too afraid of being chased by Bane's gang of thugs.

The whole pit storyline overstayed its welcome. I never felt like TDK was not economical with its scenes, so this movie was more like Batman Begins where there seemed to be more downtime and meandering in addition to the less compelling cast of villains. Though, it's unfair to compare Tom Hardy's Bane to The Joker, because Hardy was encumbered by all the production effects that cast a shadow on his own performance. People paid more attention to the masks and fights, and less to his expression and dialogue. That's part of what separated the Joker as a villain -- we didn't need combat from him to be enthralled.

[Weeks]

Spoiler:

Can someone explain to me why the Scarecrow guy (Killian Murphy?) was the arbiter in the mock court? That seemed WHOLLY random.

Spoiler:

When he showed up, everyone in the theater laughed. It *might* have been intended as a joke. Possibly.

Re: Combat, I really loved the last fight between Bane and Batman. It seemed realistic, for once. No insane acrobatics, no wobbly camera. And the sound effects weren't stupidly exaggerated. And the music was awesome. I think I need to watch it again, but I remember feeling distinctly satisfied.

[Jesse]

When the whole Romney-Bane fiasco with Limbaugh came out, Nolan admitted it was absurd because he was a conservative, and I think either the other producer or director as well. So, yeah, what you get from conservatives is always the "if you complain about financial states and taking the wealthy to task, then we end in communism and anarchy" kind of rhetoric. It's one of my main annoyances with the film and an aspect that made me like TDK much more. Anne Hathaway was spectacular as catwoman, but her character died out pretty soon for some reason; at the beginning she was rather involved and challenging, the next she came off sort of pathetic and muted.

Spoiler:

She would mess with Batman himself, but suddenly was too afraid of being chased by Bane's gang of thugs.

The whole pit storyline overstayed its welcome. I never felt like TDK was not economical with its scenes, so this movie was more like Batman Begins where there seemed to be more downtime and meandering in addition to the less compelling cast of villains. Though, it's unfair to compare Tom Hardy's Bane to The Joker, because Hardy was encumbered by all the production effects that cast a shadow on his own performance. People paid more attention to the masks and fights, and less to his expression and dialogue. That's part of what separated the Joker as a villain -- we didn't need combat from him to be enthralled.

Batman's always been a Conservative though. He's an ultra-rich guy taking the law into his own hands. Hell, in TDK he performs an illegal extradition of a foreign national in order to bring him to 'justice'.

[Lucrece]

When the whole Romney-Bane fiasco with Limbaugh came out, Nolan admitted it was absurd because he was a conservative, and I think either the other producer or director as well. So, yeah, what you get from conservatives is always the "if you complain about financial states and taking the wealthy to task, then we end in communism and anarchy" kind of rhetoric. It's one of my main annoyances with the film and an aspect that made me like TDK much more. Anne Hathaway was spectacular as catwoman, but her character died out pretty soon for some reason; at the beginning she was rather involved and challenging, the next she came off sort of pathetic and muted.

Spoiler:

She would mess with Batman himself, but suddenly was too afraid of being chased by Bane's gang of thugs.

The whole pit storyline overstayed its welcome. I never felt like TDK was not economical with its scenes, so this movie was more like Batman Begins where there seemed to be more downtime and meandering in addition to the less compelling cast of villains. Though, it's unfair to compare Tom Hardy's Bane to The Joker, because Hardy was encumbered by all the production effects that cast a shadow on his own performance. People paid more attention to the masks and fights, and less to his expression and dialogue. That's part of what separated the Joker as a villain -- we didn't need combat from him to be enthralled.

Batman's always been a Conservative though. He's an ultra-rich guy taking the law into his own hands. Hell, in TDK he performs an illegal extradition of a foreign national in order to bring him to 'justice'.

Ha! I hadn't thought of those parallels

[UniqueScreenname]

Procrastinated. Just saw it. HOLY CRAP WHAT A TWIST SERIOUSLY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE USUALLY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HINTED AT I HAD NO IDEA I AM SO CONFUSED WHAT????????

