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

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Hot Nolan Summer is back! As ‘The Odyssey’ approaches, Mal and Jo are joined by Erik Voss to continue their journey through Christopher Nolan’s filmography with ‘The Dark Knight Rises.' They discuss its strengths and weaknesses, how it compares to the rest of the ‘Dark Knight’ trilogy, and—of course—all things Bane!(00:00) Intro(06:55) ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ revisited(01:12:03) SuperlativesExplore the exclusive collection at Target.com.Hosts: Joanna Robinson and Mallory RubinGuest: Erik VossProducers: Carlos Chiriboga and Scott LeeStudio Production: Jacob CornettSocial: Jomi AdeniranAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, welcome back to House of Art. I'm Joanna Rubin. And joining us today at long last, we've long wanted this to happen. It is Eric Voss. Hi, guys. Hi, welcome to the Vajas. Welcome. Thank you for having me on.

This is a huge honor to be in the House of R. And what a house it is. You love our studio. I love your studio. You love us. I love you guys. You love Bain. I mean, how could you not?

When he places that hand on your shoulder, something happens. It's like the this. Yeah, what is that? I don't know. But it conveys everything it needs to. It unlocks hope inside of you so that he can crush it into despair. We're talking about the Dark Night Rises, and we'll do that right after this. This episode of House of R is presented to you by Target.

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All right, quick program reminders before we get started, House to Dragon season, is upon us. Are you excited? Oh, I'm so excited. I've seen the first episode as of this recording. And you're locked in. I'm locked in. I'm seated. It's going to be great.

Battle of the gullet. I can't say too much without spoiling it, but it's just a kit from me. a Navy family. Oh. Really appreciating the nautical tactics. Ooh.

You've spent two years saying to the gullet on the morrow and now at last. The mullet on the morrow. Tomorrow is here. Fantastic. We'll be talking to Thrones

with Chris Ryan. Sunday nights right after the episode drops. We'll be deep diving on Tuesday. Deep. And a little astat meat in the sandwich

on Mondays is sort of the upcoming. Supergirl coming up. It's going to be a busy, busy summer here in the House of our. Do you want to tell people about the

announcement we just made about doing at the end of summer. You can find really long announcements on the prior podcast, on our respective social media handles. The Baltimore Orioles, my favorite team, my hometown team, is hosting House of Our Night at Oriole Park at Camden Yards this summer. It's not insane. Guess who's throwing out the first pitch of the game. Yeah. August 20th against the New York fucking Yankees House of Our Night at Camden Yards. Here is what that entails. Pre-game 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 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 understand how little I know about baseball. 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, Velo and spin rate prep. So half the tickets gone within the first couple hours of them going on sale. Get your tickets now. Orioles.com slash house of our pod. We hope to see you in Baltimore, Maryland's August 20th against the New York Yankees for House of Our Night at Camden Yards.

Truly bizarre. Bunkers. That's going to be great. Oh, God. Okay. So that's what we're doing this summer. My God. Follow, you know, follow the pod.

Yes. Follow us on social at House of R. Why not? Do it. Email us. Hoppins and Degel.com. That's right. Spoiler warning for all of Batman.

Yes. Any Nolan film ever. Yeah. And any Batman, anything ever? Anything ever. Okay. I mean, I don't know how relevant that's going to be today, honestly. Yeah. No.

If it's happening in a Nolan movie, it might come up. All of Tom Hardy's acting choices in his life on the table. Yes. Yeah. You know, so that's a spoiler warning today. Fantastic. Wonderful. Voss, anything you want to plug?

Yeah. Much do people know. Much do people know. Just subscribe to new rock stars on YouTube. Yeah. We're covering a lot of the same stuff. We're not doing any list dot coverage, unfortunately. No.

You didn't want to, like, get fangs and, like, a whole cold and the glasses. Oh, I wanted to. I wasn't accepted into the cult. You can join our vampire coven any time. You're welcome any time. Joanna has fangs in her purse right now. I actually have some, too. I haven't molded them to my teeth, but we're prepared to bite you.

We're prepared to convert you if you'd like. The offer stands. Keep it in mind? I think maybe we shouldn't offer to bite our guest on this first time on the pod. Why are we celebrating Chris Bernal? The great conversion is upon us. It's upon us. We are here to celebrate Christopher Nolan because we've done almost every other movie.

That's right. We have one left after this. It is Oppenheimer. Yeah. That's the last one we're doing. Do we did it in a random order? Very Nolan-esque. Yes.

Non-linear. No worries. Yeah. We're pretending that was the plan all along. Meta. It is 31 days until the Odyssey. That is wild. Are you excited for The Odyssey?

I'm really excited for the Odyssey. Again, as a son of a Navy kid, nautical tactics. Once again, keep growing. Oh, my God. It's Big C. Summer. I'm pumped for the Odyssey. Odyssey. I think The Odyssey and Dune Part 3 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 going to 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. Yeah. He's going to do something really weird with it.

What if it does? What if, like, children of all ages go to see the Odyssey this summer? What if it's a date night movie? Oh, it's the obsession of July. Yeah, absolutely. Where are you on pining for a daddy? Where are you on the memes already? The modern language.

We're all in. I'm not. What is this meme? The Patent's in line pining for a daddy. Oh, oh. Basically, all Mallory has been able to talk about. Just the fact that then Tom Holland's like, Dad and then Patton says like, Daddy, and everyone's like, what? I love it.

You don't imagine ancient Greek saying Daddy. I don't say Father. Wait till my father gets home. 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. Right. Yeah. I want to know, like, why do they need to sound like Americans?

Did they all have to match Matt Damon and Matt Damon can't do the English accent? Probably. And so they're like, let's a lot. Patinson can't really do the American act. Patinson, he can do everything. Guess what? Pattinson, Tom Hardy, two of our greatest voice choice makers in Hollywood.

He showed us all of those everythings in Mickey 17. Okay. All of them. All of them. All right. Quick facts about this movie that we're talking about today. The Dark Night Rises in case you forgot. Directed by Christopher Nolan, screenplay by Jonah Nolan and Chris Nolan, 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, $1.15 billion with a B. Wow. More than the Dark Night. 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 Night Rises. Not for me.

Yeah. Yeah. It did. Not for you. It is crazy. I forget that it outperformed the 2008 Dark Night. Because that was the first superhero movie to make a billion dollars, I think. A billy, I think.

But we often see that. The second movie of the superhero trilogy is better. The third one is not as good, but ends up outperforming. Yeah, it makes more money, exactly. People need to know how it ends, and they need to be with Bain. Those two things are just true. Okay, Mallory's on her Bain agenda already. We love to see it.

Let's talk about the swollen run times, the Batman trilogy. Yeah. Okay? Batman begins 140 minutes. The Dark Night, 152 minutes. The Dark Night Rises 164 minutes. That's two hours and four. 44 minutes.

Yeah. 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. I think we're allowed to note it. Any thoughts about the runtime in this movie? 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 Night. 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 Night Rises has like 12 or 13. where you're like, hmm, but how did he, but how did he know? Yes. You know, so in a movie like that, you do feel two hours and 40 minutes. Is one of those, is that how you heal a broken back? You just hang a guy on a rope. You punch in the vertebrae.

