USER EDITORIAL: How Real Are Christopher Nolan's BATMAN Movies ?

USER EDITORIAL: How Real Are Christopher Nolan's BATMAN Movies ?

I'd like to discuss the (perceived) perfection and realism in Nolans Batman films. Are they everything they are cracked up to be? Click for my take..

Review Opinion
By Morty - Feb 07, 2012 05:02 PM EST
Filed Under: Batman

Hey gang, Morty reporting once again with something I feel we need to have a chat about. The Christopher Nolan Batman films, and whether or not they are indeed realistic.

I think the answer is sadly no after delving bellow the surface of his realism.
I think it is very superficial and presents itself as real, but is as much a fantasy as any other super hero Flicks out there, but cutting its self short with its tone and villains using a masquerade of realism. I will be getting hate for this and frankly I am prepare for it, I will also be told I have plagiarized
these notes from another site, and I have not. These notes were compiled by me and a few others purely out of our own observations. A trusted source has told me apparently there are more of these problems listed on other websites.

I hope I can reach even one of you, because frankly I think Nolan and his Batman films are over praised, certainly overhyped for their realism. I like Batman, I am not hating for the sake of hating, but this movie has a ton of overlooked flaws and is called the best comic book movie or even film ever, which I feel it
certainly is not. Sure they are decent flicks. But they are not realistic, and they tend to overwhelm its watchers with fridge logic that tends not to be questioned.

Fridge Logic has been the writer’s-room term for these little Internal Consistency issues for a good while, as in “Don’t sweat the fridge logic, we’ve got bigger fish to fry. We’ve only got 20 minutes left to work in
three costume changes, a foreign language, and a weird wig.” It refers to some illogical or implausible plot point that the audience doesn’t realize during the show, but only long afterwards. This naming is highly subjective,
since not every person follows the same train of thought. Some people will never even realize there was a problem, while others will call it a Plot Hole, since they already noticed the problem during the show. Stories with a Tomato Surprise may count on this phenomenon to prevent you from questioning oddities in what appears to be happening. By the time the Fridge Logic would have hit the audience, they’ve explained what was really going on, and those problems are explained to be clues that something coming up. The phrase was coined by Alfred Hitchcock.

My first topic shall be the editing problems before delving into the logic and realism of the films.


*The Dark knight Bank scene:
The Joker starts taking off his mask with his right hand, and after an angle cut takes it off with his right.


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*The Dark Knight Interrogation scene.
Joker’s hands change positions in 3 different angle cuts.


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*The Dark Knight Money burning scene.
Joker gets in the face of the Russian Mobster, angle cuts and is then far away from him,
cuts again and is back up close to him.


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Now Let us get into the Logic and realism problems the core issue I have written this article for.



Batman Begins



*The Tumbler crushing a police car.
Batman more or less flattens a Police car in front of Gordon.


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In reality if your car is ran over by a Tank, you will die if you are inside.
Metal will crush and split off, so even if you aren’t immediately killed, you are likely
to be impaled by glass or metal.
Look at Gordon’s expression; he isn’t concerned about the men under his command.
Rather than go see if they are okay, help them or god forbid shoot at the tires of the tank
that just attempted to kill police officers he gawks. “Damn nice ride”.



*The cops chasing Batman
Here we see the police chasing Batman.
He bombs them and flips their cars.
They would die or be seriously injured, likely if not paralyzed.


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*The jump to the church roof
A 5 thousand pound+ tank mobile, jumping onto a church roof with a hard landing.
That is not really plausible. How many churches are made with roofs that can withstand
extremely heavy vehicles flying over Eveil Knievel style.
Even if it’s believable, Batman really chose one in a million churches randomly that could
support that crazy feat.
Either way. It is not realistic.


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*Gordon
Just the fact that Gordon would talk to Batman at all after all the things hes done to other cops is complete fantasy. Cops take it very personally if you attempt to hurt or kill other officers.



