—Spoilers—

This truly awful movie is a study in paranoid fantasies. It weaves an imaginary world of good and evil in the kindergarten-simple style that is rarely seen outside the wasteland of TV punditry. The movie begins with, as many comic-book movies do, an event involving an impossibly skilled person conducting some absurdly complicated scheme wherein several extremely unlikely things have to occur in concert. Actually, that’s not quite true. This movie begins with two. The 90 lb. female lead is then presented as an expert in both the thieving arts and the martial arts, yet is inexplicably impoverished while enjoying the ability to blend with high society. The ridiculous villain is propelled by some terrible (and I mean that in the “terrible movie” sense of the word) cause to destroy Bruce Wayne. Oh, and he’s going to kill millions of people as well. The genocide is a bit incidental to the Bruce-Wayne-killing part, but some IQ 64 writer thought it would make for enough drama to camouflage the idiocy of everything claiming to be plot in this flick.

Anyway, after the 90 lb. woman in high heels kicks Batman’s crippled ass to steal his fingerprints, the handoff is an attempted ripoff resulting in some of the bad guys getting killed and Commissioner Gordon getting kidnapped. A woman (who is obvious to any person capable of feeding himself with utensils as the ultimate villain) appears as the convenient non-feline Bat-crush™. A few double-crosses later, the flimsy manga cartoon playing Catwoman delivers Bruce Wayne up to the most stupidly-named villain found outside the realm of terrible 1980s cartoons: Bane. Perhaps “Enemyman” was taken. Anyway, Batman’s years of Batmanning have left him with no cartilage, rendering him physically inferior to the younger Bane. Bane breaks Batman and throws him into an inescapable prison on the other side of the world. It has only been escaped once before. Then Bane’s dozens of henchmen take over a city of many millions by ruining a football game.

Thankfully, minor injuries such as a literally protruding vertebra can apparently be successfully treated with a rope and a swift kick. During Bruce Wayne’s twine-and-punch-based treatment, Bane acquires the Bat-thermonuke™ that Bruce Wayne had built in his spare time.

Conveniently, the Bat-thermonuke™ will take several months to explode. This can be calculated to the minute, but that will probably not be important to the rest of the movie. Some old blind doctor (the one who instructed the Bat-cellmate™ in the rope-and-beating treatment of traumatic spine injuries) informs the Bat-cellmate™ about something he probably heard from The Secret: don’t use a safety rope while trying to escape. In the same way that not wearing a seatbelt makes one a better driver, not having a death-preventing rope makes Batman a better jumper. Once Batman decides he really wants to heal, he has a miraculous recovery, escapes the prison, and is somehow instantly transported to a completely sealed off Gotham City.

I assume a Rocky-style training montage took place off screen, or I was meditating to salvage brain cells while it took place on screen. Post-montage Batman kicks montageless Bane’s ass in too-quick-to-be-end-boss fashion. Then the Bat-crushT stabs him in the kidney. It turns out she was the child escapee of the inescapable prison (oops, if your IQ is less than 64, spoiler). Bane was the adult that had helped her escape. Of course, this would mean that since she is roughly the age of Batman, Bane is actually the old man in the equation. Somehow, this is lost on the writer, who probably had a lot on his mind. I suppose that mountain of cocaine wasn’t going to snort itself. Wispy manga cartoon Catwoman shows up to save the day, having instantaneously mastered the Bat-murdercycle™, but only after the Bat-crush™ ruins the the Bat-plan™ to just plug the Bat-thermonuke™ back in. Though it has been several months, this all occurs within minutes of the detonation time. If only there were some martyific means of saving the day…

So Batman saves the day by suicidally disposing of the Bat-thermonuke™ using the Bat-hoverthing™. Everyone has a sad. Then it turns out he’s alive and the Inception guy is the new Robin. Then the franchise was stabbed in the kidney and incinerated in a thermonuclear explosion. I hope.

The end.