The Smark Avengers - The Dark Knight Trilogy: What Holds Up… and What Doesn’t

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Corey, Dylan, and Jon revisit Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy to see how it holds up years later. From Batman Begins to The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, the lads breaks down what still works, what doesn’t, and where the trilogy’s legacy stands in today’s superhero movie landscape. 🦇 Topics include: Christian Bale’s Batman voice The importance of Alfred, Gordon, Lucius Fox, and the supporting cast Heath Ledger’s Joker performance Why The Dark Knight Rises feels different from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Which comic book storylines inspired Nolan’s grounded take on GothamIs The Dark Knight still the gold standard for superhero films? Did Rises fall short — or is it better than people remember? And where does the trilogy rank in the modern era of comic book cinema? Join the debate in the comments and let us know how you would rank Nolan’s Batman films. 👍 Like if you grew up on this trilogy 🔔 Subscribe for weekly comic book podcasts, deep dives, and heated debates Click the link for Dylan's radio show!: http://www.bouncedigitalradio.co.uk Click the link for Dylan's Twitch stream: http://Twitch.tv/spookylaroux Click the link for Jon's Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/bigjonbowski/ Click the link for Corey's project "Henry's Usual": https://www.tumblr.com/henrysusual Click the link for Corey's show "Large Old Cup": https://open.spotify.com/show/2YHMppnl9inQevwLIxR64f

When was the last time you saw a dead man's penis, John? I'm staring at one right now. Hi, everybody. Welcome to Smart Avengers. My name's Corey. With his Dylan and John. You tricked me. Got it did. Dylan's known for saying off-the-wall stuff, and John's out here slapping his tities and looking at his own deadpins. Oh, boy, oh boy.

that might be the best one yep it's a good one it's a good it was just the betrayal and hurt in your voice as well as we kind of did that you trick see how it feels i know i'm never gonna trust anyone ever again well speaking of things we can't trust uh this is going to this is an episode that's i want to say this kind of a long time coming but it kind of also wasn't um a few months ago probably back in april or may um um um We recorded an episode of the show back when we were doing our call over Skype instead of Discord and using Skype's built-in record function to record the call. And that's how we would get the video and then we'd have the video, blah, blah, blah, blah. Towards the end of Skype's run, though, they really stopped trying and caring.

And it never became more apparent than after we recorded this episode. we sat and waited for the video to populate, and it never did. And we had our first ever kind of lost episode of the Smart Avengers in a traditional sense, because we had a full-blown episode done and in the can, and it just disappeared. So that being said, we've been kind of sitting on this one, waiting kind of for a rainy day, and something we've discussed before. We didn't have to necessarily do a ton of research for. we can just kind of jump into it with minimal prep.

But we're going to talk about the Christopher Nolan Batman trilogy. And if you still have the thumbnail, we might be able to read. Actually, you never made a thumbnail for it because the episode never populated. Yeah, I don't remember if I did make a thumbnail for it. No, I think I ever did. Yeah. So we'll do a little bit of time travel in a sense that the Christopher Nolan Batman movies kind of came out of an interesting point in time

in the movie world and superhero genre. The very first one, Batman Begins, came out in the early 2000s, which was only about four or five years removed from the release of the Batman and Robin by Joel Schumacher. That was considered a bit of a bomb. Not a flop, but a bomb,

in that it pretty much killed any interest in Batman for a hot mess. in it, which was saying a lot, because Batman up into that point was a pretty big ticket mover. Because if it wasn't just the, it wasn't just the movies, but the animated series was going. The comics at the time, because it was the 90s, were still pretty big and popular. So we had this lull period where there were no Batman movies coming out. There were rumors of Batman movies coming out, but it didn't, it just seemed like nobody wanted to take that opportunity or that shot with it.

So 2005 is when Batman Begins came out. So again, like, we're kind of just going to take this sort of a casual approach, talk about the three movies, our impressions of them, what we felt was done right, what we felt was done wrong, that kind of deal. We aren't going to get too into the weeds when it comes to, like, the behind-the-scenes stuff. Although very recently, I was watching, like, an old clip of Big Fat Quiz of the Year, and they had fucking Danny Dyer come in and read a question.

And I just immediately thought back to our episode where he was one of the rumored names to play Robin. And I was like, oh, dear guys. Yeah, the classic stuff. Can you imagine if that had happened? It had been wild. Yeah. All right.

So that being said, we're going to go back to the year 2005. I graduated high school in 2005. I also left high school in 2005. 2002, bitches. There you go. John was You call on bitches?

Yeah, John was fresh from the Willenium. Yep. We don't like to call it that anymore. No, we do. I mean, why would you not want to,

you know, name a millennium after a man who admitted to throwing up every time he comes? Nice. Moving on. Oh!

I don't think we should move on too quickly. John, did you, have you heard this? I can't say it that I have, to be honest. There was a very uncomfortable thing that he did with his wife before the whole slapping Chris Rock across the face deal where they kind of just admitted like kind of some ugly things about their relationship to one another. And like, I guess like he admitted that he had like a real bad like sex addiction problem

to the point that like the act of ejaculums. lady made him physically ill. For me, so for me, it's kind of like whenever people think of sting, they just, not the wrestler, but the performance artist of the police, formerly of the police, where like almost anyone ever just thinks about him is just

like, oh yeah, it's the guy who likes to wait a little bit before he comes. I don't know if that's how it's, like eight hours or something, isn't it? I mean, does he ever quantified exactly how long it is? Because for some people, I mean, time is all about perspective. I think he did say, one men's eight minutes, His other man's four and a half hours. Yeah, but I would also say, you know,

it ours is not waiting a bit. Like, you have to clear your whole schedule for that day. Yeah. If I was waiting for the bus for eight hours, I'd be pretty pissed off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then as soon as the bus comes, you throw off. Like, well.

You ejaculating the throat. Yeah. All right, well, that took a turn. Well, that's the thumbnail. Just John coming. and vomiting on the bus stop. Will that stay in the episode? You tell us when you watch this in the future.

Anyway, we have 2005 with Batman Begins. I was not familiar with Christopher Nolan before these movies. I knew Memento, but I wouldn't say that, like, I was an expert on the man's work or, like, knew, like, his style inside and out. That's for sure. John, you've always been a really big film person. Was that true even back in 2005? Yeah, yeah.

Like, I mean, Nolan in 2005 was sort of one of those up-and-coming names more than anything. Like, he, like you say, Momento sort of put him on the map a little bit. Well, quite a big bit. But then I guess it opened the doors for him to be able to take on Batman. Um, and so it's really this, uh, Batman, uh, Dark Night trilogy, which is what kind of put him, you know, properly into the public consciousness and sort of gave him the opportunity to then go on and start doing his own movies as well.

And yeah, obviously it's worked out pretty well for him since. That's true. So, uh, he was, okay, I said I wasn't going to get two in the weeds, but we'll get just a tiny bit. The movie was written, the script was written by David S. Goyer. He was signed on to do this in 2003, so they had a good two-year pre-production before, or pre-production and production before the movie came out. But the idea was that he wanted to focus on an origin story, because at the time, the Batman movies that came out, like, Tim Burton's Batman jumps you right into Bruce Wayne being Batman. Batman was still kind of getting established. He was an urban legend in the city of Gotham.

But, you know, he was already, he already had a cave. He already had the gear. There were no training montages. It was just like, Batman's an established thing. Here you go. Whereas Nolan's Batman, we got to see the transition of a kid who watches his parents get gunned down in an alley to angry young man to determine person who's set this impossible goal for himself and the steps he's willing to take in order to achieve it.

