The Daily Perostiles

Person spelling their email address over the phone: “‘M’….”

Me: “‘N’?”

Person: “No ‘M’. Like ‘M’ for ‘Mellie’.”

Me: “….so ‘N’?”

Person: “NO…’M’.”

ARE YOU GODDAMN JESTING ME?

First 5 seconds: Oh god this is bad.

First 30 seconds: Oh god no, really, really bad.

One minute in: Now they’ve got him with a Cognitive Neuroscience textbook in his lap being super good at crossword puzzles jesus christ why am I even—

3 minutes: Super-hot co-star introduced. Ok hold on guys I think I can make it through this. Just pretend not to hear the pseudo-psychological diarrhea spurting from Rachael Leigh Cook’s angelic mouth.

5 minutes: Will Fucking Truman are you seriously trying to be a neuroscientist? (Yes it took me that long to realise who he was.)

“I can tell she’s innocent from a thiamine deficiency, also Korsakov syn—BATON THE HATCHES MOFOS I GOT A BIG ASS RIVER OF LIQUID SHIT COMING RIGHT UP THE FOODHOLE AUUUUUGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH ALLLOVER THE WAAAAAAALLLLLLLLSSSSSSSSSSSYEAHHHHHHHHNEUROSCIENCEBITCHESSSSSSSSSSS.”

FYI I AM A HYPER-SENSITIVE GENIUS AND I HAVE TO LISTEN TO CLASSICAL MUSIC WHILE STANDING ON A CHAIR BECAUSE MY BRAIN IS SO ENORMOUS CAN YOU EVEN COMPREHEND THE SIZE OF MY BRAIN NOPE DIDN’T THINK SO. 

…OH HOLD ON…IMAGINARY PERSONALITIES YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Best new television TNT.

• YEAH LET’S STACK 25 HATS ONTOP OF EACH OTHER I HOPE YOU PAID AT LEAST $99 DOLLARS FOR THAT ONE.
• OH SO I GUESS FACESTABS ARE JUST A THING YOU CAN DO EVERYTIME NOW OK NO PROBS.
• NICE FIRE-BLOWING TRUMPET-GRAMMAPHONE FAGSTICK.
• I’M SO GLAD YOUR UBER IS GIVING ME A SLIGHT HEALTH BOOST THAT WILL BE VERY HELPFUL IN TAKING DOWN BOTH THESE SENTRY GUNS.
• PLEASE CONTINUE SPAMMING CHAT WITH YOUR REQUESTS FOR THAT AMAZING SNIPER RIFLE THAT SHOOTS PISS.
• I SEE YOU’VE CLOCKED 10,000 HOURS AS SCOUT AND I REALLY ADMIRE THE SKILLS YOU HAVE ACQUIRED BY DEDICATING YOUR LIFE TO SUCH A CHALLENGING CLASS, AND GETTING CONSTANTLY IMMOLATED MUST BE SO FRUSTRATING THAT YOU ARE TOTALLY JUSTIFIED IN LETTING EVERY PYRO KNOW HOW MUCH OF AN M1+W FAGGOT THEY ARE.

I was thinking about why it is that The Dark Knight Rises left a particularly bad taste in my mouth after walking out of the cinema. At first  I wanted to blame Tom Hardy’s Bane for not matching the brilliance of Ledger’s Joker, or that stupid part of the movie where Batman was stuck in a hole for what felt like about an hour of screen time, but these were not the real problems.*

The more far-reaching problem with TDKR was that in essence, none of it really made a lot of sense. And I’m not talking about plot holes, because there really weren’t that many, or not as many as you initially expect, because Nolan is quick to explain away all kinds of ridiculous things no matter how jarringly he goes about it, and if that’s what he’s got to do to make this movie work then that’s what he’s got to do. Only it doesn’t really work at all. (As far as the implausible goes the only thing that really bothered me was why the hell was Bruce Wayne doing sit-ups, a notoriously bad kind of exercise for the back, in the weeks after some guy miraculously re-calibrated his protruding vertebrae like it were a dislocated shoulder? How fucking sadistic are you Batman?)

After struggling to put my finger on it I thought of a recent You Look Nice Today podcast where the topic of discussion was not only Cannonball Run specifically, but that long dead breed of movies from the 80s that didn’t really have a plot, but people still flocked to see them because they all shared that big goofy fun time adventure spirit. To paraphrase Merlin Mann: you get Burt Reynolds, you put up some posters and you’ve got yourself a hit. The thing is I think this breed of movies is re-emerging, but instead of girls in fluoro bikinis, and Rodney Dangerfield’s innuendo, you’ve got computer-manipulated-everything and three-hour running times. When I made the mistake of seeing the second Transformers film at the cinema, the thing that really stuck with me walking out of there was that that whole thing made no fucking sense. A film that was made to make money by appealing to a mass audience had me feeling like a moron because I had absolutely no idea what I had just watched, other that it was long, loud and totally offensive to some part of me that likes to feel elitist about the movies I watch. And I could be wrong, but I have this really bad feeling that TDKR suffered from exactly the same problem (only it still managed to, by the magic of a great director, somehow remain a halfway decent film). 

