Louisville was the home of Dodger legend Pee Wee Reese. After the Yankees, you’re talking about the Dodgers, Cardinals, Giants, Red Sox, and A’s if you’re talking about the teams with the best history (actually success would be a better word, the Dodgers have a better history than all of those teams). And Pee Wee Reese is one of the greatest Dodgers of all time. He’s second to Clayton Kershaw in franchise history in WAR. I’m a much bigger fan of stats that count or measure things that actually happen in baseball games. So if we use those, Reese is second to Zack Wheat in hits (Reese probably would have ended up around 2,600 if not for missing three years because of World War II, but that would still put him around 200 behind Zack Wheat). He’s the Dodgers’ all time leader in runs scored and walks. The story about Pee Wee Reese putting his arm around Jackie Robinson in Cincinnati is partially legend (that might have happened at some point, but not in Cincinnati in 1947 the way the story is always told), but he is known for being a Southerner who accepted Jackie Robinson as his teammate. If we’re ranking all time Dodgers, Reese is probably third or fourth on the list of position players (behind Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson in some order and possibly Roy Campanella) and I’d also put him behind Sandy Koufax, Clayton Kershaw, and Don Drysdale. So I have him as the sixth or seventh best Dodger of all time. He’s also the only player to play in every World Series game between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers (44 games from 1941-1956). Anyway, I visited Pee Wee Reese’s home town last week.
Last April, I had my Easter vacation trip planned to get to baseball games in three different cities, Louisville, Wichita, and Los Angeles. Why Louisville and Wichita? I have spent very little time in Kentucky and Kansas. My Kentucky experiences are driving through Kentucky on the way to and from the Notre Dame-Georgia Tech game in 2006 (Dennis liked the Kentucky accent when we stopped at Arby’s) and the Cincinnati airport. I’ve spent even less time in Kansas. I did some driving through Kansas in 2014 and made one stop pretty much just to actually set foot in Kansas. Besides spending very little time in Kansas, Wichita had a brand new minor league stadium (I was supposed to go to what was supposed to be the second game there). I used the credit I had from my canceled trip to do a trip to two of those cities. I stopped in Louisville on my way out to Los Angeles. Wichita will have to wait. Maybe I’ll get there next year. Iowa and Oklahoma are two other states where I’d like to see some minor league baseball at some point. I visited the Field of Dreams and spent a night in Iowa, but I didn’t see any sports there. I visited Mickey Mantle’s house in Oklahoma, but I didn’t see any sports there either. And Oklahoma is home to the Dodgers’ triple-A and double-A teams. Oklahoma might be combined with a trip to Texas to see a Rangers game since that’s the only Major League stadium I haven’t been to and it’s where the Dodgers won 11 playoff games last year (I thought about doing Oklahoma and Texas on this trip instead of Louisville, but it didn’t quite work out with my schedule).
Anyway, I got to Louisville in the late afternoon and just hung out until the game. It was triple-A baseball between the Gwinnett Stripers (Braves) and the Louisville Bats (Reds). Triple-A is fun because there will be players that you know. This game had Christian Pache, Eddie Rosario, Orlando Arcia, Johan Camargo, and Ender Inciarte. It was a quick game with really good pitching except for the fifth inning. Gwinnett got a grand slam from Eddie Rosario (who finished this game hitting .083 in the minors, but he’s spent most of the season in the majors, where he’s hitting .254). Louisville got a run on a groundout in the bottom of the inning. And that was all the scoring for the game. The only other almost highlight for the rest of the game was a foul ball coming near me. I was in the first row under an overhang. If not for the overhang, the ball probably would have landed a row behind me and maybe three or four seats to my right. The game was over in a quick two hours and 21 minutes. The box score says the attendance was 3,532. I would estimate that the actual attendance was less than a third of that. There was nobody sitting near me (I was in the section behind the visitors’ dugout, but I was several rows back).
This was my view for the game.
As you can see, there were a lot of empty seats.
There was a pretty good food and beer selection. If I had been able to go to more games this year, I might have gone for a turkey leg, but since I only got to seven games this year, I wanted to stick to hot dogs for the most part since it is the classic baseball food (and when done right, they are delicious). There were different versions of hot dogs there. Most of the concession stands had two versions of hot dogs, but then there were a couple of stands that had two versions of premium hot dogs. The Grand Slam Dog was huge, so I opted for the Slugger Dog, which was the smaller premium hot dog. It was very good, but unfortunately they only had yellow mustard. The beer selection was good, but it seemed like all the craft beer was in cans. All the beer on tap was the cheap stuff. I had a Country Boy Cougar Bait, a blonde ale from a brewery in Lexington, Kentucky. It was probably my favorite beer that I had enjoyed at a baseball game this season to that point.
Louisville Slugger Field was a very good minor league stadium. I’m going to rank it fifth on my list of minor league stadiums. It’s a nice looking stadium with good food and beer, but there was no atmosphere with a capacity of 13,131 and about 12,000 empty seats (in my estimation). It was a Wednesday night during a pandemic and the weather wasn’t great (hot and cloudy with a little rain) so the small crowd was understandable (and it was nice being able to watch a baseball game without a lot of people around), but that contributes to Louisville Slugger Field being only number five on my list. If you had 10,000 fans there, I might rank it as high as number 1, but I can only rank these stadiums based on the experience I had in each one.