So first and foremost, we should probably talk about Christian Bale. We'll talk about him now because he's going to be present in all three movies, obviously. But Christian Bale, I would, we had a whole episode where we talked about who our favorite Batman was. Christian Bale was not any of our favorites, but that's not to say he was a bad Batman. Would you agree with that? Yes. Mm-hmm. I mean, I definitely think he rode the line of, like, kind of that quiet, brooding intensity.

Christian Bell is a very intense individual. Yeah, but then he was able to do the whole Playboy side of Bruce as well. Like the false kind of persona. You had the look. You had the charm to it. And, you know, that's where you got a little bit of the Patrick Bateman from where he was an American

Psycho before that. You could see that there's a little bit of that in there. I guess like the thing most people remember him from these movies is the voice. Yeah. which is, you know, it is sort of ridiculous sounding. But at the same time, it's coming from the kind of grounded take that Nolan was trying to do anyway. Because he can't just be speaking in his normal voice because people are going to recognize it.

So I guess he has to kind of disguise it somehow. Yeah. I mean, well, like, let's touch on that to her just a tiny moment then. because every Batman actor had their sort of take on, like, the difference between a Batman voice and a Bruce Wayne voice. Wasn't a lot of differences, though. Usually just sort of sounding more friendly was Bruce Wayne. Like Michael Keaton's Bruce,

Michael Keaton's Bruce Wayne and Batman were fucking very similar. I don't even know if you would say he made it, he attempted to hide the fact. But, like, Val Kilmer definitely did, like, his Bruce Wayne voice. was definitely a touch friendlier, and George Clooney was just George Clooney. I remember watching a clip with, who was it? It was a voice actor.

I can't remember who it was, but they voiced Batman, and they were talking about Christian Bale, and they were talking about Christian Bale's Batman voice, and they were like, I'm not a fan of it, because I think you can do it, basically just, like, drop your voice lower

and a little gravelier and not just, like, kind of sounding like, like a death metal vocalist. But, um, I think even Ben Afflick's Batman, like they didn't he have like a vocator kind of thing going on.

Uh, I remember in Justice League, he had like a voice modifier that kind of made his voice sound really grab like gravelly. Hmm. Why doesn't he always have a voice modifier? Ben Affleck? Batman.

Oh. Well. That's, That's the matter. Goodwill. It would have been very different. But, like, I mean, it spice things up. But Batman, like, he's, everybody knows Bruce Wayne.

He's a billionaire. Hey, boy, people know who he is. He's always in the media. People know what he sounds like. He wears a mask and people don't know what Batman looks like. Wouldn't it make sense for him to, like, wire up some sort of voice modulator into the mask or just doesn't sign like Bruce Ryan? I think in the comics, sometimes they will say that he, they'll make a mention.

of that saying that like oh yeah he has like a thing in his cowl that makes his voice sound different um it's sort of like sometimes i feel like the comic books will go too far and try and explain some stuff i feel like that's an example like i always get weirded out when they try to like explain why the their masks their eyes are white in the mask yeah you don't need to do that it's fine we'll just accept it yeah we'll accept it like it just looks cool exactly i remember grant morrison in in in their book on philosophy was talking about like how kids will just accept that like mermaids exist

and they don't need an explanation and like Superman flies just because like you don't need to get into the science about it and I feel like common fans are very similar in that regard only the really shitty ones are the ones who are like no you got to explain it you got to explain it I do hate shit like that where they get really like two into the weeds with it

and you're like just you know fucking chill out it's not real you know yes So when we talked about this previously, the one note I do remember is that all of these movies felt like they took two very classic Batman stories and combined them. Whereas this one is very much Batman year one in a sense of this is Bruce getting, you know, we see him train, we see him get, you know, the pieces of the costume from the League of Shadows training garb. You see the beginnings of that. You know, they explain why his gloves have fins on them to catch swords, essentially.

Which I wasn't sure how I felt about that, but, you know, is what it is. But we see, it's Batman year one for all to his purpose. Like, we see him announce Batman into the city of Gotham and the things that he does as a result of it. To get into the rest of the cast, we have the, we have Rachel Dawes, who is our love interest, and she's played by Katie Holmes, if I'm not mistaken. Yep. I will be completely honest with you. There's nothing about that character that's really memorable for me.

I mean... She's the childhood friend. Yeah, childhood friend who, I guess, Bruce loves. I guess the theme that carries across into the next movie as well is that he ultimately wants to make Gotham a better place so he can retire being Batman. live happily ever after with Rachel. But obviously stuff happens and that doesn't really turn out exactly as he planned. What kind of stuff happens? Well, she gets blown up.

One night she ate some bad Chinese food and woke up as Maggie Gyllenhaal. One day she just couldn't stop bombing every time she came. And that was really putting Batman off. He's like, dude, I don't know about you. I'm not into this. The bucket by the bed is a bit of a mood killer. Well, if you don't change it. What if, but what if, like, she, oh, no, I don't want to go there.

You'll cut my anyway, do it. I was going to say, like, what if, like, you know, like, that's how Bruce finds out that he's not really good in bed because she's not, like, she's faking her orgasms, but she's not throwing up. And she's like, no, no, really, I mean it. And she starts, like, putting her fingers down her throat. No, look, see, you did such a good job. I feel like by that point, he would be like, okay, cool. Now I know that this isn't a thing that everybody does. Yeah.

I do like the weird idea of Bruce Wayne, the Virgin. Anyway, we'll take a step back. Reset. So Katie Holmes' character, Rachel Dawes, is sort of a foil, like, kind of a foil for Bruce. Bruce in a sense that she has a very strong sense of justice. She works for the Attorney General or the District Attorney in Gotham, so she's also in pursuit of justice, but she's in more of the legal way of doing it,

as opposed to Bruce's more brash boots-to-the-ground vigilanteism. Our next big casting that we have to talk about is Liam Neeson as Henry Dukard slash Razagoul. a big fan of Liam Nissen. I did love him in this role. Henry Ducard in the comic books is a French thief.

And basically, like, that's how Bruce learns a lot of his, like, detective skills from and his sleight of hand and stuff is from Henry Ducard. So to take an established character and kind of modify him, keeping him in a role of a mentor that Bruce met along his way of, like,

training and learning and adapting. It was a good touch, as well as the big twist being that Razal Ghoul is a figurehead in the League of Shadows, it is not a person. It is a role that you fill. Because the red herring was played by Ken Watanabe. Yes.

We also have to talk about Alfred, played by Michael Gaine. Would you say that he is the best depiction of Alfred in the movie so far? Yes. I would say so. I thought Jeremy Irons had potential. I just like Jeremy Irons, though.

I mean, Scar is great, yeah. But, like, I didn't think too much of his Alfred, to be honest. No, I kind of, it kind of fit more of like the kind of the comic book role of like the former British spy that, you know, knows field medicine, knows how to, you know, knows how to work a wrench, you know, kind of deal as, as opposed to, you know, Michael Kane. being a very distinguished gentleman. He felt more like a real-life butler in a sense, as opposed to kind of like, Alfred is a but he is also a bunch of other shit that comes in very handy for Bruce.

So, I mean, yeah, from a comic book perspective, I think that Jeremy Irons fit the bill of like a comic book Alfred. But I will agree, I feel like there was not nearly as good material for him to work with as, Michael Kane certainly had. And Michael Kane, of course, is a phenomenal actor who's better.

We won't even really talk about Andy Circus because I kind of, I liked him in the Batman, but I can't necessarily feel like that's Alfred for me. Was that the one with Robert Pattinson? Okay, I haven't seen it. You really need to. It's pretty good. I really enjoyed it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I really enjoyed it. It's the first Batman movie. They really dives into the detective aspect of the character. Mm-hmm.