The Dark Knight

*The Badpod tires
Clearly you can see here that the Batpod tires are ridiculously smaller than the Tumblers,
even though they are one in the same. (Credit to TheHumanSpider for this point)


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*The Batpod gunning things
Batman racing quickly through a mall firing machines guns at glass that would create
Shrapnel potentially harming or killing someone. (Credit to Intruder for this point)


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*The Batpod blowing Cars up
In this sequence we clearly see Kids sitting in the back of a car. People are caught in traffic in a tunnel.
Batman could go around these cars; instead he blows them up and goes through them
-He could very likely be Killing kids or pets in these parked or stationary cars.
-Driving through something you blew up two seconds before would ether burn you, have debris or small
shrapnel severely injuring if not killing you.
- This was in a tunnel, using projectile explosives on glass and metal would send debris
and shrapnel everywhere, so even if Batman didn’t kill someone with his direct blast many would be maimed or killed from his
actions.
- Batman clearly does not care about destroying private citizens vehicles in a recession.
(Credit to TheHumanSpider for this section)


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*The Magic fingerprint on the bullet.
In this scene we see Batman taking a finger print off a shattered bullet.
The problem is, Finger prints are not on the inner bullet, it is on the casing which is not fired.
If you fire a handmade bullet in theory, and there is a print to recover from the inside, it will be from the
maker of that bullet, not of the person loading the gun.
Even if you dispel all of that logic, and there is actually a magic finger print from inside the casing, that
is of the shooter.
Why is he firing into the bricks? This makes no sense on top of something that already does not make sense.


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They try to make Bruce Wayne seem smart, when really if you understand ballistics in even the most basic way;
it actually makes him seem dumb.
What’s he trying to prove when he can just scan each piece and reassemble them in a computer?


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If you can just piece together the bullet for your magic fingerprint, just do it already.


*Terminal Velocity
When Joker gets thrown over the edge, and Batman fires a one in a million perfect shot around his leg to pull him back up,
the speed the joker was falling – provided Batman could actually grapple his leg as he did would have pulled Batman over the side as well, to his death. Batman’s weight would not have been able to hold Jokers mass at the speed he was falling; Joker would weight ALOT more falling at terminal velocity.


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Morality and Logic

*Framing Batman
Two face went around killing people. Batman heroically steps in and says He will take the blame.
The problem is there is no proof, no motive and 3 witnesses to say otherwise.
Ramirez, Mrs. Gordon and Gordon’s son all saw Two-Face’s rampage.
Most people would talk about a traumatic event like that and have a hard time covering it up.
Even if Mrs. Gordon and Ramirez could hide it, do we really believe the little boy could?
Imagine if that was you being saved by Batman, as an adult and also as a impulsive excitable
Child. The odds of you not telling one friend even about such an exciting event are near impossible.
Then they tell two friends and they tell two friends.


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Gordon’s effort to frame Batman would be monumental; He’d have to create fake evidence. Force
Ramirez to testify falsely. He’d have to spend half his day every day for a long time trying to get
a conviction in absentia.
Batman wears gloves. There would be no prints and the gun used in the murders would be registered to
Harvey Dent who possessed the entire motive to kill those people. The burden of a conviction against
Batman would be on Gordon’s word alone and against a ton of logic flaws. Why did batman kill these people without a motive?
Why did he have Harvey’s gun? When did he get Harvey’s gun?
Why did Harvey not report it stolen?
Basically the city, the jurors and the judge would all have to be near incompetent to even listen to any of this nonsense.


*The Moral forces of Gotham
The Jokers entire goal of the film was to prove he could make people a monster, like him.
Basically He succeeded, and here’s why.
*He broke Harvey’s will which is apparent to everyone, and pushed him over the edge mentally.
*With Batman he wanted to make him break his one rule – that he won’t kill people.
(Which again is debatable with all the reckless things he does, whether or not he already probably has?)
So at the end of the story, when Joker is almost certain batman will kill him and is pushing him to do so,
Batman proves He will not and is better than that. Saving the Jokers life.


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Then Ten minutes later he shoves his friend suffering from post traumatic stress disorder off a building.


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Batman broke his rule, and with someone he should have tried to save.
He couldn’t of thrown a Bata rang at his face? No Bat tasers?
Phoenix Jones carries a tazer, that’s what he would have done.
Batman isn’t more resourceful than Phoenix Jones?
Come on.
Harvey was his friend and he just throws him off a building and he was willing to save the Joker.

*Gordon, the one good cop in Gotham becomes a dirty cop by even considering to frame Batman.
He becomes a downright dirty piece of garbage cop if you realistically understand how much work
it would take to frame and convict Batman.
(In absentia as we assume he will be in the eight years before TDKR)
Gordon becomes a bad cop. Which is really sad.

Gotham’s 3 heroes fell, not just Harvey.

The Joker won.


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The Dark Knight Rises prologue.