And then you make them do a bunch of push-ups. Is that how that works? I'm not a chiropractor. Add it to the list. Not a chiropractor. Yeah, this is, I enjoyed watching this movie and 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. I feel like that. I have a different memory of it, which was like, obviously, anything in the wake of Dark Night can't possibly measure up. And certainly in the wake of, like, Ledger specifically, the bar is just, like, so impossible to clear. My personal experience with this was, like,

I saw this movie multiple times in theater, 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. Right. So I really liked it. I feel like. And spend time with your best friend,

Bain. My best friend Bain, who I just really enjoy watching in this movie, I think he's great. Very entertaining. Genuinely, very entertaining. I don't think the movie is even close to as good as Dark Night, 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. To your point about, like, 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 like, not two, but like 25 people are in this movie, right? And the character list is so vast and so long. The strands, you know, I think the opening sequence is very emblematic of your like, wait, I'm kind of like confused already and did I need to be, right,

for the response to people. But I think that the reaction to the movie, like, I think it was decently reviewed at the time. Like, it was pretty well reviewed. The trilogy overall, though, I think that's part of it. That's inextricable. It's 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 Bain is um god dear. Genuinely. Boss, where are you in this movie? Um, I love Christopher Nolan's works. I, I'm a defender of even his

weakest moments. Um, this one is harder for me to revisit because I do feel that it, uh, 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 scenes. 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, oh, God, why are we all working so hard? We have Batman. We're in the world of the dark night. Like, it shouldn't be this hard. So I remember watching this. I got like a midnight screening at the Howard Hughes Center, AMC, because 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 a 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 Nolan Corp in it. I love Anne Hathaway's performance in it. Same. Yeah. She owns the movie for me, honestly. I'm just a huge, like every version of Catwoman, well, almost, sorry, Halliberry, almost every version of Catwoman, I'm like,

all in. Michelle Fiver's Selena Kyle is one of my all-time top, like, favorite movie performances of all time, let alone comic book movie performances. And I just think Ann Hathaway is astoundingly great in this movie and just like, owns every scene that she's in and brings a lot of like, yeah, we love Zoe Cravitz, but like brings a ton of just like humor and moxie

and all of these other things to this movie, which can sometimes get, you know, between Bain and Talia and I would say even like John Blake can like feel a little bit more leaden than some of the other Batman installments, you know, when you've got Killian Murphy's sort of antique performance in the first one or when you have a, 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? 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 Night Rises was like back in 2008. I did a very recent breakdown of like re-breakdown of Oppenheimer and Memento and Tenet and The Dark Night. So I just haven't had that need to revisit. Yeah, to spend time with Bain.

To spend time with Bain in a 90-minute YouTube analysis. Sure, yeah. I plan to at some point. I love all of his films, honestly. Like, 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 reclaim the phrase Nolan bro as something that doesn't have to be gender-coded, one, 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. So, 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 Night 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.

What do you think makes it not a great Batman movie? Like, what is that distinction for you? To me, a good Batman movie is someone who, or is a film that, understands the core DNA of the Cape 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 Bain and Catwoman and linking Bain with the League of Shadows and Talia Al-Gul, it's not a bad decision from a story structure standpoint.

And in fact, it makes more sense in a lot of ways. but it neglects the promise of a rogue's 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 Night 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, like, 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 Bain in this movie, you know? And it works in this movie. Well, he does a lot of push-ups. And a lot of hanging from a rope around his armpit.

You got to stretch that's fine. You got to stretch that's fine. Do you think this is successful as a Batman movie versus a Nolan movie? Or what do you think? 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, you know, so just another version of what you're saying, I think. And the question of how well that works for like hardcore 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 two three slot because i think for everybody dark night is 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 and gotham and the relationship between batman and the joker or batman and bane um he's picking the aspects of a batman story that are part of the core batman text right and i think fit in a 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, you know, 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 the one of our categories is the great man, like obsession, right? And there have been a couple movies that we removed that from, but none of the Batman was. None of the Batman one. And so like that's something that is a core text for Nolan and Bruce as a character.

Batman is 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, before Batman, but also it's like something that you understand why Nolan would be interested in a vigilantee story then for that reason. 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 and Batman begins or the system that is used here. you know, so like he, 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 that 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 was watching this and I was the first time I was rewatching And I was like, 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? I think that this trilogy is superior in the regard to that. It's the best Gotham story that we've seen on screen.

Nothing against the Fox show. I know I was going to say. My character is typing. I like, Nolan did an amazing job of the, I don't know, is it sinectekees is the word? 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... 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... I love it.

It's beautiful and rainy in a way that these three films are not. Nothing against the snowflur. which I love in this film. But to answer your question, Joe, I think it's like, I think that Nolan, a textual reading of The Dark Night Rises

tells you that that was not the point. I don't think he was taking any kind of political stance on the mob mentality of a French revolutionary state. I don't think, like if you literally read it, you see that Bain is a con man, that he is 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 Selena Kyle's la libo him friends are there lining up with those Bain mercenaries. How many of them are Blackgate prison escapees? because Selena 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. And, you know, like a coincidence, 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. 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 6 protesters than it is whatever the public perception of cops was in 2016. Yeah, yeah. I think it's like Gotham, just that general question and point about like this is really a Gotham trilogy.

I agree, 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, right? kind of to your point of like, does this feel like Gotham? Does it look like Gotham? When you pan out, we have these beautiful aerial shots, it's just obviously Manhattan. Or just at Heinz Field for the Steelers, this is always been the case. They're filming in Chicago.

No, no, but I disagree because in the first two seasons, the first two films, it's Chicago. Yeah. And Chicago dressed up, especially in the first one when you get the narrows, like it's Chicago dressed up to look like a Combook 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 city 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 that's what I'm saying yeah that's what I'm saying so it feels less like Gotham Gotham Gotham Gotham is this clearly fully realized and rendered character

that is very comic booky or specific to a certain like 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 who 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 Night, we spent a good chunk of our dark night pod talking about like the ending of that movie and the choice that Bruce makes, like, is that the right choice and doesn't make sense, right? And the way that 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 when people believe that that's real, right? But like Bain has an entire operation going under their very buildings and their street and has laced the concrete that holds the structure of the city and place the bones of the city with 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 there right? 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 he, when people, say this is an anti-occupied Wall Street sort of message. He's like, those aren't my politics. 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 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 Tomlin'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 Baines 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, 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. Yeah, Atlas shrugged and broke his back. Yeah, exactly. 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, like, I think that's Jonathan Nolan saying that we shouldn't be encouraging. are 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 vigilanceism by letting Matthew Modin 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 into the conversation. How do you keep it out of it?

Yeah. You did a guy, I like did my best impression of an English major to like delineate the Tale of Two Cities influences and then I did watch your video last night and I was like, oh, Eric didn't even better job like this. So do you want to talk about the Tale of Two Cities comp at all? Like what's interesting about that to you or? What I find it, what I find interesting about it is it is a tale of two cities and they 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. Like, I like that it is a tale of two Gotham's in this story. And that, like, people are just experiencing that Gotham in completely different ways. And I love that.

I love that Selena'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?

