They still don't get it

Rating: 1/10 (31 July 2012)

Everything that was wrong with the previous installment was carried on to this one, and amplified. In short: you can't make a film about a guy in a bat costume riding on motorcycles and beating up other cartoon characters and frame it like a Shakespeare play. Why is this film three hours long? How can a story about a guy attempting to blow up a city with a nuclear bomb and being stopped by the superhero possibly be that long? I will tell you how: through bad screen writing. There are now too many characters to keep track of and Batman again experiences a deep personal drama and an incredible spiritual journey, completely shifting the focus away from the action. And remember: this is a guy who wears tights and speaks in a hoarse voice for some reason, not bloody Hamlet. This simply doesn't work. As for that deep, hoarse voice of his, why does he use it? Apparently everyone that matters in this film already knows his identity, so what's the point? Unless of course it is a competition between him and the main villain to see who can come up with the deepest voice. Listening to a dialogue between these two is simply hilarious, in part because of the fact that the film insists on the seriousness of it all. Again: you can't be serious in a film of this sort. It becomes ridiculous. What can I say? It's a superhero movie about a guy who whines most of the time when he is on screen, and when he isn't we are forced to watch the adventures of several completely uninteresting and unimportant minor characters. Why they are in this movie is a mystery. We don't care for them and the plot can be advanced perfectly well without them. My guess is that their purpose is to make the film twice as long as it should be. And it is about twice as long as it should be, or at least one hour too long. By the time the film hit the two hour mark, I could no longer care about anything and I wanted to leave the theatre. I have a few questions, by the way: How can a little girl jump a distance that a grown man in perfect physical shape cannot jump? Why is there a TV set in an underground prison in the middle of a desert? How hard is it to fashion tools to escape from that pit? They already have long ropes, metal bars and what not. Who provides food for these prisoners, and how come it is so rich in protein for a guy to build muscles worthy of a professional athlete? Also, how does a man make his way from what appears to be the heart of Africa or Asia back to the United States with no money or passport, and then break into a zone that is under tight military surveillance? Let's just say that whole part of the plot was a waste of time, as was pretty much everything else but I really can't be bothered to explain the stupidity of this endless sequence of dull and frustrating moments that they call a 'movie'. This franchise is now completely dead and any further sequels would be pointless. Unfortunately I doubt the studio will have the decency to pull the plug on this failed concept for a superhero movie