*The plane crash
We see the first plane, carrying the prisoners puncture the fuselage symmetrically
and get cables attached to it, and they cut the wings and tail off.
*The tail and wings will be Miles away from the core wreckage of the fuselage ruining any plausibility that it was an accident.
Aside from them being cut off and falling away miles before the fuselage the puncture
holes and clean cuts would give away that they were removed, and didn’t just fall off, assuming the fuselage could magically keep going without them on its own.


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*The Blood transfer
We see Banes men transferring blood into a dead body,
so the authorities will think it is the Doctor they are kidnapping.
They are letting this body go down in the wreckage and will burn with it,
so when the body is burned up the small amount of blood the put in it is supposed to be there still ?
Body’s in wreckage like that are burned to the skeleton or worse and are identified via the teeth.
Putting blood in a dead body to fool anyone borders on ridiculous, so even assuming the height of both men are identical, which they would need to be for this ridiculous scheme, it’s pointless. They would go by dental
records or by strange injuries like surgical plates etc from a charred cadaver.


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*Leaving behind a henchman
This just makes no sense at all assuming you understand that in reality they are not fooling anyone with these actions, the wings missing and the blood in the dead body. Even if you buy that the authorities and Insurance companies and owners of the plane were complete idiots and not able to tell this was sabotage. Criminals don’t leave evidence behind evidence or friends behind because the cops are expecting it; this is one of the most ridiculous scenes I have ever seen.


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*The Black Box
Even if you can disbelieve everything above I just said, Bane did not take the planes Black box.
The authorities would undoubtedly know what happened aboard the plane even if in all my points above were ignored.




All of this is fridge logic. Seems awesome if you don’t think about it very hard.


There you have it folks. Do you still think this movie takes place in a realistic world?
Is without flaw and that Batman is not a killer ?
I most certainly do not.
This is still fantasy, only masquerading as being real superficially.

Have I started a fire?


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CanadaMan
CanadaMan - 2/7/2012, 6:51 PM
Anyone who goes to a comicbook movie and expects everything to be tip-top is completely being ignorant of what entertainment is; every movie has at least one mistake or flaw, and I certainly know that the Dark Knight nor Batman Begins are perfect films, but they are the best interpretation of the source material. These movies aren't meant to be realistic to the tee. Nolan never said, I'm making a Batman film that has absolutely no comicbook or fantasy-like quality's in any way, but what he obviously was trying to do was stay away from ideas or characters that, while they may be able to be interpreted in a vaguely realistic style or tone, had a way too outlandish history with the Batman. Who cares if Batman broke some glass? Are we really going to spend the rest of the movie with Batman at the E.R. trying to explain himself to injured Gothamites? Why would Gordon care if two (potentially corrupt officers) were run over if the city is in a state of complete peril and under attack by Ra's Al Ghul? I think it'd be more unrealistic if he stopped trying to save the city just to help the both of 'em. Would you watch a movie like that? I know I wouldn't. I'd rather see Gotham saved. Meanwhile, I look forward to the Avengers, TDKR, and TASM. But not so I can watch to see their flaws, but watch because I'm a fan who'll just be excited to see Batman, Iron Man, and Spider-Man do what they do best; each vastly different types of heroes fighting for a common good. Enjoy the movies for what they are: comicbookmovie's. Not masterpieces of cinema. Not perfect works of art. Action-Packed, Dramatic, (sometimes) Character-Driven, and just plain Fun, Comic Book Movies (whether they be adaptations or interpretations). Sit back and enjoy the ride. ;)
jessepostal
jessepostal - 2/7/2012, 7:00 PM
awesome article!! this is gonna stir up some arguments haha, i totally agree that these movies are way over praised, sure there good,but no where near as great as they get commended.

@mothra, the avengers isnt going for realism,its a fantasy scifi COMIC BOOK JUST LIKE BATMAN!!!
sikwon
sikwon - 2/7/2012, 7:03 PM
i love the batman movies. the attempts at realism are more for tone then to try to make you believe its really a possible world. but since you are looking at things that dont make sense... 1. in the bank when the joker comes from behind the counter and shoots the guy with the shotgun the othewr crook says "ware did you learn to count", really watch that scene and it makes no sense. 2. when batman jumps through the window ans saves his girl and they land on the roof of the car,, in what world would they survive?? at the least she would be a puddle.
sikwon
sikwon - 2/7/2012, 7:10 PM
the fact of the matter, nolanite or not, that if you remove ledgers performance as the joker then the dark knight is only above average. ledger elivates that movie into excellent status, and thats not a bad thing or an inditement of the film. you could say the same thing about silence of the lambs. at the end of the day its the actors performance, their interpritations of a character, that draw us in.
TheBigBoss917
TheBigBoss917 - 2/7/2012, 7:30 PM
Go to Imdb, look at goofs and you will see EVERY movie with editing flaws good or bad, even Iron Man and Captain America. The Avengers will have editing flaws so Will TASM and TDKR. That doesn't mean that they will be or are bad films. and when did anybody publicly make the claim that Nolan's movies are "perfect"?
DCnerd46
DCnerd46 - 2/7/2012, 8:08 PM
Nolan is an overrated director who pays no respect to the source material.
deanwilkins
deanwilkins - 2/7/2012, 8:30 PM
I was prepared to hate your article, but found myself liking it immensely. I was bothered by a few things you mentioned and a lot more that were left unsaid. Still, I really enjoyed the sequel. Having watched Begins again, I still found it to be extremely boring, unrealistic and anti-climactic.