Mallory, any thoughts? I mean, I think this is like, again, it's interesting to think, as it always is, with Nolan films of like the through line across his work where, like, he's, when he tends to find inspiration in the text or even actively incorporate, like, a passage that Gordon's reading it, it reminded me a little bit

of, like, the recurring Dylan Thomas refrain in your favorite movie, Interstellar, right? We're like, I think that Nolan, um, 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 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 you this is going to 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 complete, 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 opening stretch and is like, you know, and he's got the letter in his hands that ultimately Bain 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 eight years. Did that ping disclosure day for either of you when Bain gets on the camera and he's like, Gordon wrote this letter? And I'm like, says who? Prove it. It works. What do you mean? It works.

Somehow the prisoners through the other side of these multiple walls. can hear this whole speech and react to it. Bain also using broadcast news instead of 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 Bain knitting at the trials, which is this Madame Defarge at the guillotine sort of reference. what I thought was really interesting. So they had this, like, high-minded, we did Dickens in Gotham. David Goyer gave an interview quite recently where he was like, you know what the dirty secret of the Dark Night Rises is? It's actually Rocky Three.

He was like, actually we also did Rocky Three alongside of the Dickens. And he sort of like lays out the beats and you're like, uh-huh. So, you know, all of these things can coexist. And that's the Nolan, which is the sort of like high-minded, uh, we're. doing great literature, we are doing high philosophy, we're doing all of that in the popcorn bucket of

like genpops cinema. How important is it do you think to Nolan and his brother that the average viewer understands the Dickens' connection? I think it's more important to Jonathan than it is to Chris personally. 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? Right. 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. Yeah. Well, I think that, yeah, that definitely changed over time. All right, let's talk about what I'm calling the curse of the overstuffed threequel. You know, this is, we're still sort of like riding the waves of the bad reputation of Spider-Man 3 when like the main critique of that movie was you put too many villains in your in your third movie coming off the hive of the second movie. And so when you have Bain and Selena Kyle and Tali Al-Gul and Robin, we're introducing Catwoman and Robin and Bain and Tali Al-Gul all in this. And it's not like the other films didn't, you know, like you've got Razel Gull 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 Ridler. And Jonathan Nolan has said that he even sort of like wrote out some treatments of what the third movie with The Ridler 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 exact.

at Warner Brothers, who after, I think at like the Dark Night premiere, something like that, was like, Leonardo DiCaprio is the Riddler, right? Let's do it, you know? And they really wanted DeCaprio in this movie. And instead they landed on Bain, among other things, as this sort of like big physical threat. Mallory Rubin. Yes. Would you like to give us your treatise on Bain and why you love him so? I just think it's something. incredibly entertaining performance. It's like genuinely really, really fun to watch. I think the voice choice that Hardy makes as Bain 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 fact that this trilogy ends up being bookended around the League of Shadows and Raz Aguul, 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 were a man. If Ledger hadn't tragically passed, like probably not, right? So, you know, was this intended from the jump to connect Bain and Talia and Roz 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, like, stuff in the third act is, you know, quite bad and just doesn't work. I think that that's not Bain's fault, actually. I think that's more about the like bloated and overstuffed and convoluted strands of the story inside of the film and as an effort to connect.

And I think the connections across the trilogy of the first film and the third thematically work. I think some of the clunkiness of the narrative inside of this story with like, how much are you paying attention in the opening plane heist to like Pavel and what is, even the reactor and the clemen. energy plan and, you know, Tate and this and that. 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 core, right? So that stuff just doesn't

work as well. I think Hardy is Bain 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 like 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, I picked Bain 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 Bain 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. I love you so much.

this is your most demented take, but I will defend. I don't think that's true. Voss, how do you feel about Bain? I don't want to live in a world without Tom Hardy's Bain. 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 Bain is the one who can actually break the bat. And I like seeing that delivered in this film. It's just this depiction of Bain is also an intellectual.

He's also a revolutionary. He's also a grifter and a con man. Sensitive guy. Cares about the innocent. He can hijack planes. He does. One innocent. one innocent. Not the rest of the innocence.

It's not the innocence of Gotham, but the entire city of Gotham that he plans to blow up, right? My bean takes are not a character specific. Oh, sure. Hashtag Bain was right? No, Bain was not right, but Bain was fun to watch.

Bain was fun to watch. He is fun to watch. I think the vocal choice does not work in the film. I, again, I'm happy that I live in a world where we have this, but it is, 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. Well, and it was, right? Because so they released the opening plane heist, whatever you want to call it, plane napping. Is that how blood transfusions work? I don't think so. That scene is not. Part of a corpse.

That scene is crazy. But they showed that in front of Ghost Protocol in IMAX as a sort of preview similar to what they did with the Dark Night. And no one could understand what the fuck Bain 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 fuck is Bainzang? So they had Hardy ADR all of his lines and introduced this more sing-song Gaden 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 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 Tom Hardy's physical imposition, like, I hadn't seen, I just had 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 bail. 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 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 like. He's a showman. Whereas like Ledger makes big choices and all of those big choices work. and Hardy, who basses 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 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's since the movie. I have, like, trouble, this most recent rewatch, is he an interesting?

introvert? Is he an extrovert? Does he like the limelight? Or is he an abvert 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 PT 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 type of plot. And Bain, 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 a kind of spokesman for any movement. 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 Bain feels to me like he is prepared to be a showman, but only when it's required, right? Like, I think he seems in the Heinz 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 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, 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 Bain, 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 Kale. Angelos collar has ever gone before. Those characters, I feel like they're the same. He's the mask, right?

And then the mask comes off. And then it's Tali'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 franchise, it's been a woman. And I just feel like, you know, people do. I like Maggie Gillen Hall in the Dark Night. A lot of people don't.

don't like Kitty Holmes and Batman begins and a lot of people don't. And so Rachel Dawes is a character or the women that have been asked to perform as Rachel Dawes as a character have been like a stumbling block for 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, you know, Anne Hathaway, it's talked about this quite recently, like that she was in a really weird time of her career. You know, 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 triard. 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 tryhard girl, and like all of that. Her reputation was so like, quote unquote, bad to like whatever, dummies on the internet. And Christopher Nolan cast her. And she has talked about how she didn't think she was going to 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, 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 La Miserables is partially responsible. Same way I think True Detective is responsible for Matthew McConaughey's Oscar, like partially responsible for getting that Oscar. She didn't get the Oscar for Catwoman, but you watch her do Fonteen in Le Miz and you watch her do Selina Kyle. And you're like, yeah, get that woman an Oscar. Are you kidding me? What can't she do?

Anne Hathaway is excellent in this movie. Yeah. I love the adjustments that she makes in a shot to go from like a screaming, a damsel in a bar. Yeah. How she can just play without even changing her face, play kind of the oops clumsy server working in the mansion to just like with the slightest tilt. Oops like that. Oh, she's just incredible. I think she gives the best performance in this film.

Yeah. 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. Yeah. But I do remember that discourse of the cool girl.

And how cool is she when she's the cool girl in this movie? When she's, it's all I know is, I'm not getting emotional. When she's just like, all I know is that you should be as afraid of them as I am. Like, she's just so effortless and wonderful. And I love her in this film. 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 how physically convincing she is in every respect, right? Like the kind of swaying crouch in front of the safe or the like, hey, just hold his hat for a second so I could 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? Everybody told me it was unbreakable. It's 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 kind of understand quickly their history, their relationship to current events, like all at once, you know, if you were basically, just like handed certain key nuggets like we are with Selena. She's after the clean slate. You know, here's a folder this thick of all of 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's 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 with that actually understanding anything about the character. We don't know anything about Selena. We're just being told all these things about here where it's like, oh my God. Like what like kind of clunky exposition to help us like really quickly grasp where this character is with her history, the way, even though some of the things that she has to say about kind of like wealth, right?