This was my only minor league game of the season (I was supposed to get to one more, but as things sometimes go in 2021, that didn’t happen), but it was my second game in a minor league stadium as I saw the Blue Jays at Sahlen Field. So I have to rank that one as well. We’re putting that one in at number 13. Here are the updated rankings:
I got to my fourth baseball game of the year, but this was the one I was most excited to get to so far. For the first time in 23 months, I got to see the Dodgers play. They came to Citi Field for a weekend series with the Mets. I went with my Dad on Sunday night because that’s when tickets were most reasonable on Stubhub (this was my first Sunday night game since I saw the Dodgers in Boston two years ago). The Dodgers swept the series so any game would have had a nice outcome for me, but this one was particularly nice for two reasons. First, much like the last Dodger game I went to, their starting pitcher was a three time Cy Young Award Winner and future Hall of Famer. No, it wasn’t Clayton Kershaw, it was Max Scherzer. And unlike the first two games of the series, it wasn’t marred by the silly extra innings runner on second base. The Dodgers won easily behind two home runs for Max Muncy (he was also the inspiration for the titles of back to back blog posts in May and June of 2018) and home runs by former Met Justin Turner, Will Smith, and Matt Beatty. The Dodgers were up 6-0 after two innings and the game was never in doubt. The Dodgers’ fielding left a lot to be desired, but Max Scherzer was able to get through six innings only giving up two runs. Beatty’s home run came off of position player Brandon Drury (who was relieved by position player Kevin Pillar) and it was quite a blast. Max Scherzer (who is now 0 for 41 on the season with no walks) drove in a run with a sacrifice fly and relief pitcher Edwin Uceta had a hit in two at bats. I point these things out because I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to enjoy the beautiful game of baseball where all nine players have to hit. Attendance was 31,205, but there was only a small fraction of that by the end of the game.
Max Scherzer pitches for the Dodgers. We were in the exact same row where we sat for a doubleheader against the Braves in June.
And with Max Muncy and Max Scherzer helping lead the Dodgers to victory, it’s a good time to post this:
This was a much more normal baseball experience than my first time at Citi Field this year. It was a bigger crowd and the concessions were more normal. After a disappointing hot dog at Citi Field in June, I had a very good one. I got the foot long dog because I wanted something more substantial. But the foot long was kind of hard to find. You have all these Nathan’s concession stands that have regular hot dogs, but not the foot long. The foot long was at the pastrami sandwich concession stand. Why not have the foot long as an option at the Nathan’s stands? To drink, I had a Newburgh Brown Ale. Last time, I had a very bland pilsner. I wanted something from Brooklyn, but Citi Field’s craft beer options still leave something to be desired (they did have Brooklyn beers, but nothing that I was interested in). This beer wasn’t bland, but it’s not something I would get again. I could see people who like coffee liking it, but I don’t get why people like coffee. But at least it wasn’t bland.
In other baseball news, Major League Baseball had great success with the Field of Dreams game. I thought they should have that game on the Thursday after the All Star Break. Red Sox-Yankees was the only game scheduled that day, but why not make Yankees-White Sox at the Field of Dreams the only game and then you could use the All Star Game to promote it? As it turns out, that Red Sox-Yankees game was postponed because of coronavirus with the Yankees so it worked out not having the Field of Dreams game then. And to Major League Baseball’s credit, they had almost every other team either being off or playing afternoon games that day to avoid overlap with the Field of Dreams game (there was one game on the west coast that started at like 9:45 or something, but that was mostly not overlapping). Next year they’re having the Cubs and Reds play in the Field of Dreams game. They had the outfield dimensions set up like the old Comisky Park for Yankees-White Sox. Will they change that with the Cubs being the home team next year? I would think that they could adjust the fences and the corn and everything with a year to plan. I would just make it so that it’s proportional to the field from the movie. One of the reasons why they built a new field instead of playing on the movie field is that the movie field’s outfield dimensions are way too small. But I would take that shape and just make it bigger.
I think it remains to be determined if they will continue the Field of Dreams game after next year. They should keep it going until every team that is blacked out in Iowa plays a game there (White Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Royals, Brewers, and Twins). And then I would maintain the field and it could be used for amateur events and then do a Major League game there like once every ten years or something.
They’ve now done games at Fort Bragg, Williamsport, Omaha, and the Field of Dreams. I was thinking about other places where they could play. Cooperstown would be next on my list. Who would play there? I would have a game right around induction weekend with a northeastern team playing against a team that has somebody guaranteed to be inducted that weekend. Like when Ichiro is going to be elected to the Hall of Fame, you could schedule the Mariners and Red Sox for a game in Cooperstown. I think you schedule that game for the Thursday before induction weekend. You have Friday off (to use as a possible rain date) and then you finish the series back at Fenway Park or whoever would be the home team (that’s the schedule the Yankees and White Sox had for the Field of Dreams game and then the rest of the series). Cooperstown has Doubleday Field, but like the Field of Dreams, the dimensions aren’t big enough for a Major League game so they would have to build a field like they did at Fort Bragg and the Field of Dreams.
