‘The Dark Knight Rises’ With Erik Voss | Nolan Revisited

Summary

House of R: ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ With Erik Voss | Nolan Revisited

Podcast: House of R (The Ringer)
Hosts: Joanna Robinson & Mallory Rubin
Guest: Erik Voss (New Rockstars)
Date: June 18, 2026
Episode Theme: A deep-dive, fan-centric critical breakdown of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises, with a focus on trilogy legacy, themes, performances (especially Bane and Catwoman), the overstuffed third movie syndrome, Nolan’s signature directorial flourishes, and cultural/political subtext.

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Overview

In this episode, Joanna and Mallory welcome Erik Voss to the House of R for an in-depth revisit of Christopher Nolan’s trilogy-closer, The Dark Knight Rises. The trio offers a lively, critical discussion about the film’s sprawling runtime, narrative ambition, iconic performances, underlying themes, and its sometimes-meme-worthy moments. They reflect on its place within the Nolan Batman trilogy, analyze its political and mythological influences, and offer classic House of R superlative “categories”—mixing humor, critique, and fandom.

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Section I: Nolan’s Ambition & The Trilogy’s Legacy

[05:13] – [12:00]

• The hosts set the stage with the context of the film:

  • The Dark Knight Rises released July 16, 2012, as the capstone to Nolan’s Batman trilogy.
  • Script by Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, story by David S. Goyer, with a record-breaking $1.115 billion box office haul—outperforming The Dark Knight but overshadowed by The Avengers that same summer.

• The team reflects on the challenge of closing an iconic trilogy, especially following the benchmark set by Heath Ledger's Joker:

  • Joanna: “Obviously anything in the wake of Dark Knight can't possibly measure up. And certainly in the wake of Ledger specifically, the bar is just so impossible to clear.” [10:13]
  • Mallory recalls seeing it multiple times in theaters, expressing a personal affection for the film despite its flaws.
  • Erik notes a harsher critical lens at the time compared to now and a personal fatigue: “I love Christopher Nolan's works. I'm a defender of even his weakest moments. This one is harder for me to revisit... it feels like you can see Christopher Nolan’s seams.” [11:53]

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Section II: Narrative Ambition, Runtime & “Refrigerator Logic”

[08:24] – [09:46]

• Discussion of trilogy runtimes and narrative sprawl:

  • Batman Begins: 140 min | The Dark Knight: 152 min | The Dark Knight Rises: 164 min
  • The hosts joke about long runtime as both podcasters & fans.
  • Erik introduces “refrigerator logic”: the movie asks viewers to ignore a high number of plot holes (“surpasses the 10 things you can forget” threshold) and feels bloated as a result.

• Notable Quote:

  • Erik: “[Nolan] surpasses the 10 things... if you win us over with enough of those scenes, 10 or more of those things, you don't really care about those nine or eight things. But Dark Knight Rises has like 12 or 13...” [09:02]

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Section III: Thematic Deep Dives—Gotham, Class Warfare, and Dickens

[15:35] – [25:36]

• The panel explores Nolan’s thematic strategy, comparing Rises’ take to Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and populist movements like Occupy Wall Street.

  • Erik: “I just think Anne Hathaway is astoundingly great in this movie and just owns every scene…” [13:12]
  • On the film’s “Gotham Trilogy” aspect:
    • Mallory: “By the time you get to the end of the trilogy, it becomes much more a Gotham City trilogy than a Batman trilogy…the politics of this movie are kind of very muddy to me.” [20:07]
    • Joanna: “It feels to me less about Gotham than...the relationship between a place and its people.” [24:29]

• Discussing political subtext and Nolan’s intent:

  • Erik: “I don’t think [Nolan] was taking any political stance... Bane is a con man...manipulating these mobs. I do wonder then what exactly the battle lines are in the final conflict.” [22:17]
  • Mallory: “When you watch this in 2026 and you see an ocean of cops beating an ocean of citizens and you're supposed to be rooting for the cops, that’s a harder watch for me in 2026…” [23:38]
  • On the “noble lie” of Harvey Dent—a recurring shadow of Joker/Dent choices throughout the trilogy.

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Section IV: Performances—Bane, Catwoman, and Supporting Cast

[36:30] – [54:43]

Tom Hardy’s Bane—Iconic or Baffling?

• Mallory leads a “Bane Defense Squad” moment:
  • Mallory: “I just think it's an incredibly entertaining performance. The voice choice that Hardy as Bane is completely insane…I love it.” [36:36]
  • Erik and Joanna debate the effectiveness, with Erik more skeptical: “The vocal choice does not work … it makes the character too much of a joke.” [40:44]
  • Notable Origin: The Bane voice partly originated in ADR after early preview audiences could not understand Hardy’s original performance [41:02–41:13].

Anne Hathaway’s Selina Kyle—MVP of the Film

• All agree Hathaway’s Catwoman is unambiguously great:
  • Joanna: “Anne Hathaway, no notes. Selena Kyle. Incredible.” [45:53]
  • The group summarizes the cultural weirdness of Hathaway’s “try-hard” era and her career resurgence.
  • Erik: “She gives the best performance in this film...So effortless and wonderful—and I love her.” [48:10]
  • Catwoman’s physical presence, wit, and emotional authenticity are showered with praise: “...the way she says ‘I'm sorry to keep letting you down’ is so, so, so good.” [51:02]

Marion Cotillard’s Talia al Ghul—The “Death Slump”

• The infamous Talia death scene:
  • Joanna: “One of the most remarkable, ‘I am dying’ posture choices in the history of cinema. Completely confounding…” [55:21]
  • Cotillard herself has commented on the widely mocked scene.
  • Talia characterized as a plot device more than a developed character, due in part to story overstuffing and real-life constraints.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s John Blake/Robin

• Affectionate but critical; the “Robin twist” inspired derision in theaters but still has some charm.
  • Joanna: “...He always thinks he knows the most in every moment, but...has that sense of moral clarity that I think makes him a perfect candidate [for the Bat mantle].” [64:39]

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Section V: Structure, Overstuffing & “Threequel Syndrome”

[35:02] – [36:30]

• Panel discusses the “curse of the overstuffed threequel” (post–Spider-Man 3 syndrome), noting that The Dark Knight Rises introduces Bane, Catwoman, Talia, and Robin, plus semi-redundant plotlines.
• Multiple memorable supporting roles: Ben Mendelsohn as Daggett, Matthew Modine as Foley, and of course, Cillian Murphy’s Scarecrow, who makes another memorable appearance ([93:06]).

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Section VI: House of R “Categories”: Memorable Moments, Superlatives, and Key Quotes

Funniest Lines/Moments

• The team riffs on Anne Hathaway’s chameleonic performance, Aiden Gillen’s unhinged accent as “CIA Guy,” and Bane’s outlandish voice.
• Mallory: “I just like thinking of him (Bruce) rappelling and just sort of painting this bat signal on the side of the bridge...” [76:32]
• Joanna: “What the fuck is Aiden Gillen ever doing?...Tommy Carcetti, mayor of Baltimore. I don’t understand.” [102:16]

Sickest Set Piece

• The team’s picks:
  • Erik: Hines Field football field demolition ([79:07]—”Hines Ward running the touchdown as the field explodes.”)
  • Mallory: The “Bat” chase scene—Batman’s public return ([81:54])
  • Joanna: The plane heist—all practical Nolan chaos ([83:41])

Most Gorgeous Shot

• Everyone agrees: Scarecrow (Cillian Murphy) presiding on his stacked desk Kangaroo Court ([93:06])

Most Unforgettable Scene

• All pick Bane breaking Batman’s back in the sewer, quoting: “I was born in it, molded by it.” ([95:17])

Best Nolanverse Regulars

• Consensus: Anne Hathaway and Cillian Murphy steal the show.

Best Stunt

• Anne Hathaway’s backwards out-the-window dive ([103:53])
• The “climb out of the pit” sequence with practical, massive set construction ([104:56])

Most Satisfying Twist

• Consensus: Alfred seeing Bruce alive at the Florence café. Also discussed—Robin “reveal,” autopilot fix, and the childhood Talia twist.

Stealth MVP

• Erik: “The snow flurries of the Pittsburgh area.”
• Joanna: Sound designer Richard King, for “making the Bane voice...legible” ([106:32])

Most Devastating Line/Moment

• Alfred’s emotional goodbye to Bruce: “…losing someone that I have cared for since I first heard his cries echo through this house.” ([121:08])

Horniest Moment

• Panel relishes Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, but Erik jokes: “Media—illiterate reading of it would be ‘it would be quite painful. You’re a big guy. For you…’” ([117:19])

Most Baffling Accent

• Bane and Aiden Gillen share top honors for utterly inexplicable vocal choices.

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Section VII: Legacy, Nolan-isms, and Looking Ahead

[124:18] – [127:05]

• Erik points out Nolan's signature elements in Rises: synchronization of multiple, complex processes culminating simultaneously (e.g., “football field demolition + city-wide chaos”), nuclear dread, and “the lessons of Pandora’s Box.”
• All three express excitement about Nolan’s upcoming The Odyssey with Anne Hathaway, highlighting his power to “event-ize” cinema, blending myth, cunning heroes, and star-powered ensemble casts.
  • Erik: “The idea of cunning is a rare virtue...Odysseus is going to represent that well.” [124:57]

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Most Memorable Quotes & Moments (With Timestamps)

• “[Hardy’s Bane voice] makes the character too much of a joke. It does feel like it is a voice in an ADR booth that is disconnected from the performance…” — Erik Voss [40:44]
• “Anne Hathaway is astoundingly great in this movie and just owns every scene that she’s in…” — Mallory Rubin [13:12]
• “The shadow of the Joker still looms over this movie. And I think the noble lie that Gordon is forced to uphold throughout this movie...is all the Joker’s doing.” — Erik Voss [87:47]
• “By the time you get the end of this trilogy, it becomes much more a Gotham City trilogy than it does become a Batman trilogy.” — Mallory Rubin [20:07]
• “There could be no true despair without hope.” — Bane (quoted approvingly) [120:24]
• “One of the most remarkable I-am-dying posture choices in the history of cinema.” — Joanna Robinson, on Talia’s death [55:21]
• “I just think it’s an incredibly entertaining [Bane] performance...I love it.” — Mallory Rubin [36:36]
• “Alfred’s emotional plea to Bruce: ‘the city needs Bruce Wayne...doesn’t need your body or your life. That time has passed. You’re afraid that if I go back out there, I’ll fail? No, I’m afraid that you want to.’” — Michael Caine, paraphrased, cited by Joanna [111:08]

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Conclusion & Takeaways

• The Dark Knight Rises is an ambitious, bloated, sometimes chaotic, but highly memorable ending to Nolan’s Batman saga.
• Panel sees it most as a “Gotham trilogy,” preoccupied with class, urban chaos, and cycles of violence/hope—less so as a quintessential “Batman” story.
• Tom Hardy’s Bane divides opinion: wildly entertaining, meme-ified, but arguably tone-confusing.
• Anne Hathaway wins MVP as Catwoman—vivacious, complex, and pivotal.
• The trilogy’s legacy includes shaping blockbuster “event” cinema and defining superhero storytelling for the contemporary era.
• The episode ends with enthusiastic anticipation for Nolan’s Odyssey, and a promise to reconvene for future fandom deep-dives.

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Quick Guide to Essential Segments (Timestamps)

• [05:13] — Nolan Trilogy Context & Legacy
• [08:57] — Runtime & "Refrigerator Logic"
• [15:35] — Thematic Discussion: Gotham, Dickens, Occupy
• [36:30] — Bane Discourse
• [45:53] — Anne Hathaway/Catwoman Admiration
• [55:21] — Talia’s Death & Plot Device Critique
• [62:01] — Robin Discussion
• [74:56] — Superlative Categories Begin
• [95:17] — Most Iconic Scene: Bane Breaks the Bat
• [111:08] — Most Devastating: Alfred’s Goodbye
• [122:20] — Most Memorable Music/Score
• [124:18] — Most “Nolan” Thing, Looking Ahead to Odyssey

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For fans and newcomers alike, this episode delivers the full House of R mix: exhaustive insight, playful critique, and unapologetic geekery—all around one of the most debated superhero films of the decade.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Hello.

[B]

Welcome back to House of R. I'm Joanna Robinson. That's Malia Rubin. And joining us today at long last, we've long wanted this to happen. It is Eric Voss.

[C]

Hi, guys.

[A]

Hi.

[B]

Welcome to the podcast.

[A]

Welcome.

[C]

Thank you for having me on. This is a huge honor to be in the House of R. And what a house it is.

[B]

You love our studio.

[C]

I love your studio.

[B]

You love us.

[C]

I love you guys.

[A]

You love Bane.

[C]

I love Bane. I mean, how could you not? When he places that hand on your shoulder, something happens.

[A]

Menacing. It's like the this. Yeah.

[C]

What is that?

[A]

I don't know. It conveys everything it needs.

[B]

It unlocks hope inside of you so that he can crush it into despair. We're talking about the Dark Knight Rises. And we'll do that right after this.

[A]

This episode of House of R is presented to you by target. For 30 years, Pokemon has shown that adventures are better together. And Target is calling all trainers to the celebration.

[B]

That's because there's something for every era of fan in the Pokemon and Target Limited time collection.

[A]

Thought you found them all after the first drop. Think again.

[B]

Drop two just landed. Featuring life sized Pokemon puzzles and an instant print digital camera, the entire collection

[A]

is in store and online. So check it out now.

[B]

Explore [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by Weathertech.

[C]

Buying something for dad usually goes the same way every year. Guessing, second guessing, ending up with something that collects dust on a shelf. Here's a better idea. Weathertech the kind of gift he'll actually use. Weathertech offers unmatched vehicle protection from floor liners and seat protectors to the cup phone and cargo liner. And no, a gift card isn't a cop out. It's just practical, like Weathertech. Skip the guesswork this year. Visit weathertech.com to get your Father's Day gift today.

[B]

All right, quick, program reminders before we get started.

[C]

Started.

[B]

House of Dragons season is upon us. Are you excited?

[C]

Oh, I'm so excited. I've seen the first episode as of this recording.

[B]

And you're locked in.

[C]

I'm locked in. I'm seated. It's gonna be great. Battle of the Gullet. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but it's just a kid from a Navy family. It's just like really appreciating the nautical tactics.

[A]

You've spent two years saying to the Gullet on the morrow, and now it will last. The Gullet on the morrow.

[B]

Tomorrow. Tis here.

[A]

Fantastic.

[B]

We'll be talking thrones with Chris Ryan.

[A]

Sunday nights, right after the episode drops.

[B]

We'll be deep diving on Tuesday. Deep and a little Lestat meat. And the sandwich on Mondays is sort of the upcoming Supergirl coming up.

[A]

It's going to be a busy, busy summer here in the House of Our.

[B]

Um, do you want to tell people about the announcement we just made about what we're doing at the end of summer?

[A]

You can find really long announcements on the prior podcast on our respective social media handles. Uh, the Baltimore Orioles, my favorite team, my hometown team, is hosting House of Our Night at Oriole park and Camden Yards this summer.

[B]

Isn't that insane? Guess who's throwing out the first pitch. The game. Yeah.

[A]

August 20th against the New York fucking Yankees. House of Our night at Camden Yards. Here is what that entails. Pregame live pod. We will be recording a live episode of House of Our. Join us for that. If you get a ticket, you get to come to the live show. Also, that ticket is to sit in a special, special section just for the bad babies. Pure Wager Pavilion. You get to watch the game with us. You get to hang out with us, you get to hang out with each other.

[B]

You get to understand how little I know about baseball.

[A]

And I will be throwing out the first pitch. You get to watch me hopefully not fall over, hopefully not spike the ball directly into the ground. Working on my shoulder. Dexterity, keeping the UCL intact. You know, some exit V and spin rate prep.