Yeah. It all is. Storm's coming. Yeah. 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 different. 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 soul and, like, her essence. You know, one of my favorite moments in the performance is toward the end when Bruce is back and trying to convince her to stay, to stay and actually help and stay and fight.

And he's like, 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. I have a read on this where, like,

because some people, because they do two love interests for Bruce inside of this movie, you know, like he has sex with Talia Agool, but he ends up with Alina Kyle. You know, 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, like, wakes up from his slumber when he meets her. And, like, 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 or 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 when to go visit Gordon. 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 bookie 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 going to be a masked character that you have to like 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, you know, like in Watchman, like incredible. And like she just has this like 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. 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. I love this. They're so manic and perfect for each other. 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 a disguise thing, just pulling off whatever this tissue paper. Yeah, the apron and the collar. Getting 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.

Yes. Where she's like, I need a powerful human shield for when I go to, talk to these guys and they're going to stiff me. And Daggett's going to use his cell phone. She's thought of everything. She's terrified. She's such a cool villain. She's great.

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. Because 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. Yeah. So we talk about Talia.

Yes, but we all have to slump. We have to slump in order to do it like this. Can your microphone pick you up in that post? I'm not sure. Poor Mary 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. One of the most remarkable I am dying posture choices in the history of something.

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. Opening night, bandboys there at 1.30 a.m. We're all laughing in that moment. Like, how, why did they use that take? 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, like, 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. And she was just sort of like right after her pregnant. and see. 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 on 10, no notes, B, that Talia like posture dying scene. Great. 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 mall, 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 mall, 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 her, 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 slash Miranda does in this movie. She's pulled the hair back. It's time for business. It's time for business.

Yeah, this is boonetail time. Yeah. The Inception callout 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 as hot. That's also a hysterical part of Dark Guy's eyes. It's 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? No, the comedy of... I set you up with a chimpanzee if it got you out of here. That's so dumb. They're the comedy of Alfred having to pick up Bruce from the ball after Selena scons with the Lamborghini does make it all worth it. But like, yeah, okay, so beautiful and mysterious woman who is involved in key boardroom maneuvers

and also is like the thing I'd love to talk about is this energy react. that one dude can turn into a nuke? Could that person potentially end up being bad? I don't know. Everyone looks so dumb every time they include her in all of the plans. They're like, let's plan everything, right? And then, like, those people die and those people die. And that planet goes awry.

And I'm like, you've got a rat. Yeah. Very tough. Look to the hot French lady. She's such, I really feel like she's like a plot mechanism in this movie. Yeah. 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-Gul. I just don't think it's necessary. I wonder, like, 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. You say that, but I've seen your defensive tenet, but I don't understand it. Oh, God.

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-Gul was just like an unfortunate choice 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's Soul, the League of Shadow story was already told,

and that book was closed. So, 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. It's so funny because, you know, watching a bunch of behind the scenes of this movie, they talked about all of the links they went 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 Bill was there in costume. And they were like, Michael Cain was very confused. Like, why Bruce was there? The headstone 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 Wayne family plot. Let's not worry about it. But, you know... Just for really memorable fuck by the fire. 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 in the movie. The few people that did, it was, like, verbally told to them. So this is, like, final team. of Game of Thrones level, 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 twist, 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 L. Gould, right? Like, I remember Dave Gonzalez is like, that's Talia L. Goya, Joanna. I was like, okay, okay, Dan. 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.

Yes, yes, yes. They cut away. And they did 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 in here, Bruce Wayne. And I wonder what they told those actors to say. 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, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I don't know. Interesting. All right. Speaking of Robin. Yeah. What did you feel about the way in which Robin is? deployed or John Blake is deployed or Joseph Gordon-Levitt in that role. 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 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.

Check my legal name. Yeah. Yeah, because he only has the name Robin because of the Flying Grayson's and that's like his insignia. So I found that to be a weird bit of lore building. I just, 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 is 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.

Remarkable moment. But I liked him screaming at that copacost. You killed us. What a raw moment in a final act that didn't have a lot of raw moments, I feel. What do you think? 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 and Inception. I love him there. The movie ending on him and setting up, that promise of like a Robin film future, was it really exciting to me at the time? And I think that it makes sense for this Bruce, this Batman, and 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 like a decision to like 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 at 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, you know, inherit the Batman mantle at the end. But I think it can lead to a little bit of, like, a, like, reaction for some fans. But I enjoy it. I think he, like makes sense in this story and in this movie. This is not my recasting pick. I will not be coming for Jessica Gordon-Levitt on this podcast. I do love him. But I did see that Ryan Gosling was, like, in the running to play this role. And I'm like, Gosling, who's so good at injecting every. with humor. Like if John Blake had just been a little, like a little less self-serious,

you know, like, 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. Like that's, he always wanted that to be sort of the final shot of the story. So, you know, whether it's a Dick Gray's, or whether it's John Blake, my legal name is Robin, like sort of moment.

That moment got laughed out at my theater. Like, they laughed at Tali and then they laughed at that. And I was like, we're not ending very well. But, like, I like that he has figured out who Batman is. So, like, in terms of, like, world's greatest detective, like, he's doing some great detecting work. I like the visual of him, like, swinging into the cave. Flying Grayson style and sort of, like, and the rise.

Like, I think I really, like, from a visual point of view, I really love that ending. But yeah, I don't know. It's, it almost works. Like, almost works inside of this. I think it's interesting. 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're going to tell him what's really going on here moment. And what if he was like, wait until you get a load of, like, not only wait until you hear about this fucking bomb.

It's literally a time bomb. When you see what scarecrow is up to? You know, like a little bit of that. It would have been fun. Yeah, he's very, very, very soft serious. It's interesting to me that Hathaway gets the accusations of being a tryhard when, like, in the same era we had Joseph Gordon Levitt doing the same kind of thing. Oh, yeah. He's like, I'm going to do make him laugh on SNL.

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

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 like 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. 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-hardy. to like fully embrace with deep and abiding warps because he's like such a drag.

But I do really like, the character works for me quite well in the movie, actually, when it ends, I'm like, let's go. Do you think when Alfred's done having his Ferné Bronco by the Arno, does he go back and he is like the Alfred to this Batman as well, or is he fully retired? 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. He didn't make a promise to Thomas and Martha to also look after every orphan crime fighter who's going to follow. He's finished burying wanes, whether or not they had actually

died, and now he can move on with his life. I do love, I watched a really recent interview with Christian Bailey where he's talking about the ending, and the interviewer was like, is it real? Is it a dream? Like, you know, what is the ending in 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 like choking and suffocating him. And so to your point about like, let's write some fanfic about the role play that Selena 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 Bill like misspeaking or whatever.

But it really struck me of this like, that's the person. that was, like, really crushing him. And, like, the fact that his mom's necklace is now on Selena's neck and, like, the pearls that were broken have been re-strung. And, like, all of that is just, like, I don't know. I love the ending of this movie. Yeah, I too. 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. Great stuff. That's a mask, right? Right. But also the Bruce Wayne who's like sulking around the mansion with Alfred is probably not his comfort zone either because he's like in the halls of the house that his parents lived and we're not able to raise him in. So he's not comfortable there. He was comfortable with Rachel for a time.