I’ve said that the Blue Jays should do one series or homestand per year at a CFL stadium in a different city (or build a temporary field somewhere in Canada, but you won’t lose out on attendance at a CFL stadium). Canadian football fields are bigger than American football fields so playing at an American football stadium would be tricky. Of course, lots of teams once played in football stadiums, but those stadiums were specifically built for both sports. But you’ve also had teams play in football stadiums that weren’t built for baseball. The Dodgers played at the Los Angeles Coliseum (but that was originally built for track and field, which requires a much bigger stadium than football does), the Rockies played at Mile High Stadium, and the Marlins played at Joe Robbie Stadium. I think the only current football stadiums I would consider would be the Los Angeles Coliseum or the Rose Bowl. I think renovations to the Los Angeles Coliseum might have made it less suitable for baseball. The Rose Bowl seems to have more area in the field than most football stadiums, but I’m sure it would still be a tight squeeze for baseball and you’d probably have to put up a big net to serve as the wall in left field or right field like they had in left field at the Los Angeles Coliseum. You could have the Dodgers play at the Los Angeles Coliseum in 2028, 2029, 2033, or 2034 to celebrate the 70th or 75th anniversaries or their move to Los Angeles or their first championship in Los Angeles (which they won when the Los Angeles Coliseum was their home ballpark). If you were going to play at the Rose Bowl, I would have the Angels host the Tigers as like a USC-Michigan connection since they have the most Rose Bowl appearances (if only there was some way to make sure the Tigers lost that game to reflect what happens most of the time when Michigan faces USC in the Rose Bowl).
Next year is the 75th anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. A Dodgers-Mets game at Maimonides Park in Brooklyn to celebrate the anniversary would be really cool. I like the idea of playing places like Fort Bragg or the Field of Dreams where you don’t have a Major League team in the state. If you can play games in the middle of the regular season in London, why not play a game in Hawaii or Alaska? It’s one thing to open the season in Japan or Australia and then have several days off before playing your first regular season game in the US, but the Yankees and Red Sox played in London right in the middle of the season. So I’m not ruling out Hawaii (the Dodgers are probably the team that makes the most sense for a game in Hawaii) or Alaska (Mariners). You could also use minor league stadiums to have a game to honor the history of the Negro Leagues like Regions Field in Birmingham. The Red Sox could play in any New England state. We’re two and a half decades away from the 200th anniversary of the first baseball game ever. That was in New Jersey. If there’s a good spot somewhere on the Hudson River where you could build a field that faces Manhattan, they could have the Yankees or Mets play a 200th anniversary of the first baseball game there. Let’s go through other states that have never had a Major League game (New Jersey actually did host some Dodger games at the end of the Brooklyn days) and who I would have play in each one. Some aren’t really necessary or practical. Like if you live in Delaware, it’s a small state and you’re not that far from Philadelphia or Baltimore. Or if you live in Wyoming or Montana, they’re such big states with such small populations. I guess you probably could get 8,000 people (about what the Field of Dreams held) to come to a game in Cheyenne or something, though. Anyway, here we go:
Delaware- Phillies or Orioles (maybe for the 250th anniversary of Delaware being the first state to ratify the Constitution)
Virginia- Nationals
West Virginia- Reds, Pirates, Orioles, or Nationals
South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee- Braves
Louisiana- Astros
Kentucky- Reds
Indiana- Cubs or White Sox
Arkansas- Cardinals
Oklahoma- Rangers vs. Yankees (for Mickey Mantle)
Kansas- Royals
North and South Dakota- Twins vs. Rockies in the foothills of Mount Rushmore would be cool for South Dakota
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah- Rockies
New Mexico- Diamondbacks vs. Rockies (this could be the Four Corners game)
Nevada- I guess any of the California teams or maybe the Diamondbacks
Oregon- Mariners vs. A’s
Many of those states require temporary fields to be built like Fort Bragg and the Field of Dreams. There are sites in other states I would definitely consider for a game. I’m thinking of the National Mall (Nationals), Gettysburg (Phillies vs. Pirates), Niagara Falls (Blue Jays), and the Grand Canyon (Diamondbacks). I don’t know how feasible any of the places I’ve mentioned would be. Like is there a place close enough to Mount Rushmore where you could build a field with a view of Mount Rushmore beyond the outfield that is accessible to enough people to make that game worth it? If there is, I think that would be really cool. But since I’ve never been there, I don’t know the geography at all to say if that makes any sense. But if it could be done, I think the places I’ve mentioned would be really cool. If anybody else has any suggestions, leave a comment. It was nice writing about something that Major League Baseball did well, rather than writing about Rob Manfred doing something really stupid.
Last year I blogged about my favorite movie ever. That came about because there weren’t any sports to watch with the pandemic. I’ve had the idea for this blog post in mind for many years and I finally got around to do it. The Dark Knight trilogy is my favorite movie trilogy and I decided to watch each movie on consecutive days once the Olympics ended. I’m not big on superhero movies, but Batman is the best superhero. Even though he’s the best superhero, I didn’t have much interest until I was hanging out with a friend one time and he had The Dark Knight on. We watched part of the movie and then went out, but I needed to see the whole thing. And then I made a point of seeing The Dark Knight Rises in the theater and I hardly ever see movies in the theater.
I really enjoy each movie, but there’s a lot of stuff in them that doesn't make much sense. So that’s what this blog post is about. It’s quite possible that some of these things I got wrong or I just missed something that explains something that I’m not getting. So if that’s the case, please leave a comment and set me straight. If you think I missed something that doesn’t make sense, leave a comment about that as well. None of these things diminish my enjoyment of the movies, but if you think me poking holes in the movies will diminish your enjoyment, then feel free to not read this. And if you haven’t seen the movies, stop reading, go watch the movies because they’re awesome, and then come back and read my thoughts. Anyway, let’s start at the beginning.
Batman Begins
When young Bruce gets scared at the play and they leave early, why do they go out into a back alley? Why not go out the main exit? You know, besides the fact that you don’t have a story without his parents getting killed.
Young police officer Jim Gordon puts his coat around young Bruce’s shoulders after his parents are killed. We’ll come back to that one much later.
