Writer Jonathan Nolan on too much "clutter" in The Dark Knight Rises

I didn't find anything clunky about The Dark Knight's script at all. I do believe people have legitimate gripes about the third act of the movie but I personally found the final act to be well done.

Batman Begins has like 5 antagonists. It depends on how you juggle them. You can't however have more than one as the main focus. There's got to be a true guy who is the rival of hero and is the big threat.

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oh man I don't know how OM Landshark will react to this

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Well, he's right. The first two Nolan films were very good at juggling villains around because they were very focused on what needed to happen. Spiderman 3 though didn't have a clue. One minute we're with Green Goblin, the next we're with Sandman, then back to Green Goblin, then back to Sandman, then he's tap dancing on a table for some fricking reason, and Venom pops right the hell out of no where, and for some reason they're all fighting together or against each other for really no reason. The film had absolutely no focus and made no sense. Nolan however was always clear on the stakes of each villain and why one was the bigger threat than the other and how they interacted. This is not a concern of mine since Nolan has proven he's very effective at this, plus the trailers have made it clear that Bane is without question the big threat here.

I saw the trailer on a high def TV during the basketball game last night and it looks like it's shot without filters like a Michael Mann film of late.

I thought it was weird that I saw the trailer that way.

TDK was somewhat clunky. The final act was terrible. The movie was FANTASTIC up to Alfred's line "we burned the forest down". They could have simply framed Batman for Rachel's death as an accomplice to the joker just before that line and it would have been perfect. After that the "too many villains" chickens came home to roost.

It was lIke they said CUT and then realized "oh wait, we wrote Harvey Dent in here, let's just go ahead and finish his story"

The third act, overall, definitely wasn't as good as the first two acts but I would hardly call it "terrible." In fact, the final scene with Gordon and Two-Face is, at least in my opinion, the best and most emotional scene in the entire film.

LINK

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They should have saved Two-face for the next film and allowed this one to be his origin.

They completely shite the bed on that villain.

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Two-Face is not a strong enough villain to carry an entire movie. His origin is much more interesting than his actual character. The entire film would have been him seeking vengeance on Batman and Gordon - which was pretty much the plot of Batman Forever.

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Also, they made Batman too passive in the story in the third act. He does fight people, but he is not the catalyst for events. He is a reactionary character. All the event catalysts are other characters, some who don't even have names.

i never liked that.

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I didn't have a problem with that. I think Nolan intentionally did that because the Joker isn't like any criminal that has come to Gotham before. He's a man who is out for nothing other than to cause chaos. Of course a character like him would end up controlling events by the end of the movie.

Bruce Wayne was trained in Batman Begins on the premise that criminals aren't complicated. They all are out for something and that "something" is almost always their weakness. Bruce Wayne was trained to find and exploit that weakness. The Joker has no such weakness and therefore Batman sort of finds himself out of his depth because this criminal was like nothing he had been trained to combat.

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While this may be true, how many movies get shite on for having a great climax scene, or twist at the end, yet are attacked for "completely falling apart" in the third act.

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I think you're overstating the criticism of the third act by a lot. The film was universally praised. Just look at its score on Rottentomatoes and Metacritic if you need reminding. Had the third act been as bad as you claim it to be I think it wouldn't have been as well received as it was. Yeah, I agree that the third act wasn't as strong as the first two acts. However, I will not go so far as to say that the movie "shite the bed" and "completely fell apart" because of it.

It was still a solid third act.

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In TDK, Batman does nothing to throw a monkey wrench in the Joker's plans, he merely reacts to the plans when they are put into motion. Hell, the only thing remotely similar to him trying to move the story forward is when they finally arrest him, and then the writers made it seem like that was the Joker's plan all along.

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And that's the Batman-Joker dynamic in a nutshell. In the comics, if I remember reading correctly, the Joker is usually the catalyst for everything that happens in the story. Batman is almost always pushed into reactionary mode whenever they are facing off against each other and Batman never wins outright. That's just the way it works between them.

I understand if you don't like it, it's just a matter of taste I guess.

The problem with Spider-man 3 wasn't the number of villains -- it was a terrible script and Raimi's dissatisfaction with Sony's intrusion in the film. It would have been easy to salvage that movie, but it's lazy and complacent.