Like 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. Yeah. That is probably most comfortable for him. 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 going to 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, 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, like, he's a phantom and 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, like, 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 a 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 not yet. The idea, of course, would be the sacrifice of death, like giving his life. Except my life. Except my life. 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, immediately, despite all of Natalia. Let's... And Pavel. And the Bain Voice.

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Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home. 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 quote from this movie. Starting with why so serious, funniest line or moment from this movie, Eric Boss. My favorite is specifically after Talia Agu'll goal's slow knife speech. and how great Marianne is with like 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

it's so great so great malar urban um i get such a kick out of both because of the just litany of physical peril that bruce has suffered through but also bruce's face in the scene when bruce goes to get basically his physical Is it the cartilage? 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 and 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 hell-skiing. Mr. Wayne. And the Bruce just like, right. It kills me. It cracks me. It's so good. Because there's so many moments you watch Bruce get just like destroyed

and you're like, is his brain like not pudding after this? So I appreciate that and it made me laugh. I don't know if this is my like Game of Thrones loyalty, but I just think Aiden Gillen in the opening this movie when he's just like

posturing with his polo tucked into his khakis with the belt and he's like trying to play the big man with his gun and he's just sort of like you know, yeah, carry him over there. Yeah, well if you throw you out of the 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 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 is used to like draw the giant Batman's sigil. Like, all the scampering that Bruce does around to, like, fix the back signal or, like, leave stuff for Robin or whatever the case may be, I can, like, vibe with. But just, like, 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, like, thinking of him, like, repelling and just sort of painting this bad signal on the side of the bridge. Yeah, yeah, exactly. 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, oh, the gas is like two 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 Selena vanishes. Incredible moment. Really good. In the same, no one ever accused me of being dumb, Selena Daggett Stryor sequence when Striver comes in and is like another Thrones. Oh yeah, Berg-Gorman. Another Thrones presence here. Nice outfit. Those heels make it tough to walk.

And when Selena stabs them and says, I don't know, do they? Just iconic. Just wonderful stuff from her. She's the best. Which is great. Any other runners up that you have? I like the cop. Just saying, sorry. Sorry, yeah. After he shoots them.

Good stuff. Yeah. Oh, actually, I was born in the Regency room also. Very good. Oh, yeah. Very good. And Abitha. It's pronounced Ibiza. It's insane and hysterical. You already mentioned this, but I do think that, like, everything that Ann 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, keeps some pressure on that darling on her way out. It's like, call me. And then, like, walking out the door on the cop and 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, he mustn't be afraid to dream a bigger, darling. Sickest, set, peace, Eric Voss. 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 and Heinz Ward running the touchdown. My least favorite, my least favorite player of all time, Heinz Ward.

Of all time? Obviously, like, not accounting for, like, actual, like, garbage people who have done terrible, real world things. Just inside of, like, a football fandom rivalry. really like the Steelers or the Ravens are tribal. I'm a Ravens fan. And Heinz Ward always had the, you know, you had to respect the fact that he was a great player, right? But like just this smug smile on his face when he was doing something against the Ravens.

It's just, 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. It's great. And preceding it with the little boys 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 set piece. Can't believe Bain 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. Bain loves the arts. It does feel like Nolan does this really well of this kind of this synchronistic editing of, of like multiple complex processes that just happened to happen at the same time and converge at the right moment.

All your plans work. It's like he did it literally intent 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. I don't think it's a bad pick because like,

for whatever you say about the BFX, 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 Chris Rennelan 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 this sense of realness. So I think it ends with like your least favorite football player ever, just like having this real like, oh, moment.

And that just like kind of stuff. Like imagine not knowing your entire team just got sucked into the ground because you were so busy running it back. Well, he was about to do a victory dance. Yeah, I didn't earn this victory dance. Like all the guys were going to tackle me got eaten. Dedication to the craft. Malibu, what's your answer?

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 going to go with the post-bank heist, stealth chase and introduction of the bat. The sequence where Batman is making his grand return at last. And the way that he emerges by blanketing the scene in darkness and the underpass. And then the old cop says to the young cop, oh boy, you're in for a show tonight. 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 Pattinson, nothing can touch our pets. But for the bail 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 Foldy just making the wrong choice to pursue Batman over the robbers. And Blake is like, uh, 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. Tough beat for Matthew Modin in this movie. I don't know why, but I like always forget he's in this movie. And then I'm like, ah, papa. Papa.

Oh, it's like the last time he didn't have white hair, I feel. I know. It looks very died to me in this movie. I need the white hair there, I think. And then the 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. I'm like, sure it was him? Really fun.

Batman's using his tricks and his toolbox again. And I think just the city watching him return is very satisfying in that stretch. 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 we watched this sort of like making up 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 Bain, you can understand, or blood transfusions. 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, the urtext for that,

you know? I don't, like, I don't, 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 of possible energy. I agree when the plane drops away. It's very satisfying. I like the, you know,

there's no reason to fear like that. comes later, being moment is kind of a nice, like, oh, shit, we need to, like, be really afraid. The fire will rise. I find the scene sort of, in a movie I really, I actually quite enjoy, I find a 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 no reason, right away. And I think the Aiden Gillen performance is, I can barely wrap my mind around any choice that

he's making. It's like. It's so banana. It's so funny. It is so funny when Bain is like, perhaps I'm just wondering why you'd like... Yeah, but do the voice. Perhaps I's just wondering why you weren't shoot a man

before pushing him out of a plane. 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. Yeah. And it's just like, you're like, what's happening?

It sounds like the theater next to you. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's painful. Like, you're a big guy. For you. No, but that's not what he's saying. Right?

Who knows what he's saying? No, because he's saying like, uh, it will be painful. You're a big for you. Like he's saying 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, uh, as far in relation to you. Well, he doesn't a lot of people. It's painful for you.

Yeah. 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 CPR on, when they start getting. Oh, none of that makes sense. 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 record. Like, it's very confusing.

That's what I'm saying. It makes no sense to put like a pint of blood into a dead body when like the teeth will be there. And it's like to open with this nuclear physicist, too, it's like two hours until that really comes back into play. Bizarre. But Tenet does the same thing. Tenet opens with a well-overthought opening scene just because like Nolan nailed it in the Dark Night. It's a great heist of a shrinking pie game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It works perfectly. And then after that, he's like, I must. I must have to have them. I have to add. I don't want them to get it the first time.

It's not going to be a bus. It's going to be a plane. What's going to happen in the Odyssey? That's why I'm so excited for the Odyssey. There's going to be some weird. We're going to hear the songs of the sirens that's distorting our perception of reality. That would be great. We're going to suck down Carybdis.

It's going to be great. Okay. You either die a hero live long enough to see yourself become the villain. Who's the real villain of this movie? Is it J. Robert Oppenheimer in a way? From a historical Pandora's box perspective. Isn't it always? That's a great answer.

I don't know. I have, this is a lame, I really think peace approach, but I think like the shadow of the Joker still looms over this movie. And I think like 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 and the overhead shot of,

the people in attendance and how it makes a smiley face with Batman as like a blueish-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 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 Bain 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.