[B]

So half the tickets were gone within the first couple hours of them going. Get your tickets now.

[A]

Orioles, Orioles.com Houseofar Pod we hope to see you in Baltimore, Maryland, August 20th against the New York Yankees for House of Our Night at Camden Yards.

[B]

Truly bizarre.

[A]

Bonkers.

[B]

Truly bizarre.

[C]

That's gonna be great.

[B]

Okay, so that's what we're doing this summer. My God. Follow. You know, follow the. Follow us on Social House of R. Why not do it? Email us hobbitsanddragonsmail.com that's right. Spoiler warning for all of Batman.

[A]

Yes. Any Nolan film ever. Yeah.

[C]

And any Batman. Anything ever.

[B]

Anything ever.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, I don't know how relevant that's gonna be today, honestly, but if it's happening in a Nolan movie, it

[B]

might come up all of Tom Hardy's acting choices in his life on the table.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

You know, so that's.

[A]

That's just what we're saying. Fantastic. Wonderful. Vaas, anything you want to plug people

[C]

know, just subscribe to new rockstars on YouTube. Yeah, we're covering a lot of the same stuff we're not doing any Lestat coverage? Unfortunately, no.

[B]

You didn't want to, like, get fangs and like, a whole cult?

[C]

Oh, I wanted to. I wasn't accepted into the cult, but

[B]

you can join our vampire coven anytime.

[A]

You're welcome anytime. Joanna has fangs in her purse right now. I actually have some too. I haven't molded them into my teeth, but. We're prepared to bite you. We're prepared to convert you if you'd like to. The offer stands. Keep it in mind.

[B]

I think maybe we shouldn't offer to bite our guests on this. First time on the pod. Why are we celebrating?

[A]

The great conversion is upon us.

[B]

We are here to celebrate Christopher Nolan because we've done almost every other movie.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

We have one left after this. It is Oppenheimer. Yeah, that's the last one we're doing. We did it in a random order.

[A]

Very Nolan esque. Non linear.

[B]

No worries.

[A]

Yeah, we're pretending that was the plan all along.

[B]

Meta it is 31 days until the Odyssey.

[A]

That is wild.

[B]

Are you excited for the Odyssey?

[C]

I'm really excited for the Odyssey. Again as the son of a Navy kid. Nautical tactics once again keep growing.

[B]

Oh, my God, it's big C. Summer.

[C]

I'm pumped for the Odyssey. I think the Odyssey and Dune Part three are the two most highly anticipated films of the year for me. I mean, everything I've seen from the Odyssey, even the music just sounds gorgeous. The prop design of the movie. I mean, isn't it great when it feels like movies have everyone in Hollywood in them? Oppenheimer felt that way. Only certain directors can get that. Maybe Villeneuve, Spielberg, Nolan. Yeah. And I'm just. It's great. It feels like a momentous thing. Even if it is, like, kind of a downer of a movie or not gonna appeal to all four quadrants. Like, how could it not? I guess, like, it's the odyssey. It's the 3,000-year-old legend and it's popular for a reason. And he's gonna do something really weird with it.

[B]

What if it does? What if, like, children of all ages go to see the Odyssey this summer? It's a date night movie.

[C]

Oh, it's the obsession of July.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely.

[A]

Where are you on Pining for a Daddy? Where are you on the modern language? We're all in.

[C]

I'm not. What does this mean?

[A]

It's the Pat the Paton line. Pining for a daddy.

[C]

Oh. Oh.

[B]

Mallory hasn't been able to talk about,

[A]

like, dad, and then Pattinson's like, daddy. And everyone's like, what?

[C]

Everyone's mad. You don't imagine Ancient Greek.

[B]

I want them to say, father, wait till my father gets home.

[C]

I don't have a problem with dad or daddy. I think it's a little weird that Nolan directed these English actors to use American accents as opposed to the Chernobyl approach of just using your natural accent.

[B]

Right, Yeah.

[C]

I want to know, like, why do they need to sound like Americans?

[B]

Do they all have to match Matt Damon and Matt Damon can't do the English accent?

[C]

Probably.

[B]

And so they're like, let's align with Damon.

[C]

Madison can't really do the American accent.

[A]

Pattinson, he can do everything.

[B]

Guess what? Pattinson. Tom Hardy, two of our greatest voice choice makers in Hollywood, showed us all

[A]

of those everythings in Mickey 17.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

All of them.

[B]

All right, quick facts about this movie that we're talking about today. It's the Dark Knight Rises, in case you forgot. Directed by Christopher Nolan, screenplay by Jonah Nolan and Chris Nolan. We with a story by credit for David S. Goyer, who left to make man of steel. Basically. July 16, 2012 is when it came out in wide release. Budget was between 250 and $300 million worldwide box office, 1.115 billion with a B. Wow. More than the Dark Knight. And yet somehow was not really, like, considered the. I mean, the Avengers came out this year and it kind of swallowed the story a little bit of the Dark Knight Rises. Not for me. It did not.

[C]

For you, it is crazy. I forget that it outperformed the 2008 Dark Knight because that was the first superhero movie to make a billion dollars

[B]

a Billy, I think.

[C]

But we often see that the second movie of the superhero trilogy is better. The third one is not as good, but it's.

[B]

But makes more money. Yeah, makes more money. Exactly.

[A]

People need to know how it ends and they need to be with Bane. Those two things are just true.

[B]

Okay, Mallory's on her Bane agenda already. We love to see it. Let's talk about the swollen runtimes. The Batman trilogy. Okay. Batman Begins, 140 minutes. The Dark Knight, 152 minutes. The Dark Knight Rises, 164 minutes. That's 2 hours and 44 minutes.

[A]

And it's actually not a runtime. You might be inclined to think maybe 20 of those minutes are credits. That's actually not the case. No, it's like seven or eight minutes of credits. Listen, our podcasts are routinely three hours long. Sometimes they're four. Who are we to note a runtime? However, it is a different experience. It's a different medium.

[B]

I think we're allowed to note it. Any thoughts about the runtime in this movie?

[C]

I think Christopher Nolan just makes movies this big and he feels like he wants to have as long as he needs to tell his story. I do think you feel it with this movie. I don't feel it watching the Dark Knight. I do feel it with Rises, and maybe it's just there's other logic issues he gives you. He surpasses the 10 things that, you know. I have a theory that as a filmmaker, you can afford under 10. Single digit refrigerator logic. Huh? Like, wait. Huh. But if you win us over with enough of those scenes, 10 or more of those things, you don't really care about those nine or eight things. But Dark Knight Rises has like 12 or 13 where you're like, but how did he. But how did he know? But you know? So in a movie like that, you do feel 2 hours and 40 minutes.

[A]

He's one of those.

[B]

Is that how you heal a broken back? You just hang a guy up, punch in the vertebrae, and then you make him do a bunch of push ups? Is that how that works? Not a chiropractor.

[A]

Add it to the list.

[B]

Not a chiropractor. Yeah, this is. I enjoyed watching this movie. In prep for this podcast, I watched it twice. I had a good time with it, but I just remember at the time, people were really hard on it. That's my memory of when this movie came out.

[A]

I feel like that I have a different memory of it, which was like, obviously anything in the wake of Dark Knight can't possibly measure up. And certainly in the wake of Ledger specifically, the bar is just so impossible to clear. My personal experience with this was like, I saw this movie multiple times in theaters, so I think the runtime didn't feel prohibitive to me because I kept going back not only to see it, but to sit in a movie theater and see it. So I really liked it, I feel like.

[B]

And spend time with your best friend Bane.

[A]

My best friend Bane, who I just really enjoy watching in this movie. I think it's great. Very entertaining. Genuinely very entertaining. I don't think the movie is even close to as good as Dark Knight, obviously, but there are things in it to recommend it and that I like. There are things in it that really don't work. It's very bloated, the character. To your point about, isn't it fun when everyone is in this movie? This can sometimes feel like the opposite, where you're like, Wait, I actually forgot that these not two, but 25 people are in this movie. And the character list is so vast and so long. The strands. I think the opening sequence is very emblematic of. You're like, wait, I'm kind of confused already and did I need to be for the response to people. But I think that the reaction to the movie, I think, was decently reviewed at the time. It was pretty well reviewed. The trilogy overall, though, I think that's part of it, that's inextricable is just like closing and concluding a trilogy that is so well regarded and there being a lot of, like, admiration for that at the time. Maybe that makes it a little harder in the moment to discern how people felt about the movie. I feel like over time now people are more inclined to be like, this is like a meme movie as opposed to like a sacred text. But, you know, your mileage may vary, and that's okay. I think Bane is God tier genuinely.

[B]

Vaas, where are you in this movie?

[C]

I love Christopher Nolan's works. I'm a defender of even his weakest moments. This one is harder for me to revisit because I do feel that it is engulfed by the shadow of the predecessor. For sure. It is over bloated. And it feels like you can see Christopher Nolan's seams, you can see the machinery of his workings. And you can see everyone working really hard in this movie to make something great. But I don't want to see people working. I want to see people vibing, existing, living, reacting, you know? But it feels like, ugh, God, why are we all working so hard? We have Batman. We're in the world of the Dark Knight. Like, it shouldn't be this hard. So I remember watching this. I got like, a midnight screening at the Howard Hughes center amc. Cause that was like, the biggest screen I could find it on. And I got a massive, mellow yellow, A drink that I've never had since. And I had to use the bathroom in the middle of the movie. But I'm like, oh, no, I can't. I can't walk out. I'll never do that. And then. So that affected my viewing experience the whole time. I'm like, come on, come on. But I still think it's wonderful. I think it has a lot of, like, Nolan core in it. I love Anne Hathaway's performance in it.

[A]

Same.

[B]

Yeah, she owns the movie for me. Honestly, I'm just a huge, like, every version of Catwoman. Well, almost. Sorry, Halle Berry. Almost every version of Catwoman. I'm like all in. Michelle Pfeiffer's Selina Kyle is one of my all time top favorite movie performances of all time, let alone comic book movie performances. And I just think Anne Hathaway is astoundingly great in this movie and just owns every scene that she's in and watching.

[A]

Wonderful.

[B]

Yeah, we love Zoe Kravitz, but brings a ton of just humor and moxie and all of these other things to this movie, which can sometimes get between Bane and Talia. And I would say even like John Blake can like feel a little bit more let in than some of the other Batman installments. You know, when you've got Cillian Murphy's sort of antic performance in the first one or when you have an extremely antic performance from Heath Ledger in the second one. And then here you've just got like, they're like, we're doing Charles Dickens this time. That's what we're doing. And Anne Hathaway just has to like carry a lot of the sort of momentum and keeping things lively inside of this movie. So you mentioned you're a huge Christopher Nolan fan. You've done these incredible video deep dives on his filmography. Have you done every single one at this point?

[C]

I think I've done videos about everyone except some of the earlier ones. I haven't done a video about following or the Prestige, but I've. And then I think the last time I visited the Dark Knight Rises was like back in 2008. I did a very recent breakdown of Re breakdown of Oppenheimer and Memento and Tenet and the Dark Knight. So I just haven't had that need to revisit to spend time with Bane. To spend time with bane in a 90 minute YouTube analysis. I plan to at some point. I love all of his films, honestly. I find a way in to all of his films. I am a Nolan bro. I can't escape that. But I don't want to be the bad kind of Nolan bro. I want to be. I want to reclaim the phrase Nolan Breaux as something that doesn't have to be gender coded 1 and doesn't have to be as, I don't know, talking down to people on YouTube. I think all of his movies already do that enough that we don't need acolytes on social media to do it on behalf of the movie.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

But yeah, my favorite of his films is probably Interstellar. I just think that's a singular achievement and I can even look at a movie like the Dark Knight Rises and really appreciate that he's trying to do Dickens in the world of Gotham, that he has this strong take on class warfare and wants that to be the backdrop. It's fascinating to revisit this movie and just feel the Citizens United decisions being commented on on Occupy Wall street being an influence and how prophetic it was for J6. Like, it's just. It's fascinating to see how plugged in he was to populism revisiting this movie. And I appreciate the ambition of the film. Even if the execution does not make it a great Batman movie.

[B]

What do you think makes it not a great Batman movie? What is that distinction for you?

[C]

To me, a good Batman movie is someone who is a film that understands the core DNA of the caped Crusader as only I understand it. No, I want a good detective story. I want a story that understands that there is a rogues gallery out there. And I think with the decisions made with Bane and Catwoman and linking Bane with the League of Shadows and Talia Al Ghul, it's not a bad decision from a story structure standpoint. In fact, it makes more sense in a lot of ways. But it neglects the. The promise of a rogues gallery that's really running the city. I love that idea that Nolan seemed to even be fascinated by, by the final shot of Batman Begins, of the Joker calling card. I'm like, that's what a good Batman movie is. I think Batman Begins is a superior Batman film to the Dark Knight Rises. I just think I don't need every filmmaker to read every comic. I don't need every filmmaker to use a comic as kind of a checklist or a rubric. I much prefer a Nolan movie to a comic book movie, I think at the end of the day. But I do think that Nolan is just more interested in the themes and the symbols in the Jungian archetypes of Batman as a character, as opposed to the relationship he has with the real oddball villains and how he has to adapt to each of those villains and kind of drink their crazy Kool Aid in order to beat them. And you don't see that he just kind of out muscles Bane in this movie, you know, and it works in this movie.

[B]

Well, he does a lot of push

[C]

ups and a lot of hanging from a rope.

[B]

Yeah, you got to stretch his armpit.

[A]

You gotta stretch that spine.

[B]

Do you think this is successful as a Batman movie versus a Nolan movie or what do you think?

[A]

Well, I think it's like impossible to separate the two in the sense that the Nolan version of a Batman movie is a Nolan movie ultimately, which is just another version of what you're saying, I think. And the question of how well that works for hardcore books Batman fans is, I guess. I mean, I think a lot of people love this trilogy and the respective ranking of where Rises or Begins goes in the 2, 3 slot. Because I think for everybody, Dark Knight is number one, right? That's probably the debate is at two, three. I don't know. I think the things that Nolan is interested in in Batman and Bruce in Gotham and the relationship between Batman and the Joker or Batman and Bane, he's picking the aspects of a Batman story that are part of the core Batman text, right. And I think fit in a version of a Batman story. But he's picking the ones that are interesting to him. Like the things we've been tracking across the whole representation of the filmography. Right. Like the dark mirrors, the measuring stick men, the way that you have a sense of like, what duty you owe to a place or what a place says about you. You know, a scene. Like one of our categories is the great man obsession, right? And there have been a couple movies that we removed that from, but none of the Batman ones.

[B]

None of the Batman ones.

[A]

And so that's something that is a core text for Nol and Bruce as a character and Batman as a symbol I think really unlocks. So I think he's just identifying the aspects of the Batman canon that most interest him specifically, even like a conversation in this film and rises, like the one between Blake and Gordon, you know, like, I hope one day when you have that moment like you have a friend, like I did, right. The idea that the structure of systems and rules will fail you, like, that's part of. That's an insomnia, that same idea way back when, well, before Batman. But also it's like something that you understand why Nolan would be interested in a vigilante story. For that reason.

[B]

I agree with you. But to your point, I think by the time you get the end of this trilogy, it becomes much more a Gotham City trilogy than it does become a Batman trilogy. And the way in which systems fail you, the way in which various infrastructure of the city are weaponized against it, like the train in Batman Begins or the system that is used here. You know, so like he, you know, using A Tale of Two Cities, not just any Dickens story, we're doing A Tale of Two Cities. Like, let's examine the layers of this city and the various figures in the city and the lies that are required to keep a city going or what happens when they're exposed. I do think the politics of this movie are kind of very muddy to me. It's interesting because, like, I. I was watching this, and I was. The first time I was re watching it, I was like, do people. Do people think the message of this movie is that revolutions are bad? And a lot of people do think that. But then you talk to any of the Nolan brothers who worked on this, and they're like, that's not what we think. We don't think that. We think we're telling the story of a demagogue and why it is bad to have a Bane and then eventually a Trump, like, figure feeding, stoking the fires of populism in one direction, promising something while all the while planning to blow up that bomb anyway, you know? So I don't know, what do you think in terms of, like, his interest in this idea of a city and how it is reflected in this trilogy?

