a red LED countdown clock

Warning - spoilers follow. If you're planning to go and see this film then you might be best skipping this thread.

Anyway, the missus and I went to see The dark knight rises last night. I've quite enjoyed Nolan's previous two outings with the caped crusader, especially The dark knight, even though I'm not particularly a Batman fan.

There is a lot that's good about this film; the acting is of a high standard throughout, the visual set-pieces are stunning, Bane is an excellent villain and I really have grown fond of Bale's Batman, even with the 60-a-day voice.

In fact there's only one thing wrong with this film, unfortunately that one thing is the script, which is a huge mash-up of lazy writing, glaring plot holes and stuff that happens for no discernible reason.

To give you an example of how bad this is, let me walk you through the villains' plan:

Objective: Complete the League of Shadows' plan to blow up Gotham city, started in Batman Begins, despite the facts that the two main baddies were expelled from the League because its leader couldn't stand the sight of the disfigured Bane and that the League's plan was based on Gotham being irredeemably wicked, whereas this film starts after it has seen an 8 year dearth of crime, with Batman retired and everybody involved in organised crime unconstitutionally locked up for ever.

Also, torture Batman by physically breaking him and then letting him watch his beloved city tearing itself apart and then getting blown up.

OK, they're rubbish objectives, but let's go with it. How, oh how, are the baddies going to pull off this audacious scheme?

Step 1: Read an article by a distinguished nuclear physicist, which says that it's possible to turn a (theoretical) fusion reactor into a nuclear bomb. Decide to capture said scientist, but not by just kidnapping him - no, indeed. Instead you wait until the CIA are about to pick him up (presumably to avoid his dangerous knowledge of how to turn a nuclear reactor, which doesn't exist, into a bomb from falling into the wrong hands) then you *pretend* to be kidnapping him and let yourself be captured so that you can perform a mid-air attack on the CIA plan and make it look like everybody aboard died.

Step 2: Build a huge network of bases and other gubbins in Gotham's sewers, using cement laced with explosives. Don't worry about anybody noticing, or one of your army of construction workers grassing you up, it's bound to be fine. Make sure that your central base is directly beneath the secret R&D depot that supplies Batman's kit, even though the films suggest that all of the people who know the location of said depot are very, very loyal to Bruce Wayne.

Step 3a: To get your hands on this nuclear reactor (which has been built by Wayne Enterprises, although the company has told everybody that it doesn't work) you hire an extremely volatile cat burglar to break in to Bruce Wayne's mansion and lift a set of his fingerprints. You then try to double-cross said cat burglar on payment for same, despite the fact that she's needed later in your plan.

Step 3b: Now you need to find out where the reactor is, because this is, apparently, a much more closely guarded secret than than the secret R&D facility. You'd think that, even in America, if a private company were building a nuclear reactor they'd have to tell a bunch of people where it was. I can't imagine that you just fill in an on-line form, application to build huge nuclear reactor, pay your $10 licence fee and then get a pop-up box saying, "You are now licensed to build a nuclear reactor. Please be careful to ensure that nobody turns it into a bomb".
Anyway, the obvious way to get your hands on this reactor is bring the multi-billion dollar industry, Wayne Enterprises, to its knees, so that they have to call in outside help, tell them where the reactor is and that it works.
To do this, you stage a hugely public invasion of the Gotham stock exchange, use Bruce Wayne's fingerprints (see step 3a) to invest all of Wayne Enterprise's money into unwise gambles on the futures market and while the programme to do this is running (it takes 8 minutes, apparently) leave the safety of the stock exchange, where you have literally hundreds of hostages, to make a break for freedom on dirt bikes (that every stock exchange keeps handy for such occasions).
By the next morning not only is Wayne Enterprises on its knees and ripe for a corporate take-over, but Bruce Wayne is also personally bankrupt.
This, for me, was one of the stupidest parts of the film, for so many reasons. The principle one is that since Batman Begins Wayne Enterprises has been a publicly listed company and Bruce Wayne isn't even on the board of directors (both of these points are re-stated in this film, so it's not like they've ret-conned it), so how exactly is he authorised to directly invest billions of the company's money on the stock exchange? Anyway, I'll not get too obsessed with this one scene (or that the writers apparently don't know what the first word in "Futures market" means or what the first two words in "Limited liability company" are about). On with the plan...

