Encore Of The Dark Knight
Remember that film “The Dark Knight Rises”? It came out a few years ago, right before which I wrote up a pair of hastily written synopses of the previous installments to help my friends get back up to speed. Sadly, none of those friends read my synopses, because they are Amish and fear the power of the internet (or whatever), so I was despondent and never completed my triptych of summaries. So here is the belated third part. To misquote Gary Oldman from part 2, I am the summariser that this film needs, but not necessarily a summariser that YOU need…
(It’s a long film)
…
CIA Agent Not-Patrick-Dempsey boards his plane in Foreignesia with a bunch of extra prisoners his men bring to him. He didn’t want extras. So sees them as “Bonus Prisoners”. Patrick McSmug is not the brightest CIA man. Once on board, he decides to play a party game with the hooded prisoners, pretending to shoot them and throw them out the door – he’s never been a very good host. The biggest of the hooded prisoners questions these ice-breaking methods, before being revealed as a guy with Darth Vader’s taste in face-pieces. It might also be a pair of headphones awkwardly put on the wrong way. This is BANE, he then shows Smugsy how a real ice-breaker does it, and blows the plane in half, saving himself and one of the prisoners he himself put on the plane in the first place. Smooth.
BACK IN GOTHAM CITY Eight years have passed. No, not since the plane-chopping shenanigans, but since we last saw Batman. No Batman in eight years. No Bruce Wayne in eight years. No one connects these dots. Gordon is giving a speech on “Happy Dent Day” or something, and is about to read a statement that says “Look, Batman is ace – Dent was a nutjob” but thinks better. Why? Probably because the guy before him stole his opening joke. Meanwhile, a waitress delivers dinner to Recluse Wayne, who now thinks he’s Green Arrow. You aren’t, you are a retired yuppie. You are reformed Patrick Bateman. Waitress breaks into the Wayne safe, and swipes pearls and finger prints (who keeps their finger prints in a safe?!) – I guess she lied about being Waitress. She takes her leave by flipping out of a window, a stunt only ever attempted by Lady Burglars. Wait, could she be….ANNE CATAWAY?!
Anne goes on to sell Bruce’s fingers to that guy from Torchwood. You know, the one nobody likes. This whole scene goes to hell, and ends up with people getting chased into the sewers by Gordon and a bunch of police. This is a bit of a dumb move – everyone knows that the sewers are where the monsters live. In this case, there are no monsters – but there is Headphone Face and his crew who make Gordon their prisoner. One cop, Cop Wonder, didn’t go chasing, and he’s looking like the smartest guy in the city right now (Which really doesn’t say much). He ends up finding Gordon washed up (and in a storm drain), after Gordon escaped from Headphone Face. Good work, Cop Wonder.
Cop Wonder decides it’s time to talk to Patrick Batman about Bateman. He knows that Batman is Bateman, because he, Cop Wonder was also an orphan, and when he was an orphan, he remembered seeing Bateman’s grown-up-orphan face, and realised they made the same expression. Or something. Look, that bit isn’t a joke – that’s almost word for word from the film.
Bateman says he’ll think about it – but it’d mean shaving, and he REALLY likes his moustache. Also, Cop Wonder tells him that the Orphan Factories have closed down, because Bateman’s company won’t fund them anymore. This will NOT do.
Bateman shaves, and goes to a party. He meets Australian, French Lady, and Cataway. Australian seems shifty, French Lady seems French, and Cataway makes weather predictions. She also steals Bateman’s car after he reclaims his pearls – that doesn’t seem right. Bateman goes to see his old pal Lucious Fox. He’s since changed the spelling of his name, as it sounds too much like a drag queen or pole dancer’s nom de plume. He now goes by Lusty Fox. Lusty brags about his gadgets and a flying car, and gives Bateman a new leg. He also tells Bateman that the company is out of money, so he should do something about that.
