Sorry if I'm a little late to the discussion here, but I only saw the film tonight. Bear with me.
I really enjoyed the film. It was good, exciting, had nice visuals and a few enjoyable plot twists. I'm not the type to pick apart acting, plot or background music, I enjoy almost every movie I see and do not consider myself a hobby film critic.
I am, however, a hobby film sceptic. Some of the macguffins really annoyed me.
For a start, the nuclear bomb. Said to be about five megatons. On ground level, that would be enough to level things in a three-block wide radius, but not enough to devastate an entire city. After all, with a ground detonation, half of the released energy is sent into the ground. Pretty much all of the other half is sent skyward. Only the "equator" of the fireball is actually hitting stuff, and the blast energy diminishes rather quickly (energy input per square unit at a distance of r from ground zero is proportional to the inverse cube of r, which is a number that decreases rapidly as r grows. Especially when there is stuff like buildings in the way). There's a reason why nuclear bombs are detonated far above ground when used in warfare.
Also, if you don't want a nuclear bomb to explode, blow it up. Yes, that's right. For a nuclear reaction to take place, quite a few things have to go exactly right. Blow it up, and you mess with all the components. It will be a radioactive mess, a weapon in its own right (not as much with fusion elements, though. Hydrogen generally isn't that radioactive), but not a city-shattering fireball.
Then you have the Army. Oh, my. Best to begin with their introduction scene, when their spearhead force crossing the bridge consists of Humvees and M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzers. Why the heck do they want to bring artillery into Gotham, and why send them in on the front line? I guess Nolan went to the nearest military based and asked to borrow some equipment. They gave him Paladins, seeing as they sort of look like tanks (you know, apart from the fact that the turret is placed at the rear of the vehicle). I guess artillery could be somewhat useful to the army in the event that the bad guys all gathered out in the open together, but they could have been placed at the other side of the river. After all, with a range of more than 30 kilometres, they would cover most of the city from there anyway.
Then later, they send in the most useless Spec-Ops team ever. When a firefight breaks out, they stand out in the open looking cluelessly for any shooters, who mow them down anyway. Why the entire team goes to see Gordon at the same time isn't very well explained.
Even later, Bruce/Batman enters Gotham, and even brings a nice suit to wear, suggesting the trip wasn't very demanding. He never tells the authorities, or any other military Spec Force about the route he takes.
Going away from the military, but staying in the world of weapons, we have a look at the guns of the Batcycle. Apparently, it fires stuff powerful enough to not only punch a hole in a wall made of cars, but making about one third of the cars vanish without a trace as well. All without the shock wave (or, you know, splinters) killing the Cat either, who was standing a mere thirty metres away. When used against Bane, the rockets/grenades/bullets don't explode immediately, nor do they penetrate his body, they simply drag him across the room.
Batman's belt buckle makes the lights in the sewers go out. Except not really, a few of them still shine dimly in the supposed "darkness".
At the beginning of the Dark Knight, Bruce demonstrates a handy set of spring-loaded shuriken hidden in his suit. Those are nowhere to be seen in the fights with Bane.
Anti-air missiles apparently only go as fast as a Bat helicopter (what the heck were those supposed to be used against, seeing as they can barely outrun cars?). In return, the tiny missiles have enough fuel to fly, with several directional changes, for about a minute. A real-life Javelin missile, twice their size, has enough fuel to fly for 15 seconds. During those 15 seconds, the missile achieves a velocity of around 1000 km/h. It can very well be used against helicopters.
Then the police brawl scene. A gang of policemen armed with fists take on a group of mobs armed with assault rifles. Instead of going for a particularly bloody carnage, which few if any policemen would have survived, and at no risk to the mobs, they all break out in a fistfight.
Bane and his gang don't want the reactor core to be reconnected to the reactor, so their evil city-destroying plan can fail. Yet, they don't even consider destroying or even disabling the reactor, before five minutes before the bomb is to go off. They had five months, and all the weapons and manpower they could possibly want. Yet, they keep the reactor, the only thing capable of foiling their plan, completely unscathed until the last possible moment.
Character mistakes can be forgiven, though. After all, we can't expect reasonable adults to know that spreading your weight over an as large area as possible is the best way to avoid breaking the ice you walk on. Had they laid down on their stomachs and crawled, they would have been likely to make it across.
The importance of horizontal beams to the structural integrity of a bridge also isn't adressed. One would think that part of the bridge they blew out only was there to keep the road together.
The successors to the Batmobile also appear to be less sturdy than their eight year-older ancestor.
Credits for not flipping trailers, though. And I'm not even going to mention the constant one-on-one fighting, where everybody line up to take their turn against Batman/Catwoman.