[C]

I think that this trilogy is superior in the regard of that. It's the best Gotham story that we've seen on screen. Nothing against the Fox show.

[A]

I know.

[B]

I was gonna say Simon Kenzie is typing.

[C]

I, like Nolan, did an amazing job of the. I don't know, is it synecdoche Is the word synecdoche? Yeah. Of making Gotham a living, breathing character who can kind of turn on a dime. The soul of that city is the most important soul to this trilogy. It's not the texture of the city, I think is not my favorite Gotham that I've seen on screen. That would either be the 89 Art Deco Gotham or the 2022 Matt Reeves.

[B]

I love Gotham.

[C]

It's beautiful and rainy in a way that these three films are not. Nothing against the snow flurries, which I love in this film. But to answer your question, Joe, I think it's like. I think that Nolan textual reading of the Dark Knight Rises tells you that that was not the point. I don't think he was taking any kind of political stance on. On the mob mentality of a French revolutionary state. I don't think, like, if you literally read it, you see that Bane is a con man that he is. He's manipulating these mobs to act a certain way. I do wonder then what exactly the battle lines are in the final conflict. Who is there fighting the cops? And I don't think the film itself really answers the question of how many of you Selina Kyle's, you know, La Viebohem friends are there lining up with those Bane mercenaries, How many of them are Blackgate prison escapees? Because Selina was one of those Blackgate prisoners. It's just the lines are kind of unclear of what this movement is really made up of. And similarly, we had some judgment of things like Occupy Wall street, where that was a big movement that had a lot of competing interests in there.

[B]

And, you know, like a coincident like it, you know, that happens at the end of 2011. This film is already basically made. And so this comes out, like, while we're still thinking about Occupy Wall street. But it was like a real coincidental moment. But to your point, like, when you watch this in 2026 and you see an ocean of cops beating an ocean of citizens and you're supposed to be rooting for the cops, like, that's a harder watch for me in 2026, you

[C]

know, and I don't think Nolan could have predicted that, you know, public sentiment towards police, at least police fighting bare knuckle in the street, what that would look like. I think the movie is easier to watch in 2022 and after than it is 2016 and after. I think it's easier to identify with those poor Capitol police who had to fend off January 6th protesters than it is whatever the public perception of COPS was in 2016.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

I think the Gotham. Just that general question and point about, like, this is really a Gotham trilogy. I really agree, but I think that it feels to me less about Gotham than, like, specifically, actually Gotham, than the relationship between a place and its people.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Kind of to your point of, like, does this feel like Gotham? Does it look like Gotham? When you pan out and we have these beautiful aerial shots, it's just obviously Manhattan. We're just at Hines Field for the Steelers. This has always been the case. They're filming in Chicago.

[B]

Like, no, no. But I disagree because in the first two seasons, the first two films, it's Chicago and Chicago dress up. Especially in the first one where you get the narrows, like, it's Chicago dressed up to look like a comic book city. And then when he just decides in this movie to make it New York and Philly and downtown Los Angeles, you know, to try to make the idea of the city sort of feel bigger. So you can get the shots of the bridges being blown up and stuff like that. But I just feel like all of a sudden I feel like I'm in a different. And if, you know, yeah, Christian Bale is still playing Batman and a lot of, you know, Lucius Fox is still here and Alfred's still Here. But this does not look like the Gotham that we spent.

[A]

That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. So it feels less like Gotham. Gotham. Gotham is this clearly fully realized and rendered character that is very comic book y or specific to a certain story universe and more just like American city. And what does it mean to be a philanthropist or a businessman or a vigilante or a cop or a jewel thief or any person in that place has to make a decision about what your relationship to it is. What does it mean to grow up in a boy's home on those streets? What does it mean to be a younger brother of an older brother who got pulled into those tunnels for work? And like, you know that that's happening, but other people don't. Like, one of the more interesting threads, movie to movie about Gotham is. And we, you know, I think in a movie that we love and admire, the Dark Knight, we spent a good chunk of our Dark Knight pod talking about, like the ending of that movie and the choice that Bruce makes. Like, is that the right choice? And does it make sense? Right. And the way that those tendrils connect in this film, the Dent Act. And you open with this, like completely farcical portrait of a city free of organized crime for eight years and the streets were cleaned up and this and that. And it's like the commentary on what kind of delusion is unfolding in a place where people believe that that's, that's real. Right? But like Bane has an entire operation going under their very buildings and their street and has laced the concrete that holds the structure of the city in

[B]

place, the bones of the city, with

[A]

explosives that he can blow at any point and they don't even know it's happening. So I think that the, like, assessment of, you know, political, the political apparatus of a city and the machine of a city and stuff like that is obviously really interesting to Nolan. And then the, you know, conversations that like Alfred and Bruce have about and Bruce has with Blake in this movie and you know, Rachel last movie, everything, like, what can one person do in the face of that? What is their right?

[B]

What do you owe a city? It's interesting, Jonathan Nolan when he talks about Batman, because Jonathan Nolan, who considers himself a staunch progressive, gets stressed out when people say the Dark Knight is pro Bush era surveillance and gets stressed out when people say this is an anti Occupy Wall street sort of message. He's like, that, those aren't my politics. We, he was like, we tried very carefully to keep our politics out of this because we feel like he's like, I don't mind injecting my politics into other things. I do. But when you're handed Batman, like, you, you want to make it about Batman, and you don't want to make it about, like, your politics. But, like, he's like, but I think Batman's kind of a fascist. Like, that's John Van Nolan's take on this. Like, that's the other side of the blade of vigilante justice. Right. Is like, the richest man in Gotham has decided what is right and what is wrong, and he is going to make that decision on his own. And the way in which, like, the mob mentality, when you get the kangaroo courts, shout out my guy, Jonathan Crane Killian, as always. But, like, when you get the kangaroo courts of Bane's revolution, it's like, how different is that from. It is different, but, like, how different is it really from Batman just unilaterally deciding what is right and what is wrong. Yeah.

[A]

And the fact that when Bruce is removed from that place, it actually does crumble without him and is 12 hours away from blowing up by the time he gets back.

[C]

Yeah. Atlas Shrugged and Broken.

[B]

Yeah, exactly.

[C]

It's interesting that all three of these movies kind of treat the decision to become Batman and exercise Batman's crime fighting as a kind of sin, as a kind of necessary evil, rather than a virtue, rather than something that's cool, rather than something that. Like, wouldn't it be cool if we had our richest recluse fighting crime in the streets? It's like, Alfred confronts that. He's like, I didn't want you to come back to Gotham after what happened to your parents. I think you should hang it up. I think it's bad. I mean, the second film says, this is the kind of insanity that you inspire by going around as a masked figure. I find that interesting because it's saying that. I think that's Jonathan Nolan saying that we shouldn't be encouraging our billionaires to take everything on their shoulders. We should get a very strong man to break their back to discourage that kind of behavior. Like, it seems to reject vigilantism by letting Matthew Modine lead cops, uniformed police officers, to fight our battles for us. I think that's him trying to reconcile all these complex things. But I do think if you show a large group of people in a city that are being affected by things happening in it, you can't help but politics come in force conversations.

[B]

How do you keep it out of it?

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You did a good I like, did my best impression of an English major to delineate the Tale of Two Cities influences. And then I did watch your video last night and I was like, oh, Eric did an even better job of this. So do you want to talk about the Tale of Two Cities comp at all? Like, what's interesting about that to you

[C]

or what I find it? What I find interesting about it is it is a tale of two cities and they take. They address it with actual text that Gordon says in his eulogy. But it is a city that we both have to share. It's like, it's not geographically separated. It's a city that is. Well, I guess in this film it is above ground and below ground, but ultimately it's a cohabitated space. And it speaks to the different perspectives of the people who have to share these same buildings and streets. And I like that idea, that kind of blindness between these characters. I like that it is a tale of two Gothams in this story and that people are just experiencing that Gotham in completely different ways. And I love that. I love that Selina's Gotham is completely different than Bruce's Gotham. I love their slow dance and how he has these assumptions that she completely rips apart. I love how personal it is between the two of them when she steals his mother's pearls and how important those pearls are to the Wayne family. And I love seeing it all fall apart. I don't know. What were your guys reactions to the Dickens element?

[B]

Mallory, any thoughts?

[A]

I mean, I think this is like a. Again, it's interesting to think, as it always is with Nolan films of the through line across his work, where when he tends to find inspiration in a text or even actively incorporate a passage that Gordon's reading, it reminded me a little bit of the writing recurring Dylan Thomas refrain in your favorite movie, Interstellar. Right. Where like, I think that Nolan, he almost. He's not literally using these as epigraphs. It's not a quote that opens the film like it's the first page of a book, but he's kind of using them in similar fashion, right. Where they're there to clarify tone and intent to us. Right. And I think that that for some people probably feels a little like clunkier than for others when a character is like, literally reading it and telling, this is gonna be the map that the story operates against. But I don't mind it. And I think, like, especially when it's a character like Gordon in this film who we know is wrestling with his personal guilt and compl like he's complicit in this, right? And he did it at the time for a reason, not one that made sense, but he did it for a reason that he had at the time. And then he has to like, you know, when he goes up at the, in the opening stretch and is like, you know, and he's got the letter in his hands that ultimately Bane will very dramatically read, he's like, is this the moment? You know, and you wonder how many moments like that he's had on those, those eight years.

[B]

Did that ping disclosure day for either of you when Bane gets on the camera and he's like, gordon wrote this letter. And I'm like, says who? Prove it.

[C]

It works.

[B]

What do you mean?

[C]

Somehow the prisoners through the other side of these multiple walls can hear this whole speech and react to it.

[A]

Bain also using broadcast news instead of

[B]

the Internet, you know, but I was like, what do you mean you just read a letter? Like, where's the handwriting analysis? What are you talking about here? Yeah, so we've got Gordon's eulogy, which is sort of like cobbled together lines from the end of Tale of Two Cities. We've got characters like Stryver and Barsad who are named for characters in Tale of Two Cities. But my favorite is Bane knitting at the trials, which is this Madame Defarge at the guillotine sort of reference. What I thought was really interesting. So they have this like high minded. We did Dickens in Gotham. David Goyer gave an interview quite recently where he's like, you know what the dirty secret of the Dark Knight Rises is? It's actually Rocky iii. He was like, actually we also did Rocky III alongside of the Dick. And he sort of like lays out the beats and you're like, aha. So you know, all of these things can coexist. And that's the, that's the Nolan, which is the sort of like high minded. We're doing great literature, we are doing high philosophy. We're doing all of that in the popcorn bucket of, you know, like gen pop cinema.

[C]

You know, how important is it, do you think, to Nolan and his brother that the average viewer understands the Dickens connection?

[B]

I think it's more important to Jonathan than it is to Chris personally.

[C]

Yeah, I think it's his way into the story. It's his way to kind of structure the themes of the story. And without that, he doesn't have a way in. But it's just interesting that it seems it's literally referenced through Easter eggs in the movie. But like how maybe 5% of people ever really notice or discover that.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yeah. As I've said on every one of these podcasts, Nolan is one of my favorite filmmakers. I just adore his movies. I don't think that anyone who made Tenet necessarily cares what every audience member is able to understand about their movie. Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, I think that.

[B]

Yeah, that definitely changed over time. All right, let's talk about what I'm calling the curse of the overstuffed Threequel. We're still sort of riding the waves of the bad reputation of Spider Man 3, when the main critique of that movie was you put too many villains in your third movie coming off of the high of the second movie. And so when you have Bane and Selina Kyle and Tali El Ghul and Robin, we're introducing Catwoman and Robin and Bane and Tali al Ghul all in this. And it's not like the other films didn't, you know, like, you've got Ra's Al Ghul and the Scarecrow in the first movie. It's not like we haven't done double triple duty before. It just feels like a lot here. We'll sort of talk about each of these characters, but I do love the conversation that they had at the time where the studio wanted them to do the Riddler. And Jonathan Nolan has said that he even sort of, like, wrote out some treatments of what the third movie with the Riddler would be, but what they all agreed was that it was just too close to the Joker, and they didn't want to do the Joker. But he says there's an executive Warner Brothers, who, after I think, at the Dark Knight premiere or something like that, was like. Like, Leonardo DiCaprio is the Riddler. Right? Let's do it. You know, and they really wanted DiCaprio in this movie, and instead they landed on Bane, among other things, as this sort of, like, big physical threat. Mallory Rubin.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Would you like to give us your treatise on Bane and why you love him? So?

[A]

I just think it's an incredibly entertaining performance. Like, genuinely, really, really fun to watch. I think the voice choice that Har as Bane is completely insane. And, like, I offer no explanation or defense of it, but I say unapologetically that I love it. I. You know, this is obviously, like, part of a stretch of films where we got to spend a lot of time on the Internet wondering why Tom Hardy didn't want to show his face in a movie and, like, was going to mumble basically indecipherably and inaudibly through a Large part of the film. Captivating. Captivating to watch. I think that the, like, fact that this trilogy ends up being bookended around the League of Shadows and Ra's Al Ghul. Like, you know, there are real life tragic reasons that that happens, obviously. And like, you know, that's also just, like, worth saying. And, you know, would this have been the exact character set that we got for the third if Ledger film, If Ledger had. If he thought Ledger hadn't tragically passed, like, probably not. Right. So, you know, was this intended from the jump to connect Bane and Talia and Ra's and League of Shadows and have that be such a central force in this question of, like, can you save a city without burning it down to the ground? I have to imagine that the answer to that is no. But I think in terms of completing this Bruce Wayne's journey, even though the Talia stuff in the third act is quite bad and just doesn't work, I think that that's not Bane's fault, actually. I think that's more about the bloated and overstuffed and convoluted strands of the story inside of the film. And as an effort to connect it, I think the connections across the trilogy, the first film and the third thematically work. I think some of the clunkiness of the narrative inside of this story with how much are you paying attention in the opening plane heist to, like, Pavel and what is even the reactor and the clean energy plan and, you know, Tate and this. And it's like that falls into what we were talking about a few minutes ago. That's just kind of like generic can I save my city stuff. There's nothing specific to that that feels like Gotham specific. Gotham Corps. Right. So that stuff just doesn't work as well. I think Hardy as Bane is like not only Internet meme era fodder in a really fun way, but just like a really memorable, like, I'm Gotham's reckoning. Great performance. He is at the center of a couple of my favorite scenes in the history of comic book movies. Like, one of the things we did last year was our best of the century so far project. And I picked Bane, Batman scenes. Both of which I will talk about many times again today in more than one of those pods. Not because this is my favorite movie of the trilogy, it isn't. But because I think those scenes and watching Bane and Bruce go toe to toe is like, just incredibly compelling and captivating. So I'm a huge fan of the performance in a movie that can elsewhere be Flawed.

[B]

I love you so much. This is your most demented take.

[A]

But I will. I think a lot of people agree. I do.

[B]

I don't think that's true. Vaas, how do you feel about Bane?

[C]

I don't wanna live in a world without Tom Hardy's Bane. I'm happier. I think we're in the better timeline that he made those choices that he did. I think it is a fundamentally flawed character in this trilogy and in this film. I really do think there was an attempt by Nolan to address some of the concerns with his previous two films that we didn't have Batman in a real fight ever. And I do think you do need to see his physical prowess and the boldness to show Batman's back getting broken. I think at some point in his research, Nolan discovered that Bane is the one who can actually break the back. And I like seeing that delivered in this film. It's just this depiction of Bane is also an intellectual. He's also a revolutionary. He's also a grifter and a con man.