Yeah, 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 you solved it when a lot of the people, 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 then as we've already outlined, like the fact that as you know, the League of Shadows is able to move in, that Bain, it's not just that Bain shows up and does this thing. Daggett has his operation, securing the tunnels. And like, like, Ben Mend Mendelso's in this movie. Ben, the Krenick is here.

Like recruiting workers, you know, that exchange that Blake has with the young boy whose brother washed up. And that kid is like, yeah, like people go to the tunnels. That's what they do. 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 sense of complacency and, like, kind of ineptitude that allows Bain 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. And he's like, thank you. To the man who decided that 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, in the, of that. Mine is related to yours as 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 like Wayne Tech 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 or they 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.

decisions, especially of these, like, billionaire playboy inventor or whatever, coming back to, like, bite you in the ass and haunt you at the end of the day. Yeah, great 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 of us. How often is she repeating that refrain from those gorgeous cafes and the banks of Florence? I wonder. I wonder, Selena. She's like, she's like, once I could only get red delicious apples. eat. My tune really changed.

Exactly. You can point of that kid's apple is so it's very tough. Are you watching closely? Most exquisitely gorgeous shot. 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. Nolan. Good director. That guy knows. Misonin.

I love the mise en cent on this movie. I love Selena on the bat pod, the mechanics of it, and we saw teases of this throughout the movie, 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 at me. That's great. Every time I see it. I bet. Yeah. Very powerful visual sequence. She's amazing. My pick, this one's for Joe. It's getting to see scarecrow sitting atop his... 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 Cray and the scarecrow the star of this trilogy. It's so good. It's from a set deck perspective. The way they stacked those desks, the way the whole thing is shot, he looks incredible.

Like his coat is frayed, the looks all scarecrowy. He's got a hammer. He's got a hammer. He's out of a gavel. That's the most wacky, comic-booky moment of this movie, and I just think it looks so cool. I love that it's a very exaggerated in a 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 when 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 search of the stories which is 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 in Gotham but yeah Scarecrow atop his pile of hours amazing We had like a stack of cash in the dark night.

We have the Trinity Test Tower in Oppenheimer, and you have the Trojan horse. Does no one like just building wooden structures of like 20 feet in height? Yeah. 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 like mountain triangular. Do you think no one would do well at Burning Man? What if he's there every year?

Probably. He's wearing a Bayne mask, you can't tell. He's wearing a Bayne mask, you can't tell. And he's like, take control of your LSD. Point it up. Oh my God. 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 birders come back to the Bay Area and they're just like, reintegration, like in severance? Like they're like, I have to come back to reality. man, it's such a hard, come down. Love you, Burners. Okay. I can't remember to forget you the scene you think about the most, Eric Boss. I think it's got to be just Batman and Bain duking it out in the sewer, breaking its back.

Correct. I always wondered what would break first. Your mind or your body, right? Your soul or your body? Who cares? Spirit of your body. It's so good. Just the water dripping down on them.

The lighting is incredible. Love it. Obviously, it's my pet goes well. That was one of the things that I picked in our. our best of the century so far, so I was obviously not gonna not pick it here. You know, the famous Nightfall backbreaking, just canon, making it

to the screen, obviously, you're very exciting. Selina's betrayal, you have the character beats for that relationship, too, building up to it. Bain revealing he knows who Batman is, that he's Bruce. Like, there's all of that. Everyone knows the misrepresent. I mean, not Selena, and she's shocked

and Gordon at the very end, he's like, oh, wait a minute. Gordon's the last one in a lot. Can I just tell you that Gary Olman having to deliver, Bruce Wayne? And, like, how many, do you think he was 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 got to say, Bruce Wayne. Like, how am I going to do that? I think he was probably spending a good chunk of his time thinking about having to watch Talia. She's really, like, slumped, like, episode nine of a binge watch. It's a shirt, professional fashion. But, yeah, like, the brutality of the brawl.

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 most iconic one already.

Like all of them are bangers. Pieces cost you your strength. Victory has defeated you. Victory. I'm defeated you. Ooh, right. Theatricality and deception. Powerful.

allegiance to the un-initiated, 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 and it molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blinding and then he turns and he grabs them.

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

But all it needed was rope swing. All you need is that little, like, kind of like little thing to hang from and someone to your vertebrae back in and you're good. The pit, the fact that it's called the pit, it's like the pit comes to the pit. Great medical drama crossover there. Absolutely. Some potential for us here on social, just throwing that out there. What's the night shift like on that pit?

Let's ask Dr. Ellis. Okay. Let's find out. You know, Bruce is like part of crafting and forging the Batman persona in the first place is like, 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 Bain to take that from him is like,

I just think incredible. To take Batman's prep time, right? Exactly. That's right. 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 she passara.

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 120 feet of it, they actually physically built so that, you know, and 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 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 Shadow's 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, the pit is incredible to me. The way that those sort of Escher-esque steps, which are based off the steps at the Chan Bavri Stepwell 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 so like that, it's just like the climb works for me. It rises. The fire rises, so does Bruce Wayne. It's great.

I love it. And there are bats there. All right. Swear me. This movie is rated PG-13, which means, cannot have exactly one F-Ball. Where would you put it? 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 punctuate it with Aidan Gilling going,

fuck! Right at heat. Oh, go, fuck. Yeah, long, fuck. Yeah, you could even cut it. You could do the Spider-Man trilogy thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Great one.

Yeah. I think it's appropriate that these picks center around a little finger and Krenick. I'm going with a Daggett scene. I'm going with Daggett and Bean because you could put like 20 fucks into this scene because he says what the hell is going on,

but let's start. what the fuck is going on, right? The 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 fucking charge.

I paid you a small fucking fortune. What the fuck is this? All of it. It's just, he should be saying fuck all the time. There's no version of this scene where this character wouldn't be saying fuck all the time. And then he dies, obviously. It's funny that it's like clear that Bain is,

you think he's going to snap his neck, but then there's like a really long haunting scream. So I'm like, is he just like smushing his skull? Oh, he's mountain popping him. Yeah. Something that would be gradual and painful enough. Yeah. Yeah.

What's your picture? You boys know you can come into my fucking neighborhood without asking politely. There you go. 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 Bain and Faye. you want, I'm going with Aidan Gillen, the king of the bad accents, because what the fuck is Aiden Gillen ever doing? Even in Sing Street when he's Irish, I'm just like not really sure what Aiden Gillen's ever doing. Tommy Carcaddy, mayor of Baltimore. Like, I don't, I don't understand. He's doing, he's really in Littlefinger, like, memorable shade. Oh, memorable shade territory here where you're like, this is changing not only season to season and episode to episode, but line to line.

What's happened? What's your? I'm going to pick Bain. Yeah. I mean, 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, I think. My pick is Bain Voice. I don't know how it couldn't be Bain 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. What's our most baffling overall? And is it Kenneth Brana in Tenet? Oh, God.

We've had some really good ones. Yeah. Yeah. 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. I mean, Killion Murphy, I think.

Hell yeah. Got to be him. Welcome. He's so great. Welcome to this Jonathan Craneheim. She's the best. I'm going with Anne Hathaway here. Yeah, 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 outline the best. We usually pick Michael King. And obviously there's a category here that we can definitely celebrate Michael Canaan. But like, Michael Canaan has won that category more often than not in this, in this rewatch of all these movies. He's very special.