Spoiler:

Not the Batman living part, the Miranda being the child part.

[TheGrammarBolshevik]

Spoiler:

I honestly didn't find the twist very effective. It changed the significance of a few a events earlier in the plot, but looking forward, it's all about the same: just a different person trying to blow up the city. In that role, Talia and Bane are interchangeable or worse: one is a master of planning, combat, archaic languages... the other can drive shift? I also didn't really care enough about "Miranda" for it to mean much when she made her heel turn, in the way that you care when Gotham's White Knight becomes Two-Face.

[SurgicalSteel]

Spoiler:

I honestly didn't find the twist very effective. It changed the significance of a few a events earlier in the plot, but looking forward, it's all about the same: just a different person trying to blow up the city. In that role, Talia and Bane are interchangeable or worse: one is a master of planning, combat, archaic languages... the other can drive shift? I also didn't really care enough about "Miranda" for it to mean much when she made her heel turn, in the way that you care when Gotham's White Knight becomes Two-Face.

Spoiler:

I agree. However, I think it was somewhat hinted at, but only if you know the Batman mythos. I felt stupid after the reveal for blindly accepting that Bane was Raz Al Ghul's child. Something should have gone off in my head to the affect of "Wait, I know Raz Al Ghul has a kid, but it's a female, and she's a ninja like her dad. Something's going on here."

[Christo]

Spoiler:

Oh - and another thing I've just thought of. Why did she bother to remain "undercover" during the siege of Gotham? Bane assumed that Batman would never get out of the pit. So who is she hiding from again? There's zero point in her maintaining her facade at that point!

I don't understand why she bothered to rise through the ranks of Gotham at all. I mean, if her goal is to blow up Gotham, why not just blow up Gotham and not waste time on the whole charade?

[UniqueScreenname]

Spoiler:

I think the reason I considered it so effective was because there were several things she did that were so much more about payback than about fulfilling Raz Al Ghul's destiny or whatever. She worked for his company, pushed her ideas, built up trust, even slept with the guy just to make him feel more powerless when he was betrayed. My theory is that she would have ended up pushing the trigger for all the world to see on the tv in his cell if he hadn't escaped. Then he could be worried about her throughout the whole thing but still serve it to him. It's all highly demented.

[Zarq]

Spoiler:

For me the twist was both expected and unexpected. I had heard rumors that Ra's was going to have a role in the movie, so as soon as they showed Miranda, I thought "Yeah, that's Talia.". What I did not expect was that she was going to BLOW UP THE CITY. She's an antiheroine for crying out loud. Minor villain at worst. Blowing up a city and killing millions of innocents is straight up supervillain.

Also, I though Bane sounded like a cross between Dumbledore and a bullfrog.

[Magnanimous]

Also, did anyone else think he sounded like Deckard Cain?

I was thinking Sean Connery mixed with Darth Vader.

[UniqueScreenname]

I'm sure it helps to know any of the canon.

[Amnesiasoft]

Spoiler:

I honestly didn't find the twist very effective. It changed the significance of a few a events earlier in the plot, but looking forward, it's all about the same: just a different person trying to blow up the city. In that role, Talia and Bane are interchangeable or worse: one is a master of planning, combat, archaic languages... the other can drive shift? I also didn't really care enough about "Miranda" for it to mean much when she made her heel turn, in the way that you care when Gotham's White Knight becomes Two-Face.

Spoiler:

I agree. However, I think it was somewhat hinted at, but only if you know the Batman mythos. I felt stupid after the reveal for blindly accepting that Bane was Raz Al Ghul's child. Something should have gone off in my head to the affect of "Wait, I know Raz Al Ghul has a kid, but it's a female, and she's a ninja like her dad. Something's going on here."

Spoiler:

The guy in the prison kept saying the child wasn't Bane...

[SurgicalSteel]

Spoiler:

I honestly didn't find the twist very effective. It changed the significance of a few a events earlier in the plot, but looking forward, it's all about the same: just a different person trying to blow up the city. In that role, Talia and Bane are interchangeable or worse: one is a master of planning, combat, archaic languages... the other can drive shift? I also didn't really care enough about "Miranda" for it to mean much when she made her heel turn, in the way that you care when Gotham's White Knight becomes Two-Face.

