1.Pacing of the story was horrible. It felt like watching a 3-hour long trailer where dialogue is delivered at a snap pace and given no time to sink in.
This is your opinion, and you are entitled to it. However, your opinion is wrong as evidenced by the fact that most of your following gripes with the movie demonstrate your inability to pay attention and pick up on the plot points.
2. Despite this fast pace to get all this story crammed in there are at least a good 5-10 minutes of time wasted showing Batman on top of a building overlooking the city.
At least a good 5-10 minutes? Really????? Either your sense of time is really screwed or you purposely exaggerated. I hope it is the former because otherwise it would be a huge indictment on your integrity as a critic.
3. Even the Batman/Selina kiss at the end felt "loveless" and thrown in "just because"
This is your opinion. I, just like many others, disagree.
4. I believe studio script writers who had to review the film were too scared to tell Christopher Nolan he has to "show" rather than "tell". The film contained far too much junk that just simply tells us what is going on rather than let us actually experience. We are told the villains motivations are to build up hope of the people then bring it crashing down yet we never see this occur. We are told how fast, brutal, and ferocious Bane is yet the fight scene choreography was rather slow and dull. One last example comes in the clues that Bruce is still alive then we see Bruce in the cafe, the shot of him in the cafe went far too long and should have only had Alfred get a passing glimpse of Bruce and the result would have been more ambiguous and more Christopher Nolan.
You articulated three complaints instead of just one.
a- Nolan does have a penchant for exposition through loquacious dialogue. That is present in all of his movies, including “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.” You are actually both told and shown what is going on.
b- I don’t know how you could have misunderstood the simple concept that Bane articulated to Bruce Wayne while in the Pit! He duped the inhabitants of Gotham into thinking they were part of a populist revolution against the rich in order to provide them with false hope (“There can never be true despair without hope”) and at the same time torture Bruce Wayne by making realize that he FAILED to inspire good in Gotham.
c- The first Batman-Bane encounter was EPIC! You found it dull and slow?
d- The last scene with Alfred noticing Bruce Wayne at the café was not meant to be ambiguous at all! Nolan provided you with all the evidence (the autopilot fixed, the bat symbol repaired, the pearls missing, the coordinates he left for John Blake) clearly telling you that Bruce Wayne is not dead.
5. Both villain deaths were pathetic and anti-climactic. Bane was blown to smithereens by Catwoman and Miranda/Talia is killed in a car crash. Batman doesn't actually/directly defeat either villain in the film. Hell, technically Batman just sets the jet to auto-pilot and The Bat vehicle takes care of the bomb. Maybe Bruce should have retired earlier and let Robin do all the work because he was a bum throughout most of the film. By far the most un-heroic hero of all superhero movies of late.
I do agree that the deaths of both villains were anticlimactic. Talia’s was poorly acted, to be honest with you. Batman did defeat Bane. “Hell, technically Batman just sets the jet to auto-pilot and The Bat vehicle takes care of the bomb”??? That point is simply asinine! By that logic you can say that Batman doesn’t do anything when he uses his gadgets. Batman has also been assisted on numerous occasions in “Batman Begins” and “The Dark Knight.”
6. The explanation for the villains motivations is to build up the hope of the people and then crush it. They take over the city and make the place hell for months. By this time people would have lost all hope with the way things were in the city. This bomb should have been detonated within a week of activation. At around this time people would begin to lose any hope.
The motivation was not to build hope, but rather to have them maintain a slimmer of hope which would result in true desperation according to Bane. They did not make the place hell. They played with the frustration of the poor and disfranchised by creating the illusion of the populist revolution against the rich. The motivation behind that was personal (vengeance) because Bane and Talia wanted to torture Bruce physiologically and emotionally by making him feel the entire weight of his failure as he watched Gotham societal structure crumble.
7. The count-down for the bomb was 5 months. The exact time Batman needed to recover and get back to Gotham. This plot is from a "visionary" director.
And your point is?
8. A device that can completely erase someone's identity is a ridiculous concept like unobtanium from Avatar. No way the device works considering the size of the file that Blake shows to Selina at the airport. Can't erase a paper file too.
Once again, what is the point that you are trying to make? You do realize that you were watching a superhero movie about fictional characters in a fictional city, right?
9. The dialog in the script is overly dramatic and filled with far too much exposition. Nobody talks like that in real life and for a movie grounded in realism the amount of exposition took me out of the narrative in several scenes.
I don’t know if you realize that you just contradicted your first point where you mention that the dialogue is delivered far too quickly, and you didn’t have time for it “sink in”? Now you are complaining that there was too much exposition! Which one is it?
10. For a movie grounded in realism (remember all the bruises from the first film) we see Batman shrug off an awful lot of punishment in this film. First the no cartilage in the knee, the ass beating/broken back from Bane, a stab to the gut from Talia. Batman shrugs all of this off and doesn't lose a single step. As a matter of fact, the more punishment he receives it appears the stronger he gets through the film.
I’m not being facetious at all when I say this: What the f*ck is wrong with your thought process? You just answered your own ignorant question: The movie is grounded in realism, but is not reality. What you failed to realize is that there are different levels of realism that a movie can adhere to. A lot of factors affect the level that can be presented. For example, with the amount of violence present in the movie, there was no display of blood because of its PG13 rating.