But Anne Hathaway, my God. All right. Why do we follow so that we can, speaking of, so we can learn to pick ourselves back up. Best stunt. Egg Voss. 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 they're, did she do that herself? I don't know how they did that stunt. 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 of her sons. 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 framing that she deserves for that. You just see her just basically her window wash wipe the frame.

And I'm like, she did that. That's incredible. She's great. Very lumber. Have you seen the footage of her stunt double in the bat paw just, like, demolishing an IMAX camera? I just lost control of the baton. It cost them so much money. There's also a behind the scenes of like the bat, which they had like mounted on a vehicle, right?

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 going to be expensive. Incredible. Mallory Rubin. This was where 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 and sequence, but the build, because 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 and then the third jump to succeed the fact that he packs I love that exchange about like oh you're packing cute and it's like I'm gonna fucking make it no rope I'm gonna do it no rope and I always get a chill and 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 well in the first movie very satisfying very satisfying amateur seek the sun get eaten power stays in the shadow stealth MVP of this movie that not enough people talk about. That's your answer. The snow flurries of the Pittsburgh area. I think 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. I love that. I didn't really have a good pick for this one.

Maybe because this is like the billionth. Potty. We've done on this and I'm out of like stealth candidates, but I... This is going to be a controversial choice. Okay. But I'm going to give it to Richard King, who is a sound designer on this movie, because I watched him, I watched his feature out of him and Hans Zimmer are talking about the score and the sound at the same time. Yeah. And he just like basically looks like he's crying when he's talking about how the Bain 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 this. So like, poor Richard King, who at the end of the day, I do think you can mostly understand Bain. And this is not his, you know, it's ADRs, all this other stuff. Uh, 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. Yeah. 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 like hand cues for each other. So, like, Bail would, like, say his line, and then he would be like...

And then Tom Hardy would say his line. And, like, you can't see it in the movie, but he's just like... He's just like... I just imagining, like, the... I think this has to be, like, their fight scene. It's like the water rushing down, the IMAX camera whirring, and then mask mask, mask. And they're just... And then, like, whatever choices Tom Hardy's making in that moment.

It's just so funny. Great one. 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. I mean, Marry and Cotillard, 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. She's like, I'm done with this movie. No one's going to like me in this movie. I am let tired. All right, Mal Irvin. So I wanted to make a Rachel-centric pick here,

but I'm going to do that in another category to talk about that, Alfred Bruce Fight. So I'm going with the legend of the moment. mercenary. The fact that for two out of the three movies in this trilogy really center on Ross Uncle's dead wife, which is just unbelievable. Unnamed dead wife. Yeah. Worked for a local warlord, fell in love with the warlord's daughter. Mercenary was condemned to the pit when the warlord found out, but was exiled and said twist. She took his place to the pit and she was with child. Yeah. And then all of the prisoners rush into her cell and she's killed. What is the

logic of the pit. The warlord can't say like, no, no, no, you don't need to go in. Like, I guess he was really, is there like a pit governor or warden who's like, I need one soul. Really mad about it. Maybe. Maybe there's some magic there's like an election for pit governor? I think it's appointed. It's passed down from sun to sun.

One of the moments I love is like you're recalling that Roz says to Bruce in the first movie. Once I had a wife, my great love, she was taken for me. But then we just actually get that exact scene replayed in the film. I 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. She says, I mean, William Devane plays the president of the United States. He doesn't get a name. Tom Lennon's character is doctor.

I didn't look it up, but I presume Glenn Powell's listed as Gotham Exchange douchebag. Glenn Powell's in this movie. But yeah. Tom Conte is just prisoner. Unnamed dead wife 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 wrote down as his o'frienda, but basically just like, the homage to the dead women of this franchise in Wayne Manor is what I pay. Do we see Roz's wife just depicted in some drawing that you're going to add to the shelf?

It's like on there. Tali as it gets on there. 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 Boss. Is it Matthew Modine putting on his dress uniform? Dress blues.

The dress blues. Just to die. It has to be that. You can't just wear your... Whatever the bathroom you're wearing, when you're there either way. I mean, on the heels of Gordon being like, did you bury your uniform?

Yeah, you got to break it all out. Send your wife to answer the door. If... Maureen Kotiard had not cornered the market on awkward death poses. I think Matthew Modin had a real run at it because he's just sort of like a curvature. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a real. It's a real chalkout.

Yeah, it's very like mystique. Yeah. It's fun and Liberty Museum. I love it. Great more. I'm going with Alfred's plea to Bruce when Bruce resumes his training. If this man is everything that you say he is and the city needs me, that's what Bruce says of Bain. 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 that to the note that Alfred was hammering in Dark Night, we see this evolution from like, okay, Alfred said to Bruce in Dark Night, 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 Alford, the journey across films 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. 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 like 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.

That's incredible. He's the hero, Gotham deserves and not the one it needs right now. who was regrettably miscast and who would you replace them with Eric Voss? I think Hardy. I think Tom Hardy is, again, I don't want to live in a world without Tom Hardy's Bain, but if you could do it all over again, I think there's a completely different approach to Bain 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 at 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 Bain better. Do you think Idriselba would have been like, The Apocalypse is canceled? He still has to do that voice. They're like, Tom Hardy made this decision. We ended up firing him, but you still need to do the voice.

Those are the roles. Obviously, I can't agree, but I respect your opinion. I would love to recast Aiden Gillen. And I think genuinely like an opening scene that makes me like pretty worried about how the rest of the movie is going to go. All right. I'm giving it to Marion Coetton. It's not Marion Cotier's fault, but let's just pretend it is. Naomi Watts and Rachel Weiss and Kate Winslet were all in the running for this role.

And I think Rachel Weiss would be my choice at the end of the day because she wouldn't have that same Inception Association that Mary and Cotillard had. Deadline at the time, because they didn't know that there were two female characters in this movie. So Deadlines, like, these are all the actresses up for the female lead in this movie. And they were like Rachel Weiss, Naomi Watts, Blake Lively, Natalie Portman, Anne Hathaway, Cura Knightley. So obviously, like, some of those are catwomen and some of them are Talia. The longer, the longer Catwoman list. Angelina Jolene, Natalie Portman, Jessica Beal, Charlize their own, Emily Blunt, Vera Farminga, Gemma, Arterton, Abby Cornish, Eva Green. Oh, my God.

Who got really close. I'm not sure I would have survived that, honestly. Kate Mara, Blake Lively, Charlotte Riley, Olivia Wilde, Lady Gaga, and Kira 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 in 20. 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, Killian Murphy. Anyway, I would put Rachel Weiss in this role. Yeah. All right. You don't really want to work it out. You want to be fooled. Most satisfying twist. Eric Foss.

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. Yeah. I like seeing scuba gear on his rack of stuff. Like you see a scuba tag. Yeah.

Oh, that guy has a water version of the suit. I like that twist. That was fun. That's my pick, too. I mean, I think we're leaning into here most. 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 the, what you talked about, earlier, like that seven years that Bruce was way hoping you 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. And you're like, could it be, and 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 their story. So I love it. That's my pick.

I'm giving it to the tell you a goal. 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 being credit for a woman's work by the way but the kid being Talia I agree is a great yeah the kid being Talia I think is a cool twist

all right Talia being like I'm here to finish my dad's job in the present time I'm less good but the kid's stuff is great is the slow knife all right you do a good impression I don't think so you do it's not who I am underneath phrasing but what I do that defines me

no one is not known for a sexual content but let's go ahead and try to excavate the horniest moment of this film. 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. This is inspired. Genuinely inspired. I think it's beautiful. Love is love. Happy pride. Incredible. Valerie, what's your pick?