Headphones uses Bruce’s finger prints to spend all his money in an ill-advised stockmarket spree. Really? No one needs PIN numbers, or signatures, or authorisations, they just say “sure, you’ve got that guy’s fingerprints – this is all a-okay!” Anyway, Headphones gets away with this, BUT NOT BEFORE THE BATEMAN returns! This gets the police all kinds of agitated, and after they reveal they’ve got a hell of a lot more cars than Bateman, he one-ups them by FLYING. He does so in that flying car that looks like a submarine. That flies. Called the Bat. I think Lusty’s lost his mind.
Seeing Bateman all shaved and new-legged worries Alfred. He’s probably still carrying some guilt about having let Cataway steal all that important stuff, but you know how butlers are. He ends up telling Bateman that no one loves him, everyone hates him, and that even RACHEL DAWES didn’t really like him, preferring Half-A-Face to Bateman. Ouch. Low blow, Alfred. The butler mutinees (I’m not gonna make THAT gag), and with a final parting shot about having always hoped to retire, and see Bateman at a cafe in Italy (Really? That’s kinda…precise), he leaves Bateman home alone, at which point he presumably splashes on cologne and defends his house against Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci. Presumably.
Everything kicks into high gear now. Cop Wonder is investigating dodgy building sites and getting a dislike for guns, Headphones is throwing out people he doesn’t like, Cataway is trying to steal stuff from people (stuff that sounds ridiculous, but she’s a Lady Burglar – you don’t argue with Lady Burglars), Bateman is flying around the city because he can, and Gordon wheezes from his hospital bed. Cataway and Bateman team up to take on Headphones, but, you know what? Cataway lied! Again! Bad cat. No biscuit. Headphones rearranges Bateman, and sends him to a prison at the bottom of a pit in Overseavlakia. Now he’s off to use Gotham like his own personal playground.
WITNESS! As Headphones leads the police on a merry chase underground. THRILL! As Headphones explains he’s got the entire city booby-trapped to explode! PONDER! Why he then tells them the big bomb will go off once he counts down from 1 billion. Okay, he doesn’t do that last bit, but after blowing the bridges, the tunnels (to trap the cops) and the football stadium (to ensure his team doesn’t lose), why have a bomb on such a long leash? SIMPLE! Bateman needs time to recuperate for Act 3. Oh, and remember that guy he saved from the plane smash at the start? Yeah, Headphones bumps him off now just to prove a point. And what are Lusty, Alfred and French Lady doing? No one knows. No one really cares. Headphones drives his stolen Waynemobiles around Gotham like some kind of slot car set. He also lets everyone out of prison, after reading Gordon’s “Dent is a jerk” speech. Now Gordon looks like a dick for not having said something sooner. Even Cop Wonder is disappointed.
Back in Overseavlakia, Bateman is stuck in bed, forced to watch bad coverage of Gotham being ransacked by Headphones. He’s slightly completely crippled, but it turns out the jail doctor used to be an expert at unbreaking spines. No, really. He’d make a killing in one of those shopping centre massage parlours. After some faffing around, and seeing spectral images of a natty ghost (it’s Raaaaaaaaaaaa’s. One Ra’s, Many Ra’s’s?), Bateman decides it’s time to regenerate his body and become a new Bateman. He gets sorted out, and then climbs the walls of the pit-prison, using only a thick rope harness as a safety. He falls. Many times. And strangely, doesn’t get yanked in two by the unforgiving rope. Or maybe he does, and Jail Doctor just puts him right again. I’d believe that. He keeps trying. Maybe without the rope – at least that’ll be conclusive.
Back at home, Headphones has turned Gotham into Detroit. That mad guy from 28 Days Later is still around, but now he’s being a judge. From Psychiatrist, to Drug Dealer, to Judge. That’s a common career path…in Detroit. Anyway, this time Headphones’ guys have got Gordon and a bunch of other good guys, and they are gonna be trialed by treacherously thin-iced river: you walk across the river, and you are free! Or drowned. You know, whichever happens first. It’s not good. BUT. Bat darts fly out of…EVERYwhere. Gordon is saved! Bateman appears, and says “Hey check this out”, then lights the entire bridge on fire in the shape of a Bate. He would have been there sooner, but it took a good six weeks for the Bate-bridge stunt. Gordon seems underwhelmed, but Bateman is sure the kids will love it.