But we're not talking about the Reeves of the Batman series. That's next week. Where we will talk about the Batman. Anyway, we also have, I always feel like I'm going to get it wrong. Killian Murphy as Scarecrow. Yes. You pronounce Scarecrow correctly. Great.

I always get words. I always go, is it scarcrow? Skarkakro. Scarcero. Scarce. Scarre-Roe. Scarce row. Gary Crow.

Scarcero. Cereux. Cereux. Cereux. Cillian Murphy. I do remember one of the things we talked about last time were how two of my countrymen are in this film.

That's true. Liam Neeson specifically is from Northern Ireland. Yes. Cillian Murphy's. So that's nice to get a little bit of proper representation for me. Yeah. Because as you can see,

me and Liam Neeson practically identical. That's true. Yeah. Very similar. So. So it's a good thing. Any other notable castings from there?

I don't think so. I mean, Gary Oldman is Jim Gordon is the big one. Not Gary Newman, Gary Oldman. Certainly not Gary Newman. That would have been a very different Jim Gordon, yeah. Morgan Freeman as well. It's Lucius Fox. There are a lot of really distinguished actors there, which is, this was before Christopher Nolan kind of got his stable of actors that he continually worked with.

Yeah, pretty much. This is kind of the beginnings of that. You kind of, because I would say he's kind of a director you could call an auteur in the sense that he has a very, he has a very definite style to what he does and a pool of actors he prefers to work with. Mm-hmm. 100%. So great casting. The story is pretty simple in regards of, you know, Bruce Wayne coming back to Gotham as Batman to make a difference

and having to deal with the mysterious League of Shadows that are basically a environmental doomsday terrorist cell who, you know, are basically, they're sort of the Roman, they claim to, Be present when empires need to fall. And Gotham has been corrupt for too long, and they're there to reset it. Hmm.

What's it, what are they called? The League of Shadows. League of Shadows. Do you think that they're, like, knocking around these days? We might find out. We might find out. Anyway, uh,

Razagul would have loved COVID. That'd have been his fucking jam. That is, it absolutely was. If you read, I'd love, Rosalgoal is one of my favorite villains. I will go ahead and put it out there. Rosalgole is one of my favorite villains. So to go into this movie with that expectation of seeing it,

and I was really disappointed with the Red Herring at first, because I thought, like, oh, wow, they just fucking killed Rosalgoal in the first, like, 20 minutes. This really is just going to be Batman versus Scarecrow. That feels really anticlimactic in a sense because Scarecrow, not really a heavy hitter. Or see, you would think. He's got name value, but he's not going to be who you face in a fist fight. We also say this, that Killian Murphy is one of the few actors who was in all three of the movies, along with Morgan Freeman, Alfred, Morgan Freeman, Michael Kane, Christian Bale.

I think they're, and Gary Oldman, they're like the four, five actors who were in the whole time. So even though his character is dispatched quite easily in this movie, Scarecrow keeps turning up. I would argue that he's dispatched quite easily in the second one as well. And the third one, I believe. And the third one. Yeah. Like he said, Scarecrow not really a heavy hitter when it comes to his physical prowess. I love that bit, though, that they stuck with.

Let's just bring the Scarecrow back every film. Yeah. Just to do fucking nothing. He did great, though. He did great. But yeah, no, so the movie centers around a conspiracy plot involving Scarecrow's fear toxin and basically the League of Shadows wanting to detonate a device. that would, you know, turn Gotham into essentially a rage virus-filled hellhole where people

just call each other to death. Mm-hmm. Pretty simple. Point A to point B storytelling. Not all. It's a solid movie. I think it's probably of the three movies. I'd say it's the second invest in terms of quality.

Yes. Because I feel like... I feel the third one just lacks direction and we'll get to that. short time. We'll get that. Mm-hmm. So, anything in particular about Batman Begins that you would like to discuss that we've not already brought up before we can move to Dark Night, because I feel like Dark Night we're

going to get a lot of mileage out of. Yeah. Not really. I haven't really seen the first one that much. I think I've only seen them once. So I didn't really have a whole lot I was going to say about it. But I did like that you think that Scarecrow is going to be a big deal, but it's, you know, It turns out he's not really.

Like, they're going to do a B-N-Switch, you know. It was the second Bada Switch in the movie. Well, I like that, though. Yeah. I mean, he got handled rather quickly. His first confrontation with Batman is essentially his last. He got man-handled. Mm-hmm.

And some people like that. Some people are into that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. well that like a movie about a guy who dresses as a bat to fight crime can be so kind of grounded and realistic in terms of you know like explaining how he became uh like a crime fighter and how he got all of these you know wonderful toys and stuff that's true like

don't want to we don't want to take away from that that is a very big part of that is the relationship with lucius fox and his own sort of experiment with things. Because I, I remember the, I mean, the Tumblr, obviously, you know, the Batmobile was what really stood out when they originally were showing the trailers. Because, like, we, basically for years, the Batmobile, I mean, the Batmobile started off as this sort of like weird hot rod kind of car. And then over time, it just kind of became more and more of this sort of hulking, but weirdly

aerodynamic sports. car and yeah and then this movie was just like actually no it's this weird fucked up looking tank which like when you think about it if you're batman you need to get to somewhere really quickly it makes sense to have a sports car but it makes more sense to have a car that pushes all the cars out of the right doesn't it yeah that makes way more sense like you know penguin was able to put bomb in the Batmobile in Batman Returns. Ridler did it too

in Batman Forever. I don't know if you can put a bomb in the Tumblr. Like, it's designed to be pretty ruleproof. Sturdy. You know? Sturdy. Yeah. Although it does get blown up in the second

movie. Well, okay. That's it was what I know, but I feel like the end of the day, you can't just keep a good bomb down. The Tumblr is what, I feel like, Musk wanted the cyber truck to look like. He was like,

costume watch, I'll just make it out of sheet metal. I'll just make a stupid looking thing instead. I'll just make it really smooth. I think it looks more like Inspector Gadget's car. It kind of does. Okay. It kind of does.

So, so real quick to kind of get into just sort of the meat and potatoes of this, Batman begins. settled at a final box office of roughly $373 million and an average Rotten Tomato score of 85%. For comparison, Batman and Robin, which came out in 1997, did $238 million, so about a hundred and some million more.

And their Rotten Tomato score is an average of 12%. So significant improvement. significant improvement. So after Batman begins with the success, the Dark Night was greenlit and that came out in the year 2008 to a lot of fanfare and anticipation

because it was the first time since 1989 we were going to get a big screen Joker which everybody loves except for Dylan we all love the Joker except for Dylan and this Joker was being played by Australian actor, Heath Ledger, who at that point had been really well known for sort of like a lot of teenage rom-com kind of movies.

I think the big two I remember are a knight's tale and ten things I need about you. So a lot of people were like, this is going to be the Joker. And then we got our first kind of image of him with this fucked up scars on the mouth and stringy, messy hair and just sloppy makeup. up and we're like, all right, well, they're going to go with a very different approach.

Now, I remember at the time, because this is 2008, I was midway through college. I remember at the time a lot of people were very nervous about this because you look at the Joker and you look what Jack Nicholson did and you're like, wow, how are you going to compare with that? Yes. Big client shoes to fill. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

even though Jack Nicholson had regular size feet. Yes. As is my knowledge of Jack Nicholson. There you go. So obviously you can't talk about the Dark Night without talking about Heath Ledger and you can't talk about Heath Ledger's performance of Dark Night without mentioning the fact that he did pass away before the movie premiered due to an unfortunate drug overdose.