How old was Bruce when his parents were killed? I would have put him at like 10 or 11, but 14 years later he’s been kicked out of Princeton when he goes to the hearing about Joe Chill being released from prison.
When Bruce Wayne goes to court for the hearing about Joe Chill being released from prison, it’s set in the past, but it’s not that far in the past. What kind of security do they have at this court if Bruce Wayne can get a gun into the building? Haven’t courts had metal detectors for a long time? Bruce spent seven years traveling the world and training after he had planned on shooting Joe Chill and then confronting Carmine Falcone. So that puts that part of the movie sometime in the 1990s. I definitely don’t think you’re getting into a court in a big city in the 1990s without going through a metal detector.
Bruce trades coats with a homeless guy. We’ll come back to that one later.
What are all the League of Shadows ninjas doing when Bruce burns down the temple? Bruce fights the fake Ra’s al Ghul. What are the rest of them doing? Did they escape? They are not helping fake Ra’s al Ghul stop Bruce from escaping. And then he saves the unconscious real Ra’s al Ghul from sliding off a cliff while barely avoiding falling off the cliff himself. Look, I know Bruce is supposed to be in pretty good shape, but the physical strength he would have needed to save Ra’s al Ghul in that situation is pretty absurd (he pretty much uses the strength of one arm and no other parts of his body to do it).
When Bruce returns to Gotham and is becoming Batman, he goes to talk to Jim Gordon about taking down Carmine Falcone because he knows Gordon is an honest cop. How does he know this? He did meet Gordon after his parents were killed, but that was like 21 years earlier. Maybe he remembers that encounter, but does he remember Gordon specifically? Even if he does remember Gordon, how does he know anything about him?
The homeless guy still has Bruce Wayne’s coat seven years later?
Everything Batman is doing in his first night going after the mob is very quick. But then he has the time to create the bat signal when he ties Falcone to the spotlight?
Alfred mentions how Bruce needs excuses for his injuries after his first night fighting the mob. That makes sense. But fortunately, he won’t have any injuries for the rest of the movie.
The microwave emitter was turned on when it was stolen from the ship. It seems like it would be kind of dangerous to transport a weapon that vaporizes water on a ship.
Dr. Crane drugs Falcone in prison. They said Falcone wanted an insanity defense and that’s why Crane comes in. But wouldn’t anybody who interacted with Falcone realize that he was completely different after he met with Crane? Like obviously Crane did something to him.
Speaking of Bruce not having any injuries, Crane drugs Batman, pours gasoline on him, and lights him on fire. But he doesn’t have any burns or anything. That makes sense.
Okay, apparently Bruce is celebrating his 30th birthday. That would make him 9 when his parents were killed. That makes sense, but then he was kicked out of Princeton when he was 23?
Batman takes Rachel to the Batcave in the Tumbler after Crane drugged her at Arkham Asylum. He tells Gordon he brought his car. Was he just driving this around Gotham and nobody noticed until now? And then he’s driving across the rooftops in the Tumbler. I know the Tumbler is supposed to be a defense project or whatever, but it can jump from rooftop to rooftop and go invisible. It seems like pretty unrealistic technology.
Bruce Wayne walks into his party and they’re singing Happy Birthday before he was even there? That makes sense.
Ra’s al Ghul says that the League of Shadows has been around for thousands of years. That seems a little unrealistic.
Ra’s al Ghul says that Bruce burned his house and left him for dead. That’s half true as Bruce saved his life. But also, he means to leave Bruce for dead. But the League of Shadows is proving to be incompetent. Ra’s al Ghul easily could have made sure Bruce was dead. And his henchman that he left at Wayne Manor couldn’t stop Alfred from rescuing Bruce.
The Dark Knight
During the bank robbery, when the one bank robber suspects that the Joker is going to kill him, the Joker says that he kills the bus driver, which of course he does. But counting on the bus to crash into the bank and kill that other robber didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Of course, the Joker could have just killed the bus driver and the other robber if the bus didn’t hit the other guy as planned, but it was just like there was no doubt that the guy would be in the right spot right when the bus crashed into the bank.
Why is Crane not locked up after the events of the first movie?
In the parking garage, Batman jumps down and lands perfectly on Crane’s van as it’s speeding away. It seems incredibly unlikely that he’d be able to time that perfectly considering he can’t even see the van. And why does this speeding van just stop when Batman lands on it? That’s not going to be the last time that the laws of physics are violated in this movie.
Okay, in the last movie we had a gun in the court building presumably in the 1990s. In this one, we get somebody trying to shoot Harvey Dent in a courtroom in the present (2008, but maybe it’s not actually three years after the first movie). You definitely weren’t getting into a court building in a major city without going through a metal detector in 2008 or whatever year the movie is supposed to be set in.
At Bruce Wayne’s fundraiser for Harvey Dent, the Joker drops Rachel out of the window. Batman goes after her and somehow gravity pulls him down faster than Rachel and he catches her. And then they both land on a cab after falling several stories and … they’re fine. That wouldn’t cause any serious injuries or anything.