[A]

Sensitive guy. Cares about the innocent.

[C]

He can hide in the pit.

[A]

He does one innocent. Not the rest of the innocents. Not the innocents of Gotham. The innocent.

[B]

Entire city of Gotham that he plans to blow up. Right.

[A]

My bean takes are not character specific. They're performance.

[B]

Bane was right.

[A]

No, Bane was not right. But Bane was fun to watch. Bane was fun to watch.

[C]

He is fun to watch. I think. I think the vocal choice does not work in the film. Again, I'm happy that I live in a world where we have this. But it makes the character too much of a joke. It does feel like it is a voice in an ADR booth that is disconnected from the performance that was there on set.

[B]

Well, and it was right because. So they released the opening plane heist. Whatever you want to call it. Plain napping. Is that how blood transfusions work? I don't think so.

[C]

The heart of a corpse.

[A]

That scene is crazy.

[B]

But they showed that that in front of Ghost Protocol in IMAX as a sort of preview similar to what they did with the Dark Knight. And no one could understand what the fuck Bane was saying. And that was like a very unfortunate first impression of this movie. Was that it was a joke before you even saw the movie. Is that what the is Bane saying? So they had Hardy ADR all of his lines and introduce this more sing song Gayden so you could at least a little bit more understand him. And I do think it's fun. Like I don't think it's it's like, unfun. But it doesn't work for me as a whole in a vacuum. And in certain isolated moments, I have a good time with it. And I think the way in which, like, Tom Hardy's physical imposition, like, I hadn't seen. I just saw Bronson for the first time last year. And that is just like an absolutely incredible, like, whirlwind, physical brutality performance from Tom Hardy. And he is, like, really delivering that here the way that they shot him to make him, even though he is shorter than Christian Bale, look like he's towering over Bale like, you know, and just, like, punching holes in pillars for no reason, honestly. And, like, all this other stuff like that. Like, I like the physical imposition with the intellect, and I like his. There's something I really like about his connection to Talia, but. But, yeah, overall, I just think at the end of the day, the voice undercuts a lot of that. It is really fun to imitate. It is, but it undercuts it as,

[A]

like, he's a showman.

[B]

Whereas, like, Ledger makes big choices and all of those big choices work. And Hardy, who bases off a, you know, somewhat famous boxer in the uk, like, made this choice for this voice. And I fundamentally don't think it works.

[C]

At the end of the day. I think it's a note that Nolan should have given him. And I don't know what happened there. Like, if you're Christopher Nolan at that point, it's post Inception Christopher Nolan, you can say, like, don't fuck up my billion dollar movie, please. And luckily, this movie ended up doing well, despite all of it. It didn't ruin the movie, and I don't think it. Since the movie, I have trouble. This most recent rewatch, is he an introvert? Is he an extrovert? Does he like the limelight? Or is he an ambivert in the way that he can adapt to just serve the mission of trying to burn Gotham down? Because I think the middle act of this film requires this person to be kind of a P.T. barnum. And he does not strike me as someone who likes being in front of a camera, likes speaking in front of a crowd. Yet he's there in Heinz Stadium talking to thousands of people and is, like, making a big show of it. That's why I'm like, I think there were some ideas that the Nolan brothers had from the second film. You need someone like the Joker, someone who is kind of a media figure, who loves the camera, who can't get enough of people staring at him to be able to deliver that particular take type of plot. And Bane, while he works really well in close quarters combat and a larger than life presence in some regards, doesn't strike me as someone who works as like kind of spokesman for any movement.

[A]

I think the good news is it's never hard after this at any point to hear anything in a Christopher Nolan movie or to understand what people are saying in a Nolan movie. It's never a problem again, folks. It's only a problem in any movie that he's ever made involving water or IMAX cameras. I think that the Bane feels to me like, like he is prepared to be a showman, but only when it's required.

[B]

Right.

[A]

Like I think he seems in the, in the Hines Field Steelers stadium section, very comfortable showboating and knowing that the camera is on him and that he has everybody's attention not just in that stadium, but globally. Right. I think when he is like in the steps about to open Blackgate and loose the prisoners onto the, onto the streets again, he seems to be like, I think kind of relishing not only the act, but the moment of public presence. I actually think the thing that doesn't. But also he's like happy to wait in the shadows underneath the city and operate and of course sets up the, you know, the darkness exchange with Batman in a very compelling way. I think the part that, the part that like doesn't work as well, actually. Even though the, I think understanding of the emotional connection and history to Talia works not only for being in a vacuum, but as like a comp to Bruce as a character who's like, who is the person most important to you. And saying to Blake, like, even if you don't think you have anybody, like, there's always someone and you don't realize until they're in peril or they're gone. The thing that doesn't actually work quite as well is when Bane, I think, has to completely shrink then in light of the Talia reveal, because that feels incongruous actually to the. Like, I am out here with my collar popped as high as anyone but Brian Colangelo's collar has ever gone before. Those characters don't feel like they're the same.

[B]

He's the mask, right? And then the mask comes off and then it's Talia's time to shine. Which we'll talk about in a second. First, let's talk about Selena, Kyle. Like we've got this recast category which, you know, we'll talk about when we get to our categories. But every time we've done it for this mov. This franchise, it's been a woman. And I just feel like, you know, people, I like Maggie Gyllenhaal in the Dark Knight. A lot of people don't. I don't like Katie Holmes and Batman Begins, and a lot of people don't. And so Rachel Dawes as a character or the women that have been asked to perform as Rachel Dawes as a character have been like a stumbling block for them this, this franchise. Talia. I have reams of notes for Talia and we'll get there. Anne Hathaway, no notes. Selena, Kyle. Incredible. And some context for this that I, That I always think is fun to think about is that. And you know, Anne Hathaway has talked about this quite recently. Like that she was in a really weird part time of her career.

[A]

You know, it's.

[B]

It's easy to come to movies now and see Anne Hathaway still thriving and see her in the Princess Diaries and think, wow, this woman has had just like a solid, incredible career. But there was just this weird time on the Internet where everyone decided that Anne Hathaway was too try hard. This is post the 2011 Oscars, which were not her fault. That was James Franco's fault as far as I'm concerned. And she just had this like theater kid energy. There were all these think pieces about Jennifer Lawrence, the cool girl, versus Anne Hathaway, the sweaty try hard girl. And like all, all of that. Her reputation was so like quote unquote bad to like whatever who dummies on the Internet. And Christopher Nolan cast her. And she has talked about how she didn't think she was gonna get cast. That he took this like, chance on her when no one liked her and everyone thought she was toxic and wanted to stay away from her and put her in this role and then put her in Interstellar and just sort of like she's like, he to a certain extent, kind of saved my. Kept my career momentum going in a time when it really could have ground to a halt. And it's just like, I genuinely think that this movie, because it comes out the same year as Les Miserables, is partially responsible. Same way I think True Detective is responsible for Matthew McConaughey's Oscar. Like partially responsible for getting that Oscar. Cause she didn't get the Oscar for Catwoman. But you watch her do Fantine in Les Mis and you watch her do Selina Kyle and you're like, yeah, give that woman an Oscar. Are you kidding me?

[C]

What can't she do Anne Hathaway's excellent in this movie. I love the adjustments that she makes in a shot to go from a screaming, a damsel in a bar. How she can just play without even changing her face. Play kind of the oops. Clumsy server working in the mansion too. Just like with the slightest tilt.

[A]

Oops.

[C]

Like that. She's just incredible. I think she gives the best performance in this film and she's so watchable. And I agree. I think often we reward Oscars for career in that moment. So the moment that the actor's in rather than the singular performance a lot of the time, and I don't know, I remember that time in 2011 and not understanding it, not tuning into it, still liking her as a performer. Yes. I understand that she was the better half of the Oscar presenters that year. I don't understand why she took the blame for that. But I do remember that discourse of the cool girl and how cool is she when she's the cool girl in this movie? It's. All I know is I'm not getting emotional. Let me.

[A]

When.

[C]

When she's just like. All I know is that you should be as afraid of him as I am. Like, she's just so effortless and wonderful and I love her in this film.

[A]

Yeah, she's amazing. Definitely the MVP of this movie. She's sexy, she's smart, she's confident. But we understand the moments where she feels fear. I think something like the how physically convincing she is in every respect, right? Like the kind of of swaying crouch in front of the safe or the like, hey, just hold this hat for a second so I can punch you through it at the airport, right? All of that, you know, the humor. Like, you dumb bitch. No one's ever called me dumb before. Like iconic, honestly. Incredible, right?

[B]

I told me was unbreakable.

[A]

Like, it's so good. And you know, often in a film, especially a film with this many new characters in particular, like you're saying Joe, who we have to like, like kind of understand quickly their history, their relationship to current events. Like all at once. All at once. You know, if you were basically just like handed certain key nuggets like we are with Selina, she's after the clean slate. You know, here's a folder this thick of all of the trans, you know, the transgressions and the run ins that she's had. Bruce, when he's like praising the way that she retrieved his fingerprints, right? And he's like, she is good. But also they're catching up with her, the ground is shaky beneath her feet. There's a version of that where it's like so ham fisted to make us understand without actually understanding anything about the character. We don't know anything about Celaena. We're just being told all these things about her where it's like, oh, my God, what kind of clunky exposition to help us really quickly grasp where this character is with her history. Even some of the things that she has to say about, of like, wealth. Right? It all is.

[B]

Storm's coming. Yeah.

[A]

Like, you know, even when Bruce gets to keep his house and her reaction to that is like, man, you even like, go broke, like, differently than the rest of us, right? There's a version of it where it's like kind of just like really eye roll inducing, but she makes it home at just the perfect frequency. And you understand, I think, something about her, her soul and like her essence, you know, One of my favorite moments in the performance is toward the end when Bruce and trying to convince her to stay, to stay and actually help and stay and fight. And he's like, I think, you know, I think you have, like, there's more to you than that. And the way that she says, I'm sorry to keep letting you down is so, so, so, so, so good. And you have no problem believing, I think that there's like a sincere, earnest impulse behind that, just as there is when she's like, come away with me. So you buy it when they're together at the end, but also you buy that she had to talk herself into pulling back into the city after she clears the path in the tunnel. It's just fantastic. Fantastic performance, fantastic rendering of this character. I love it.

[B]

I have a read on this where, like, because they do two love interests for Bruce inside of this movie, you know, like, he has sex with Talia Ghul, but he ends up with Selina Kyle. I think some people are like, why would he end up with her at the end of the day? I feel like she's his soulmate in this movie. He wakes up from his slumber when he meets her. And there are moments in this movie where they're just sort of like they're mirrored again and again and again. She pulls on him what he pulls on her on all other. You know, that's what that feels like, you know, all this sort of stuff like that. But like, even, like her back flipping out of his window, which is just incredible, and then him, like, back flipping out of the hospital window to go visit Gordon, like, there's just like, all of these sort of mirror moments, which, like, the bat and the cat have always had that. And so there's just that built in. I'm rooting for them anyway. Helps that she looks absolutely smoking hot in her costume. The goggle ears are an incredible, inspired innovation to bring this comic book y idea into this grounded, real world thing. Also, I talk about this a lot, but I feel like it's really important to have, if you're gonna be a masked character, that you have to have really good lips. Or in the case of Robert Pattinson, like, he just has a slash mouth, which also really works for Batman. But, like, Patrick Wilson has, like, incredible. You know, like, in Watchmen, like, incredible. And, like, she just has this, like, the. The, like, five layers of red lipstick she's wearing when she's got that cat costume on is, like, should not be underestimated. I think it's very important. Yeah.

[C]

She is a true shapeshifter. It's really fun to imagine the two of them in Italy and their epilogue. Like, what kind of hotel guests are they? Are they just, like, running cons on the waiter? Doing his, like, spoiled college jerk Persona? Her doing her, you know, flirty girl energy? And then every hotel they go to, they're just acting like a completely different couple.

[B]

I love this.

[C]

They're so manic and perfect for each other.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

When she does the transition of. Yeah. Doing that. Whatever that dive is out the back of the window, which is incredible. Landing somehow on her feet, as all cats do, and then just doing this kind of master of disguise thing. Just pulling off, whatever this line.

[B]

Like. Yeah, the apron. And the apron and the.

[C]

Get in the back of the congressman's car and saying, you want to take me home? And then they go off to the Caribbean for a few days. Like, we don't see that in the movie. But, like, she kept up that act for, like, days to get him drunk and ruin his life, probably. And then just so she can use him as a human shield. Like, that is such a long con.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Where she's like, I need a powerful human shield for when I go to talk to these guys, and they're gonna

[A]

stiff me and Daggett's gonna use his cell phone. She's thought of everything.

[B]

She's thought of everything.

[C]

It's terrifying. She's such a cool villain. There's a completely different version of the movie where it's just her and just the kind of, you know, the cat and mouse or the cat and bat game that could have been played. Cause I Love that. I love the energy between the two of them. And it's such a well written character and a well performed character. And it's just fun to imagine the Elseworlding with her.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Shall we talk about Talia?

[A]

Yes. But we all have to slump. We have to slump in order to do it like this.

[B]

Can your microphone pick you up in that pose? I'm not sure.

[A]

Poor Mary.

[B]

And Cotillard has been like. Has given interviews where she's like, yep, I didn't get the angle right on that day. She's like, I sure fucked that up. I understand people hate it.

[A]

One of the most remarkable I. I am dying posture choices in the history of cinema. Completely confounding. You're definitely not supposed to be just cackling uncontrollably at that point in the film, but it's hard not to.

[C]

Opening night fanboys there at 1:30am we're all laughing in that moment. Why did they use that take?

[B]

I know. Let's go back and take another take. Well, I mean, so part of it is like, I know they had a short window with her because she had just had her baby and they like, you know, so like, that's why she's wearing a lot of billowy coats for a lot of the movie, is she was just sort of like, right after her pregnancy, they altered the shooting schedule so they could get time with her. And I love that Christopher Nolan did that. He's like, I want Marion Cotillard. I don't care. I'll figure it out. But like, I think it put them, like, against the clock to certain stuff they were shooting with her. And yeah, like, I cannot believe he got into the editing room. Was like, A, that bay voice, 10 out of 10, no notes. B, that Talia, like, posture dying scene.

[C]

Great.

[B]

Love it. Which sucks because I don't know that I love. I think her coming off of Inception. Of course, there's so many Inception people in this movie. But, like, coming off of playing Mal. And I know the Internet had already figured. The Internet had already figured out she was playing Talia. That's fine. But, like, what percentage of the Internet is the. Is the mass audience. But coming off of Mal, she's just giving villain energy, like, the whole movie, unfortunately. And so, like, if you had cast maybe an actress who didn't quite have that baggage or directed her to play the difference. I still do love when she shoves the knife in him and her very impassive face when she does it. I really like that moment. A Lot. But I don't like much else that poor Talia Miranda does in this movie.

[A]

She's pulled the hair back. It's time for business. Time for business.

[B]

This is ponytail time.

[A]

Yeah. The Inception call out is like, a great one. And you couple that with this hot woman who every old man in Bruce's life constantly is reminding him is hot. That's also a hysterical part of Dark. Dark Rise is where Alfred and Lucius are just constantly like, have you seen this hot chick around you? Oh, have you seen this hot chick around you? They're the comedy.

[B]

I set you up with a chimpanzee if it got you out of here. That's so dumb. They're the comedy of Alfred.

[A]

Having to pick up Bruce from the ball after Selena absconds with the Lamborghini does make it all worth it. But, like, yeah, okay, so beautiful, mysterious woman who is involved in key boardroom maneuvers and also is like, the thing I'd love to talk about is this energy reactor that one dude can turn into a nuke. Could that person potentially end up being bad?

[B]

I don't know. Everyone looks so dumb every time they include her in all of the plans. They're like, plan everything, right? And then, like, those people die, and those people die, and that plan goes awry. And I'm like, you've got a.

