It's been nearly a fortnight since I saw The Dark Knight Rises, the much anticipated third film in Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy.
I certainly enjoyed the film a great deal, and appreciated the effort it went to to break the usual superhero film structure. Also the attempts to make the characters feel "real" was a welcome addition.
However, there were a few things about the film's characterisations that didn't sit right with me and, having had a bit of time to think it through, I have figured out what it is.
Ultimately none of the main characters develop.
In fact, thinking back over the three films, Bruce Wayne has not developed since he first decided to put on the Batman cowl halfway through the first film Batman Begins. Since then he has been locked in a kind of developmental stasis, unable to progress of change.
I'm not saying he is only in one emotional state from then on. The events of The Dark Knight have thrown him into an eight-year depression in which he still wallows at the start of The Dark Knight Rises. Rather his outlook, motivation and methodology remain the same as the first time he plucked Flass off the pavement a decade before.
Do I look like a cop?
It may be that Nolan and his brother Jonathan, with whom he wrote the second and third films, were aware of this and decided to proceed anyway, but looking at the majority of Nolan's films I can't help but notice the drama comes from timely revelations as opposed to character development.
There are some characters that shouldn't change, of course. The Joker's methodology may change, but ultimately his objective is still chaos. His power comes from the fact he is frozen.
Others, I feel, were given a disservice by not being allowed to learn from their experiences.
As I said in my previous Batman article, the narrative job of characters like the Joker is to give the hero someone against whom they can spar without the risk of being destroyed. Bane offers Batman no reprieve in his fight with him. It is all or nothing - only one of them can ever walk away. It is through minor conflicts with an opponent not bent on the hero's destruction that the hero can learn and develop skills for his more dangerous opponents.
Once I saw Bane was going to be Batman's foe in The Dark Knight Rises, I assumed this is what The Dark Knight was setting up. Bane is Batman's dark opposite. His shadow. As physically strong and dedicated as Batman is, Bane has gone done the route of the destroyer. His is filling the position Ra's al Ghul had clearly intended for Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. A friend of mine pointed out that, while all we see of Bruce in the Batman costume is his mouth and chin, this is the only part of Bane that is permanently covered - he is Bruce's negative.
I assumed Batman was going to draw on his experience with the Joker, who is physically weaker than Batman, to defeat Bane who is physically stronger. How and why I thought this was going to come about would not only have shown Bruce's ability to learn, but to finally reconcile the two halves of himself and allow a less tyrannical Batman to to exist thereafter.
A number of spoilers follow, so if you haven't seen the film you want to skip ahead.
The dramatic thrust of The Dark Knight Rises comes from the revelation of the identity of the child in the pit prison, and who her guardian was. And it is in the pit prison that Bruce should have developed.
Having been shown he cannot defeat Bane through physical force, nor be able to climb out of the prison while tethered to the world below, this should have been Bruce's apotheosis. In much the same way it is only once Carl Fredericksen sheds his past in Disney Pixar's Up by emptying the house (a Freudian analogue for the mind) of what is holding him back that he can soar and rescue Russell from his own dark opposite Charles Muntz, it is only by cutting the cord tying Bruce to the pit (a Freudian analogue for the Id) that he can climb towards the light and defeat his dark opposite in Bane.
To do this Bruce no only needed to cut the physical rope, but also the emotional one. My biggest problem with the whole film is when Bruce is talking to a fellow prisoner and says "I'm not afraid. I'm angry!"
It is anger that has motivated Bruce through all three films. It drove him in Batman Begins. Rage fuelled him in The Dark Knight. And it drives him again in The Dark Knight Rises. He never gets over that stage. In my opinion, it should have only been once he left his rage and fear behind that he had could cut the rope.
My other complaint is that, despite being conceived as a flamboyant detective, a man who would apply brain and logic where Superman would apply strength and speed, the Nolan/Bale Bruce has always seemed a little stupid. I would have preferred it if he had already worked out the identity of the child who had escaped the pit.
This brings me to the issue of Bane. He is set up as an utterly ruthless killer who can snuff out a life and take action that will end the lives of millions of people without any self-reflection. Yet in the pit prison, he demonstrated compassion and a protective instinct that seems at odds with that.
Had he been portrayed as a kind of mindless monster, I could resolve that with the idea that the girl had imprinted on him, and he was instinctively driven to protect her. But Bane is not shown as a gorilla. He is eloquent and intelligent. I do not see how he can reconcile protecting little Talia with exploding a nuclear bomb that will, presumably, kill tens of thousands of girls like her.
And this is where we come to the solution.
SPOILERS END.
You see, my favourite portrayal of Batman is the 1990s animated series. While I accept it is usually people's first exposure to a character that is their favourite incarnation, what I felt the Animated Series got so right was its depiction of the villains. Now I know it is, ostensibly at least, a children's programme, but many of the rogues gallery were not shown as evil monsters, but incredibly damaged people.
As a result, the Batman in this version treated his opponents with a degree of compassion and understanding. When he faces Bane for the second time, Bruce just punches him even harder than before.
If Bruce had worked out the pit-child's identity while he was there he could have used said individual as a bargaining chip with Bane to force his surrender in much the same way the Joker did with Rachel to Batman. It may have been that Bane would have brought about his own demise (much as Batman nearly did when fighting the Joker), but it would have showed Batman's ability to compromise and shed the appearance of self-appointed jury, mirroring Bane's kangaroo court.
Of all the characters the only one who seemed to undergo any kind of transformation was that of John Blake. As a result, a lot of people have speculated he is being set up for the sequels.
So am I saying all characters must change?
No. In open-ended series, like comics, there is often pressure from above not to have the characters undergo massive transformations. The same is true with sitcoms and soap operas. Here character consistency is valued so that multiple writers can deal with the same characters on a weekly or even daily basis, and not run into problems of characterisation.
But in a finite and, presumably to some degree, pre-planned series like a film trilogy there is the fantastic opportunity to develop a character.
For all the flaws with the film, one thing the script of Batman Forever got right was that, in the final test, the Bruce Wayne/Batman dichotomy didn't become either/or, but both. Val Kilmer's Bruce Wayne says to the Riddler he is both, "Not because I have to be, but now because I choose to be."
In Epic storytelling, as outlined by Joseph Campbell and others, one of the final stages in the hero's journey is called "The Master of Two Worlds". Having been through all he has and achieved apotheosis, the hero can now move freely between his own world and the other world. In the climax of The Dark Knight Rises, by contrast, Bruce believes he can only be one.
As I said earlier, all of this may have occurred to the film's producers who decided to make it the way they did precisely to prove Bruce is stuck and rage-driven. However, it feels like a bleak and un-redemptive ending to a film series that is, as claimed by its creators, about what a man can do through strength of will and singularity of purpose.
In short, the Dark Knight may rise, but he never soars.
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