Most drug overdoses tend to go unfortunate. Well, it depends who it is. Yeah. some of you're not too sad to see him go anyway some of them are real fortunate you know what I mean you're like oh thank God so um we got a very different take on the Joker from where Jack Nicholson's was Jack Nicholson's Joker was very chaotic but it was very sort of crime oriented very much about being the main character and being the center of attention what with his love that Joker commercials and the product placements and of course the uh going through the museum and vandalizing all the statues and art with smiles and handprints and stuff. The very playful Joker, this Joker was more of the chaos for the sake of chaos that Dylan, you have gone on the record for saying you did not like. Not exactly.

I don't like how the Joker has turned into this weird kind of... I don't know the way to describe it, but like he's... He's revered now. It's a different character than what it was. And I feel like the chaos, but the sake of chaos character works well in this film. I don't think that's what happens in the comics anymore. The Joker is not that character anymore.

He's just this revered, wonderful, can't do anything wrong. It has magic armor kind of invincible plowing. That's what I don't like. He's just a guy. But he's always. somehow is seven steps ahead of everybody and he knows everything and he has every advantage, which I don't like. That's comic book stuff.

I feel like in media, the Joker has usually been represented very well, very realistically, and a lot of different, in the TV shows and the films and stuff like that. The Joker has been represented very well. It's the comic Joker I don't like. Yeah. Because I feel like they. the people who write him are a little too

enamored with him so he just ends up doing all sorts of crazy shit and you're like, this is boring. But I feel like with a character like Heath Ledges Joker, that's a really interesting Joker because it is a total opposite of what Jack Nicholson did.

Yeah. It's not a guy that's looking for attention. It's just a guy that's looking to fuck around. Well, so that's the thing about the Heath Ledger Joker character I find the most interesting is the fact that he's a liar. Like, that's the part that always got me with his whole like, oh, I'm not a guy who makes plans where everything he did was so carefully orchestrated.

Like, that's really the thing about it is he's a horrific liar. Like the whole time, he's just talking through both sides of his mouth. Yes. The thing, the other part about it is, I mean, Heath Ledger's performance, he was dark, he was charismatic. He grabbed your attention, what with just his mannerisms, the tone of voice. he used. The fact that like I mean, God, how many terrible Joker impersonations

came out after that is a different fucking beast entirely. But he definitely was a new take on the Joker that became iconic. And for that alone, you have to salute it. Do you have a favorite scene of his from the movie?

Because I mean, I tell you mine right now is the interrogation room scene. where Gary Oldman's character and, you know, Commissioner Gordon and Batman are interrogating him and just sort of his mannerisms, how he carries himself. And then when he's left alone with that one beat detective and he knows exactly what buttons to push to get under the guy's skin to orchestrate his own escape. Hmm. I think there's a lot, man.

That's the thing that I love about that film was when you watch it, every single scene the Joker is in. like it's captivating and take your eyes off him so i feel like like pretty much every scene he's in makes you want to watch it more obviously people would say the pencil scene that's what i was gonna say yeah the disappearing pencil but i like i quite like the bit where he's on top of the big pile of money oh yeah and he just sets in a fire he's like whatever i'm like you know i can identify with this guy there's a lot of um little little bits like that where you're like it's just like the bit where he always in the party. Yeah. Yeah.

And he's just like, because then you can see a lot of like dignified. You see people reacting to him. Yes. You get to see him being really just him. And you get to see people who would say that they are of a different class, a different breed of people to him, just having no idea like how to react to something like this. I like that because that's a fun, you know, juxtaposition. I'd say the scene where he's. coming out the hospital and pressing the button to blow it up is a classic as well.

It is. I think that's so memorable. That's really, that was, but also the bit where he's in the hospital talking to Harvey Dent. Oh, yeah, yeah,

yeah, and he's like, I'm not the bad guy here. And then, like, immediately is like, kind of the bad guy here. But like he said,

because he lies so often, like, he, like, so quickly, is like, this isn't about me. And then,

like, like, three sentences later is, like, yeah, I did this. But, you know, it's really bad man you hate, you know. Yeah. Like, it's the other thing about the, about his performance in that,

or not just his performance, but just how they handle Joker, was again, like, with Razal Ghoul in the League of Shadows, these were all trained, like, ninjas for all intents of purposes. These are people who were, like, combat trained. They had the exact same training that Batman had, so the fights were physically very challenging. Whereas Joker's, like, crew were all like very mentally ill people he was just taking advantage of like that was the thing

they kept pointing to it and all of his like gadgets and his gear was incredibly low tech like the bombs made out of cell phones and stuff like very very low tech stuff. The detonators being like ignitions you know yeah there was a very it was it was a good way to just like this is going to be completely different from the last movie here's an example why visual difference we can keep talking about Joker or we can move on to some of the other casting in the movie as well

I mean we should probably talk about Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent's nice two-face I would say up to this point our best version of two-face we've had on camera so far you talk about you don't like Tommy Lee Jones Tommy Jones is amazing although isn't it Sebastian

Stan cast a beat Harvey Dent in the upcoming Batman movie? I don't be so, yes. We could have a contender. We could have a contender. I will say, this is Aaron Eckhart before his stock was kind of tanked. So this is like right after Thank You for Smoking, if I'm not mistaken. So he had some good buzz to him. He just did a lot of crap afterwards.

Yeah, I was going to say, why did his stock tank? Because I haven't heard of him after Batman. Well, I mean, if you've watched Eye Frankenstein, then you'll know. I have not. There you go. No. I have not watched a three more Frankenstein film. Okay, fair enough.

That's your loss, but okay. Is it? I've not watched the recent Netflix one, but I like Yarmel Del Toro, and I probably will at some point. I'm just holding back on that one. But no, I've a fucking Boris Karloff tattoo, so don't take my word for it. Yeah, don't take my word for it. It's right there on the wall. Justering at him.

That's his head. There is. There is. there is. Oh, freaky Franklin. Yes. So, no, Aaron Eckhart was great. But one of my favorite things that this is from the animated series where he was voiced by Richard Mull was when you show that Harvey Dent was a damaged person before the scarring. Because I always, like that to me was always really kind of like, oh, he was hideously deformed. And he went crazy. But it's like, no, he always had problems.

The scarring just gave him an excuse not to care anymore. right it was an excuse so like we saw that when he kidnapped a uh very young david dasmalshian in one of his early roles as a joker goon that he kidnapped and was holding a gunpoint trying to threaten and coerce information out of and you know batman had that first interaction with harvey because at first he was like enamored with harvey dent while also being kind of jealous because rachel dawes who's now being played by maggie jillenhall was romantically linked with him. But now he saw as like, all right, cool, I don't have to be Batman anymore if this guy becomes the district attorney because he's the kind of guy that's going to do things the right way.

I won't have to be Batman anymore. I can fucking retire, which is it going to be a controversial comment I'm going to have about this movie. But regardless, it was nice to see like, all right, we have a Harvey Dent that's a kind of, he has a dark edge to him already. And we know it's going to happen. You don't introduce it. It's like, you know, Chekhov's gun, if you introduce Harvey Dent, you know he's going to get fucked up. Well, unless it's in the very first Batman movie. We just didn't get there quick enough. Yeah.

I would have loved Billy D. Williams as Two-Face. We got there, that would have something else. They have a Siri comic book world called Batman 89, which is like the continuing stories. And in that one, Billy D. Williams' Two-Face did happen. Yeah, yeah. so saw Sean Wayne's Robin as well. Anyway, all things considered. Aaron Eckhart did a great job of TwoFace.