Bring on the re-boot.
misner89
misner89 - 2/7/2012, 8:33 PM
this guy needs a girlfriend there movies man omg get a life bud
masterhater
masterhater - 2/7/2012, 8:33 PM
Nice article. Some of u Nolan boys taking it a bit personally.
I agree with every word. Nicely done sir.
ElBicho
ElBicho - 2/7/2012, 8:33 PM
@Morty

Great job on the article man.

Let's re-boot this motherfricker already!
RexBlazer1
RexBlazer1 - 2/7/2012, 8:34 PM
I agree that many parts of the Nolan Batman Trilogy are not realistic, but that's because, IT'S NOT REAL! All you're doing with this article is picking the movies apart, and movies are purely meant for entertainment. So stop picking it apart, and enjoy the damn movie for Heaven's sake.

And remember people, IT'S NOT REAL!!!
darCNite1989
darCNite1989 - 2/7/2012, 8:35 PM
You peope know it's just a MOVIE right.....?
sbdc1939
sbdc1939 - 2/7/2012, 8:35 PM
i dont know why ur focusing theses things on just this movie.. If u really are gonna make an article about tdk then go agead and do every action movie why ur at it because your gonna see it happen alot. its a movie batman cant glide either, i mean who cares the movie was good why are u trying to bash it 2 years after it came out get a life dude
Odomirr
Odomirr - 2/7/2012, 8:37 PM
So yeah, I got bored of this article not even halfway through I think. You know, plenty of people bitch about movies, but you know what, not like they have the skills to go out and make them themselves. Basically this guy needs to get a life. He prolly likes Twilight too.
Supes17
Supes17 - 2/7/2012, 8:40 PM
Lol some people take this shit way too seriously. Do you have a problem with people liking Nolan's films? Because that seems to be the ONLY thing you talk about in this site, besides posting Marvel Supremacy pics on all the TDKR articles.
"Didn't think you were one of those."

Now if one were to list and talk about the Marvel films' flaws in articles, everyone will flip the [frick] out. Nothing but bias in this site.
AsianVersionOfET
AsianVersionOfET - 2/7/2012, 8:41 PM
Nice try, but it's still my favorite comic book movie ever made, and one of my favorite movies of ALL TIME in general. The fact that you spent this much time nit-picking teeny tiny flaws in Nolan's Batman films just show how good they are and further prove you're just a [frick]ing moron who likes to be different just for the sake of being different.
TheGambitFreak
TheGambitFreak - 2/7/2012, 8:42 PM
Main? Holy Shity Morty!
Supes17
Supes17 - 2/7/2012, 8:42 PM
Oh, and uhmm... It's a mother[frick]ing movie, not a biography based on your life. You're more obssessed than the damn Nolanites themselves. But I guess that the fact that enjoy the films labels me as one. Smh
AsianVersionOfET
AsianVersionOfET - 2/7/2012, 8:42 PM
Oh and go [frick] yourself.
Supes17
Supes17 - 2/7/2012, 8:45 PM
Come on now, Asian, you can speak your mind without resorting to insults like those lol
AsianVersionOfET
AsianVersionOfET - 2/7/2012, 8:46 PM
Not you Supes17 hah, talking to dumbass Morty.
Drewsterville
Drewsterville - 2/7/2012, 8:47 PM
Ok would you rather have Nolan or Joel Schumacher? Its just a movie calm down. The movie cant be realstic in everyway, come on the dude wears a Bat suit. Just be happy they made the film and its not going to suck as bad as spiderman 3.
Supes17
Supes17 - 2/7/2012, 8:49 PM
Guys let me know when you find a "perfect" movie...It doesn't exist
The Godfather is the best IMO and even it has flaws
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