Minor Plot hole: A CIA-sponsored aircraft does not detect a non-stealth plane flying slowly above its flight trajectory. This means that part of the subplot for this movie goes something like this:
U.S General: You wanted to see me Mr. President ?
Obama: Yes, I unfortunately bring sad news my dear friend. The recession hit us hard. We have to make difficult decisions to save the economy – What I mean by that is……Radars.
U.S General: I’m sorry sir, I am not sure I –
Obama: Radars. We are going to scrap radars from U.S aircraft. All of them. Those things are luxuries we as the American people can no longer afford.
Bane being the mastermind that he is, knew about the lack of radars on CIA planes, otherwise his plan would have fell to shit.
Minor Plot hole: Dagget’s plan to take over Wayne Enterprises makes no sense. Ok. He needs Bruce Wayne’s fingerprints to make a bunch of bad stock decisions in order to momentarily ruin the company and push him out of the board. Fine – so far so good.
But why the hell would you use Bruce’s fingerprints the same day as your planned Stock Market attack? Don’t you think that if all the policemen are not descendants of interbreeding families they would find it suspicious that Bruce Wayne was not present on the scene of the attack and that none of the hundreds of witnesses saw him there? Could they find it suspicious that Wayne Enterprises goes down the exact second the terrorists are leaving the Gotham Stock Market in shambles? Wouldn’t all transactions be cancelled or called into question anyway after the computer systems were hacked in an armed raid? If the whole plan was to get a simple atomic bomb – couldn’t they just buy or create one themselves without having to produce this convoluted mess that could fail at every step of the way?
Minor Plot hole: So the Gotham police force is finally out of the sewers after 5 months of increasing malnutrition and gay urges. Their plan? Find Bane’s army (soldiers with AK-47s and tanks) and charge them with a few handguns. No surprise. No surrounding strategy. Just a good old suicidal medieval B-line. It’s a miracle Bane’s soldiers also happened to be retards themselves and decided to fist fight trained police officers instead of mowing them down with their weapons. But one thing is even weirder: all the cops were clean-shaved. This means that aside from food – Gillette razors and creams were the number 1 item sent in the sewers.
Minor Plot hole: People on the internet complain that Batman appeared out of nowhere in Gotham city after leaving the desert. Those same people would probably call on the UN Security council for a drone strike on Christopher Nolan’s house if they considered the fact that Bruce Wayne had to spend days hiding around one of Gotham’s destroyed bridge to paint a batman symbol with gasoline. He probably needed a few gallons – which mean he had to climb up and down a few times to finish his masterpiece while avoiding both Bane’s mercenaries and the police. But you know, you can’t put a price on a shitty bat-signal that will destroy your surprise advantage and potentially kill you when you can add the thrill of trying to disarm a nuclear bomb minutes before it explodes instead of having a head-start.
Minor Plot hole: Catwoman is the best burglar in the world. She is the definition of stealthy: she can drive a 800-pounds motorcycle up a set of stairs right next to Batman and Bane without them noticing anything. It’s probably because of the high-heels.
Major Plot hole: This exchange should have happened somewhere.
Gordon: Bane is in the sewers. I feel like his plan will unravel soon. Send everyone.
Gotham Cop: What do you mean everyone?
Gordon: EVERYONE!
Gotham Cop: Didn’t the last two films establish how smart you were? You want to send a thousand cops in the sewers at the same time? What if they get stuck? What if there is an explosion – you know, similar to the one that almost got you in the face? What if a scared woman calls 911 because a crazy guy made nunchuks out of her two children and tries to kill her with it? Do we tell her to run towards the sewers to get saved? Would it be better to just send a few? Or have a strategy? Or are you really gonna follow that screenplay so that Gotham can lose all its cops without character names in the most ridiculous way possible?
Gordon: EVERYONE!
Major Plot hole: Bane commands one of his soldiers to stay in the crashing plane – aka to sacrifice his life – because the CIA will expect the crashed remains to have one prisoner body inside. But Bane simply wasted a comrade’s life. The CIA has engineers and forensic experts that will be able to see that the plane was attacked from the exterior – bullets fired from outside the windows – and holes dug outside the cockpit by mechanical wrenches.
There is no way for the CIA to assume nothing fishy and fancy happened. Considering the wings will be miles away from the rest of the remains – even an inbred postman would be able to grasp the physical concept that no plane can crash like this on its own. Thus, with all the efforts put into his master-plan, Bane sacrificed a soldier for nothing and put a lot of effort into a stealth operation that will simply not work. Which is all the more confusing when you think about the fact that the actor who plays the sacrificed soldier shows-up later in the film on a bridge scene with the U.S. army.
Plot contrivance: Nolan’s Batman universe is realistic. This is why the Stock Exchange attack is clearly shown during the day only to suddenly turn into nightfall 4 minutes later when Batman shows-up on his Bat-cycle to Bat-own the shit out of those time sorcerers.
Plot contrivance: When Catwoman makes the fingerprint deal to sell Bruce Wayne’s identity she tricks the bad guy into using the kidnapped official’s phone, hence allowing the police to trace his whereabouts as he has been reported missing. However, the police arrive at the bar in a matter of seconds – including Commissioner Gordon! They must have been hanging around just out the front.