[A]

You've got a rat.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Very tough look to the hot French lady.

[C]

She's such. I really feel like she's like a plot mechanism in this movie.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Like, when you rewatch it, you see. Oh. Nolan needed a way to have some kind of. For. For Bruce to lose the board vote, for him to lose his wealth, to put her in a position of power to where she can reactivate this energy project. You can sense Nolan's nuclear dread pumping throughout this movie. And then, yeah, he felt the need to close this trilogy by bringing back the League of Shadows, by making her Talia Al Ghul. I just don't think it's necessary. I wonder if this movie came out several years later. If he did Inception and Interstellar and his Dunkirk movie and got a couple of his other passion projects out of his system and then revisited the movie years later, you wouldn't feel the need to top or to close the trilogy the same way. You would have had more. I don't know, at least more experience with sound mixing in a film to make different choices.

[B]

You say that, but I've seen your defense of Tenet, but I don't understand it.

[A]

Oh, God.

[C]

I mean, Tenet is not a Movie that's meant to be understood. That's how I feel. This is a movie that is meant to be understood. And, yeah, I think Tali Al Ghul is just, like, an unfortunate that. I feel like Marianne Cotillard was underserved in this role, and it's not her fault. I just think it's. I didn't need the League of Shadows in this film. If it's a story about Gotham Soul, the League of Shadows story was already told, and that book was closed, and we all just saw it happening. And I don't know, what do you do at that point? Once the Internet figures it out? You can't cut her from the film, because at that point, the film is what the film is.

[B]

It's so funny because watching a bunch of behind the scenes of this movie, they talked about all of the lengths they went to to keep certain secrets, right? Like when they filmed the funeral scene, Christian Bale got in costume and was on set. So that if there were set photos taken of the funeral scene, Christian Bale was there in costume, and they were like, Michael Caine was very confused, like, why Bruce was there. The head headstone in. In that scene says Miranda Tate on it. You know, so they could later put Bruce Wayne on it. Why Miranda Tate would be buried in the. In the Wayne family plot. Let's not worry about it.

[A]

But, you know, just really memorable Fuck by the fire.

[B]

That's why. And Liam Neeson was like, I had no idea what I was doing in that movie. He just told me to, like, walk out of the shadows and walk back into the shadows. Like, a lot of people just got, like, their scenes. Nobody knew the ending of the movie. The few people that did it was, like, verbally told to them. So this is like final seasons of Game of Thrones level. Like, like, we're keeping people in the dark to try to keep this a secret. And it's like, then the most important, like, not the most, but, like, I would say the big twist. Maybe the big twist is we'll talk about twists. But, like, maybe the big twist is Bruce is still alive. But, like, the big twist kind of feels like it was Talia. And then that was the thing that the Internet was like, that's definitely Talia Ghoul, right? Like, I remember Dave Gonzalez is like, that's Talia Ghoul. Joanna. I was like, okay, okay.

[C]

It's interesting. Yeah. I didn't know that they did all those things to keep the secrets from breaking out. I was aware of the Robin ADR ad later.

[B]

Yes. Yes, yes.

[C]

They cut away and they do the same thing with the patching of the autopilot technology and the bat vehicle. Like they say, oh, whose name was on the fix? They cut away from the engineers and you hear Bruce Wayne. And I wonder what they told those actors to say. Do they? Yeah, they must have given those actors another name because he has to kind of smirk in a moment to be like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

[B]

Interesting. All right, speaking of Robin.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

What do you feel about the way in which Robin is deployed or John Blake is deployed or Joseph Gordon Levitt in that role?

[C]

I think Joseph Gordon Levitt's great in this role. I like him a lot. I wish there was more Joseph Gordon Levitt now. I miss him. I think I don't need it to be Robin. I wasn't disturbed by it being Robin. There are maybe other. Robin is a weird one that, like, his name is Robin and not Dick or Richard or something like that.

[A]

Check my legal name.

[C]

Yeah. Because he only has the name Robin because of the Flying Graysons and that's like his insignia. So I found that to be a weird bit of lore building.

[A]

I just.

[C]

I don't think Chris and Jonathan have the same kind of interest in expanding the comic book lore of this world. So when they do things like this, it kind of feels a little hollow, but not so much to where I walked out of the theater upset. I was like, I would watch a spinoff with him as kind of a Nightwing esque character in this world. I still think that door's open. Honestly. I think Joseph Gordon Levitt is kind of the answer to the question of what do we owe this community? What do we owe Gotham? He has forgotten the orphans, and I think the fact that he could be the champion for them, I think is so virtuous and nice in the final act. It's a little hokey to see him say, let's get back on the bus. You can't. Don't let him die without hope. I thought it was a bit of an eye roll.

[A]

Remarkable moment.

[C]

But I liked him screaming at that cop across the killed us. What a raw moment in a final act that didn't have a lot of, like, raw moments, I feel.

[B]

What do you think?

[A]

I like the performance as well. I mean, I'm a Joseph Gordon Levitt fan. I like him in Nolan's movies, obviously. We had a ton of fun talking about Arthur in Inception. I just love him there. The movie ending on him and setting up that promise of a Robin Film future was really exciting to me at the time. And I think that it makes sense for this Bruce, this Batman, in this version of the story, which is so rooted in including in their conversations in this movie. Like, that was the point of Batman, like the way the symbol is supposed to function. There's all of the ill that that has inspired over the course of the trilogy. But what good and hope and a decision to fight for the cause could it inspire? It makes perfect sense to me as an ending point to kind of pass the mantle and the mission to another character. I think that undeniably it is also true that this Blake figure in this movie is like kind of a square. The term that's used in the movie often is hothead. And I think that's true in the sense that he doesn't mind, like being a bit of a bitch and like whining and complaining and calling everybody out on their bullshit like he's a little bit of a brat. He always thinks he knows the most in every moment, but he's just like, he's really kind of like self righteous and like self important and has that sense of moral clarity that I think frankly makes him a perfect candidate to,

[B]

you know, inherit the Batman mantle at the end.

[A]

But I think can lead to a little bit of like a God like reaction for some fans. But I enjoy it. I think he makes sense in this story and in this movie.

[B]

This is not my recasting pick. I will not be coming for justice. Gordon Levitt on this podcast, I do love him, but I did see that Ryan Gosling was in the running to play this role. And I'm like, Gosling, who's so good at injecting everything with humor. If John Blake had just been a little less self serious. And yeah, I do like that. Like, when we think about John Blake as a candidate to take over the mantle. And Christopher Nolan has said from the beginning this was what he wanted at the end of his journey with Batman was someone else takes over the mantle. He always wanted that to be sort of the final shot of the story. So, you know, whether it's Dick Grayson or whether it's John Blake, my legal name is Robin. Like, sort of moment, that moment got laughed at in my theater. Like they laughed at Talia and then they laughed, laughed at that. And I was like, we're not ending very well. But I like that he has figured out who Batman is. So in terms of World's Greatest Detective, he's doing some great detecting work. I like the visual of him swinging into the cave flying Grayson style and sort of the rise, I think I really, from a visual point of view, I really love that ending. But yeah, I don't know, it's. It almost works. It like almost works inside of this. I think it's interesting.

[A]

The humor point is a great one because like, you know, I think I'm thinking of a moment like where in the third act he has that you get to tell him what's really going on here moment. And what if he was like, wait till you get a load of like not only wait, wait till you hear about this fucking bomb. It's literally a time bomb. Wait till you see what Scarecrow is up to. You know, like a little bit of that would have been fun.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's very, very, very self serious. I do like the role.

[C]

It's interesting to me that Hathaway gets the accusations of being a try hard when like in the same era we had Joseph Gordon Levitt doing the same kind of thing.

[B]

Oh yeah. He's like, I'm gonna do make em laugh on snl.

[C]

The shapeshifting he does in the Bruce Willis impression in Looper. I didn't have a problem with this. I was a theater kid. I love seeing a theater kid work out their freak on screen.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And so I don't blame any of them for this. But it's just interesting that Anne Hathaway had to pay the price for that and both of them get their chance to kind of like earn their keep here. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I do think that the story of Gotham as Christopher Nolan has presented it are characters that are just a bit wearier for sure and accepting of the base reality of corruption.

[A]

It would be weird to walk around like this is all a laugh riot. It's just like it makes him, I think, a touch hard to fully embrace with deep and abiding warmth because he's like such a drag. But I do really like the character. Works for me quite well in the movie actually. And when it ends, I'm like, let's go.

[B]

Do you think when Alfred's done having his Fornet Bronco by the Arno, does he go back and he is like the Alfred to this Batman as well, or is he fully retired?

[A]

I hope not. I hope he goes and just really enjoys some respite in Europe. I don't know if he has the capacity to really unwind in him ultimately, but I think Florence is lovely. Let's go look at some other places.

[C]

He didn't make a promise to Thomas And Martha to also look after every orphan crime fighter who's gonna follow.

[A]

He finished burying Waynes, whether or not they had actually died. And now he can move on with his life.

[B]

I do love. I watched a really recent interview with Christian Bale where he was talking about the ending, and the interviewer was like, is it real? Is it a dream? What is the ending of this movie? And he's like, well, no, I think it's real. It can be whatever the audience wants it to be. I think it's real. But what he said is he's like, he finally gets to lay down the privilege and the burden of being Bruce Wayne. And I love that it wasn't being Batman. It was like being Bruce Wayne. That being Bruce Wayne was the thing that was choking and suffocating him. And so to your point about, like, let's write some fanfic about the roleplay that Selina and Bruce do across Europe. Like, I love that he's just like, I don't have to be Bruce Wayne anymore. And that and the. And I don't know if that was just Christian Bale, like, misspeaking or whatever, but it really struck me of this. Like, that's the Persona that was, like, really crushing him. And, like, the fact that his mom's necklace is now on Selina's neck and, like, the pearls that were broken have been restrung. And, like, all. All of that is just, like, I don't know. I love the ending of this movie.

[C]

So what is this home base like, we. When I think of Bruce Wayne, I think of the public Persona, the billionaire playboy who's, like, jumping in fountains with models and going on yachts with ballerinas.

[A]

Great stuff.

[C]

That. That's a mask. Right?

[B]

Right.

[C]

But also, the Bruce Wayne who's, like, sulking around the mansion with Alfred is probably not his comfort zone either, because he's in the halls of the house that his parents lived and were not able to raise him in. So he's not comfortable there. He was comfortable with Rachel for a time. If I think, like, yeah, Bruce sitting on a terrace in Florence is probably. There's a different Bruce that we haven't really seen yet that is probably most comfortable for him.

[A]

I think that this is, like, this is obviously something we love in general in a story like this and something that is quite rewarding for viewers or readers after the investment of real time with that character. Like, it's a version of what we get with Cap and Tony, you know, at the end of Endgame, Right. Where Cap is The one where Cap finally gets to say, like, I'm gonna try some of that life Tony's been telling me about. And then Tony is the one who makes the sacrifice play. And, like, if you have bought in fully and invested fully in the choices and the sacrifices and the compromises a character has had to make, and if the what the hero or the vigilante or whatever has actually given of themselves to the people they have helped, then, like, either they give it all at the end or they give a different version of all of it, which is letting themselves actually, like, off the hook. Right? And so watching Bruce, you know, coming into this movie and, you know, we learned that eight years have passed, and seeing him, like you're saying, Eric, he's a phantom in the halls of his own home. And the idea that he rebuilt it in the first place, like, as a monument to what, right? To the past. And so the idea of Bruce finally allowing himself to discover some sort of future. And I think it's interesting because, like, Alfred's position across the movies actually moves quite a bit in terms of what he wants out of Bruce. I'll hit that in one of the categories. But, like, Bruce has changed inside of the constant. The constant is, what do I have to do for this place? And so it's a massive thing to allow himself to, like, let go of that and go live life for a little while. And there's a, like, you know, one of the lines I really remember from. There are actually a lot of lines in this movie where even all these years later, you watch the movie and you're like, I remember hearing that in the trailer for the first time, right? And like, not everything, not yet is definitely one of those moments. And I remember getting, like, a chill seeing that in the trailer for the first time. It's like, not everything that yet. The idea, of course, would be the sacrifice of death, like, giving his life, giving the mask, which was Bruce's life. Like, there's no life in this stretch of time across this trilogy for Bruce outside of being Batman. So that is giving everything right. It's really cool. It's a great, great, great ending. The final scene is part of why I was so ready to be like, I need to see this again immediately.

[B]

Immediately.

[A]

Despite all of the Talia and Pavel

[B]

and the Bane voice, let's do our categories.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

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[B]

Okay, we're going to do our top 20 combination of superlatives and other sundries as we go through this. Each category has a Nolan movie quote attached to it, not necessarily a quote from this movie starting with why so serious? Funniest line or moment from this movie.

[C]

Eric Boss My favorite is specifically after Talia Al Ghul's slow knife speech and how great Marianne is with she really wanted the best face of the last thing he sees before they all get fried by a nuclear blast and it doesn't work out. Him going in his Batman voice too slow. So great. So great.

[A]

Mallory Rubin I get such a kick out of both because of the just litany of of physical peril that Bruce has suffered through. But also Bruce's face in this scene when Bruce goes to get basically his physical cartilage.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Wherever Jim Gordon is. And then the doc says, I've seen worse cartilage in knees. And Bruce is like, that's good. No, that's because there is no cartilage in your knee and not much of any use in your elbows or your shoulders. Between that and the scar tissue in your kidneys, the residual concussive damage to your brain tissue and the general scarred over quality of your body, I cannot recommend that you go hella skiing Mr. Wayne in the Bruce. Just like it kills me, it cracks me up. It's so good because there's so many moments you watch Bruce get just destroyed and you're like, is his brain not pudding after this? So I appreciated that and it made me laugh.

[B]

I don't know if this is my Game of Thrones loyalty, but I just think Aiden Gillan in the opening of this movie when he's just posturing with his polo tucked into his khakis with a belt and he's trying to play the big man with his gun and he's just sort of like, yeah, carry him over there.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Well if you, if we throw you out of the plane and it's just like terrible cosplaying. As someone with any kind of attitude, it's really, really funny to me. And then also this is extra textual. But this time, watching through, I was thinking about, you know, when, when Batman to Gordon is like light it up and he lights it up. And then you have to think about Bruce in the dead of night, I guess, laying that track of the fuel, climbing up the bridge using whatever fuel he has used to draw the giant Batman sigil. Like all the scampering that Bruce does around to fix the bat signal or leave stuff for Robin or whatever the case may be, I can vibe with. But just he had so little time on the clock before that bomb was going off and he just had to make a very dramatic fiery entrance. And so I just like thinking of him rappelling and just sort of painting this bat signal on the side of the bridge. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[A]

Absolutely nuts. I love that. Also the fact that they are on canonically slippery, ready to crack at any point. Ice. Like I'm always waiting for Gordon to be like the. Oh, the gas is like, like 2 inches from me on this very slippery ice. Like what if I had not seen the flare and stopped exactly where I was supposed to stop? Would I just like Harvey Dent myself right here? Tough one. Great one. A couple runners up. We already talked about this. So that's what that feels like when. When Selena vanishes.

[B]

Incredible moment.

[A]

Really good. In the same. No one ever accused me of being dumb. Selina Daggett strier sequence when Stryver comes in and is like, another Thrones.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Bert Gorman, another Thrones presence here. Nice outfit. Those heels make it tough to walk. And when Celaena stabs him and says, I don't know, do they. Just iconic. Just wonderful stuff from her. She's the best. She's great.

[B]

Any other runners up that you have?

[C]

I like the kind of just saying sorry.

[B]

Sorry.

[C]

Yeah. After he shoots him.

[A]

Good stuff. Oh, actually I was born in the Regency Room also. Very good.

[B]

Oh, yeah, yeah, Very good.

