The debut of The Dark Knight Rises marks the third installment of Christopher Nolan's batman trilogy
and is the final conclusion to his modern mythology that explores justice, crime and human nature within the confines of civil society. The success of the first two films had raised such a high bar that much speculation and debate surrounded whether or not a third film could live up to and surpass its predecessors. After seeing the film, I can say that as the third part of a trilogy Nolan was able to successfully create a satisfying book end to the thematic structures of the first two films while escalating entertainment value and cinematic scale to a new level of believable comic book mythos come to life. Unfortunately however, I felt that as an individual self-contained story, the film fell short of the standard of perfection that Nolan had set for himself; while it was an incredible achievement, the moral assertions seem muddier and the hidden twist at the end only retroactively dissolved the arcs of its villains while simultaneously making batman's final triumph a bit anti-climactic. Despite, The Dark Knight Rises falling just barely short of perfection, I truly loved the film and consider the trilogy to be a lasting contribution to film canon as a meditation on the modern mythological role of the hero as protector of justice in modern civil society.
The Beginning of Fear and Justice
Batman begins starts by establishing the flaw with Gotham as the mythological embodiment of society. The Wayne family is a modern day wealthy aristocracy who live as champions of good providing philanthropic contributions and using their power for beneficial solutions such as the public transportation train system that they built. They are accidentally murdered in a robbery. Here the world is established to be imperfect. Some people are rich and others are poor. This is an almost Lockean assertion that scarcity leads to the necessity of civil government. The criminal avoids just punishment by acting as a witness to the crime boss Falcony. After the trial the Wayne murderer is himself murdered by a pawn to protect Falcony from his testimonies. Civil society appears to be further flawed because the limits of government include the ability to defeat corruption. Bruce Wayne confesses to his long time friend and assistant to the DA Rachel Dawes that he wanted to claim justice himself by murdering the man who killed his parents. She responds by saying that, "Justice is about harmony, Revenge is about making yourself feel better", and Wayne says, "Your system is broken". Here Nolan has laid out the beginnings of Batman's philosophy that civil justice has failed to uphold its obligation to society and it needs something more. Rachel Dawes quickly responds with the counter argument, "If you believe in Justice, look beyond yourself". Social order in civil society is greater than the needs for individual justice. The bulk of Batman begins then follows Bruce Wayne's journey as he learns to become more than just a man and becomes a servant of the civil society.
A strong theme of Batman begins and later the Dark Knight Rises is fear. Bruce Wayne is established to have a Fear of bats. In a conversation with Ra's Al Ghul who introduced himself as Henri Ducard, when asked what he wants Bruce Wayne Says, "I seek to fight injustice. To turn fear into a means to fight the fearful." Ducard later syas, "I can offer you a path. The path of a man who shares his hatred of evil and wishes to serve true justice, if you devote yourself to an ideal, you become something else entirely." Essentially Batman as a character is a wealthy aristocratic prince who has chosen to fulfill a self imposed civil duty to dedicate his life to fight injustice. Yet rather than fight as a public figure contributing wealth and leadership as his parents did, he fights injustice literally and becomes a symbol of fear.
Only, the injustice that Ra's Al Ghul and Batman mean to fight are two different things. Ra's Al Ghul wants to destroy the decadence and corruption of Gotham while Batman seeks to fight crime. Ra's Al Ghul's plan is to destroy gotham literally with fear in the form of a weaponized fear-inducing chemical. Batman stops him. As ideologies this establishes a difference between the pursuit of justice as an equalizing of economic scarcity with the pursuit of justice as preserving societal harmony through the prevention of crime. Since crime is the breaking of societies set of formal rules that we call laws, this leaves a philosophical contradiction. Vigilanteism violates the law, so how is this an exemplar morality?
The Dark Knight as higher Morality.
The second installment titled 'The Dark Knight', pits Batman against a "new class of criminal" called the Joker. The Joker is seperate from other criminals because he isn't after money. He just wants to watch the world burn. His destruction of society seems to involve an exploitation of human nature.
From the opening scene where he executes a mob bank robbery and talks his accomplices into killing each other to the manipulation and corruption of Harvey Dent, it is evident that The Joker's super power is the ability to exploit the predictability of human nature. He plans and schemes and seems to manipulate everyone in the film by pushing their buttons.
The Joker Explains to Harvey Dent "Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just, do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how, pathetic, their attempts to control things really are..." In essence the Joker is explaining his belief in the ultimate futility of control and civil societies failure to provide stability.
"You know what, you know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. 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!... " The Joker explains how he derives his power. It lies in the predictability of humanities natural reaction to fear.
"Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh and you know the thing about chaos, it’s fearr."
There we have it. The Joker exists as a moral opposition to Batman because he represents anarchy and chaos and as the jungian archtypical trickster he represents our fear of the unknown and the unpredictability of the Universe. But in The Dark Knight, Batman defeats the Joker by not giving in to fear. He doesn't even kill the Joker. He uses the cell phone sonar invention only once as a means to defeat the Joker but knew it crossed a line and built in its own destruction and limited the powers use to one time. He doesnt give in to the seduction of ultimate power. The Batman is a true hero.
Harvey Dent represents how crime can be fought without the Dark Knight. But threats to rachel make him consider violating his values. And when rachel is killed and he himself becomes a victim he proves to be corruptible. He chooses to exact revenge as a vigilante. As Two Face he justifies his murders as fate by flipping a coin. He does not pass judgement. Judgement is left to the fate of the coin flip. Only he is choosing who is judged. This is just another corrupting of justice. An extreme that in the story serves to prove the validity and necessity of Batman.
The conclusion of The Dark Knight establishes that Batman is a moral alternative. It argues that the exemplar morality is to defeat injustice by getting your hands dirty. That a true solution to defending the state is being believed to be a villain but making the hard choices that are in the state's best interest. So The Dark Knight finishes as a film by adding to the moral conclusions of Batman Begins.
The Dark Knight Rises from taking the fall.
The Dark Knight Rises continues 8 years after The Dark Knight. In the third film, Batman has fallen from grace by taking the fall for Harvey Dent. The films primary villain is Bane. He has all of Batman's training as being a part of the League of Shadows. Just like Batman, he rejects the league of shadows for his own belief in something better. The film builds up Bane as the perfect adversary to Batman but then undoes him with the twist. After the twist, Bane is just a thug acting out of love. He doesn't represent an ideological opposite for Batman to defeat on his journey to realizing what it takes to be the truest hero. Instead Bane is just a thug. The true enemy turns out to be Talia Al Ghul who ends up being a reiteration of Ra's Al Ghul. Nolan seems more concerned with sewing up the themes of his films as a trilogy than continuing the moral debate his first two films established.
What I would have preferred from the Dark Knight Rises, would have been for Bane to represent the opposite end of the ideological pendalum from the Joker. Where the Joker is Anarchy and Fear, Bane could have embodied The Dark Knight taken to a further extreme, he could have been the incarnation of power and strength gone wrong. He could have reacted to the realization that civil society is imperfect by imposing the ultimate power of fascism. He could have been the revolutionary turned dictator/tyrant. He could have been what would happen if someone with Batman's training and intelligence decided he was the only one deserving of ultimate power. That the failings of the state could be fixed by the empowered individual. He could have represented the ideological opposite of The Dark Knight and the opposite origin that the film established. He could have represented how being born from hell versus privelage could lead to an extreme view in the opposite direction. But no. Instead he was just a pawn and simply the muscle belonging to Talia Al Ghul's head. He acts out of some unexplored loyalty and love. Talia Al Ghul is the real villain. However, her philosophical vantage point seemed unclear to me. She criticized Batman's failure as being unable to follow through and being unable to fully trust the people. Yet her solution to the problem was to destroy all of society including herself. I didn't understand how blowing up gotham with a fusion reactor proved or solved anything. Even Ra's Al Ghul's plan in Batman Begins seemed to have more thought. If society destroys itself by fear then there is a starting point to rebuild. A clean slate. But destroying it completely with a bomb is just an apocalypse. It says that society is undeserving let's just destroy it. Where the first two films established mythological stories as premises to ideological debate, The Dark Knight Rises doesn't. It doesn't have much to say about morality. Or if it does, it's just not as strong and clear as the first two films. The focus of the third film seemed to be about building a new franchise with Joseph Gordon Levitt's character and finishing the themes of fear. Yet Bruce Wayne's leap of faith in the prison does not seem to finish the philosophical progression established by The Dark Knight. It is a step backwards. Yes he thematically proves himself by rising from ashes. It serves the film well but it doesn't serve the mythological arguments of the Trilogy as a whole. Yes, he sewed the thread of "Why do we fall, so we can learn to get back up" together but more important than minor themes like getting back up is the overall moral and mythological assertions about what a hero should or shouldn't do. A proper continuation would have provided an alternative to the Hero "taking the fall". I mean, he "rises" from "taking the fall" as a play on words, but I mean "taking the fall" as in he accepts condemnation from society. It could have been a logical progression of the moral argument by saying that a hero should openly stand in the face of injustice instead of hiding in the shadows. Taking the fall for Harvey Dent wasn't the best way to be a Hero and that in this third film he grows and learns there is a better way to be a Hero. A proper mythology should be about what the hero learns from his journey. The Dark Knight Rises doesn't seem to do this. Or if it does, then it is saying the hero learns that he wants to have a normal life. But not because there shouldn't be vigilante justice, since he decided to just pass the torch. It says be a Hero for as long as you can until your family butler chews you out for risking your life and family name. What?
