Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.
A Review.

-----MASSIVE GODDAMN SPOILER ALERT---











This week Christopher Nolan gave the world the final installment in his Batman franchise. And by final, I really mean final.
The last movie in this trilogy clearly ends the franchise.

The Nolan Batman series is a complete story, unlike most other attempts at the title, this series has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

In the beginning Bruce Wayne witnesses his parent’s murder, and goes through seven years of training to learn the skills to avenge their deaths.
He then learns that his mentors are zealots. Like suicide level zealots. They want to weed out corruption so vehemently that they are willing to wipe out entire civilizations to insure the good behaviors of everyone else. They claim to have done so in the past, and plan on doing it again. This time in Bruce’s home town Gotham.

Clearly Bruce cannot let this stand, and he spends the rest of the first movie stopping his mentors from destroying his city.

So the first movie is the education stage of the Warrior’s journey and the giving of the quest.

In the second movie we meet the catalyst. Really three catalysts.
The Joker.
Two-Face/Harvey Dent.
Rachel Dawes.

All three figures represent choices.
The Joker represents Chaos. He shows Batman the furthest extent of how far a zealot could go to achieve his goal. The Joker has no rules, and he pushes Batman to lose his own rules. He shows the level of corruption that exists in all people. In The Joker’s eyes all humans are corrupt, except for Batman. Hence his obsession for the hero. He wants to force the hero to become corrupted. What isn’t realized until the next movie is that he succeeds.

Harvey Dent/ Two-Face is the corruption of Batman. Harvey signifies Batman’s moral superiority. And just has Harvey is Corrupted and turns into Two-Face, Batman is corrupted aswell. Harvey shows that even the mightiest can fall. There is no thing as true purity.

Rachel Dawes Represented Batman’s way out and his reward. The Idea that there was something waiting for him at the end of his journey.
Rachel offered him yet another choice: Early retirement. But with a cost. He would have to give up on his quest and leave it to someone else (Harvey Dent). Bruce is truly robbed of his choice when Joker kills Rachel and mutates Harvey. Batman is left with no option but to continue his quest.

The movie ends with The Lie. Gordon and Batman agree that they must submit to their own level of corruption for the sake of Gotham. They declare that it was Batman not Harvey who killed the people, and Batman killed Dent aswell.
Batman goes into hiding and Gordon is able to push through legislation to completely outlaw organized crime in Gotham.

Which brings us to the most recent enstallment.
The Dark Knight Rises is the end of the story.

-----YET AGAIN SPOILERS---
The evil Zealot organization resurfaces, now with an insanely elaborate plan to wipe out Gotham, the land of the corrupt. The first attempt they made was too rash, too many ways it could go wrong. The new plan was almost a decade in development. An entire army of operatives are trained from teenage runaways to adult assassins. The entire city is layered in a network of tunnels lined with explosives. And most importantly, key operatives take out the financial and technological advantages of Bruce Wayne and Wayne Enterprises.

At the Beginning of the film, Bruce Wayne and Batman are retired. No appearances from either of them for eight years. No one has seen Wayne aside from his butler.
He’s out of shape and his years of fighting have taken their toll on his body.

This movie also introduces his second way out. Selina Kyle. Rachel Dawes was the woman that he wished he was worthy enough for. Selina Kyle is the woman who is worthy of him.
That’s the primary problem that escapes him when Rachel dies. He still sees her as he did when he was young. She’s the idealist, she’s the type of woman his parents would have wanted him to marry.
Selina Kyle is the woman that someone like him should marry. She’s worldy in the same way that he is. Although she’s a thief, she still has the same morality as he does (With the exception of guns). She is the Ying to his Yang. Whereas Rachel was somebody that he outgrew when he was 20.
Kyle offers him a way out. The two of them could disappear together and give up their lives as outlaws.
Batman is of course too dedicated for this, he committed to the lie with Gordon, and he still believes that Rachel was his one true love.

Then Enter the Villains. They are more prepared, better trained, and insanely dedicated to their cause.
They kick the shit out of Batman and throw him into prison in a fortune country. They then turn Gotham into an Anarchist city-state separate from the U.S. for FIVE MONTHS. At the end of which they announce they are going to destroy the city with a Nuke.