What’s the deal with Batman taking the shattered bullet from the brick after Richard Dent and Patrick Harvey are killed by the Joker’s henchmen? That’s followed by the scene with Bruce and Alfred with the machine firing at bricks. It seems like he’s comparing different shots to the brick he took from the murder scene to see which one was the right one so his computer could reconstruct the bullet to get finger prints. But wouldn’t that only work if you knew exactly the distance and the angle from which the original bullet was fired? Of all my complaints, I feel like this one has an explanation that I’m not totally getting. But this is Batman doing some scientific work, so this is a good time to insert this video:
Jim Gordon takes a bullet for the mayor at Commissioner Loeb’s funeral and then they fake his death. What did faking his death accomplish? He says later that it was to protect his family and it’s as if it was premeditated, like he knew he was going to get shot. And it seems like nobody knew he was alive. Like his family didn’t know and Harvey Dent and the mayor were surprised to find out that he was alive. But somebody had to be in on this plan with him.
I definitely have some issues with the Joker’s attack on the convoy of Harvey Dent. Batman jumps over a car in the Tumbler to take a bazooka shot from the Joker to save the convoy. How could he know when the shot was coming so that he could time it perfectly? After Batman has the Tumbler self-destruct, he’s on the motorcycle and he wraps the Joker’s truck up so that it flips over. After this huge truck goes airborne and flips over, the Joker is … totally fine, no injuries. And Batman drives the motorcycle towards a building at a high speed, kind of climbs the wall with the front tire, turns around, and comes to a complete stop. Somebody is going to need to explain the physics on that one to me. And then we find out that Jim Gordon isn’t dead as he arrests the Joker.
When Jim Gordon leaves the Joker in the interrogation room, we find out that Batman is in the room standing right behind the Joker. How did he get in there? Was he already there when they brought the Joker in? I know the light comes on and it reveals Batman, but was this room completely dark and nobody noticed him? Or just the end of the room behind the Joker was completely dark and the rest of the room wasn’t? How does that work? Or did he get in there after they brought the Joker in? How would that happen without anybody noticing?
The Joker seems pretty confident that they’re going to be able to save either Rachel or Harvey, but not both. Of course, Batman does save Harvey (thinking he was saving Rachel), but it was a really tight window to save either of them. Batman barely gets to Harvey in time and Gordon almost gets to Rachel in time. Did the Joker know that Batman would be faster than the police and they wouldn’t get to the other one in time? And did he know exactly when to give him the locations so that only Batman would make it to his location in time?
What happens when the Joker sets off the cell phone bomb inside the guy in the MCU? You have this huge explosion and the Joker and Lau are totally fine, but all the police are killed/incapacitated? How does that work?
When the Joker meets Harvey in the hospital, he talks about plans and how everybody is okay with things going according to plan even if the plan is horrifying. He says, “If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics because it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little, old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds.” That quote makes no sense. How is the example of the mayor different from the other examples he gives? Wouldn’t that be part of a plan also?
Harvey shoots Maroni’s driver causing the car to accelerate and flip over. Of course, Harvey escapes this incident unscathed (he did put his seatbelt on before shooting the driver, but I don’t think the seatbelt is preventing serious injury when that happens).
When Batman throws the Joker off the building, he shoots the grapple gun at the Joker to catch him. Of course, he hits the Joker’s foot and he’s able to pull him back up. That’s a pretty ridiculous shot to be that accurate and nail him in the foot.
In the last scene, Harvey flips the coin to decide if he’s going to shoot Batman, himself, and Gordon’s son in that order. Of course, the coin decided that he wouldn’t shoot himself, but why wouldn’t he put himself last? And as he’s flipping the coin for Gordon’s son, Batman tackles him off the building. This time, there’s actually a consequence for this. Harvey is killed by the fall. But Batman is fine.
The Dark Knight Rises
Is Bane running a highly trained military? Because that’s what it would take to pull off this plane crash while kidnapping Dr. Pavel and getting him off the plane safely and onto another plane. I guess watching the rest of the movie you could say that he is running a highly trained military. How does he have the money to do that?
How does Bane eat?
How did Bane get to Gotham City? He’s wanted by the CIA. He’d be pretty easy to recognize. How does he get into the country?
So Bane is just living in the sewers? How does that work? Does he have a bed down there?
How does John Blake know exactly where Commissioner Gordon is going to end up when he escapes from Bane? Bane, who lives in the sewers, doesn’t seem to know where Gordon is going to end up, but Blake knows?
Blake met Bruce Wayne as a kid and knew that he was Batman because of a look on his face? Nobody else can figure this out, but some kid figured it out?
Bruce Wayne goes to a doctor and gets a pretty terrible report on his physical condition. We’ve seen him limping around. He’s at least in his late 30s by now. But he’s going to just go back to being Batman?
Alfred tells Bruce the rumors about Bane. Where has Alfred heard these rumors?
We see Bane going through security at the stock exchange and how he gets through. How did everybody else get their weapons into the stock exchange? How did they get these motorcycles into the stock exchange? It seems like late afternoon when Bane leaves the stock exchange. But then it’s totally dark during the chase. How long was this chase going on for? During the chase, we have one of the hostages on the back of a motorcycle who just ascends from the motorcycle into the air. Um, what? How did that happen? Was Batman rescuing him somehow? Am I missing something obvious? And what’s the deal with Batman’s motorcycle when he makes a sharp turn? The wheels like roll over sideways. How does that work? Then Batman escapes on the Bat. How did he get it there? Did nobody notice this very odd aircraft flying around Gotham before Batman used it to escape?
During the fight on the roof, it’s Batman and Selina Kyle against several of Bane’s thugs. Bane’s highly trained military can’t handle two people? And Selina Kyle has a gun that Batman won’t let her use, but none of Bane’s thugs have guns (other than the one guy who starts shooting at them from above and forces them to flee)?