11. Too much repetition in the script. Did we really need to hear JGL called a hot-head so many times? Did we really need to see the wheels on the Bat Pod flip 15 times? Did we really need to be constantly reminded that Bane was a member of the League of Shadows about 80 times by every character in the film practically?
I am going to point out you have grossly exaggerated your points. I honestly don’t know why you would complain that Bane’s League of Shadow affiliation was stressed upon so many times (even though you overstated grossly the number of occurrences) since that is an important aspect of the storyline.
12. The movie should have been titled Bruce Wayne Rises because Batman only has a very few scenes in the actual movie. As a matter of fact, a few of the minor characters probably share just as much screen time as the caped crusader.
Batman is not nearly as interesting without the Bruce Wayne as aspect of the character. Ultimately, a good writer will make you care more about the character behind the mask. What minor characters probably had as much screen time as Batman?
13. Several scenes involving the dark knight and the thick black makeup he wears around his eyes are noticeable. Particularly one scene where he is in the bat suit with the helmet off and no makeup is present or when he is captured by Bane who besides stripping him of his equipment felt the need to wash his face for him as well. We see this makeup present in almost every close-up face shot of Batman.
And your point is? Read this over slowly, and I am sure you will realize how ridiculously idiotic of a complaint it is.
14. The change in shooting location from Chicago to Pittsburgh/New York made a very large difference in the feel of Gotham. In Batman Begins and TDK Gotham felt very dark and crime ridden as well as smaller. The scene change to New York/Pitt made it almost seem that Gotham was an entirely different city from the previous two films.
How in the world was TDKR supposed to feature a Gotham that feels “very dark and crime ridden” when the Dent Act virtually eradicated the Mob?
15. The reveal of Bane/Talia underscores Bane's entire character reducing him almost to henchman status and Talia gives us absolutely nothing to fear or show us that she is an evil bad guy since she dies five minutes later.
She is not an evil bad guy. She is a woman that adopted her father’s ideology and who wanted to avenge her father’s death. Even if Bane is considered a henchman (which he certainly is not), that does not lessen is impact at all. There are many awesomely depicted and memorable henchmen in movie history (Darth Vader being the most iconic).
16. Despite the prison being constantly told how much of a hell hole it was when Batman was trapped in it the prison seemed fairly relaxed. You didn't see anyone trying to make a crippled Bruce Wayne their bitch, they had a prisoner with some medical training helping to take care of Bruce, they even had TV in the prison. Christopher Nolan should have consulted with the makers of Prison Break if he wanted to make a prison a hell hole because they did a better job of that in the season 3 Panama Prison.
If you paid attention to the movie, you would have the answers. Nobody tried to make Bruce Wayne their “bitch” and the doctor took care of him because Bane paid the Doctor to keep him alive. The TV was placed there specifically for Bruce Wayne to watch in horror and despair as Bane destroyed his city.
17. The CIA allows three unidentified and hooded people who were captured onto their plane that is transporting a scientist at the beginning of the film because they supposedly have knowledge of the masked man named Bane and his group. They allow this without checking who these hooded people are. It was no surprise to anyone to find out one of these people was, in fact, Bane himself.
It’s a movie! Suspension of disbelief does come in handy in such a situation. Allow yourself to be entertained a little bit. After all, it is a movie about a multi-billionaire who dresses like a bat in order to fight crime.
18. A CIA plane transporting an important scientist they have captured seemingly has no radar support to realize another plan is hovering directly above them.
It’s a movie! Work your imagination and simply assume that it is a miniature non-militarized plane with archaic equipment that was simply utilized for transport.
19. Without doing any hard math on it. There is no way that the plane hijacking in the beginning was even remotely possible/believable. Everything from the plane that continues to fly needed some tremendous power/stability to stay in the air despite pulling another plane to the strength of the cables and joints holding the cables in being strong enough to the way the plane drags through the air (perpendicular to the ground) all defied logic and physics.
I am not going to provide you with any calculations disproving you claim that the hijacking scene is impossible. I think you'd want to know more information, like how fast are the planes traveling, how much do they weigh, how much power does each plane have…if you going to assert that it was indeed not feasible in real life. I must also ask you why are so hung up on the physical plausibility of the plane hijacking when you are watching such a movie.
20. Bane seems to have A LOT of suicidal followers throughout the film. It can be explained away as them being League of Shadows members. The only problem with this is The League of Shadows took a huge hit to their ranks in the first film. Even assuming that after Raz's death Talia took over and rebuilt their army was far too large and filled with far too many suicidal members.
You answered your own question! They are INDOCTRINATED members of the League of Shadows for the love of common sense!!!!! And why in the world would that bother you? Have you not watched any movies before this one?
21. One of Banes suicidal followers is given a blood transfusion from a doctor on a plane Bane is trying to kidnap to fake this guys death. This wouldn't fool any forensics team into ID-ing the dead body from a plane crash.
The plane crashed. Common sense will then tell you that the plane consequently caught fire thus causing the bodies the get burnt up pretty badly. The DNA in the blood would therefore be a good way to identify the bodies.
22. Gordon gets captured and taken to Bane and he escaped by jumping into flowing water in the sewer. The prisoner exclaims there is no way to know which water way he will wash up through and end up at. However, Officer Blake who has no idea he even jumped into the water seemingly acts on a hunch and knows exactly where to find Gordon.
He knows where to find Gordon because he was on the scene where the body of the orphan kid washed up at the same location earlier.