I'm going with the way Catwoman moves when she's trying to open Daggett's safe in full leather. And the leather is hug in 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. Right after that. Pitting Daggett's hand to the wall with her steel stiletto heel and cooing. and 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 going to hit you with, this is particularly after our like experience covering and or 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, benemic 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 boy's shoulders, et cetera, matters inside of this fight. Gordon does it for Bruce. Bruce does it for Blake without knowing it. And Blake's like, that's Batman. Yeah, I mean.

I could tell. You looked angry. I knew you were Batman. I really love that line. For me, it's, and this gives you a power? over me. I love the, you think this gives you power for me, because it's like, it's just such a great rugpole moment.

And the idea that the pride and the arrogance of the 1% thinking that they can control the world, that you forget that there are other things more powerful than just paying someone a small fortune. I love that. 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. It's, 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 victory over him. How often do you think people get to visit in the pit? I think this is a, I don't think there's a lot of, like, I don't think there's a lot of conjugal visits. I don't think there are a lot of visiting hours of any sort of the pit.

They just sort of, like, drop the rags and the scraps of food down the hole. Yeah. Do they kind of dangle them on a rope and they wade from 50 feet above? Oh, that's the conjugal. Yeah, exactly, basically. Something for the spank, think, that's it. You know, learned here, there could be no true despair without hope, a little Ted Lasso. Yeah, 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. I love that he just, like, put a little TV in there so that Bruce has to. It's so easy for Bruce, which he does, to just break it. Did they have to wire the pit just so that he could do this? They have the telephone, you can't climb this HDMI cable to get out. It's not going to hold your weight. Exactly. All right.

You think darkness is your ally, but you were merely adopted the dark. I was born in it, mooted by it. Most devastating moment. Eric Boss. 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 and Thomas' grave, I failed you. Like, just crying Michael Kane in this movie.

Top one. Really tough. Yeah. It's got to be that. I have no other notes. Yeah. I did initially have this in the dead wife category because Rachel is the impetus for it. So that's kind of amazing. The Rachel letter comes back.

Yeah, a 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 unless 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. And that is more important. And they're both crying. Goodbye, Alfred. Kind of emotionally terrorizing for, that's just the AC making his shake. He's on Earthquake, don't right. 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 signals and like, he couldn't just like say like, Alfred, don't worry. I'm still alive. We'll see you at the Arno. Maybe if Alfred had stuck around instead of really needing to prove a point. He would have been able to tell them. Oh, wow. Tough.

Victim blaming. All right. Can you hear the music, Robert? Most unforgettable Zimmerism. I love the Catwoman theme in this. Obviously, the chant, the rise is great. That's my pick. 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 going to catch every ledge on the way down. It's a really beautiful score. I love that. The Deshi Basara, the fact that Han Zimmer had, like, fans from around the world recorded in advance because he needed that, like, huge chorus of voices.

So you just had, like, Randos from around the world just going, like, Deshi Basara, into a microphone, and that's in the movie. I think that's so cool. 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's the lighting of the bat signal on the bridge. The score's really great there too. Absolutely. All right, we are almost done. For me, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship, quoting your favorite tenant.

Actor who never returned to the Nolanverse, but should have. Ben Mendelssohn. Hell yes. Exactly. He's so good. My pick too. With like a foot, just a mention of Glenn Powell in case he hadn't come up at this point,

but he has. But yes, Pantle's in. Like, do you know that Tom Hardy actually bashed Glenn Howells? This is my real, like, Vigo Mortensen broke his toe. That Tom Hardy was supposed to give Glenn Powell a cue to prepare himself for that stunt, and he didn't. He just bashed his head into the desk. And Glenn Powell was like, kind of, I got half a concussion from that. Not ideal.

You know, I think, yeah, whatever. It's the mask. He did give the cue, but the mask swallowed the sound. He tried their cue that he increased. All right. Some men just want to watch the world burn the most Nolan thing about this movie, Eric Fass. 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 of. And I think that was there under the prestige, the fear of technology.

The man opened a Pandora's box that it can never close. And I think that's going to be in the Odyssey in some way. well. What is the Trojan horse, if not, you know? The secret doom lurking underneath. That's my pick, too. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Our greatest accomplishments cannot be behind us.

What aspect of Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey are you thinking about slash most type for this month, Eric Moss? I think the idea of a cunning hero. Like, I think cunning as a virtue is underrepresented. I think self-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 all the time. Big deal. The idea of hunting 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 them.

And I think Odysseus is going to represent that really well. Oh, I like that. That's a fun one. Yeah. Like I don't want to die actually. Like let me get back to like 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 Interstellar a couple months ago. I can't wait to watch her cook. Do you think when it comes to Odysseus' bow, she's going to be like, oops, nobody told me was unstringable? I do. I do, actually.

I mean, I hope. I hope. I think it's just the, like, excitement that I'm, you know, like the way in which, I mean, the ticket bullshit, you know, people being shitty about it, but, like, just to scramble for Tick. There's, like, ways in which 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-quadded event and, like, let's all go watch the fucking Odyssey this summer.

I'm so excited. I genuinely can't wait. I can't believe we're a month out. I know. Like, what the hell? That's so exciting. And that much excitement for, again, a 3,000-year-old story. No.

Like, the story. Also, we're all in L.A. together and are, like, definitely going to be at this screening. together? We get to like watch movies together now? What a treat? I think so. What is the comp for this podcast in terms of like crossover events? You know? This is like it's because 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. Wow. Yeah. Kind of. I mean, this is momentous. It does feel momentous. It's momentous. 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. When will you come back? Yeah. Anytime you'll have me. Oh my gosh. Eric. Seriously, anytime. Where are you on, what's your, what's your relationship of Lord of the Rings? Um, I have, well, I've done analyses of the Peter Jackson trilogy. I know the text of the trilogy.

I've not read the similar again. Sorry, this is not a pop quiz. You don't have to like prove anything. I'm just like, I like it. Recite the fourth line of the second appendix. No! Name all the doors in the hobbit. I can't even do that.

See Misty Mountains. But 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. They're wrong. They're wrong.

It's beautiful. You know what we have. love to do, walk around and say, it's glad you're a drill hit. I'd just love to do that. I'd be out of him lots. I think I've accidentally internalized signs and portents based off of me 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. Fortense and signs. Portions and signs. That's what I say. That's great stuff. This is fun. Thank you so much to Eric Foss. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you to Christopher Nolan. I mean, thank you to Bain. Thank you. You know what? We've been hard on you. Thank you to Bain. Thank you for Mary and Cotillard for your truly demented death slump. We really appreciated it.

Truly. Thank you to Carlos Chiraboga, to Jacob Cornett, to Scott Lee, to Jomea, Dineron, to our dinner on. We appreciate you all. We'll be back with House of the Dragon. That's right. Check out Eric on your rock stars. One of my favorite, my favorite YouTube channel that exists.

More than the Ring Reverse channel or the House of Art channel or outside of our own stuff. Outside of our house. But of everybody else in the wide internet world. It's you. Thanks, guys. Bye.