Plot contrivance: The police finally corners the Batman after his 8 year leave of absence. The excitement gets the best of the GCPD and the raging boners are increasingly difficult to hide. Batman is stuck in a hallway with cops covering the only exit. But SURPRISE! Batman takes off in his flying Bat-Lobster that generates more sound than a pack of rogue lawnmowers in a kinder garden.
How the hell did Batman land this flying sound-nightmare in the middle of the city without anyone noticing? Yes, it’s painted black – which I am sure was quite useful when he landed the thing during the sunny day before reaching the Bank. Adding the fact that it would still sound like a helicopter flying right beside your face makes us wonder what type of people live in Gotham.
Plot contrivance: Listen-up kids. If you ever go Banesane and break your sibling’s back by bending it with your knee because they ate the last blue Popsicle in the freezer– just follow those easy but long instructions from the world’s best chiropractor who took care of Batman in a desert shithole:
1) Punch the spine
Now that you followed all the instructions, your brother/sister is now ready to play with you again and mommy and daddy will never know what happened. Have fun and play safe.
Plot contrivance: It is very nice of Bane to offer Batman a television while he stays in an underground prison in Shitistan. You have to realize that a few of his henchmen had to dig a 30-stories hole through the desert beside the prison to be able to pass the cable and power source to get the TV to work. Then those same henchmen had to think out-loud ‘’Now where the fuck do we connect this ?’’ and realize that the closest power supply was in the neighboring town a few miles away. Then they had to buy more wire extensions and dig another small tunnel to hide the wires. The few henchmen that survived the exhausting ordeal then had to sexually bargain the access to an electrical socket owned by the tribe leader who controls all the electricity in the region. This could have been a movie by itself.
Plot contrivance: Bruce becomes a cripple (for whatever reason we might add). He doesn’t think he has what it take to return as the Batman anymore. Fortunately for him, he gets a robot leg upgrade that makes him able to kick through concrete. So when Cyborg-Batman meets his nemesis, Bane, for the first time, he sticks to his fists to hurt Bane and never uses his Super-Saiyan leg to tear his limbs off. And actually, the demonstration of his new cyber-leg will be the first and only time it is ever seen or mentioned in the screenplay.
Plot Contrivance: The CIA agrees to take some hooded prisoners aboard their plane because they work for the ‘masked-man’ called Bane. The CIA, an organization that is known to be very rigid, thoughtful and safe in their internal action plan decides to NOT look at any of the prisoner’s face before getting them on the plane. You know, in case someone has a bomb or emitter in their mouth – or if someone has a mask and is called Bane.
Plot Contrivance: Batman landed his Bat-Lobster on top of a building in Gotham and during the 5 months mega-looting by millions of angry citizens, no one ever found it: including Bane’s mercenaries who knew it existed and still had to be somewhere on the island.
Plot Contrivance: When the nuclear device is about 2 minutes away from exploding and Batman decides to fly it out to sea, he spends precious seconds making out with Catwoman and then waxing lyrical with Commissioner Gordon. It’s not like he had 10 minutes to get outside the 6 mile blast radius, he had 120 seconds. And he’s making out with a chick. Fine it was Anne Hathaway in a leather suit – but still.
Retroactive continuity: Police Commissioner Gordon is attacked and needs hospitalization. He is Gotham City’s leading Police officer, yet his explanation that there is an underground base being built by a super villain is laughed off and ignored – thus his need to approach Bruce Wayne. Considering the borderline supernatural damage caused by previous Gotham villains in two separate occasions, and taking into account Gordon’s excellent record on helping Batman defeating those villains on both accounts, surely the powers that be would take his warnings with profound seriousness and examine more deeply his reports. Instead they apparently ask him if he’s seen any over-sized alligators. This movie simply ignores Gordon’s past efforts in the first 2/3 of the trilogy.
Unaddressed Issue: How did Bruce Wayne get back in Gotham city? He had a few days to do it so it is not that farfetched of an idea to conceive. But – he was malnourished, beaten, penniless, stuck in Shitistan and he got inside the most heavily guarded city on Earth. Did he use a secret tunnel? Did he use George Clooney’s Bat-skates to cross the river? That could work as an explanation –but I pulled it out of my ass, nothing in the movie implied for an easy way for Bruce to show up again in the city. He just teleported there like a video game character using a scroll of town portal.
Unaddressed Issue: If Bruce Wayne is alive at the coffee table at the end – how come no one recognizes him? After all, he is the famous dead billionaire of Gotham City. Would you recognize Steve Jobs if he was taking a coffee right beside you ?
Unaddressed Issue: Gotham citizens are weird. They hate the rich millionaires but they are cool with an exposed-cranium Darth Vader wanna-be who exploded their Football team, mayor and bridges. They also believe what Bane says about Gordon – I mean, this is assuming any of them understood what the fuck he was saying through that metal face-hugger. But as an audience, we know the letter is real, but how can the citizens just blindly assume it’s true? It’s just a piece of paper read by a stranger who exploded hundreds of people a few seconds ago. Is it the best way to get Gotham’s trust?
Unaddressed Issue: Why did Bane and Talia want to die with Gotham? Why did Bane and Talia want to give 5 months of anarchy to Gotham before blowing it up…..instead of just blowing it up? Why did Talia want to finish her father’s will if she hated him? Why did Talia want to finish her father’s will if Gotham was not the same corrupted city it used to be with all the mobsters in prison? Why did Marion Cottillard play Talia’s death scene like a FOX Kids cartoon character?