Good, believable, nice, you know, controversial take, I think, but a lot of people that I know who's one complaint about The Dark Night was they thought the movie was too long. The point where the Joker's been apprehended and we still have to go deal with Two Faces, the moment they were like,

that's when the movie felt like it went too long. because Joker's been caught but we still have to tie up the two-face loose threads right because by that point they know they're not going to have any more Joker exactly that's what I'm saying Joker is the most captivating part of that whole film

it just gets people interested keeps you watching and it's one of those things whenever Joker is on screen everybody watching it is going to be going where is Joker they want to see more of the Joker and because that happened to me

the first time I watched it I'm like I wanted to just be all Joker all the time. But that's why the film works the way it does. Because it keeps you on your toes. And you're like, well, then now what's going to happen, you know? Even at the end of it, once they know Joker is kind of wrapped up and done. Like, well, let's see how this plays out. Let's see what they do.

Because whatever happens at the end of it is still a direct result of everything we've seen from the Joker up to that point. so you know it's it still makes sense I think I don't think by the time we get to the end of it you're like now it's too long you know there's definitely some films where you watch them

and they drag and you know they drag when you look at your watch and you're like we're not in R in fuck me dude you know I did not feel that with the dark night at all no same here to be honest although I do think that once Joker gets captured

like the a whole Harvey Dent side of things gets like wrapped up really quickly there's like it just there's no well it feels like they could have kept him around for like a potential sequel as well

yeah but they just he gets killed off so quickly that they kicked themselves after that choice as well because Joker was the one who had the line of we could do this forever and you're like no you're not But he didn't know. Yeah, no, they didn't know.

But like I said, it was one of those hindsight 2020 things. It was like, maybe we should have kept Harvey Dent around a little longer. But if the, well, I suppose we should comment a little bit about the Maggie Gyllenhaal character and her role in this. Because she replaced Katie Holmes. At that point, Katie Holmes had had a whole fallout with the Church of Scientology and Tom Cruise and was keeping a very, very low profile and was replaced with Maggie Gillenhall. who was fine in the role of Rachel Dawes. The character, like you said, is very, very meat and potatoes.

There's not a ton of nuance to the Rachel Dawes character for the most part. But you do have the love triangle with Harvey Dent and Bruce and her, where it turns out is a lot more one-sided than maybe Bruce Wayne was under the impression it was, especially with the whole letter scene that Alfred Burns at the end of it, where it's revealed in a letter that she wrote before she died that she was not going to be with Bruce. She preferred to be with Harvey, which again,

feeds into the aspect of the Nolan Batman movies. The one thing I didn't care for is the idea of like, Bruce doesn't want to do this forever. Because being Batman is such an ingrained part of like in the comic book Bruce Wayne world. Like there's literally, you know, elseworld storylines where Bruce Wayne is in an exoskeleton because his body is so broken down

but he can't stop being Batman. Like Batman Beyond is all about like Bruce physically can't do it anymore and that's why he finds Terry to be his successor and still advises Terry from like the Batcave because he can't, he cannot detach himself from this. This is it for him. This is his whole purpose.

So to have like a Bruce Wayne that's kind of like, oh, I can quit. I can retire. and me and Rachel we could be happy together. It's like, that doesn't feel right to me. There have been moments, there have been storylines where Bruce has flirted to the idea, but inevitably it's like, I have to do this because it's why I exist.

I get what you're saying with that. Yeah. But at the same time, I think in terms of like Nolan's take on Batman and this world being a bit more grounded, like the fact that Batman's like, oh man, I just can't wait to retire. That feels real, you know, like genuine to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like I'm counting the days. John is like England's Batman, I think we can all agree on it. Yeah, he's the English Batman. To be fair, I get that too. Like, I feel like that makes sense because at some point,

whenever you're the sole protector of Gotham City, at some point you're going to be like, nobody else gonna help nobody else gonna like step up and do this shit no I can I can understand that yeah well and that's and again that yours your juxtaposition with the comic book world is he's got a whole fucking crew

of sidekicks and family members that help him out and he's still like anytime he ever like runs into like an alternate timeline or another dimension where like Dick Grayson becomes Batman he's always disappointed because he's like I didn't want this for you yep

yeah exactly in the comics he's like I want he's so many other people to help him but he's always like really though you're not

you're not gonna do it the way I do it so Batman the control freak he's the frank black of the pixies correct whereas in the films he had this kind of like

I'm tired I'm fed up fighting clines and fucking scarecrows I've been punching mentally old people and I feel bad about it yeah which I should do

Yeah. And I was the worst person, I would feel bad with this. Yeah. The Joker's guys are just people with schizophrenia. You feel terrible for them. They definitely got problems. He's going to punch him, though. Yeah, yeah, I have to.

Who else is going to punch him? Hans are tied. He's going to punch him. The butler? I don't think so. No, he's just an old man. He's not combat trained like in the comics. The woman dressed up like a cat?

No, no, no. She's not even a movie yet. You know what he mean, though? Yeah. In the series. So if. Batman begins was Batman year one. Then the Dark Night is sort of a combination of the killing joke with the Joker's storyline of if you put someone through enough hell, they'll break.

Even if they're a nice person. And also the long Halloween, which is essentially a very, the tale of how Harvey Dent fell from Grace. So there's your two stories kind of combined into this one. Any final thoughts on the Dark Night before we move head first into the Dark Night Rises? it's really good yeah best of the series by a long way and probably one of the best superhero movies in general as well

like there's not many that as well put together with all the twist and turns and like edge of the seat sort of stuff going on there so yeah we didn't even talk about like we didn't even really talk about how you know Lucius fox essentially kind of at the end of the movie

kind of quitting being an advisor for Batman after like they cross some ethical lines in order to find Joker. Like that's a point of no return for him and he drops it. You know, Batman takes the fall for what happens to Harvey Dent so that people,

their feelings on Harvey Dent aren't tarnished so he willingly becomes the bad guy. And like at that point, like Batman was established. He had like, you know, kind of people in hockey pads at the very beginning of the movie trying to be him. You know, like he's, he'd become an icon in Gotham. So, like, he had to turn his back on that and become wanted by the police.

So, I mean, that's, of course, the big, you know, the line there of, you know, not the, the hero they deserve. The hero they need, not the hero they deserve. Yeah. So ultimately, the dark night, right, the dark night, uh, did a billion dollars in the box office. And has a rotten tomatoes average of 94%, which is, uh, the dark night. the highest of the rotten tomatoes I think we've ever done. Well, no, no, 90, there was a Marvel that did a 97%. I can't remember what it was, though.

It was the Eternals. It was the Eternals. No, no, it was Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse. Well, you know, they're often getting confused with each other. Yeah, it's different. Very similar. Animated, very similar, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, my favorite part of the movie is when Maggie Gillenhall is just a rectangle and her head's right in the middle of her. horse so. Don't stag off that animation style. I know. I know you love animation. I'm just, I'm just teasing. Anyway, it's a beautiful film that's not going down that road. We will not go down that road. But we'll save that for the next one. The road that we will go down is the follow-up to this in the year 2012, four years later, the Dark Night Rises, where Batman is still kind of a wanted figure. Bruce is wearing down physically and mentally, and we are introduced to a slew of new characters, including Tom Hardy is Bain.

Now, I will go ahead and say this. I love Bain. Bain is one of my favorite villains of all time. He is a tactical genius. He's physically imposing. He's the man who broke the bat. Now, of course, in the comic books, Bain is like seven foot tall and South American. And Tom Hardy is five foot seven.