Gordon and Blake spend those five months fighting to save the city, Batman spends the time re-training his body.
And most importantly, he learns the all important lesson. It’s not all about finding a cause worth dying for, it’s about finding something worth living for. A person who isn’t afraid of death has no value of life.

Not really focused on but highly important is the fate of the corporate douchebags. They sold out the city for a promise of business superiority. Which of course they don’t receive, cause why the hell would they bother paying anyone? No instead they are all executed. Which is ironic since they are the very figures of corruption that the cult was obsessed with destroying. Honestly, with those guys dead, why bother continuing with the plan? Oh yeah, cause they are a crazy cult.

Many fight scenes later the villains are defeated, and their Hubris is their weakness. They were so intent to die for their cause that they threw their lives away for the temporary victory at the cost of the war.

And we have the ending.

-----I SWEAR TO GOD, YOU SHOULD KNOW THESE ARE SPOILERS BY NOW---

Batman fakes his death and retires abroad with Selina Kyle, who has erased herself from all computer files in the world.
Alfred gets his life long dream of seeing Wayne at peace and done with vengeance.
Gordon is finally free of his lie and the city is finally free of organized crime and crazy cults obsessed with destroying the city to banish corruption.
And Blake gets to see Wayne manor turned into an orphanage, which makes him happy, and then Batman leaves him the bat-cave and all of his remaining toys to continue his work.

This is a perfect ending. After 80 years of Batman, someone finally figured out how to give Bruce Wayne a proper ending. He’s been fighting his never-ending battle against Gotham city crime for forever. In this shorter story, he gives Gotham 15-20 years of his life (including his training period) and he settles all the ghosts and debts from his parent’s deaths. When everything is finally sorted and his last enemy is defeated, he retires to pursue his own happiness and leaves the mantle for someone else.
In every other version of the Batman mythos he trains an apprentice, who never actually replaces him (excluding the few times he “died” and was replaced by a temporary Batman.) It’s actually a reoccurring theme that Batman outlives his apprentice. Multiple sidekicks have been killed or maimed in the line of duty, and Bruce always continues on without them.

In this movie Batman actually makes good on his concept and passes the mantle on. And the story ends, because it’s no longer about Bruce Wayne: The Batman. It’s about the next guy.
Sure Selena Kyle and Bruce Wayne probably have wacky adventures out in the world, but their story in Gotham is over.

And I am incredibly impressed with Christopher Nolan to actually realize that It is much better to produce a great piece of work that ends when it should, rather than to milk it until it is only remembered as something we had to suffer through. (I’m looking at you Star Trek Franchise. Nemesis? Generations? Insurrection? You make me sad.)

More film makers need to learn this lesson, as do TV creators. End a show when the story ends, Don’t milk it for more money.

Ted Mosbey needs to meet his wife.
Gilligan and the Skipper need to leave the Island.
Ricky needs to let Lucy play in the band.
And for the love of god, either kill the survivors of Lost or get them off the Island, watching them run around solving mysteries on a fucking island is retarded. It’s an island, given how long they were there, they should have every single rock memorized.

So there you have it. A trilogy that pays homage to the source material, yet manages to re-define itself from a never ending serial to standard three part story. Beginning, middle, end.

Furthermore, It fully defines the persona of Batman. He is a being of willpower, he is more clever than you, and no matter what you throw at him, he will triumph in the end.

Plus he manages to pull off the most epic misdirection vanishing act ever. He manages to kill off both Batman and Bruce Wayne in entirely believable scenarios in such a way that no-one would possibly believe that the two were related. Batman died very publicly at the heart of a nuclear blast while saving the city.
Bruce Wayne was just another of the rich people who somehow died during the five months of anarchy inside Gotham.
And he left just enough clues for his friends to know that he was really alright, just retired. For good.

And he Fucking Finally got to have a happy ending. Seriously, getting to spend the rest of your life gallavanting around the world with Anne Hathaway is a nice reward for twenty years of torture and sacrifice.