The holiday season is the time for toy companies to let it all hang out and put their most impressive wares on display in hope that excited children will convince their parents to buy them. Which is why it's curious that LEGO's new set based on this summer's blockbuster hit The Dark Knight Rises wasn't available until January. Luckily for us AFOLs (Adult Fans Of LEGO) the season of treating yourself is year-round. So yesterday I went to my local LEGO store, redeemed by $5 credit for being a member of the VIP club, and purchased The Bat vs. Bane: Tumbler Chase.
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| "We take Gotham from the corrupt... and give it back to you... the people." |
The set itself is a good example of the excellence that modern LEGO products generally exhibit. It's got two vehicles: a camo Tumbler that pales in comparison to the discontinued set from 2008, and the movie's unimaginatively-titled The Bat, from which I later cannibalized many of the core pieces in order to make a black version of the Tumbler... but not before re-creating select scenes from the movies (pictured). The Tumbler's coolest feature is a bank of concealed missiles, but in a triumph of convenience over authenticity, they gave it a front central axle - the two front wheels in the actual movie version were somewhat illogically free-standing. It's also got precious little headroom - I had to alter the design a bit for the black version in order to accomodate Batman's headgear. The Bat, despite its scaled-down size, surprisingly had room for two LEGO minifigs inside. I was however confused at the maneuverability of the front propeller-thingies. With three separate ball and socket joints, they appear more like robot arms than... come to think of it, what are those things there for in the first place?
But it's the TDKR-inspired minifigs that really give the set its personality. They brought back the movie-themed Batman from the aforementioned 2008 set, and it's always nice to add another Batman cape to my collection - this new one brings my total to three black, one blue. I don't know why the prepackaged Bane figure is wearing a solitary Michael Jackson glove, but I replaced his torso with a furry jacket reminiscent of the one he wears in the film. I also took Commissioner Gordon's head off the SWAT uniform, put it on Bruce Wayne's suit from last year's Batcave set, and gave him gray hair so that he better resembles the character from the 1992 Animated Series.
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| "My mother warned me about getting into cars with strange minifigs." |
To complete the experience, I of course put on my copy of TDKR on BluRay while building. Seeing the film for the third time, the first from the comfort of my own home, I was inspired to make a list of the things that bothered me about it. Not that I didn't like the movie as a whole; it just left a lot to be desired in the whole logic/creating a compelling version of the Batman universe departments. Since, according to Jim Gordon, we shouldn't believe in coincidence, there must be some cosmic significance behind the fact that this video from CinemaSins came out the very same day. They mention four of my biggest grievances among their 73 movie sins, so I won't waste precious space on the blogosphere except to innumerate them:
Sin #8: How does Officer Blake figure out Batman's secret identity just by looking at him? Even Dick Grayson had to be told, and he lived in Wayne Manor for gosh knows how many months before becoming Robin.
Sin #14: Alfred's false exposition about Bane. The folks at CinemaSins were confused that Alfred even knew all that information to begin with but I don't think it's unreasonable that he could come up with it given a couple hours on the Batcomputer. What upsets me is that everything he says turns out to be a lie. And it's the worst kind of lie that can be told in a movie based on a previously established and well-loved canon: information that is true in ALL OTHER VERSIONS OF THE STORY, but which is revealed to be nothing but a red-herring in this universe.
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| It only comes in black if you make a few custom modifications... |
Sin #23: The stock market fraud that leaves Bruce Wayne penniless. While examining the evidence, Lucius Fox remarks, "Long term we may be able to prove fraud." Meanwhile, short term, what in the name of Dow Jones are the police and the SEC doing with the VIDEO FOOTAGE of Bane breaking in and HACKING INTO THE ONLINE TRADING DESK??? I doubt they could have confused the masked mercenary for Bruce Wayne inputting his actual thumbprint...
Sin #64: Bane and Talia's backstory reveal. I haven't actually read any of the Batman comics, but isn't Batman supposed to meet and bond with Talia before he even meets Ra's al Ghul and finds out she's his daughter? Even if you want to keep it so he trained with Ra's and the League of Shadows (or Society of Shadows or League of Assassins, depending on your continuity), you can still have him meet Talia as an ally without knowing her connection to Ra's. It's similar to what happened with Venom in Spiderman 3: wasting one of the deepest and most influential characters by relegating her to the last 30 seconds of the movie.
The Bane voice takes up three sins (#1, #25, #42), and while its campy indecipherable tone definitely goes a long way in dragging down the credibility of this movie, I don't even know if he's the worst offender in the unable-to-be-understood department. Of course there's the famous bat-voice, and Marion Cotillard's accent shouldn't win any prizes for clarity. But I think Commissioner Gordon might take the cake with his emotionally guttural raspy growl. Effective thought it may be, it's inexcusable that a character who's not wearing a mask should have a three-minute scene of dialogue where the only words you can understand are "filth" and "friend like I did."
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| Front-mounted propellers or Robo-arms? YOU DECIDE! |
But my number one biggest objection to the movie has to do with Bruce Wayne's pathetic obsession with Rachel. Let's start at the beginning: Why does Bruce Wayne become Batman? Because he saw his parents gunned down before his eyes at a young age, an experience that profoundly changed him, inspiring a near superhuman level of focus and drive that allowed him to become a powerful crime fighter. This experience so fundamentally changes his character that it comes to to define him more than the name and fortune he was born into. Over the course of the first two movies, Bruce falls in love with a girl who ends up dying tragically. And in the third one he gets so broken up about this that he becomes too depressed to be Batman anymore.
So let me get this straight: His heartbreak over losing the girl he likes weighs more heavily on his soul than the loss of his parents? How can this character use one instance of tragedy as an inciting incident to inspire him to greatness, but gets completely flatlined by another similar tragedy? Keeping with the pattern of his origin story, shouldn't Rachel's death have caused him to become some sort of Mega-Ultra-Batman, rather than leave him depressed and useless for the first hour and a half of the movie? This inconsistency immediately cheapens Christopher Nolan's version of the character.
You may read this and think I'm a new-Batman-hater. I'm not, I'm really not. We fanboys have the tendency to scrutinize most vehemently the things we love best, and my nitpicking of this particular movie is really just an affirmation of how devoted I am to any version of Batman that might come to be. Including LEGO Batman in the upcoming movie (voiced by Will Arnett, I'm told, which I'm extremely eager to hear). However, my custom LEGO Batman minifig remains free from all reproach as the most genuine and pure Batman ever to grace the toy shelf. Here's hoping they'll make a movie version that approaches his awesomeness one day...
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| THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE! |
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