And very British. And the voice is, I don't know what I'm. accent he's going for in that voice, but the mask definitely there was a choice in presentation for how they wanted to do Bain, and they did it. Well, I will say,

presentation-wise, when you just see him, you're like, okay, yeah, it is. It's striking. It looks good. You're like, okay, you know, it's not a one-to-one to the comics, but then Joker wasn't a one-to-one of the comics, and it worked. Ian had a look.

I love the mask. you know, he looked intimidating. I'm like, okay. We all like that shirt and jacket. Just a real fun choice. You're like, okay, you know, doesn't have to be a one-to-one of the comics. I dig this. I'm very interested.

So I would say presentation-wise, I think being looked the part. That's not my issue with Bain. Which is? Well, the voice. The voice. The voice is. Not necessarily the voice. I would say it's the projection

is my issue because there were times in that film where Behan would say something and then people around him would go oh my God and I'm like

I don't know what he just said to you or why that's so concerning to you how do you know what he said because I have no fucking idea there are times I wish there's subtitles because he would just go war war and then we go oh my god bain's we gotta do what he says like i don't know what he said like if i was there i would be like look i don't want you to kill me but i have no idea what you talk to the

yeah can you can you do it again maybe like take the mask down do it again put it back on you know just for me that was my issue i love bane well that was one of my issues on in this, but my first issue was not how he sounded, but how impossible it was to understand what he was saying sometimes. I mean,

I like the voice box, I like the gimmick, I like that. I didn't like how I just didn't know what he was saying sometimes. Yeah, a bit too mumbly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So joining Bain, we had Anne Hathaway,

as Catwoman. I have to tell you, I was not terribly impressed. I didn't care. This is going to, this might be a very strange thing to say, we will say it. Catwoman is the be all end all,

Fem Patel. Always has been. And Anne Hathaway, to me, is about as sexy as a jar of mayonnaise. It's white and it is dull. and it is uninteresting. And it's easy to fuck. But yeah, there was absolutely nothing about her as catwoman that I thought was interesting or appealing.

I mean, especially, was it Zoe Kravitz who played her in the Batman John? Yes. Infinitely better and more interesting. Infinitely. And just effortless as well. this did not feel effortless Michelle Pfeiffer had the same vibe to her of just effortless

like your eye was drawn to her immediately and not I just again I just I felt this was really uninspired and I feel like we just went with the big name somebody else said that to me one of my friends said that to me when it was that pulling came out because they were like

this is a grave of miscarriage of justice which I'm like that's maybe a bit of a overreaction, but they really did not like Anne Hathaway being Catwoman. And I'm like, I get it. I can see where you're coming from. I thought she was fine. Yeah, yeah.

But I feel like in a trilogy of films where the actors have except for, unfortunately, a lot of the women, most of the casting has been better than fine. But then, like we've said, if you look at Kitty Holmes,

like Maggie Jelen Hall they were fine because of what they did yeah there wasn't a lot to work with in those roles as well I think the problem with that was they were fine because their characters

were fine who cares about those characters yeah the Catwoman is a character that people do care about so that character has to be more than fine yes that has to be to the same level of the other characters we've talked about Batman or the butler or the Joker or it needs to have that um uh seem level of of attention to it

i don't know if they did that i i think she was fine as catwoman but i think that what they want from catwoman is more than fine yeah and that was one of those instances where like having a grounded approach with the character they went the wrong way with it like zoie cravitz her version of catwoman was also incredibly grounded i mean her catwoman was also incredibly grounded i mean her woman was like a dancer at like a club which is very in line with the comic books that catwoman was a sex worker for a period of time um and i just they're just this didn't feel grounded to me at all it just didn't it felt it felt like we were trying to create like a female equivalent to Batman but like oh but she's still a criminal and it's like it's like a loop in the third kind of criminal where it's like professional criminal and I just, I don't know.

It is didn't have any dirt. Didn't have any dirt, didn't have any grit. And you got to be a little filthy if you're going to be catwoman. I agree. I guess it's fair. Yeah. So also joining them, we had Marian, I'm going to absolutely butcher the last name. Is it Cotillard? I think it's a bit more French than that.

Yeah. You ain't getting that from West Virginia. or Ohio Yes, but she was a She plays the character of Miranda Tate Who is later revealed to actually be Talia Al-Gul The daughter of Liam Nissen's character Which is a little confusing in retrospect

When we think of Ross Al-Gul as a title Why wouldn't she just be Rosal-Gul? Anyway, that being said Thoughts on on her Because again, Talia is a very dynamic character in the comics as well, the daughter of, you know,

daughter of Raza A ghoul, the mother of Damien, who is, you know, one of the current Robbins. So very much of love interest with Batman, same as Catwoman. But,

um, I don't know. I didn't, I'll be honest with you, I have a hard time. Remembering much of her in this. I think, when I think of her,

I always end up thinking that I'm thinking of Dark Night Rises, but I'm actually just thinking, of Inception. Yeah, it's not much of a character here to work with. And the reveal that she's Talia

comes as almost like an afterthought near the end of the movie. Yeah. So it doesn't really pack much of a punch or like offer much of a, you know, shock and surprise or anything. It's just there.

So yeah, it's not great. It's different from the twist in the first film, I felt like the beating switch where you're like, oh, the real villains,

the Elam Neeson. This one, they spent so much time making the villain being, or being to have such an unsatisfying ending. Yeah, yeah.

And after them to go, oh, it's her all along. You're like, huh? And then I think that drags down the rest of the film. Because obviously the rest of the film is supposed to be this big,

Reyes against time, but the bomb, whatever. But by that point, I feel like they kind of deflated the audience. They've kind of like, let's say, it vomited up all over their shoes because they blew their load already. You know what you mean? Like, people, by that point, I would say, your friends, you thought the Dark Night was too long because they get to the two-piece bit.

Yeah. It's better applied to this film. Because once they get to the end of Bain, everything's deflated and you're like I don't care we still have like 30 40 minutes of shit to go and that I find that happened to me

once they got rid of being and they were like it's Talia Al Gould you're like cool I have to keep watching it you know he can't I feel really annoyed that they were so

anti-climactic with the way they got rid of being and we're all the way through that film the whole point of the film is being versus Batman. Like they're going to have a big thing. They didn't. It turns out it was somebody else. And then she just kind of disappears.

You're like, all right, well, great. Like, you know, it's like a big fuck you to the audience, which is a shame because the other ones hadn't been like that. They've been smart. They'd be very clever with the way they played things. This one wasn't clever, I thought. So also joining the cast for this movie is Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Detective John Blake. who, of course, at the end, has revealed his legal name is Robin.

It means absolutely nothing in the context of this. It felt really pointless to even do that. But regardless, at this point, Christopher Nolan has definitely entered that sort of auteur stage in, because you start to see his regular acting buddies. So you see Tom Hardy, you see Joseph Gordon-Levitt, you see Killian Murphy's brought back for a small part with Scarecrow again. you see Michael Kane, who's done a lot of other, who's done other movies with him, Marion, last name in French that I'm going to absolutely put your mind.

Nobody else, by the way, nobody else has even attempted to say her name. I want to point that out. So that's our, the Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Blake character. He's kind of meant to be kind of an avatar character in a sense of the eyes on the ground, kind of getting you acquainted with this new status. quote Gotham where the police fucking hate Batman are trying to track him down. He's also our kind of point person for the other big happenings here where, you know, spoiler,

Bain and the League of Shadows detonated series of bombs that turns Gotham into an island and separates it from the rest of the civilized world, which again is a plot point in the comic series No Man's Land, where an earthquake did that to Gotham. So, of course, Bain also, we can't have Bain without breaking Batman's back. happens here as well. So that's also part of it is Bruce having to work his way back up to fight Bain. And as you mentioned, have an unsatisfactory conclusion in that. So there are two comics books that are the emphasis for this. We have No Man's Land and Nightfall and Nightfall, where Batman gets broken.

