Nolan, you and I have a problem. I spent £27 ($42) taking my wife and 14 year old to see The Dark Knight Rises. I want £17 back. If you do not pay, we fight.
Here is the breakdown: My wife and I will let you keep £1 from each of our tickets because of the very cool exploding football field scene. We would like the rest of our money refunded in full. Although my son was pissed off with the plot holes, he was able to override elementary brain function to focus on the visuals. I'm good with you keeping £8 of the £9 for his ticket. Hand back £17 and we avoid a situation.
Why? Your filmmaking is lazy. The next time you try to make a phone call, half of your touch screen is dead. And when you drive your car the steering wheel only turns left. That is what it is like watching your movies.
With Batman Begins you fumbled away libation belly shots with the Muses. Joel Schumacker had hijacked the series with a one-way ticket to "Holy smokes, Batman, this movie sucks! Fwap! Clank!" You went in like a Delta Force Ranger and carried out a barely alive dark knight through a war cloud of death. That was awesome. All you needed to secure unlimited sexy time in the heavenly grotto was to deliver a great movie. Instead you mickeymoused a story about Gotham's water supply being contaminated with a toxin that activates when H²O steams up, which drives people insane, but for all of it to work within the storyline, not a single person in Gotham had a bath or shower, boiled the kettle for a cup of tea or warmed up a damn can of Campbell´s Chicken and Stars - for weeks. Just typing that last sentence makes me want to punch you in the pancreas.
Your next movie, The Dark Knight, gets an immunity pass here only because Heath Ledger's sacrosanct portrayal of the Joker continues to draw gasps from the divinity babes. You owe Heath a chunk of your estate and a Ray's Pizza sized slice of your soul.
Heath's genius was a one movie immunity idol, it can't protect the rest of your storytelling, screenwriting and film editing slovenliness.
Exhibit A: The idea for Memento - performed by two pothead buddies baked out of their frontal lobes:
Stoner 1: Dude, what if we did a movie where a guy's memory gets erased every day and he's like involved in a murder that he can't figure out and sh*t?
Stoner 2: Yes, dudage. You are the ideas masterblaster. And the dude gets a bunch of tats' and uses them as body Post It notes to try to remember what happened the day before and sh*t. Duder, pass the bongage, you've been bogarting for like half an hour. Dude, the bong! Aww, man, you doused! Bongwater spillagio, dude. Not cool.
Exhibit B: Inception (2010) - once again starring the blaze bros:
Bro 1: Yo brah, what if there was a dude that could like infiltrate other dudes' dreams and wreak havoc with the future, like espionage and murder and sh*t.
Bro 2: I like it, broham. Once again you are the kid with the golden lid. Dude, the bongola! Bongwater spunkage in the couch again, dude. Very not cool.
Bro 1: Dude, huh?
The difference between you and our two paragons of expansive thought is that the next morning, over a grande portion of chicken and waffles ("Yo bro, stop bogarting the maple syrup. Dude, the molasses! Come on!"), they laugh about the bonanza of implausibility they somehow overlooked the night before. You, on the other hand, call Warner Brothers to arrange a pitch meeting.
Exhibit C: The Dark Knight Rises - played by Christopher Nolan and TDKR's Editor:
TDKR Editor: Umm, Chris, we start the movie with Bruce's knee in such bad shape he gimps around with a cane for 30 minutes. The bionic brace idea is amazing, but it disappears when Bruce is trying to climb out of Ra's al Ghul's Lazarus' Pit. In the final 45 minutes of the movie, Bruce is bouncing around fighting bad guys like a tweaked out Jackie Chan at his first backyard wrestling sleepover.
CN: Yeah, yeah, I know. Don't worry about it. They'll forget that one. We've got bigger problems, like how the *uck do we get Bruce back to Gotham from the pit? And whose idea was it to put that mine shaft in North Africa? What was wrong with Long Island?
TDKR Editor: This is what I've been saying for months. I know Filmmaker Rule Number 48 is "The audience will pay for whatever we shove down their throats," but the sequence where Bruce escapes from the pit without sneakers, cash or a passport and magically reappears in Gotham to save the city from a nuclear explosion - with seconds to spare, is a bolus of faecal matter that even Batman fans might not be able to choke down.
CN: *uck it, let's move on. Wait, I've got it! Find a cute English kid to sing The National Anthem in a haunting mezzo-soprano. How did I forget Filmmaker Rule 93: "Manipulated gravitas trumps logic every time." Suck it North Africa!
I'll cut to the chase, Nolan. You have the keys to the upcoming blockbuster, Man of Steel. Fight against your ego and/or indolence and/or your "I'm-now -really-famous-and-I-definitely-do-not-want-to-screw-up-this-shhweet-sitchiation" torpor and put in the man hours on the screenplay and final editing. Take pride in the storyline. You have nine figure resources to get legit filmmaking artists involved in the telling of a narrative that is both astonishing and credible, which are not mutually exclusive. Work through the plot holes with toil and virtuous supplication to the Greek deity wenches so they reconsider your application for membership into their Liquor in the Front, Poker in the Rear VIP room. Why bust your *ss to create higher art? Because it is the bold and courageous and difficult and infinitely more satisfying accomplishment. Because it is the difference between striving to beget something aesthetically perfect and settling for being a big ticket gold-digging LaLa whore. And because the Muses are smoking hot.
Maybe you care, maybe you don't. Whatever your stance, remember we the audience have our own Filmmaker Rules. Here's one to take to heart - Filmmaking Rule 126: You douse my couch one too many times with bong swill, I won't get high with you anymore......dude.
Send me your contact info so I can forward my bank details for receipt of the £17. Otherwise its fisticuffs. And if you hide behind Bale I will fight you both.