John Daggett gets mad when Miranda Tate takes control of Wayne Enterprises and he asks where Bane is during his tirade. Um, Bane is standing right there. Look around the room and you’ll see him.
When Selina Kyle takes Batman to Bane, they’re walking together. She says to one of Bane’s thugs, “He’s behind you.” And then Batman appears from behind the thug. How did he get there without the thug noticing?
Bane sets off an explosion to show Batman that he’s below his armory. This seems like a very impressive feat of engineering that he’s able to set off an explosion that doesn’t cause the whole thing to collapse upon him.
Selina Kyle knocks out the police officer who tries to arrest her at the airport, but then she just surrenders to John Blake? I guess you could say that the police officer approached her in the bathroom with nobody else around, but Blake confronts her in public on the jetway. How does Blake get to the jetway without encountering her before that point? How did he know which plane she was getting on unless he followed her to the gate? I’m assuming she used an alias since she was wanted for kidnapping a Congressman. But the fact that he’s coming from the opposite direction down the jetway towards her suggests that he didn’t just follow her.
What’s the deal with Bane’s prison? Like it’s a prison and it’s really hard to escape from, but if you can escape, that’s totally cool. Where is this prison? It certainly doesn’t seem to be in the United States. How did Bane get Bruce Wayne out of the country to bring him there? How does Bane get back into the country when he is definitely a wanted man? This might be the part of the whole trilogy that makes the least sense to me.
Bane says that the bomb is going to explode in five months. Let’s keep that one in mind for later.
Hines Ward returns the kickoff for a touchdown as the explosions are happening and the field collapses. And then he just turns around and looks at it like, “How ‘bout that?” Like wouldn’t he be trying to run to safety in that scenario and not just hanging out in the stadium that is collapsing?
Commissioner Gordon just knew that two guys were coming to kill him in his hospital room and was ready for them?
There have been almost 3,000 cops underground for three months. They say they’ve been getting food and water. How are they getting food and water underground for 3,000 people for three months? Now Lucius Fox says the bomb is going off in 23 days, which would be about a month earlier than Bane said it would explode.
Bruce escapes the prison. Now he’s in the middle of nowhere with no money or identification. How does he get back to the United States and back to Gotham?
Lucius tells Bruce that the bomb is going off in 12 hours. This happens when it is still daytime and it’s in the winter. In the winter, you have less than 12 hours of sunlight. So if the bomb is going off in 12 hours, it should be dark when it explodes.
Batman has 12 hours to save the city, but he spent some of that time rigging a flaming bat symbol on a bridge?
Batman tells Selina Kyle they have 45 minutes to save the city. At that point it’s still dark. But it’s going to be very bright by the time the bomb explodes. And they’ve got 45 minutes, but Batman goes to fight Bane? I know he’s got Gordon working on dealing with the bomb, but shouldn’t finding the bomb be the priority? Leave Bane alone and find the bomb. He’s trying to get the trigger for the bomb from Bane. That would make sense if you had lots of time to spare, but that bomb is going off whether or not somebody presses the trigger.
Talia al Ghul mentions 12 million people about to die. So let’s say Gotham is about the size of New York City. They had most of their police force trapped underground and that was almost 3,000 people? That seemed like a small number so I googled and found out that New York City has about 36,000 police officers. Maybe that’s why there’s so much crime.
The autopilot issue with the Bat was brought up earlier in the movie. We’re going to find out that Bruce Wayne fixed it. But when Selina Kyle asks if he’s going to eject from the Bat after flying the bomb out over the water, he says, “No autopilot.” I know they want us to think that Batman died, but why even have this exchange in the movie? I guess it’s to remind us about the autopilot issue and have us think that Batman is going to die. But isn’t Selina Kyle one of the few people he wouldn’t want to have think that he’s dead?
When Gordon wants to know who the hero who saved Gotham is, Batman says, “A hero can be anybody, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.” So we have a callback to a scene from the first movie that would have happened about 30 years earlier. Like maybe Bruce Wayne would remember that event, but remembering Gordon specifically seems a little hard to believe. But Jim Gordon immediately remembers it and knows what Batman is talking about? (By the way, I love this scene and use it when I’m teaching about September 11, but it doesn’t make much sense when you think about it.)
Why is Bruce Wayne presumed dead at the end of the movie? We know why Batman is presumed dead and the people at his grave all know who Batman was, but they’re not telling anybody who Batman was.
So yeah, if I got something totally wrong or you can explain something that I’m not getting, please leave a comment. It’s weird to me that there’s now as much time between Batman in 1989 and Batman Begins in 2005. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I think 1989 Batman was pretty good. I don’t think the rest of that quadrilogy was all that good (I think I saw all of those movies at some point, I know I saw at least three of the four, but sequels are not that memorable). The Batman is coming out next year and it’s supposed to be the start of a new trilogy. It’s so easy to mess up a superhero movie (I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on a plane, it was terrible) and it’s going to be tough to follow the Dark Knight trilogy. The Batman is going to have the Riddler and the Penguin, two classic Batman villains who weren’t in the Dark Knight trilogy, so that’s interesting. Maybe Clownface will appear in one of the sequels (see the Simpsons video above). But it seems like Hollywood could have waited longer to do Batman again.
It’s a year late, but it’s nice to be able to enjoy the Olympics again. And the Winter Olympics are coming up in less than a year. But it’s weird to watch these events with no fans. I would have delayed the Summer Olympics another year and then delayed the Paris Olympics until 2025 and then we’d be back on schedule for Los Angeles in 2028. But actually, why not have the Olympics every three years? Then we could make it so that you’d have Olympics every 18 months between the Summer and Winter Olympics.