Which we've talked about extensively on the show. And if you haven't heard it already, should go back and check our Nightfall episodes because they're amazing. Two-parter. We should do that one, the No Man's Not one, too. So there's a lot that goes on in no man's land. That was a very long, like, event. So, yeah, we should do it. I mean, is it,

is it Kang Dynasty levels of? It was King Dynasty levels of length. Not in, but I mean, stuff happens in that one, as opposed to King Dynasty where stuff happened, but it was inconsequential. Like, that's where Cassandra Kane gets introduced. Jim Gordon's wife gets murdered by the Joker, like in cold blood in front of a bunch of babies.

some, there's some intense shit that happens in no man's land. So, yes, our big plot points are, we're having Gotham and Batman at an all-time low with him having to crawl his way back up. I feel like we should talk about the ending as well, because, I don't know. Well, he didn't seem to be excited about the ending. I mean, again, it's just, it's, it's, it's another, it's someone's personal take on Batman, which I get, I understand, and I can. respect that. Personally,

seeing the big reveal of Bruce Wayne and Selena Kyle having kids in a French bodega or whatever the fuck that was, I don't care. What do you even do at that point? The bit that annoyed me was that Batman just drives his little helicopter off into the sea and explodes.

And I'm like, Batman's dead. I'm like... Probably not. Tom's not dead. Yeah, probably not. Like, anybody watching that who thought Batman was dead, you're like, You think they're just going to kill off Batman, there will be no more Batman?

No. Batman's not dead. He did it with James Bond in the last Bond movie. I haven't seen it. Spoilers. This, by the way, is a great get-out-of-free card. Because every time you guys say something has happened, I'm like, well, I didn't see it, so it hasn't happened.

It never happened. It never happened to me. I have no... Daniel is still James Bond. I didn't know James Bond. I didn't know James Bond was dead. You killed him. Uh, I can't remember, I guess, the bad guy in it.

Mereo. That's all. Being. Yeah, it was Bain. I had to get some revenge somehow. Five of them. You know? Yeah, I thought the proper ending were Michael Kehan sitting in the restaurant and he looks

over, he sees Batman, which is Bruce Bain. And they kind of wink at each other or whatever. The credits roll. I didn't hate that because they foreshadowed it. I think I hated it because they foreshadowed it so clearly. Yeah, yeah. Where Michael King said, this exact thing is what I want to happen. And then the exact thing happened.

And like, okay, that's not like foreshadowing. That's just like... Do you think that that actually happened or do you think that's like a dream sequence? Do you think that Alfred has dementia? Yeah. And just in his head, he's like in a home. He's in a home. And he's trying to, his family are trying to talk to him.

quite old. Yeah, his family are like, Alfred, please, you know, try to recognize us. And he's just like in the bed, like, we just wait over there, having dinner, you know. Ah, Mr. Wade over there, having dinner. This reminds me when I was young

and I saw a woman have an abortion in a sink. Alfie. Because he's Alfred. I guess, yeah. Same character. I never made that connection, but 100%. That would be fucking wild. It's like, oh, yeah, this is actually like a secret, like, hidden joke in there is that, uh,

the Alfred in the back, the dark night trilogy is actually just Alfie. He's that, he's that, he's that traumatized. Well, after you matured. I haven't seen it. So, uh, you got to watch Alfie, man. I feel like there's a lot of films they have to watch and clearly I'm not going to watch. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. Don't worry. We're not all, John. We can't watch 1,200 films in a year. I mean, we can count if you want to.

I can do it. I mean, you can dance if you want to and you can bring, and you can, you know, leave your behind. You can leave your friends behind. Out of your friends don't dance. Wait. Wait. Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do not that dance was. S, S, S, S, S, A, A, A, A, A, sorry.

I actually really do, like that song on, ironicallyly. I also love safety dance, yeah. Oh, give you the extended version. I want that full seven minutes. No. Regular-ass version. Anyway, that's how our feelings about the Dark Night Rises are that we just went off on a safety dance tangent. So I guess your thoughts on Dark Night Rises, I found myself kind of bored watching it.

Yes. To me, that's when the grounded realism got really tiring. I don't even think there's that much grounded realism in this movie as well. No, there's not. Like, in terms of, like, you know, Bain blowing up the bridges of Gotham and then, like, basically, turning into no man's land, the government doing fuck all to kind of... Exactly. They would have sent the fucking army in there. Yeah.

But then there's, like, all the stuff as well where, like, the police, uh, tricked into going down into the sewers, and then they're, like, trapped in there for months on end. it's like, really? I don't know, like the whole... They would have been malarish, kind of... Very sickly. Yeah, exactly.

It just feels like such a lazy plot compared to how smartly the previous movie was... Oh, yeah, 100%. I think he just kind of... He didn't want to do three movies. No, he kind of had to and just wanted to kind of

get it out of the way, I guess. I feel like he did want to be three movies, but like by the third one, something went wrong. Well, I think like Keith Ledger dying probably was a dampness. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like definitely wanted to make a third one. I think he definitely wanted to make a third one, but just in the course of it, he was like, I don't know if he's going to work. But by the time you're in the middle of shooting a Batman film,

you can't really be like, that's the end. We'll just cut it. Like they have to finish it. They have to do something. I feel like maybe that contributed to like it shoddy ending, you know? I don't know.

Who knows? It's just a bit of a bummer of a movie as well. Like Batman starts it off as being broken and then he kind of shakes it off, picks up the mantle of Batman again, and then immediately gets broken a second time. And then, yeah, then he's like, yeah, he has to spend a lot of the movie in the pit

trying to get out and get back to Gotham and stuff. It's just, I don't know, it's a weird kind of movie as a Batman fan, really. Like, it doesn't feel like we're getting the best version of Batman in this at all. No, no, we're not getting, we're not getting, I mean, there's, there's a lot of comic storylines where the, the crux of it is just Batman getting pushed to a physical or mental breaking point. currently there's a story in detective comics where he has been poisoned and there's no cure for the poison yet and what the poison does is it removes your inhibitions and it removes your sense of fear it's like a it's like a poison called like courage and it was basically devised by this new villain whose whole motivation is his dad was a criminal and when he was a kid

Batman scared the shit out of him by breaking into his home and abducting his dad and because it was like Bruce when he was young and inexperienced and thought like force was the right way to do everything. So like he's poisoned with this thing that's removing his inhibition. So like he's constantly having to check himself like, am I being too aggressive? Am I being too brash? Because Batman's whole defining trait is control. Batman is a creature of control. Everything he does is about control.

So like you can do stories where Batman is getting pushed to those physical limits or those mental limits where he's, where he's, you know, like, just getting the shit kicked out of him. But, like, the indomitable will has to be there. And I know this movie had a lot of Bruce Wayne self-doubt. And that doesn't feel right. Yeah, I can see that. Any final thoughts on Dark Night Rises, though? Just it was a bit of a lot done, I think.

Yeah. I don't think it's a bad movie necessarily, but it's just compared to especially the Dark Night. It was a massive letdown. Yeah. I think the ending is a big problem for me. Maybe like the last half hour. Like, ah, that's a shame.

So this movie, box office-wise, did better than the Dark Night. It did $1,115,000. The average Rotten Tomato score, though, is 87%. So even though we preferred Batman begins over it, it's still rated higher than Batman begins. Well, you know, people are idiots, so. So if you were to take those three movies and get an average on both the average box office

for a Christopher Nolan Batman film is $829 million and an average Rotten Tomato score of 89%. So not bad. Not bad. Not bad. In comparison, if we look at the first wave of Marvel movies, which was multiple movies.