This third film builds up Bane to be the perfect adversary for Batman. But then it throws a twist in the mix. Only the twist undoes the villain Bane. He isn't the child born in Hell who ascended into the light. He wasn't trained by the league of Shadows. He wasn't the son heir of Ra's Al Ghul come to finish the destruction of Gotham. He was just a body guard of Talia. Just the muscle man. A devoted servant. We spent the whole movie wondering how Batman would rise to defeat the Dark Knight equivalent of James Bond's "Jaws" or "Odd Job". He was a lacky with flare. All the things we cared about Bane now mean nothing. Worst of all, the story doesn't seem to replace Bane with an equally substantial moral adversary. Even though Talia was pulling the strings the whole time and this was interesting for the plot, Talia Al Ghul is not fully formed as an opposition to Batman. Characters often exist as opposing ideologies that help support the idea that the protagonists actions or view points are better. That's how a story makes a point. In this case, Talia doesn't strengthen the moral position of Batman. She is merely exacting revenge for her father's failures. So she represents the idea that one should seek revenge. This doesn't seem to be nearly as strong as The Joker's need to inflict chaos and fear. The third film falls short.
So as a trilogy the Moral Argument goes:
Batman Begins is about taking it upon yourself to fight injustice by conquering your fears.
The Dark Knight says battling fear and protecting justice requires getting your hands dirty even if it means being condemned by society.
The Dark Knight Rises says rise to the occasion but live your life and let someone else get their hands dirty, and remember we said a bunch of stuff about fear and revenge and an underground society of anti-utopians, well their back but they don't actually represent anything you should just be afraid of them or not really them, just the daughter of that guy cuz she wants revenge."
It could have said, "Rise against fear but don't become something for society to fear". Or anything else for that matter.
It's really hard to criticize someone as brilliant as Nolan whom I personally admire, but I think I'm making a pretty valid case here. But that's what happens when the studio forces you to make a sequel and turn it into a continuing franchise because it's too valuable of a property and they make you do it on a quick timeline.
On a personal note, I loved the film. The Cat Woman was hands down the best iteration of the character. She provides valuable anti-hero alternative. She commits crime as theft out of necessity and establishes that the natural scarcity of society may necessitate the violation of laws and the violation of societies rules is not inherently evil. Not to mention, her character is attractive as hell and provides a good reason for Bruce Wayne to give a shit about the world again.
In the end, The Dark Knight rises is a spectacular film. Personally I enjoyed it a lot. It is one of the best movies of the summer and it is a shame to critique it and be disappointed. Yet given the moral complexity of the first two films and the strides that they accomplish, the third film film fails to add to the morality of the mythology. Instead, it is an entertaining film in the way that other films are entertaining. I often hate that directors are subject to so much scrutiny, but in this case Nolan has fallen just short of perfection and missing that mark is all the difference. Where he could have completed the moral argument of the mythology he created, he merely continued the franchise because the studio felt this is too valuable a property. I still am not sure what Talia Al Ghul was all about. In my personal opinion, if you take her out of the third film or leave her as a false ally and fourth position on the moral structure then the film could have worked. But instead, she is the main villain and her belief that society needs to be punished for decadence with complete destruction does not seem to be a valuable alternative to vigilanteism. In the end, the film seems to argue that while injustice needs to be fought, the cost takes its toll and an individual is best living their life and pursuing happiness then sacrificing them self to the demands of the State's defense. This is because Bruce Wayne ends up leaving his life as Batman and the protector of Justice behind. Where the The Dark Knight argued that the Hero's duty was to bare the burden of his responsibility to the state, The Dark Knight Rises suggests that the Hero should try to live a normal life. In the end, The Dark Knight trilogy completes the story to a satisfying conclusion but fails to provide a complete ideological argument about the hero's role in civil society.
I loved the Dark Knight Rises, but instead of getting the Hero we deserved from the Dark Knight, we got the end of a trilogy. Nolan did do a great job of completing the story. And for anybody else but Nolan this would be satisfactory. Yet because the Dark Knight as a second film was so good and made such a clear and coherent contribution to modern mythology, the Dark Knight Rises but not high enough.
Da nana na na na na na BATMAN,
-MM
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