[A]

And Ibiza. It's pronounced Ibiza. Insane and hysterical.

[B]

You already mentioned this, but I do think that, like everything that Anne Hathaway does in the fingerprint exchange scene from the, like, screaming and crying, like, going from shooting everyone competently to screaming and crying to saying to the congressman, keep some pressure on that darling. On her way out, he's like, call me. And then like walking out the door and the cop until she's like, he's bleeding. You know, like all like the in and out that she does of that character is just like, really funny, really good. It's just incredible stuff. All right. Speaking of Tom Hardy, you mustn't be afraid to dream a bigger darling. Sickest set piece. Erik Voss.

[C]

I might get heat for this. I just love the football field demolition. I know it was in the trailer and I know there's a lot of VFX that doesn't hold up. Just the concept of it in. Hines Ward running the touchdown.

[A]

My least favorite. My least favorite favorite player of all time.

[B]

Hines Ward of all time.

[A]

Obviously, like, not accounting for, like, actual, like, murderers. People who have done terrible real world things just inside of like a football fandom rivalry. Like the Steelers or the Ravens are tribal. I'm a Ravens fan and Heinz Ward always had the, you know, you had. You had to respect the fact that he was a great player, Right? But like this just this smug smile on his face when he was doing something against the Ravens.

[B]

And it's just.

[A]

It was so easy to hate him and root against him. So watching him receive the kickoff and then have no idea that his entire team is being sucked into the abyss as he runs forward towards the end zone to happily score.

[C]

It's great. And preceding it with the little boy singing the national anthem, I mean, part of it was like, I saw it in the trailer and seen it in imax. That is like, a very cool spectacle and piece.

[A]

Can't believe Bane didn't win you over, Joe, with his commentary on that musical interlude. You know, it's like, ooh, it's a beautiful voice. Loves the arts. Bane loves the arts.

[C]

It does feel like Nolan does this really well of this kind of this synchronistic editing of, like, multiple complex processes that just happen to happen at the same time and converge at the right moment.

[B]

All your plans work.

[C]

It's like. Like he did it literally in tenet of, like, the building unexploding and the top half exploding at the same time. All of his movies have a moment like this, and it was like, yeah, the explosive cement going off around the city, all culminating in the football field. So it was really the moment leading up to it that led to mine.

[B]

I don't think it's a bad pick because, like, for whatever you say about the vfx, like, when you watch the Making of, they, like, blew holes in the field and they had guys, like, fall into the hole. Like, real guys fell into holes during that run. And yes, they added a bunch of extra explosion. But, like, I love that Christopher Nolan talks about, like, when he. When he does a big sequence and they have to use cgi, of course he would rather blow up every building himself. But, like, if they have to use CG for something or another, he's like, I like to always end with something real to anchor the audience into the sense of realness. So I think it ends with, like, your least favorite football player ever. Just, like, having this real, like, whoa moment and that. Just like kind of like imagine not

[A]

knowing your entire team just got sucked into the ground because you're so busy running, running it back. That's good.

[C]

Well, he was about to do a victory dance. Yeah, I didn't earn this victory dance. Like, all the guys who are going

[B]

to tackle me got dedication to the craft. Mallory Rubin, what's your answer?

[A]

So I had Eric's pick as one of my two candidates for the stunt category, actually. But it's always hard to know which goes in which. There's a lot of bleed between them. I am gonna go with the post bank heist, stealth chase and introduction of the bat. This sequence where Batman is making his grand return at last, and the way that he emerges by blanketing the scene in darkness in the underpass. And then the old cop says to the young cop, hop, oh, boy, you're

[B]

in for a show tonight.

[A]

That is Just like, so good. And then we get a little bit of a stretch with our favorite, the bat pod. One of the better. I mean, nothing can touch Patson. Nothing can touch our Pats. But for the Bale movies, one of the better billowing cape Batman moments here, which is always important, you have this really, like, notable idiot cop stretch, right, With Foley just making the wrong choice to pursue Batman over the robbers. And Blake is like, oh, what? You know. So we have a lot of doubt that is being cast on the ability of the people who are in theory charged with protecting the city to, like, know what is appropriate in a given moment.

[B]

Tough beat for Matthew Modine in this movie. I don't know why, but I like,

[A]

always, like, forget he's in this movie. And then I'm like, ah, papa, Papa.

[C]

Oh, it's like the last time he did have white hair. I feel.

[A]

I know it would have been dyed to me, the white hair there, I think. And then the, the, the, the, you know, bat pod going up the, like, shooting down the track so that he can go up and escape. And then we swap in the bat. And Blake gets to be a smart ass for a second is like, sure, it was him.

[B]

Really fun.

[A]

Batman's using his, his tricks and his, his, his, his toolbox again. And I think just the city watching him return is very satisfying in that stretch.

[B]

I'll be a basic bitch and pick the plane opening sequence. The fact that they, like, actually did a lot of that in the air is just like, so Nolan and so amazing. And when you watch this sort of like making of where they're like, we had to ask Scotland if it was okay if we could crash a plane on their countryside. And it just looks incredible. Like, you know, whether or not you can understand Bane, you can understand, or blood transfusion, you can understand that, like a plane drops out from beneath some of your characters, you see people, like, rappelling into a plane. Like, that's, you know, Tom Cruise is like, okay, bet I'll try to top it. But like, but like, that was the urtext for that, you know, I don't like, I don't.

[A]

It's amazing. This is the second Batman movie in a row where for literally no reason, Nolan was like, what if we did a massive plane thing just for absolutely no reason? And it's fun certainly, to have the Mission Impossible energy. I agree. When the plane drops away, it's very satisfying. I like the, like, you know, there's no reason to fear. Like, that comes later. Bane moment is kind of a nice like, oh, shit, we need to, like, be really afraid the fire will rise. I find this scene sort of in a movie I really. I actually quite enjoy. I find the scene to be emblematic of actually. What, like, doesn't work about the movie, which is just like, you're so on your back foot trying to track what is happening kind of, for me, no reason right away. And I think the Aiden Gillan performance is. I could barely wrap my mind around any choice that he's making. It's like.

[B]

It's so bananas.

[A]

It's crazy. It is so funny when Bane is like, perhaps they're just wondering why you'd

[B]

like, yeah, but do the voice.

[A]

Perhaps he's just wondering why you would shoot a man before pushing him out of a plane.

[B]

It's so funny when his voice comes into the scene, like you're watching the scene and you're like, I'm confused. What's going on? Like, blah, blah. But then his voice comes, like, through the mask, through the sack, and it just sounds like it's in a different movie.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

You're like, what's happening?

[C]

It sounds like the theater next to you. The walls are too thin.

[A]

It's gonna be painful. Like, you're a big guy. For you.

[B]

No, but that's not what he's saying, right?

[C]

Who knows what he's saying?

[B]

No, because he's saying, like. Like, it will be painful. You're a big.

[A]

For you.

[B]

Like, he's saying finishing you would be painful for you. Okay. I think a lot of people think he's saying you're a big guy and he's like, as far in relation to you. I think that's what a lot of people think.

[C]

I have that as one of my other picks. But, yeah, I agree with you. I think there is, like, a logic issue of when they start doing NCPR on when they start getting.

[B]

Oh, none of that makes sense.

[C]

Yeah, none of that. The transfusion where Pavel's blood needs to be in this corpse and they couldn't identify him. Like, there was enough blood that was transfused where they couldn't look at dental records. Like, it's very confusing.

[B]

That's what I'm saying. It makes no sense to put a pint of blood into a dead body when the teeth will be there and whatever. I don't know.

[A]

And it's like to open with this nuclear physicist who. It's like two hours until that really comes back, back into play. Bizarre.

[C]

But Tenet does the same thing. Tenet opens with a. Well, overthought opening scene just because, like, Nolan nailed it in the Dark Knight. It's a great heist of a shrinking pie game.

[A]

That's amazing.

[C]

It works perfectly. And then after that, he's like, I must. I must have.

[B]

I must confound them from the jump

[A]

instead of a bus.

[C]

I don't want them to get it the first time.

[B]

It's gonna be a bus.

[A]

It's gonna be a plane.

[B]

What's gonna happen in the Odyssey?

[C]

That's why I'm so excited for the Odyssey. There's gonna be some weird. We're gonna hear the Songs of the Sirens. That's distorting our perception of reality.

[A]

That'd be great.

[C]

We're getting sucked down Charybdis. It's gonna be great.

[B]

Oh, my God. It's gonna be great.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Who's the real villain of this movie?

[C]

Is it J. Robert Oppenheimer? In a way, from a historical Pandora's

[A]

Box perspective, isn't it always a great answer?

[C]

I don't know. I have. This is a lame, I rolly think piece approach, but I think the shadow of the Joker still looms over this movie. And I think the noble lie that Gordon is forced to uphold throughout this movie and how it tortures him and really ruins his relationship with Batman, I think that is all the Joker's doing. There's like a bunch of. There's media illiterate takes of the final shot of Batman's eulogy and the unveiling of a statue in the overhead shot of the people in attendance and how it makes the smiley face with Batman as like a bluish colored nose. And how it's like the Joker's smile and almost like a Kubrickian way looms over this whole thing. I disagree with that take. I do think it's weird that there's a semicircle and then two smaller semicircles. I don't know why you would arrange an audience that way at an unveiling of a statue, but whatever. But I do still think that, like, Nolan was still so excited by what he accomplished in the second film and how the Joker poisoned the city in such a way that people like Bane and the League of Shadows could come back and nearly bring it to destruction. I think there's an argument to be made that, like, the Joker was ultimately the worst, most dangerous threat this city ever experienced in its history.

[A]

Yeah, well, I have a kind of related pick, which is like, complacency. I mean, I think that the Dent act and these lazy days of thinking of solved it. When a lot of the people who are allowing that delusion to take root, like Gordon, Bruce, like, know that that's not true and can't possibly hold. And also if it does hold, is it right? You know, and as we've already outlined, like the fact that as you know, the League of Shadows is able to move in that Bane. It's not just that Bane shows up and does this thing. Daggett has his operations securing the tunnels. And like Ben Meddleson's in this movie, Benven Krennic is recruiting workers. You know that exchange that Blake has with the young boy whose brother washed up? And that kid is like. Like people go to the tunnels.

[B]

That's what they do.

[A]

It's like this stuff is happening and nobody is doing anything about it. Also, like nobody but Pavel knows how to disarm this bomb. There's no one in the world like Bruce decides that the reactor is too dangerous. The appeal of clean energy he can't let go of. But, like, he doesn't just flood the room. Like people just are making decisions born out of a sen of complacency and like, kind of ineptitude that allows Bane to fairly easily infiltrate the city and then take it down, you know, from beneath. All he has to do is pull that concrete down from underneath the armory of Wayne Enterprises and say thank you.

[B]

And he's like, thank you. Great.

[A]

William decided Harvey Dent meant more to this city than Batman. So like you're saying the shadow of Joker. I would also say. And they're related, of course, the shadow of Harvey Dent and the complacency and the.

[B]

Is related to tears is a chain reaction of answers. I think we talked about this when we did Batman Begins, but who can fucking remember? And I talk about this a lot when I talk about the Tom Holland Spider man movies. But this idea of like, tech coming back to haunt people. So Stark technology, which is like the villain of every single Tom Holland Spider man movie. It's like Stark tech is the problem. Wayne Tech, like the train in the first movie and the clean energy here, the way that Wayne Tech is, is weaponized, is like haunting this and just sort of these, like the thoughtless whims of the rich, the playthings of the rich, or the like, you know, good intentions that Thomas Wayne had for the city or whatever, being turned against, being weaponized. But I just really love this idea of like previous decisions, especially of these like billionaire, playboy, inventor, whatever, coming back to like bite you in the ass and haunt you at the end of the day. One. But also rich people. There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches because when it hits, you're all going to wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest.

[A]

How often is she repeating that refrain from those gorgeous cafes on the banks of Florence? I wonder. I wonder.

[B]

Selena. She's like. She's like, once I could only get Red Delicious apples to eat. I. My tune really changed.

[A]

Exactly. To get a bite of that kid's apple is very tough.

[B]

Are you watching closely? Most exquisitely gorgeous shot, Eric Voss.

[C]

There's a lot of them in this movie. I mean, Nolan does know how to compose a shot for me. It was hot take.

[A]

Nolan knows his way around a shot.

[C]

Yeah, that guy knows. Mise en scene.

[B]

The mise en scene. I love the mise en scene of this movie.

[C]

I love Selina on the bat pod, the mechanics of it. And we saw teases of this throughout. But when she tumbles in a way and does a 180 and how fast that is, I thought that was beautiful motion. I had gotten applause out of me.

[B]

That's great.

[C]

Every time I see it.

[A]

I bet. Yeah. Very, very powerful visual sequence. She's amazing. My pick. This one's for Joe. It's getting to see Scarecrow sitting atop his.

[B]

That is of course, my answer. That is, of course, my answer. That is, of course, my answer. The best shot of this movie is Jonathan Crane, the Scarecrow, the star of this trilogy.

[A]

So good.

[B]

It's from a set deck perspective. The, like, way they stacked those desks, the way the whole thing is shot. He looks incredible. Like, all, like, his coat is frayed. The looks all Scarecrow.

[A]

He's got like hammer skating reams of paper.

[B]

Yeah, he's got a hammer instead of a gavel. Like, that's the most, like, wacky comic booky, like, moment of. Of this movie. And I just think it looks so cool.

[A]

I love that it's a very, like, exaggerated, exaggerated comic book visual in a trilogy where we don't always get those. That's like, exciting. And it does connect to the first film where we had more of that through the Scarecrow stuff in particular. It's also, though, like, exaggerated in a kind of like, political cartoon, which is very effective in that section of the story. So it's just great. And you know, the kind of related exile via ice stuff looks very, very good too. The sheen and shimmer I agree with you. It's like, fun to see the snowflakes falling down and in Gotham, but yeah, Scarecrow atop his pile of power.

[C]

We had, like a stack of cash in the Dark Knight. We have the Trinity test tower in Oppenheimer. And you have the Trojan Horse in the. Does no one, like, just building wooden structures of like 20ft in height?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I mean, Bruce has to scale the. Not wooden, but the mountain up to the League of Shadows. And Batman begins. There's a lot of that kind of. Of like mountain wooden. Do you think.

[B]

Do you think Nolan would do well at Burning Man?

[C]

What if he's there every year?

[B]

Probably he just masked. You can't tell. He's wearing a bay mask.

[A]

You can't tell.

[B]

And he's like, take control of your lsd. Oh, my God. The bay. Like the Bay Area vibes post Burning Man. What was the. I forget what they call it. It's like reintegration or whatever. Like when the burners come back to

[A]

the Bay Area and they're just like reintegration, like, inseparable.

[B]

Like, they're like, I have to. I, like, have to come back to reality, man. It's such a hard comedown. Love you, Burners. Okay. I can't remember to forget you. The scene you think about the most, Erik Voss.

[C]

I think it's gotta be just Batman and Bane duking it out in the sewer, breaking its back.

[A]

Correct.

[C]

I always wondered what would break first. Your spirit, your mind or your body. Right. Your soul or your body. Who cares? Spirit or your body. So good. Just the water dripping down. The lighting is incredible. Love it.

[A]

Obviously, this one pick as well. That was one of the things that I picked in our best of the century so far. Pot. So I was obviously not going to not pick it here. You know, the famous Nightfall backbreaking. Just canon making it to the screen. Obviously here. Very exciting. Selina's betrayal. You have the character beats for that relationship too. Building up to it. Bane revealing he knows who Batman is, that he's Bruce. Like, there's all.

[B]

Everyone knows that this movie is.

[A]

I mean, not Selena, not Mum. She and Gordon, at the very end, he's like, Bruce Wayne.

[C]

Gordon's the last one in the line.