The average was $961 billion, and their average Rottenma's score was 85%. So significantly less movies, but very comparable. Yeah, very interesting. So right now we're kind of in a weird place with Batman films because we have the second The Batman coming out. We have a Clayface movie coming out, which is still weird to think there's a Clayface movie coming out,

but they are not going to be a shared world. The Batman 2 has nothing to do with Clayface. It is a sequel to the other the Batman movie. Because James Gunn's DCU has his own Batman film that will be in the works at some point called Batman Brave and the Bold. That is going to be a Batman and son, Bruce Wayne and Damien, which will be the first time we'll see that pairing on the silver screen. Nobody's been cast.

A script has not been even leaked. So it's all in the realm of possibility currently at the moment. Do you think we could get cast as Batman? My goal. You all three of us? Yes. So I'll be Bruce Wayne. Okay.

Corey will be Batman. Then John does the stunts for Batman. I'm not sure about this. If I'm getting cast... No, no. If I'm getting cast in the DC universe, I'm getting cast as Bibbo Babowski. And that's it. Okay, well, I was going to say that John will swap roles.

You can be Bruce Wayne and I'll do the stunts. Well, John, so Dylan, you can be Batman and John can be Bruce Wayne. Who's going to do stunts? Me? Yeah, that's you, bud. But you're not going to be in a Batman film? No, I'm going to be in the Superman films as Superman fanboy Bibbo Babowski. But wouldn't you want to stay in the same film as us?

No, we're in a shared universe. not the same film no maybe bibbo visits got them not a few might get together to fight each other somehow but that would be ridiculous yeah some would say that would be the dawn of justice I would say that would be total bullshit that's what I would say

that would be this was our so that was our last Batman with Christopher Nolan and Christian Bail the next Batman that we got after that was Ben Affleck in Batman v. Superman, Don of Justice, and then the Justice League,

and then Zach Snyder's Justice League, and then Flash, and then I think at the end of the Flash, because of all the time fuckery, Ben Affleck got replaced by George Clooney at the end? Yeah, I think it's what happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Dylan, you didn't know that one, did you?

I haven't seen it. Well, there you go. I'm seeing it. So is there a final pin you want to put or a final bow? You'd like to slap on the Nolan Batman trilogy and our second rundown of these movies? Well, the first run down that everybody knows of why. Well, they know about the first one. They just know that it disappeared one day.

Just like me. One day. You're going to give them the old Irish goodbye. Well, be appropriate. It would certainly be. We just call it a goodbye. It's just standard old goodbye. Well, it's not really a goodbye because nobody ever says goodbye.

You just turn around and you're gone. That's why you're the perfect Batman. He does that all the time. You turn around, he's gone. We just call it going home. He's called Batman. Okay. I would argue that if you went to Jim's gone and said that I would be the perfect Batman,

he might have a couple of notes for you. But I appreciate that. I don't have much to say about the whole thing other than I think we covered like our favorites it's like you know Park Night in the first one and the third one but Heath Ledger was a very good Joker

yeah and I really really hope that this podcast has recorded properly and you have to do the third time yeah please don't make us do it third time I'm not I'm not doing it a third time Yeah. If this one, for whatever reason, if this one doesn't get through, people just go, it's weird they never talked about the Christopher Nolan Batman movies.

Not once, not twice. Never once, never. They must really hate Christopher Nolan. Well. And that's the prestige where we reveal that we actually do like him. And David Boy's there as a person. It's a great film, though, prestige. You've seen that. You've seen that one. Okay. I've seen that one. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I love that one. Grateful. Honest to God, I know a lot of people were like, oh, I wish that Nolan would come back and make more bad. No, let him make stuff like that. That is infinitely better. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The twist in those movies, fucking amazing. Great twist. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Steve Bowie was in it. Yeah. I mean, obviously, if you got David Bowie in it now, it's even more impressive. Well, not, I wouldn't say impressive.

I'd be more like concerning. Haunting. Haunting, really. Yeah. I would say not cool. That's how I would say it. Yeah. All right.

Well, speaking of all these, this movie talk that we've been doing, John, where are you out in your movie watch for the year? So, so far I have watched 120 movies. That's impressive. It is early February here. Late February, if you're watching this.

So add another 40 to that and you're probably close to where we are. So, John, what was your most recent movie that you watched? It was a movie called The Kingdom, which was one of the very many post-9-11 sort of movies obsessed with American soldiers and the Middle East and terrorists and all that kind of stuff. It was all right. It had Jamie Fox in it. Oh shit. Jennifer Garner. Okay.

Jason Bateman. Interesting. Chris Cooper. It was like, yeah. His Cooper's always great. Yeah, it was decent. It wasn't great, but, you know, those kind of movies are pretty much a dime a dozen anyway,

so you have to do something special to make them stand out. Yeah. Any military movie from the 2000s is going to be very run-of-the-mill. Yeah. Problematic as well, absolutely. Mm-hmm. So, John, where can they read about your review of the kingdom? Wait, what did you give me to score?

I gave it three stars out of five. I'm glad. Run of the mill. Yeah. And they can find my review on Letterboxed at a big John Bowsky or one word. And Dylan, what have you been getting up to this week? All sorts of fun stuff, you know, but mainly a Monday night to do radio show. show 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock

UK time. Click on Barnes Digital Radio.com. You can listen to it. I would recommend you check out Monday nights, 9 o'clock to 11 o'clock. We play a lot of fun music.

Do Facebook this week? I did. I appreciate that. That was really nice of him. He doesn't always talk to me. You're rude. I find. Sometimes I stream on Twitch

at Spooker Root. And I draw a lot of cartoons and I make them come alive. I put them on YouTube, but Team Crow's and I, it's the same on YouTube on TikTok. We're thinking about maybe not being on TikTok anymore because, you know, the political climate these days. Yes. But we're on YouTube, which is also problematic. Come on, you've got to draw a line somewhere. You have to choose the devil you know.

Yeah. So we have a new cartoon up. I think I put one up today. Not today when you're watching this, but today when we're recording this. So there'll be more stuff coming out. Check that light. All right.

And as for me, I have my show, Large Old Cup. It's back in a lot more shouty than it used to be because I'm still playing with my microphone levels at times. And also, lately there's been a level of just enthusiasm while I'm recording. I'm kidding.

I'm hitting recording when I'm on a high and we're just going. But that's just a fun of it. But you will find a link to that as well. It is on, much like Smart Avengers, it is on Spotify and everywhere else that you can listen to podcasts. There's not a YouTube component because it can't be bothered. But speaking of YouTube components, though, there is new number ones, which is the show that I recently kind of started doing. It's about three to five minutes long every week where I go to my local convict store every Wednesday or sometime in the week. and I grab a new number one from the wall from a publisher that I usually have not heard from in a series I know nothing about.

So I've done it about four weeks in a row now. And it's been pretty interesting. I will say that it's been a lot of people with some interesting ideas that I don't know if they have everything they need to make it happen. So of the four that I've read, the last one, Do Not Disturb, I think has the, the most potential to be a pretty good ongoing. Good. But yeah. Until next time, however, we're going to get out of here.

And maybe you'll see this episode, or maybe you'll be lost to the annals of time forever and always. Until then, though, we'll see you later. Goodbye. Goodbye. That's Batman. Was that Batman or Bing? It was Batman.

You do a Bain one? Bye. All right. No, it's good. Do a Joker. Oh, no. You got to make lip-smacking noises. That's how you know it's real.

Goodbye. That's an auditory nightmare.