Spoiler:

I agree. However, I think it was somewhat hinted at, but only if you know the Batman mythos. I felt stupid after the reveal for blindly accepting that Bane was Raz Al Ghul's child. Something should have gone off in my head to the affect of "Wait, I know Raz Al Ghul has a kid, but it's a female, and she's a ninja like her dad. Something's going on here."

Spoiler:

The guy in the prison kept saying the child wasn't Bane...

Spoiler:

Did he? I don't remember that, maybe I wasn't paying attention at that part. All I remember is Bruce Wayne saying something like "Bane was the child then?" and the guy just saying nothing.

[Amnesiasoft]

Spoiler:

The guy in the prison kept saying the child wasn't Bane...

Spoiler:

Did he? I don't remember that, maybe I wasn't paying attention at that part. All I remember is Bruce Wayne saying something like "Bane was the child then?" and the guy just saying nothing.

Spoiler:

I think that was the last time Bruce asked if the child was Bane, it seemed by then Mr. Prisonguy was kind of sick of telling him that Bane was not the child.

[Adacore]

Procrastinated. Just saw it. HOLY CRAP WHAT A TWIST SERIOUSLY CAME OUT OF NOWHERE USUALLY THINGS ARE SUPPOSED TO BE HINTED AT I HAD NO IDEA I AM SO CONFUSED WHAT????????

Spoiler:

Not the Batman living part, the Miranda being the child part.

Huh. I saw that twist coming a mile away, at least in part. I guess different things work for different people:

Spoiler:

I didn't predict the child being Miranda, but I was 99% certain she was working with Bane from the scene where Bruce Wayne and Fox showed her the reactor. Her being the child makes sense, if I'd had time to think about it, I think - it's the logical reason for her to be on Bane's side. And she does have that funky accent (which sounded more like the kind of accent you'd have in that prison than whatever-the-hell Bane's accent was).

[AvatarIII]

Spoiler:

Oh - and another thing I've just thought of. Why did she bother to remain "undercover" during the siege of Gotham? Bane assumed that Batman would never get out of the pit. So who is she hiding from again? There's zero point in her maintaining her facade at that point!

I don't understand why she bothered to rise through the ranks of Gotham at all. I mean, if her goal is to blow up Gotham, why not just blow up Gotham and not waste time on the whole charade?

Spoiler:

She needed to rise through the ranks in Gotham to instigate the Fusion reactor project, which was required to build the bomb she needed to blow up Gotham.

[freakish777]

Spoiler:

I think that was the last time Bruce asked if the child was Bane, it seemed by then Mr. Prisonguy was kind of sick of telling him that Bane was not the child.

I don't remember that at all (you should fix your spoiler tag). Granted, there were two "old guys" in the prison, and I have no idea what one of them said at all (did I mistakenly assume that the second guy was speaking in a non-english language???).

Spoiler:

What I do remember is the footage of the child (still as a child) after having escaped from the pit, being in the sun and earlier Bane having said he didn't see the sun until he was a grown man. Also, the Child escaping with no mask, and one of the old guys saying that the doctor worked on Bane's mask.

[Chen]

I don't remember that at all (you should fix your spoiler tag). Granted, there were two "old guys" in the prison, and I have no idea what one of them said at all (did I mistakenly assume that the second guy was speaking in a non-english language???).

There were two guys in the prison and one started off speaking a non-English language (with the other translating). Of course at the end of that part of the movie, the translator was gone for some reason, so the other guy started speaking in English so Bruce could understand him

[pseudoidiot]

Spoiler:

Didn't spot if it was mentioned or not, but as far as the twist goes, there was all the talk about the plague or whatever that disfigured Bane and then they showed the child climbing out of the pit, which would, presumably, have been after the plague. I'll admit it wasn't enough for me to put two & two together while watching, but it did stand out as a little odd at the time