[B]

Can I just tell you that Gary Oldman having to deliver Bruce Wayne and like. Like, how many do you think he's just like, wandering around his hotel room just being like, Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne, Bruce Wayne. Like, you know, and he just kind of throws it away, which I kind of like. But it was just sort of like, he's like, oh, God, I gotta say, Bruce Wayne. Like, how am I gonna do that?

[A]

I think he was probably spending a good chunk of his time thinking about having to watch Talia.

[C]

She's really like, slumped. Like episode nine of a Binge watcher.

[A]

Professional fashion. But yeah, like, the brutality of the brawling, just the physicality, the destruction of like the symbols of safety and power. Right? You have exploding and breaching into the Wayne Armory but also shattering Batman's mask. Right? We get a little of like the cap shield shattering there as well. Like, that's always a really satisfying thing to watch. And this is just like a string of iconic Bane lines. I mean, you said the plot. Most iconic one already. Like, all of them are bangers. Pieces cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you. Victory has defeated you. Ooh, right. Theatricality, deception. Powerful agents to the uninitiated. But we are initiated, aren't we, Bruce? Members of the League of Shadows. So, so, so good. I love. Of course you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man. By then, it was not nothing to me but blinding. And then he turns and he grabs him like he just has the edge in every respect there. The Shadows betray you because you belong to me. And the cracking of the mask, the way that he hoists him up like he is a. A rag doll.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And snaps him over his knee and then discards him like trash. It's an epic villain moment for Bane and it's for. For Bruce as our hero. Like to see him brought low and then have to. To decide to try to crawl out of the pit and fight his way back. That helplessness for a character who is defined.

[B]

But all it needed was rope swing.

[A]

All you need is that little kind of like little thing to hang from and someone to punch your vertebrae back in and you're good. The fact that it's called the Pit, it's like the Pit comes to the Pit. Great medical drama crossover. There some potential for us here on throwing that out there.

[B]

What's the night shift like on that bit?

[A]

Just ask Dr. Ellis. Let's find out. Bruce is part of crafting and forging the Batman Persona in the first place. Is. I'll be the one to figure this out. I'll be the one, right? Through my money, through my means, through my tech, but through really just the sheer force of will and intention. And for Bane to take that from him is.

[C]

I just Think incredible to take Batman's prep time, right?

[A]

Exactly. That's right.

[B]

Okay, I. This is hard because I have it in like nine different categories. But I think I have to give it to the climb. The. That scene just like, real. The way that he shot it. First of all, the way that they built like a 120 foot well drop. So not the whole thing that you see, but 120ft of it. They actually physically built so that, you know, Christian Bill had to like climb down into it. So, like, when the stunt guys are like falling and stuff like that, like they're following falling down a thing the way that it's shot to look like. I mean, we get that clip together, but like Thomas Wayne coming down. So, like you mentioned, like the League of Shadows bookends is not your favorite thing. But I do think there are other closing of the loop moments inside of this movie that really work for me. And that's one of them. The design on that whole, you know, that the pit is incredible to me. The way that those sort of Escheresque steps, which are based off the steps at the Chand Bavari step. Well, in India, which I know from the fall, one of my favorite visual movies of all time, but they shot it on location there. They just replicated it here. But like, just the design of that, all the people down at the bottom chanting and the bats and the thematic nature of it and stuff like that, it's just like the climb works for me. It rises, the fire rises, and so does Bruce Wayne. It's great. I love it. And there are bats there. All right.

[A]

There are.

[B]

Swear to me this movie is rated PG13, which means can have exactly one F bomb. Where would you put it?

[C]

In the opening sequence. I don't believe we actually see the plane hit the ground. We don't see the shell of the plane hit the ground. Despite it looking stunning. The way it drops and descends towards the Scottish countryside. I would have loved to have seen it hit. And I would have loved to have punctuated it with Aiden Gillan going, fuck. Right as he could even cut it. You could do the Spider man trilogy thing. Cut it off. Yeah.

[A]

Great one.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

I think it's appropriate that these pics center around Littlefinger and Krennic. I'm going with a Daggett scene. I'm going with Daggett and Bean Wayne, because you could put like 20 fucks into this scene because he says, what the hell is going on? But let's start right there. What the fuck is going on right Our plan is proceeding as expected. Really? Do I look like I'm fucking running Wayne Enterprises right now? Like, everything he says in this stretch. No, you stay here. I'm in charge. I paid you a small fortune. What the fuck is this? All of it. It's just. He should be saying all the time. There's no version of the scene where this character wouldn't be saying saying fuck all the time, and then he dies, obviously. It's funny that it's, like, clear that Bane is. You think he's gonna snap his neck, but then there's, like, a really long, haunting scream, so I'm like, is he just, like, smushing his skull?

[B]

Oh, he's mountain popping him. Popping him like a gray something.

[C]

That would be gradual and painful enough.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. What's your pick, Joe?

[B]

You boys know you can't come into my fucking neighborhood without asking politely.

[A]

There you go.

[B]

Selena. Kyle. All right. He doesn't speak English. If he does, it's with an accent thicker than sauerkraut sauce. Most baffling accent. This has been a fun runner. You can pick bait if you want. I'm going with Aidan Gillan, the king of the bad accents, because what the fuck is Aiden Gillan ever doing? Even in Sing street when he's Irish? I'm just, like, not really sure what Aiden Gillan's ever doing. Tommy Carcetti, mayor of Baltimore.

[A]

Like, I don't. I don't understand. He's doing. He's really in Littlefinger, like, memorable shade.

[C]

Ooh.

[A]

Memorable shade territory here where you're like, this is changing not only season to season and an episode line to line, but line to line.

[B]

Yeah. What's happening?

[A]

What's your.

[C]

I'm pick Bane. I think he just. It's Bartley Gorman, I think, is the name of the fighter that he picked. And it's an inspired choice. I like a lot of research going into it. It just really does hurt, this movie.

[A]

I think my pick is Bane voice. I don't know how it couldn't be Bane voice, but I love it. I love it, and I'm glad he did it. But I think it fits the prompt of most baffling. Certainly it's baffling. I happen to think it works, but it's baffling.

[B]

What's our baffling. Most baffling overall? And is it Kenneth Branagh in Tenant?

[A]

God?

[C]

We've had.

[B]

We've had some really good ones for this category. Very special category. Okay. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask. Best use of Nolan verse regular in this movie.

[C]

I mean, Killian Murphy, I think.

[B]

Hell, yeah.

[C]

Got to be him.

[B]

Welcome.

[C]

He's so great.

[B]

Welcome to this Jonathan crowd.

[A]

I'm going with Anne Hathaway here. Me too. I mean, she'll become a future regular, obviously, with Interstellar and now, of course, the Odyssey. So I think she's eligible because she's going for the 3p now. Just fantastic. As we already outlined the best, we

[B]

usually pick Michael Caine. And obviously there's a category here that we can definitely celebrate Michael Caine in. But, like, Michael Caine has won that category more often than not in this rewatch of all these movies. He's very special. But Anne Hathaway, My God. All right. Why do we fall so. So that we can. Speaking of. So we can learn to pick ourselves back up. Best stunt egg Voss.

[C]

True to the quote itself. It's her backwards fall out of the window. It's just so beautiful. It's such a beautiful dive. I assume that there. Did she do that herself? I don't know how they did that stunt.

[B]

There had to have been, like, a pad, like, right underneath there. But she just, like, really, like, really goes for it. And like, she did say she did most. Most of her.

[C]

I mean, everything she does a runner up for me is just after she says the no killing rule and then just does her leg. Like, Nolan doesn't even give her the. The framing that she deserves for that. You just see her just basically her leg, window wash, wipe the frame. And I'm like, she did that? That's incredible. She's great.

[A]

Very limber.

[B]

Have you seen the footage of her, her stunt double in the bat pod, just like demolishing an IMAX camera.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Just lost control of the bat podcast. Cost them so much money. There's also a behind the scenes of, like, the. The bat, which they had, like, mounted on a vehicle.

[A]

Right.

[B]

And it just like runs into a building by accident. It's like a bunch of. It breaks off and someone off camera is like, that's gonna be expensive.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

Mallory Rubin.

[A]

This is where I. I had what you already picked in another category. Joe Bruce. Making the jump, making the climb in the pit. Because we do get the actual, you know, payoff of the jump. But, yeah, in case this hadn't been selected in another category. It's such a wonderful. Not just that actual scene in sequence, but the build. Cause you have the first attempt, you know, you have the healing of the back. You have hearing the tales of this one child who did it. Then you have the first failed attempt, right? You have the doctor's lessons. Fear is why you fail. And then the second attempt, also just, like, slipping. Not even missing the jump, but just slipping before he even gets there that time. And the conversation about, like, not fearing death.

[C]

Death.

[A]

And then the third jump, the succeed. The fact that he packs. I love that exchange about, like, oh, you're packing.

[B]

Cute.

[A]

It's like, I'm gonna fucking make it.

[B]

I'm gonna do it. No rope.

[A]

And I always get a chill when it's. When he says, what does the chant mean? Rise. It's like. It's just really, really, really great. And like you said, Joe, the connections to the. The well in the first movie, very satisfying. Very satisfying.

[B]

Amateur seek the sun, get eaten. Power stays in the shadows. Stealth MVP of this movie that not enough people talk about. What's your answer?

[C]

The snow flurries of the Pittsburgh area. I think, like, the geographic space is lost in this movie. It doesn't have a good sense of geography because he's mixing Los Angeles and New York and Pittsburgh. But just when those snow flurries are activated in the final 45 minutes of the movie, it all comes together. I believe it gives the texture that I was missing from the setting.

[B]

Oh, I love that great thing.

[A]

I feel like I didn't really have, like, a good pick for this, maybe, because this is, like, the billionth pocket done on this, and I'm out of, like, stealth candidates. But I.

[B]

This is going to be a controversial choice.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

But I'm going to give it to Richard King, who is the sound designer of this movie, because I watched him. I watched a featurette of him and Hans Zimmer talking about the score and the sound at the same time. And he just, like, basically looks like he's crying when he's talking about how to make the Bane voice legible. Like, because he was like. For a while, we were trying to make, like, little, like, hydraulic sounds or like some. There was some sort of, like, mask sound that they were. He's like. But no one could understand. So, like, poor Richard King, who, at the end of the day, I do think you can mostly understand Bane. And this is not his. You know, it's adr. It's all this other stuff. Christian Bale has talked about the fact that, like, he and Tom Hardy, because they were both masked and probably because of those, like, really noisy IMAX cameras, and they were far away, and they were, like, yelling their lines at each other and they couldn't hear each other. And so Nolan's like, you're missing your cues. And so they developed a, like, hand cues for each other. So, like, Bale would, like, say his line, and then he would be like. He would say his line and, like, you can't see it in the movie. He's just like, I just imagining, like, the. The wa. I think this has to be like their. Their fight scene is like the water rushing down the IMAX camera whirring. And then mask, mask. And they're just. And then, like, whatever choices Tom Hardy's making in that moment, it's so funny. Funny.

[A]

Great one.

[B]

All right. You're waiting on a train. A train that will take you far away. Best dead wife slash woman moment of this film.

[C]

I mean, Marion Cotillard with just the will. Like, it's almost like she was, like, lunging into death in that moment. Just the final breath. She wanted it out of her lungs as soon as possible.

[B]

She's like, I'm done with this movie. No one's gonna like me in this movie. I am the D. All right, Mal Urban.

[A]

So I wanted to make a Rachel centric pick here, but I'm gonna do that in another category to talk about that Alfred Bruce fight. So I'm going with the legend of the Mercenary. The fact that for two out of the three movies in this trilogy really center on Ras Al Ghul's dead wife,

[B]

which is just unnamed. Unnamed dead wife, yeah.

[A]

Worked for a local warlord, fell in love with the warlord's daughter. Mercenary was condemned to the Pit when the warlord found out that. But was exiled and said twist. She took his place in the Pit. And she was with child.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And then all of the prisoners rush enter her cell, and she's killed.

[C]

What is the logic of the Pit? The warlord can't say, like, no, no, you don't need to go in.

[A]

Like, I guess he was really.

[C]

Is there. Is there, like, a pit governor or warden? He's like, I need one soul.

[A]

You know, really mad about it. Maybe. Maybe there's some.

[B]

Do you think there's, like, an election for pit governor?

[C]

I think it's appointed. It's passed down from sun to sun.

[B]

It is like a.

[A]

One of the moments I love is like, you're recalling that Ra's says to Bruce in the first movie, once I had a wife, my great love, she was taken from me. But then we just actually get that exact scene replayed in the film.

[B]

It just cracked me up when I was writing out the cast list for these notes and everyone had a name. And then you just get to, like, the Dead wife. I mean, William Devane plays the President of the United States. He doesn't get a name. Tom Lennon's character is Dr. I didn't look it up, but I presume Glenn Powell is listed as Gotham Exchange douchebag. Glenn Powell's in this movie, but. But, yeah, Unnamed dead wife is. Is pretty special. That's not my answer. My answer is I already had this down. But I was watching your video, Voss. You called it Bruce's grief shelf, which is Martha and Rachel. And I. I wrote down as his ofrenda. But, like, basically just like, great one. It's just the homage to the dead women of this franchise. In Wayne Manor is what I picked.

[C]

Do we see Ra's Wife just depicted in some drawing that he's going to add to the show. Talia gets on there.

[B]

They won't fear it until they understand it. And they won't understand it until they've used this clearest great man moment. Eric Voss.

[C]

Is it Matthew Modine putting on his dress uniform. Dress blues, dress blue.

[B]

Just to die.

[C]

It has to be that. You can't just wear your. Whatever the bathrobe you were wearing when you're there.

[A]

The heels of Gordon being like, did you bury your uniform? Yeah, you gotta. You gotta break it all out.

[B]

Send your wife to answer the door. If Mar and Cotard had not cornered the market on awkward death poses, I think Matthew Modine had a real run at it because he's just sort of like a curvature. Yeah, it's a real.

[A]

It is, yeah.

[C]

It's very like Mystique. Liberty Museum.

[B]

I love it.

[A]

Great one. I'm going with Alfred's plea to Bruce when Bruce resumes his training. If this man is everything that you say he is in the city needs me. That's what Bruce says of Bane and Alfred says, the city needs Bruce Wayne. Your resources, your knowledge. It doesn't need your body or your life. That time has passed. You're afraid that if I go back out there, I'll fail? No, I'm afraid that you want to. So if we compare it to the note that Alfred was hammering in Dark Knight, we see this evolution from, like, okay, Alfred said. To Bruce in Dark Knight, when Bruce said, what would you have me do? Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it. But that's the point of Batman. He can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else has. And then Alfred says to Rachel, in that film, even if everyone hates him for it, that's the sacrifice. He's Making. He's not being a hero. He's being something more. So, Alfred, the journey across films from. From. Make the sacrifice. That's what Batman's for. To value your life and recognize what you as a man, as a person, as Bruce, have to give. Not just what the Bat has to give, but what you have to give feels like a real thesis on the evolution of understanding the great man that you always were. I love that Bruce Wayne.

[C]

That's great.

[B]

I think I want to give it to sort of the concept of the idea of Batman as a mantle and this idea of just sort of like, anyone can wear the mask or, you know, whatever that case may be. I just like that as an icon inside of this, Thomas Wayne is the great man, though is really hard to beat. Thomas Wayne and Batman Begins. They were just sort of like, that was a great man. All right.

[A]

It's incredible.

[B]

He's the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now. Who was regrettably miscast and who. Who would you replace them with? Erik Voss?

[C]

I think Hardy. I think Tom Hardy is. Again, I don't wanna live in a world without Tom Hardy's Bane, but if you could do it all over again. I think there's a completely different approach to Bane, where you get, like, an Idris Elba in there, and he is taller than Christian Bale, and he does convey intellectual in a way that I don't know if Tom Hardy really can. And he is kind of a populist figure, a natural populist figure. Who would go out there at the end zone and work that crowd? I don't know. I don't know if he's the right pick for it. But I just think Tom Hardy is so good in Inception. I think he can speak Nolan. I think covering the face is really a flaw with the character. But I think there's someone else out there who could have played that version of Bane better.