It’s time to sort this city out – Bateman gets Gordon to rally the troops, and the underground cops. He gets Cataway to use one of his Bate-bikes to clear a bridge out of the city, whereby she immediately gets down to the business of deciding whether to cut and run, or help…. He then orders Cop Wonder to gather up all the children and get them out of the city (you know, that one that no one can escape)… and Bateman decides it’s time he makes his daylight debut! Headphones hears about the uprising and gathers his army of knuckleheads with guns to fight Gordon’s army of cops with sticks and angry expressions. It’s a bit one-sided, but then….BATEMAN BEGINS! AGAIN! With surprising stealth, he flies down on to the impeding battlefield, and leads his rag-tag army of malnourished prisoner cops against Headphones’ army of well-armed lunatics.
But…he’s Bateman. The fight goes as you’d expect in a Nolan Batman film – without blood. Even Matthew Modine, who was a good-but-selfish cop, fought…valiantly,and died…bloodlessly… Look, it’s a pretty messy sequence. Lots of extras. Hans Zimmer bashing on an orchestra.
Meanwhile, Headphones and Bateman are duking it out. Bateman knows Headphones’ weakness, and proceeds to damage the face-mask that Headphones loves so. This accessory damaged, he starts to lose his powers, and Bateman gets the upper hand! That is, until a surprise attack from…FRENCH LADY! But no, she’s not French Lady! She’s…Talia Al Ghul! Daughter of Qui-Gon Ji- err, Ra’s Al Ghul! She planned this whole thing! THis was all her doing! MWO HO HA HA. Now she’s going to blow up the last bits of Gotham, bye. She leaves Headphones to watch over Bateman, when she knows full well Headphones wants to turn him into an artisanal, hand-squashed vigilante jam. A rousing chorus of “not-gonna-happen”, sounding suspiciously like high-powered cannons, blasts Headphones out of the franchise, with a quick reveal showing us Cataway is responsible for the ejection. Time to stop Frenchy Al Ghul.
Frenchy made a bee-line for the bomb truck, planning to blow the city apart because, hey why not? That was actually her plan in the first place. But she doesn’t reckon in the interferences of those meddling ki- err, Bateman, Gordon and Cataway! Trapping her in her truck via squashing (of the truck), she gurgle-laughs her last monologue, revealing the bomb is ready to go off. Bates decides there is only one thing to do – fly that bomb out of the city as fast as he can. Why?! Because when he was an orphan, he remembered seeing a cop’s grown-up-orphan fac- no, he tells Gordon in a roundaboutish way he his THAT ORPHAN, and then cranks the Bate-radio. Time to fly, bomb.
Cop Wonder is on a bridge with a busload of screaming orphans (no, really), and shouting at the cops to let them through, who are all saying no, with their guns. Things look really dire, because the countdown was getting well and truly dramatic by this point, wheeeeeeen THE BAT FLIES OVERHEAD WITH A LARGE BOMB IN TOW! WOW WHAT A HERO! WATCH THE FLYING BAT GO WITH THAT BOMB! GO BAT GO! GO BAT G- whoops. Blowned up.
Life goes back to normal. The Recluse Wayne will gives away all of his stuff, and the cops put together a statue that looks just like the Bateman from the comics they read as they grew up. Alfred goes on holiday in Italy and sees…wait, can it be? RECLUSE WAYNE AND CATAWAY! But they must be using fake names now. Maybe they are called Hathawanne and Wayne Bruce? They are incognito, and Alfred cheers them. Go Alfie go. Back in Gotham, Cop Wonder is given….a bunch of climbing gear and a geocache location. We also find out that Cop Wonder doesn’t go by his first name, because he doesn’t feel it suits him. That name? That name is….
SIDEKICK. He goes for a dive under Wayne manor and finds a big hole full of screechy mammals.
Now go watch The Dark Knight Rises, and tell everyone what you saw here.
Thoughts In The Key Of N 