So the plot was reasonable, everything was accounted for, but why did it have to go about being such an inarticulate mess? I don’t believe this was intentional on Nolan’s part, or at least not 100% intentional. He may have had a vision of Gotham vulnerable to a chaotic reign of terror, but somewhere along the way he and his brother lost their grasp of this vision and it bloated out into something catastrophic. One minute Bane has his men elaborately mixing the city’s foundations with some kind of malleable explosive cocktail, the next minute he’s got himself a nuke that he wants to vaporise everyone with…oh but hold on guys we won’t be doing that for several months okay? And apparently this is all so that Batman can wallow in some pit while he watches the action unfold on a big ass flat screen. Oh and by the way there really isn’t that much action, but it was a cool idea. But then by some shocking turn of events sitting in a hole doing nothing actually makes Bruce Wayne super angry and he has this kind of really shallowly established catharsis involving spooky Ra’s al Ghul flashbacks, and throwing himself off a cliff with a rope around his very severely damaged back which is OK because he’s the Batman and Lucius Fox no doubt gave him some kind of titanium vertebral augmentation in the event that some evil villain might one day break his back, and then some battered up Paulo Coelho looking motherfucker drops some serious knowledge bombs about climbing without a rope and holy shit that works and so Wayne gets out of the hole, gets back to Gotham where Bane has been doing basically nothing the whole time except walking around looking menacing I guess, and Selina Kyle is still there for some weird reason because it’s not like anyone thought of getting away in a jet or a helicopter in the night because Bane obviously has the entire sky under heavy surveillance or something I mean let’s not even question that shit. 

But look guys Bane’s motives aren’t even as sporadic as you all think because surprise! Talia al Ghul was being a total secret badass and you even slept with her Bruce Wayne you big idiot, and holy shit she somehow managed to get in on everything Wayne was working on on every single level of Wayne Enterprises how fucking convenient, so Bane instead of being a brilliant mastermind, just had to steal a whole bunch of stuff and blow a bunch of shit up what a great villain there Christopher Nolan, kudos on that original interpretation, I mean you could have just cut and pasted the Bane from Batman and Robin into this movie it wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference but whatever dude.  Also let’s have Robin in the movie but we won’t fag it up with an actual Robin we’ll just make him a cop and then reveal it at the end and totally blow everyone’s mind. And while we’re spitballing the need to have a throwback to every single aspect of the other two movies let’s not forget some drawn out shit regarding Harvey Dent, that’s really important and relevant too to this magnificently well pieced together motion picture. But hold on how are we going to fit Catwoman into this film as well? Oh, have Talia al Ghul/Bane hire some random petty thief to dig up some dirt on Wayne/Batman and have her set him up but then have a change of heart because she totally digs those moulded black biceps? Yeah fuck it that’ll do. Cut a trailer and let’s get this shit out there. 

(*despite the fact that when my review breaks down into that typical kind of Internet writing pseudo-comedic hyperbole, I do in fact mention in length these particular aspects as being very real problems with the film in essence, as the whole criticism gets grossly side-tracked in a way that is supposed to be for the benefit of amusing the reader and avoiding any serious conclusions which might land me in the unpleasant position of being responsible for having an opinion about anything.)

“Th Count bin livin hard times since he bin done rong and down by th jetty we wail a song of th mead I spect was sum parts piss o de logal mooshine bootligger Jerry Gobbler buda fine job it done for de col nide aheddavus. We slep close to de river to wash come mornen an we slep close tahgedda not lieg lovers gainst the bible but tahgedda for necessity wut wid de hoarfrost settlin oba times not fa seein come mornen you be jumbin in de water it colder den nothin but it good fa meldin de ice dots from ye brow.

“As sun drops from de blanet, Count del me a story boudis rish little mistress an de life he was ronged ouddov, sez he could be sleppin by de roarin fire if hay wa-ned, he sez widda kind of mischievous face stretchin in de small flames we kep goin, if hay wa-ned hay could pull a man up from de cellar, dis was de mans dey kep down in de cellar for slave werk and I think mebbe odder tings too he nut divulged, he pull up a man in de chains and slice him open slice iz arms an iz dighs n iz belly up n down an he stays warm in de blood he be rollin round in et all up n down de lion skin rug make im feel lieg he wuz de savage king of anodder era ov mangind.

“I said Count yew crazy basdard yew nod gonna gut me up in my slep, he said don yew eben dink a ding lieg dat aw brodda we godda stig tahgedda don eben dink et, bud I dink we godda stey warm donigh an bedween us dis coat we stole from a dadgecoat driver nut gon geddus dru de night alibe naw so yew be a gud fellah dere and remand me ov de dick beef stew we done edd dis ebenin deres a gub fellah jus one leg by dis shoulda one leg by dat an down wid the trowsers id only be gold a few moments brodda led de stingking warm land do my breast an watch de sdeam risin see dat warm pile make id way across my bossom an dere you go fellah jus lie down wid your breast do mine and we stay warm now undil dere ain’t no warm bedween us an in the cold of night before death sweeb down for ids obbordunidy I stand above yew brodda and make my own to yours and we be warm again undil de sun invide us do a cleansing bath anna new fine day.”