[B]

Do you think Idris Elba would have been like, the apocalypse is canceled.

[C]

He still has to do that voice.

[B]

They're like, tom Hardy made this decision. We ended up firing him. But you still need to do the voice.

[C]

That's the.

[B]

Those are the rules.

[A]

Obviously, I can't agree, but I respect your opinion. I would love to recast Aiden Gillan and I think genuinely, like, an opening scene that makes me, like, pretty worried about how the rest of the movie is gonna go.

[B]

All right, I'm giving it to Marion. It's not Marion Cotierre's fault, but let's just pretend it is Nami Watts. And Rachel Weisz and Kate Winslet were all in the running for this role. And I think Rachel Weisz would be my choice at the end of the day because she wouldn't have that. Same in the Inception association that Marion Cotillard had deadline at the time because they didn't know that there were two female characters in this movie. So Deadline's like, these are all the actresses up for the female lead in this movie. And they were like, Rachel Weisz, Naomi Watts, Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Keira Knightley. So obviously, like, some of those are Catwoman and some of them are Talia's. The longer the Cat, the longer Catwoman list. Angelina Jolie, Natalie Portman, Jessica Biel, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, Vera Farmier Omega, Gemma Arterton, Abby Cornish, Eva Green.

[A]

Oh, my God, who got really close. I'm not sure I would have survived that, honestly.

[B]

Kate Mara, Blake Lively, Charlotte Riley, Olivia Wilde, Lady Gaga, and Keira Knightley. And then Chloe Grace Moretz and Jennifer Lawrence auditioned for Juno Temple's role, which is wild to me because, like, Jennifer Lawrence was already, like, she wins the Oscar. Like, I was just like, that's a, you know, a way too small role for Jennifer Lawrence inside of this movie. But that's what you do. You invest in small roles in Nolan movies, and then all of a sudden, you've got an Oscar for Oppenheimer. So good job, Cillian Murphy. Anyway, I will put Rachel Weisz in this role. All right. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled. Most satisfying twist. Erik Voss.

[C]

I like the autopilot twist with the bat. I like revealing that he's still alive. I didn't need him to die. I like how that was set up throughout the movie. I like seeing Scooby on his rack of stuff. Like, you see a scuba tag. Like, oh, that guy has a water version of the suit. I like that twist. I thought it was fun.

[B]

That was very good.

[A]

That's my pick, too. I mean, I think we're leaning into here. Most satisfying twist. Because I think what you said earlier is right. Like, the big twist is obviously the Talia reveal, but are we calling that satisfying? No. Right. So I think the moment that Alfred and Bruce share at the end, the autopilot setup, which we get many beats, you know, we have three different autopilot notes before we get the reveal. Like, that's all really satisfying, but it's the emotional note, you know, of Alfred having said this thing to him very early in the film, right? This, like, Batcave classic lecture that he gets about what you talked about earlier. Like that seven years that Bruce was away, hoping he wouldn't come back and looking for him in that cafe. And then when he does, and we've even seen this, like, false couple across the way in that moment, you're like, could it be? We know it's not, but your mind tricks you into thinking and wondering. And then to see Bruce there giving Alfred that little cheer, it's just, like, really, really satisfying. A really great way to end, like, the. Their story. So I love it. That's my pick.

[B]

I'm giving it to the tally. Well, I am. I'm giving it to this Joey King as young Talia. Like that. That is a girl you're watching the whole time. Not Bane getting credit for a woman's work, by the way.

[A]

But the kid being Talia, I agree with you.

[B]

The kid being Talia, I think is a cool twist. All right.

[A]

Talia being like, I'm here to finish my dad's job in the present time, I'm less good. But the kids stuff is great.

[B]

It's the slow knife. All right.

[A]

You do a good impression.

[B]

I. I don't think so. You do. It's not who I am underneath phrasing, but what I do that defines me. Nolan is not known for sexual content, but let's go ahead and try to excavate the horniest moment of this film.

[C]

So it's a specific, media, illiterate reading of it would be quite painful. You're a big guy for you. And it's like, you're a big guy for me. For you, I'm too big for you.

[B]

This is inspired, genuinely inspired.

[C]

I think it's beautiful.

[B]

Love is love. Happy pride.

[A]

Incredible.

[B]

Valerie, what's your pick?

[A]

I'm going with the way Catwoman moves when she's trying to open Daggett's safe in full leather, and the leather is hugging every curve and every crack. And it is very memorable and powerful, and I'd say even more so than, like, quote, unquote, Miranda and Bruce exploring each other's scars curled up in front of the fire. Really good.

[B]

Right after that, pinning Daggett's hand to the wall with her steel stiletto heel and cooing, cat got your tongue? That's it for me. The heel on the wall is, like, insane. All right. And ideas is like a virus. Resilient, highly contagious. The line that hits hardest, 14 years later, I'm gonna hit you with this is particularly after our last, like, experience covering andor. When Bruce reveals himself to Gordon and he says, a hero can be anyone. Even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy's shoulders to let him know the world, to let him know the world hadn't ended. You know, it's every little step forward. The Nemec Manifesto sort of thing. It's just sort of like, what little good can you do in the world? Even if it's putting your coat around a. A boy, shoulder, et cetera. Matters inside of this fight.

[A]

Gordon does it for Bruce. Bruce does it for Blake without knowing it.

[B]

And Blake's like, that's Batman.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, I could tell you looked angry. I knew you were Batman crazy.

[C]

I really love that line. For me, it's. And this gives you power over me. I love the. You think this gives you power over me because it's like. It's just such a great rug pull moment. And the idea that. That the pride and the arrogance of the 1% thinking that they can control the world. You forget that there are other things more powerful than just paying someone a small fortune. I love that.

[A]

I am going also with a Bane line. I'm going with something we have shockingly not brought up yet, which is, then you have my permission to die, which is iconic. And of course, Bruce gets to throw it back in his face. And so Gotham is ashes. And that's the, like, not of your body, of your soul Stretch. When he visits him in the pit to, like, really taunt him, to lord his.

[B]

How often do you think people get to visit in the pit?

[A]

I think this is a rare. I don't think there's a lot of, like. I don't think there are, like, a lot of conjugal visits. I don't think there are a lot of visiting hours of any sort in the pit.

[B]

I think they just sort of like, drop the rags and the scraps of food down the hole.

[C]

Did they kind of dangle them on a rope and they wave from 50ft above.

[B]

Oh, that's the conjugal.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. Basically something for the spank bank. That's it. You know, learned here there could be no. No true despair without. Without hope. Little Ted lasso.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Then you have my permission to die. The arrogance of it, you know, thinking that he's won when he hasn't. It's great.

[B]

I love that he just, like, put a little TV in there so that Bruce has to.

[A]

It's so easy for Bruce, which he does to just break it.

[B]

Did they have to wire the pit just so that he could do this?

[C]

They have to tell everyone, you can't climb this hdmi. Cause to get out, it's not gonna hold your weight.

[A]

Exactly.

[B]

All right. You think darkness is your ally, but you were merely adopted. The dark. I was born in it by it. Most devastating moment, Eric Voss.

[C]

I think it's like kind of the breakup with Alfred and Bruce and then kind of tagging it at the end when he tells Martha in Thomas Grave, I failed you, like, just crying Michael Caine in this movie.

[B]

Really tough.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. It's got to be.

[B]

I have no other notes.

[A]

Yeah. I did initially have this in the dead wife category because Rachel is the impetus for it. So that's kind of amazing, actually.

[B]

The Rachel letter comes back.

[A]

Yeah. Dead girlfriend with the letter. How dare you use Rachel to try to stop me. I'm using the truth, Master Wayne. But it is. It had to go in. Most devastating. It's just absolutely heart wrenching. What does it mean? It means your hatred. And it also means losing someone that I have cared for since I first heard his cries echo through this house. But it also means saving your life. If that is more important than they're both crying, goodbye, Alfred.

[B]

Kind of emotionally terrorizing for. That's just the AC making a shake. It's not an earthquake. Don't worry. Kind of emotionally terrorizing for Bruce to even let Alfred think he's dead for a single second. You know what I mean? Like, I understand he has to sell the theater, but it's just sort of like at that very moment, he is scampering around like, fixing bad, bad signals and, like, doing. He couldn't just, like, say, like, alfred, don't worry, I'm still alive. We'll see you at the Arno.

[A]

Maybe if Alfred had stuck around instead of really needing to prove a point, he would have been able to tell him.

[B]

At least think about victim blaming. All right. Can you hear the music, Robert? Most unforgettable, Zimmerin.

[C]

I love the Catwoman theme in this. Obviously, the chant, the rise chant is great.

[A]

That's my pick.

[C]

Yeah. It's a slow knife of the movie score of the. And if you listen to the track on the soundtrack, it gets more complex as it goes. Normally in the film, we only hear, like, the opening 12 seconds of it or so, but, like, it gets to this cataclysmic, like, ground is breaking underneath my feet kind of place, but I'm gonna catch every ledge on the way down. It's A really, really beautiful score.

[B]

I love that. The Deshi Basara. The fact that Hans Zimmer had, like, fans from around the world record it in advance because he needed that, like, huge chorus of voices. So you just had, like, randos from around the world just going, like, into a microphone, and that's in the movie. I think that's so cool.

[A]

I think the way that the chanting pairs with the kind of percussive quality of the score into that surging horn. Yeah, really, really good. There's, like, a religious quality to it. It's great. That's my pick as well. I do think that the lighting of the bat signal on the bridge. The score's really great there, too.

[B]

Absolutely. All right, we are almost done. For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship. Quoting your favorite Tenet actor who never returned to the Nolan verse, but should have.

[C]

Ben Mendelssohn.

[B]

Hell, yes, Exactly.

[C]

He's so good.

[A]

My pick, too, with just a mention of Glen Powell, in case he hadn't come up at this point. But he asked. But yeah, like, do you know that

[B]

Tom Hardy actually bashed Glenn Howell's. This is my real. Like, Viggo Mortensen broke his toe. That Tom Hardy is supposed to give Glen Powell a cue to prepare himself for that stunt, and he didn't. He just bashed his head into the desk. And Glenn Powell's like, kind of. I got half a concussion from that. Not ideal, you know, I think. Yeah, whatever.

[C]

It's the mask. He did give the cue, but the mask swallowed the sound.

[B]

He. He tried their cue. That he and Christian Mill did. All right. Some men just want to watch the world burn. The most Nolan thing about this movie, Erik Voss.

[C]

I mean, I mentioned the synchronization of impossibly long processes that just converge at a singular moment. That's a big Nolan thing. I think the nuclear dread, like, it kind of started here, and then you would see that kind. And I think that was there under the prestige, the fear of technology. The man opened a Pandora's box that could never close. And I think that's gonna be in the Odyssey in some way as well.

[B]

What is the Trojan horse if not,

[A]

you know, the secret doom lurking underneath? That's my pick, too. Yeah, absolutely.

[B]

All right. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us. What aspect of Nolan's upcoming the Odyssey are you thinking about? Most hyped for this month, Eric Moss.

[C]

I think the idea of a cunning hero, like, I think cunning as a virtue is underrepresented. I think some sacrificial is overdone. Someone being selfless, making the sacrifice play great, wonderful. I've seen it. Every dad goes through it all the time. Every mom goes through it all the time. Big deal. But the idea of cunning is a rare virtue. I think that kind of Danny Ocean, someone who's like overthinking every scenario and doing it in a charming and likable way that doesn't make you hate him. And I think Odysseus is going to represent that really well.

[A]

Oh, I like that. That's a, that's a fun one. Yeah, like I don't, I don't want to die actually. Let me get back to the hot people I love and want to be with. Why not? My pick is Anne Hathaway. I mean I was already so excited about the Odyssey and the cast of the Odyssey, but revisiting this and we did intersell her a couple months ago. I can't wait to watch her cook.

[B]

Do you think when it comes to Odysseus Bow she's going to be like oops, nobody told me was unstringable?

[A]

I do, I do actually.

[C]

I mean, I hope, I hope.

[B]

I think it's just the like excitement that I'm, you know, like the, the way in which, I mean the ticket bullshit, you know, people being shitty about it, but like just the scramble for tickets. There's like ways in which it's. The system is fucked up and I don't like people feeling like getting shoved out and I don't like scalpers taking advantage. But the excitement over a movie ticket and this idea of it as an event and hopefully a four quarter event and, and like let's all go watch the fucking Odyssey this summer. I'm so excited. So genuinely can't wait.

[A]

I can't believe we're a month out. I know, like what the hell? That's so exciting.

[C]

And that much excitement for again a 3000 year old story.

[B]

Like the story, the same story.

[A]

We're all in LA together and are like definitely gonna be at the screening together. We get to like watch movies together now.

[C]

What a treat. I think.

[A]

So what is the comp for this podcast in terms of like crossover events? You know this is like it's. Cause it's not even. I don't think this is really like inside of Marvel or dc. We get a. This isn't like, okay, you've got to watch the Flash and Arrow this week. This is really like Marvel and DC came together to do a podcast.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

You know, like, I mean this is momentous.

[C]

It does feel momentous.

[A]

It's momentous.

[C]

I've been on the outside of the house looking in for so long, just hearing, like, the best takes about movies and tv. It's just been like. I mean, just sitting here listening to you guys each share your takes on this. I've just been like, oh, right. I have to say something after this. Oh, no. I want to just keep listening to them talk.

[A]

When will you come back?

[C]

Yeah, anytime. You'll have me.

[B]

Oh, my gosh, Eric, seriously, anytime. Where are you on what's your. What's your relationship to Lord of the Rings?

[C]

I have. Well, I've done analyses of the Peter Jackson trilogy. I. I know the text of the trilogy. I've not read the similar.

[B]

Sorry. This is not a pop quiz. You don't have to, like, prove anything. Like, you're just like, I like it. That's like, I like.

[C]

I like.

[A]

Fourth line of the second appendix. No name all the dwarves of the Hobbit.

[C]

I can't even do that.

[A]

See Misty Mountains.

[C]

But I. I like the Rings of Power. I think that's a good litmus test, because a lot of people don't. Yeah, I really do like it.

[A]

They're wrong.

[C]

They are wrong. It's beautiful.

[A]

You know what I love to do? Walk around and say is, galadriel hit.

[B]

Galadriel hit.

[A]

I just love to do that.

[C]

I think I've accidentally internalized signs and based off of you guys and just like, referring to, oh, this is like, oh, a harbinger of something to come. You know, a sign important like that only came out of my mouth because you guys have said it.

[A]

Portents and signs.

[B]

Portents and signs.

[A]

Somebody said accurate sign.

[B]

Same thing.

[A]

This is fun.

[B]

Thank you so much to Eric Voss. Thank you so much for being here.

[A]

What a treat.

[B]

Thank you to Christopher Nolan.

[A]

I mean, thank you to Bane.

[B]

Thank you.

[C]

You know what, Tom Hardy, we've been hard on you.

[B]

Thank you to Bane. Thank you for marrying Cotillard for your truly demented death slump. We really appreciated it, truly. Thank you to Carlos Jaraboga, to Jacob Cornett, to Scott Lee, to Jomi, at dinner on tour. We appreciate you all. We'll be back with House of the Dragon.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

Check out Eric on New Rockstars, One of my favorite. My favorite YouTube channel that exists more

[C]

than the Ringerverse channel or the house

[B]

of our channel or outside of our own stuff. Outside of our house.

[A]

Everybody else in the wide Internet world, thank you.

[C]

Thanks, guys.

[B]

Bye. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides scrolling spreadsheets. Yes.

[A]

Good.

[B]

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