Step 4: Use the cat burglar you double-crossed in step 3a to bring Batman to you, so you can beat him up and break his spine over your knee. Then show him how you can now break into his R&D centre and steal his secret military grade weapons. Then put him in a jail with a proven escape route, sharing a cell with the two people in there who know how to repair him, physically and mentally, but without, say, any guards who can break his legs if he tries to escape.
Fixing the broken back is comical - the doctor tells Bruce that one of his vertebrae is protruding and then delivers a medically precise in the back, and, hey presto, one un-broken back. Why are all of the doctors of this calibre hanging around in filthy jails in undisclosed foreign locations?

Step 5: Having got the reactor and the scientist who knows how to turn it into a bomb kidnap three members of the board of Wayne Enterprises, because their palm-prints are required to start the reactor (which must be a bugger when you're trying to test it). Once they've started it get your scientist to turn it into a bomb. Don't worry that he might refuse or, more likely, that he's a *theoretical* physicist working on a reactor that he's never seen before and presumably (a) he doesn't know how it works, (b) his theories have never been tested before and (c) nobody there can tell if he's really made a bomb or just pressed a few buttons and told you it's done.

Step 6: Take the reactor core (which is now, maybe, a bomb) out of the reactor. When the scientist tells you that this will cause it to become unstable and explode casually tell him that, according to your calculations, this will happen in 5 months. Don't worry that you're a trained assassin, not a trained nuclear scientist because the core helpfully has a red LED countdown clock on anyway - a feature common to all nuclear reactors.

Step 7: Wait for Gotham to send *every single* policeman in the city down into the sewers to look for you. It might be a bit of a wait, as you've already tried to assassinate the only policeman who knows you're down there, but them's the risks. When they're all down the sewers detonate your explosives, trapping them there and also collapsing a football pitch for reasons best described as "It looks cool". Also blow up all but one of the bridges. Give the people of Gotham a half-arsed speech about how you've liberated them and the city is now theirs, but if any of them try to leave then an unnamed citizen, to whom you've entrusted the trigger to bomb, will blow it up.

Step 8: Tell the military (outside the city) that if anybody crosses the one remaining bridge the bomb will be detonated. Don't mention all of the boats clearly seen on the shores of Gotham/Manhattan.

Step 9: Release and arm all of the members of organised crime who were locked up, trusting that they'll want to serve in your militia.

Step 10: Drive the bomb round and round the city in one of three identical trucks, with a lead shielded roof, so that overhead units can't detect the radioactivity from the bomb (do fusion reactors give off radioactivity?), but don't lead-line the rest of the truck (because, by now, the budget must be getting pretty low), so that the bomb can be detected from street level.

Step 11: Wait 5 months for the people of Gotham to form a new society, which seems to consist mainly of turfing the rich out of their homes, putting them on trial for being rich and then making them try to walk to freedom over a frozen river.

Step 12: Wait around for the bomb to blow up and kill you.

OK, that was a long rant, but it still barely scratches the surface of how ludicrous this film is. Almost nothing in it makes any sense and the film blatantly relies on you being so mesmerised by the big explosions and the fights that you don't notice you're watching a film where almost every character does the most idiotic thing possible at every step.

If you leave your brain on the popcorn counter you'll love it, but to me it's just stupid. So disappointing after The Dark Knight

I had no idea that was going to be Robin. Apart from being on the ball he didn't show any super-hero potential to me.

In the Dark Knight rises we first meet Bruce Wayne in his mansion, border line geriatric with a limp and a stick. He wants nothing to do with Batman and after being robbed by cat woman and some persuasion Master Bruce decides he needs to get the cape back on. At this point I expected a montage of him using his grit determination to get himself back up fighting fit to some kind of shape, but no.

He puts on a special knee brace that lets him kick through walls!