As I’m writing this, I’m watching the United States dominate Iran in basketball. That’s nice after a bad loss to start the Olympics for the US. NBC is using Roundball Rock for Olympic basketball so that’s cool, but they’re giving us the height of players in meters. What? This is America, we don’t use the silly metric system. If you want to give me heights in meters for sports like swimming or track and field where the races are measured in meters, fine, it’s still silly for an American audience, but I’ll live with it. But how are you giving us meters for basketball? The other bad thing about Olympic basketball is being forced to root for Kevin Durant. If Kyrie Irving was on the team, I think I just wouldn’t watch.
I like the Winter Olympics more than the Summer Olympics. The Winter Olympics come in the dead time of the sports calendar and when the weather is bad. The Summer Olympics come at a time that is pretty dead, but the weather is good and my favorite sport is still going on. Also the Winter Olympics have curling, which is awesome. But the Summer Olympics are still fun. I’m going to go through the sports and rank them by my interest in them (I’m going by the sports listed on the NBC Olympics website, so if I missed anything, it’s their fault):
No Interest
Artistic Swimming- I don’t know what this is. Is this what we’re calling synchronized swimming now? We have real swimming. We don’t need artistic swimming.
Boxing- I’m not a boxing fan to begin with and it doesn’t seem like a sport that lends itself to competing several times in a span of two weeks.
Cycling- I mean, this is a sport where Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens would fit right in.
Equestrian- I have no idea how this sport even works and I’m not interested in finding out. I’m going to assume the horse is more important than the human. They should give the horses the medals.
Golf- This is a sport I’ve never understood. Like I get how it could be fun to play. I don’t get why somebody would want to watch other people play golf. If mini golf was an Olympic sport, that would be more interesting.
Gymnastics- It’s the figure skating of the Summer Olympics. Other people care, I don’t. Obviously these are amazing athletes, but I have no interest in watching it. I generally dislike sports where the outcome depends on corrupt judges.
Judo, Karate, and Taekwondo- Apparently these are all different Olympic sports. I have no idea what the difference is between them and I’m not going to try to find out.
Rhythmic gymnastics- This sounds like gymnastics, but sillier.
Shooting- If you’re going to have shooting, it should be combined with something completely unrelated, like biathlon with skiing and shooting in the Winter Olympics. If you had to like throw a javelin and then shoot a target from the spot where your javelin landed, then I might be interested.
Skateboarding- I think I heard a 13 year old won a medal. Yeah, I’m not going to care about this one.
Weightlifting- Unlike several sports on this list, I completely understand how this sport works. You have to lift the most weight. But that doesn’t make it interesting.
Minimal Interest
Archery- It’s definitely an impressive skill. If there’s nothing else interesting on, I might watch it.
Canoe/Kayak- This is something that I’ve actually enjoyed doing myself. I don’t know how exciting of a sport it is to watch on TV, though.
Diving- The only thing I’m interested in is how little of a splash they can make. I might not watch any diving, but if I do, that’s what I’ll be watching.
Fencing- This is a terrible TV sport, but I will always root for Notre Dame athletes and we pretty much have the best fencing program in the country. The US has won three Olympic gold medals in fencing and they were all people who fenced (Is that the verb?) at Notre Dame. Mariel Zagunis won gold in 2004 and 2008 (and bronze in 2008 and 2016). She was a student when I was a student. I knew we had a gold medalist at Notre Dame when I was there. When I first transferred there, my roommate Jorge took me to watch fencing and introduced me to her. I didn’t realize she was the gold medalist until later. And Lee Kiefer won a gold medal this year.
Field hockey- Street hockey would be more interesting.
Modern pentathlon- Is there a difference between modern pentathlon and regular pentathlon?
Rowing and sailing- Sports that involve racing can’t be terrible (except for cycling with its rampant steroid usage). And they’re on water so that’s cool.
Soccer- It’s such a silly sport, but if the United States has a chance to win a medal, then I might watch. Let me go through my biggest objections to soccer. First of all, all the players have perfectly good hands but only two of the 22 players on the field are allowed to use them. Like if it was a sport for disabled people who didn’t have full ability to use their arms and/or hands, then I would get it. Second, you have a sport with a gigantic goal and it’s impossible to score. Like how many soccer balls could you fit through the goal at once? I just googled it and Google says 363. How many basketballs can fit through a hoop at once? The answer is two. Yes, soccer has a goalie, but the goalie occupies such a small percentage of the goal and still nobody can score. It’s so silly. Hockey has a goalie who occupies a much larger percentage of the goal than a soccer goalie and there’s much more scoring in hockey than there is in soccer (and there’s not a lot of scoring in hockey). And then there’s the clock issue. Why don’t they just stop the clock when somebody gets hurt or there’s a penalty or whatever? We have the ability to do this. Other sports do it all the time. But soccer just keeps it going and then at the end of the half or game they’ll add like three minutes. But three minutes really means like two minutes and 51 seconds or three minutes and 18 seconds or something like that. Just stop the clock and then we don’t have to guess when the game ends. I’m sure there are other objections I could come up with, but those are the big ones.
Sport climbing- I have no idea how you win at this sport, but I’m kind of interested in finding out. Is it a race? Maybe I’ll find out at some point during the Olympics.
Surfing- I’ve had this on TV a little bit, but I have no idea how you win. Like there was a clock counting down and I had no idea what that meant.
