The exposition was necessary, especially for the general audience. The movie involved complicated concepts which naturally require exposition. Obviously you will not need to hear the exposition when watching the film for the 10th time, but in order to truly feel and enjoy the magic when seeing it for the first time on the big screen in cinemas, you needed to be able to follow the movie. Hence the exposition.Crazy Eight wrote:Since when has how the majority deems a film's success in a specific aspect made said aspect un-criticizable? Inception's largest and most frequent criticism is it's clunky exposition and insanely slow first hour (roughly, minus the opening). It's so awful that everyone I know who was an enormous fan of it when it came out in theaters literally can't sit through it anymore, and I'm close to that point myself.
OK, but there was plenty of action despite this. Plus there were emotional conflicts present throughout the movie, namely between Cobb and Mal. Things needed to be explained.I never specified who I put the blame on, and it's obviously not Lee. He doesn't get to decide which scenes make it into the film, or how much dialoge from them makes it. The exposition lasted far too long scene-to-scene and there were far too many scenes dedicated to it. This quite literally slowed the film down and let the scenario's and characters breathe, and it happened insanely frequently up until the last half hour.
Actually TDKR had a bunch of slow parts, especially in the beginning after the plane hijack. There was tons of awkward exposition and some lines of dialogue that were just plain stupid as well that were anything but effective:TDKR is the exact opposite. It's always in motion, which is the whole reason we have this "pedal faster" quote going around. It throws an insane amount of information at you, and it does it quickly but effectively, which is the reason so many people missed so many obvious points in the film. It forces the viewer to actually pay attention for nearly 3 hours. For a film analysis guy, you should love this, since it's literally the perfect film to dissect. Establishing shots, heli shots, length of stuff like that, whatever, that's up to you, I won't argue otherwise since it's wholly subjective. I'm not saying I wouldn't have loved another 15 minutes, but I don't think it would have necessarily made the film -better-.
1. Alfred's extensive knowledge of Bane's life and knowledge of the issues within the LOS (like seriously how did any agency or government body learn that the LOS had excommunicated one of its own members? A centuries-old secret society with a code of honor would not allow such information to become public).
2. Alfred: "No one knows why, or how escaped, but they do know that once he did, he was trained by Ra's Al Ghul."
Me: "I know you worked for the British military when you were younger but how do people know this? And who the heck are 'they'? And you know about the Pit, so I'm guessing that the CIA or that British Intelligence must also, yet obviously no one has ever done anything about it. And in today's age of the United Nations, Google Images and satellite imaging technology, how has no one ever discovered this pit, which lies right next to a small city/village?
3. The unnecessary extra explanatory dialogue regarding the bomb.
Fox: "As the device's fuel cells detoriate, it becomes increasingly unstable, to the point of detonation."
Me: "Thanks for letting me know. It's not like Dr. Pavel said pretty much the exact same thing about an hour ago."
Blake: "This bomb is a time bomb."
Me: "Well it's a damn good thing that you told me. It's not like I saw a digital LCD timer on the bomb three times already."
4. The hilarious dialogue by everyone in the Pentagon war room.
Analyst: "Whatever it is, it's nuclear."
Me: "LOL I would never have guessed."
General: "Get the President on the line."
Me: "LOL I've heard this line in a thousand different disaster movies by now."
Batman flies the bomb over the water, where it explodes.
CIA Analyst: "That's detonation!"
Me: "Oh really? Wow, nice catch! I would never have guessed just by seeing and hearing the bomb go off."
5. The hilariously clunky Clean Slate exposition by Dagget. 'Nuff said.
6. Fox shows Bruce the morning newspaper, titled 'Bruce Wayne Doubles Down and Loses'.
Fox: "Long-term, we may be able to prove fraud, but for now you're completely broke."
Me: "WHAT!!! They MIGHT be able to prove fraud?! Despite the tons of evidence that Bruce Wayne was never at the stock exchange and that the trades were executed by the terrorists? And Bruce is completely broke? What about all of his offshore accounts and off-the-books stockpiles of assets? And does a multi-billionaire like Bruce lease all his cars, which is what was implied when his vehicles were towed away? Why did they shut off Bruce's power like that? And WTF! Those trades were made by fingerprint, and yet there was video evidence that Wayne was not there and that those trades were made, by the, um, TERRORISTS who shot up the place and started executing mysterious trades at the same time that Bruce supposedly made these crazy gambles!"
See my point? I thought TDKR suffered way more due to its exposition and clunky dialogue than Inception did, if Inception did at all. Inception revolved around difficult concepts that were being brought to the big screen in a novel way which thus required lots of explanatory dialogue. TDKR however, forced tons of unnecessary exposition and awkward dialogue on us that ultimately hindered the film and did something much worse by causing the very logic and legitimacy of its plot points to be questioned. Plus, due to the IMAX time limit, quick cuts to and from scenes and some of the shortened scenes in general really caused the movie to suffer. I'm surprised you found TDKR to be more well put together than Inception.
TDK's story did not require an extremely long movie, unlike the story of TDKR.And TDK had the same time limit as TDKR...