Tennis- I am somewhat interested in tennis in general, but it’s not a sport that lends itself to the Olympics. Like how is tennis in the Olympics any different from any other tennis tournament? I guess the only thing would be that in doubles you have to have a partner from your own country and in other tournaments your partner could be anybody. I’d much rather watch Wimbledon than Olympic tennis.
Trampoline- I’m guessing that this is a sport that involves doing a routine and there are judges. I would be more interested if it was just to see who could jump the highest.
Triathlon- You could just throw some shooting in there and make it quadathlon.
Wrestling- Unlike judo, karate, and taekwondo, I know what wrestling entails. The fact that it has existed for centuries makes it slightly more interesting.
Legitimately Interested (I just put the first two categories in alphabetical order, but I’ll rank these.)
13. Softball- Things that would make this sport more interesting would be if more countries were decent at it and if it wasn’t so hard to score.
12. Table Tennis- It’s not bad, but it’s not as fun to watch as the scene in Forrest Gump would suggest. I would say it would be better to watch if the camera was positioned to the side of the table rather than behind the table.
11. Badminton- It’s kind of like tennis except I can watch tennis throughout the year if I want. The only time I would ever watch badminton would be in the Olympics.
10. Rugby- They play 14 minute games. That seems like what the video game version of the sport should be. It is interesting to watch. I get how the scoring works. I’m not sure if there are any other rules in this sport. It seems like you are allowed to do anything short of murder.
9. Basketball 3 x 3- It’s like they took the sport of basketball and made it not as good. But I do like the idea of having different versions of sports in the Olympics. As I’m writing this, the US has already won 21 medals in swimming. In theory, we could win medals in men’s and women’s for both regular basketball and 3 x 3 (although apparently we weren’t in the men’s competition for 3 x 3). So at most, a country could win four basketball medals. Let’s get more events for basketball and other sports. A three point contest with several rounds could be an event. You already have silly sports with corrupt judges, so why not a slam dunk contest? In baseball, you could have a home run derby and a throwing competition based on accuracy and arm strength or something. You could have a triples speed competition where you have to hit a ball to the outfield and then round the bases from home to third and you have to end with a slide. In the Winter Olympics, you could have a hockey shootout competition and a hardest shot competition. I’m sure there are other things we could add for these sports that don’t have several events.
8. Handball- You see, this is what soccer should be. You’re trying to get a ball into a goal and you can use your hands. And people can actually score in this game. It would rank higher if the US was good at it (I don’t know if we’re even competing in it).
7. Baseball- Baseball is my favorite sport, but not as an Olympic sport. I care much more about the Dodgers and in international competition, I’m more interested in the World Baseball Classic (which is not the greatest because of how they have to limit pitch counts). Olympic baseball is all guys who are well past their prime or players that nobody has ever heard of.
6. Track and Field. Unfortunately Tom Hammond is involved. Can NBC learn from their Notre Dame coverage and replace him with Mike Tirico? It seems like this has been the main event of the Olympics for as long as I can remember. It’s been swimming the first week and then track and field the second week. I guess the advantage for track and field is a greater variety of events (swimming just has different distances and strokes), but I still like swimming better so I would do track and field the first week and make swimming the main event.
5. Basketball- The advantage basketball has over baseball is that it’s all players that you know playing for the US. The disadvantage is that I have to root for Kevin Durant. I definitely like basketball more than the sports I’ll rank ahead of it, but I can watch basketball for most of the year and it’s not that much fun when the US is just expected to win. Like I’m not going to be upset about a silver medal in any of the sports that are still to come on this list, but if we win the silver medal in basketball, it’s a failure. And this year there’s a decent chance that we won’t win the gold so that’s not fun.
4. Beach Volleyball- Unlike indoor volleyball, this is most definitely a summer sport. I think some people might rank this one even higher than I did. It’s a fun sport to watch, but I’d go with regular volleyball ahead of it. My criticism of beach volleyball is that it seems like everybody plays the exact same way. There’s no variety in the style of play. If you’ve seen one beach volleyball match, you’ve seen them all. It’s like watching Big 12 football. In Big 12 football, you’re going to get lots of passing and no defense. That doesn’t mean I won’t watch it, but I’d like it more if there were different styles of play.
3. Water Polo- They’re beating each other up in the water while swimming the whole time. I have no idea how they have the energy to do this for more than like 90 seconds. It’s another sport where you have to get a ball into a goal. The goal is much smaller than soccer and you have the whole swimming and beating each other up the whole time thing and there’s much more scoring than soccer.
2. Volleyball- This should be a bigger sport in America. It’s really fun to watch. I went to a couple of volleyball matches in college, but I should have gone to more. There should be more college volleyball on TV and after football, basketball, baseball, and maybe hockey, this is the sport I would want Notre Dame to be good at (we made it to the NCAA tournament last year, but I’m talking really good).
1. Swimming- While track and field is hurt by Tom Hammond, swimming benefits from having Rowdy Gaines. The United States has produced some great swimmers and it’s always great to see the US do well. Unlike a lot of other Olympic sports, I don’t need to see it any more often than every summer Olympics, but when it’s the Olympics, I love it. Like I would have no interest in watching US qualifying for Olympic swimming. I don’t care who qualifies because I don’t know who most of them are. Also, I’m assuming the races in qualifying wouldn’t be as exciting as the races in the Olympics (the people who are qualifying are beating people who aren’t good enough to make the Olympics). But once they’re in the Olympics, I’ll hear about them and be all in on rooting for the Americans against the rest of the world.
