Well, its about time I sat down to write
this.
If you are interested, I have covered the Bruce Wayne character arc (as I see it, of course) in part 1 and part 2. This article will look at his character arc from Rises and why I think the film is so great.
I grew up a Batman fan. And that was it. I
never delved into comic books or, other cartoon series, or any of that, I found
them too farfetched. I grew up on the original 1992 animated series, one of the
most brilliant representations of Batman out there. And after a slew of
horrible Tim Burton renditions, along came my hero Christopher Nolan who
created The Dark Knight Trilogy, for which I am forever grateful to him. Batman
is one of the greatest characters of
all time, as are some his enemies. This series is by far the most brilliant
realization of the story. Artistic, crisp, fantastic and yet very believable,
it is a series that has, at least for me, changed action movies. This is how
Batman should have been represented- dark, heroic, human.
So why is The Dark Knight Rises (hence forth to be referred to as Rises for short) such a great movie?
Several reasons, the most important of which is the completion of the Bruce
Wayne character arc in such style. The second is the boldness to step out of
one’s comfort zone, and by this I mean the comfort zone that Nolan has created
with the previous two movies. This zone is the reassuring thought that “Yes,
this could actually happen,” which is one of the main USPs of the series. The
fall of Gotham into anarchy has been covered in the comics. But to show the
fall of a modern American city, the
modern American city, is a ballsy thing to do- and Nolan pulled it off. If
Gotham were to fall, it would take a villain like Bane and The League Of
Shadows. Even then, this is the trippiest movie I’ve seen of the series.
Everything fits perfectly, everything is
thought out, and everything is ended perfectly. Everything comes full circle,
right from Begins through TDK till the end of Rises.
Eight years after the events of TDK, the Dent Act is enforced which has
effectively cleaned up organized crime in Gotham. It seems Batman is
victorious. Gordon still feels a great guilt at burying the truth, and almost
reveals it in a speech he had written. Bruce Wayne, on the other hand is a
recluse. Batman disappeared after that fateful night when he took the fall for
Dent’s murders. Bruce Wayne went into hiding himself, refusing to come out of
his fortress and cutting himself off from the world. Bruce was a broken man,
physically and emotionally. The scars of that final battle are visible. He
walks with a cane now. More than that, he can no longer face the world because
his one chance at a normal life is gone. He couldn’t love again after Rachel’s
death. Especially when he believed that it was his fault she died, and that she was waiting for him. In
spite of all the good he had tried to inspire, all he knew in his life was pain
and loss. And he felt the guilt of it all. First his parents, then countless
innocents, then Rachel. Alfred knew there was nothing but pain and loss for
Bruce in Gotham. But Bruce came back because he was driven by higher ideals.
Alfred also hid the truth about Rachel’s final decision from Bruce. Bruce lived
the last eight years believing that they were going to be together, he carried
that weight every second of every day for eight years and as it bore down upon
him it became a part of his existence. And the worst part for him is that he
had nowhere to lose himself, nothing to distract himself with. His alter ego
was an outcast. Gotham no longer needed Batman, they even wanted him arrested.
With nothing else to turn to, Bruce withdrew completely.
True, he tried to do his best in his
capacity as Bruce Wayne, billionaire industrialist. He tried to start a clean
energy project but recognized the potential danger and put the project on hold.
This caused Wayne Enterprise revenues and profits to plummet, and subsequently
hampered the aid to his various philanthropic outlets. Other than that he
probably tried to keep his mind occupied the best he could. I don’t know what
physical therapy he might have been up to, but he seemed to have taken a shine
to archery.
All the while, evil is rising again. The
League Of Shadows is returning to Gotham to finish what they had begun. And
they are led by Batman’s greatest physical match. It is fitting that Batman’s
final test would be against the brotherhood that made him in the first place.
Batman would be needed again. And he is sought by an officer, John Blake. I
don’t know how, but Blake figured out that Bruce Wayne was indeed Batman. It
took someone who had been through almost similar circumstances as a child, but
in spite of being orphaned and having no money to his name, Blake remained a
good soul. I don’t know how long it took him to finally be convinced of
Batman’s identity. I’m not sure if he just jumped the gun finally and went to
Bruce’s house and sprang this accusation on him, waiting to see his reaction.
In any case, he jarred Bruce into action with what he had to say. Fitting that
it had to come from another orphan.
And we now turn our attention to two new
women in Bruce’s life.
One is a resourceful, clever girl who plies
her trade as a master thief and goes by the name Selina Kyle. Bruce’s first meeting
with her was a memorable one. She is highly trained in martial arts and knows
how to handle herself. Bruce is intrigued, to put it lightly. But he doesn’t
know how bad she is for him. Bruce finds out she is part of something huge, but
her main motive is clearing her records. He thinks it is so that she can start
over clean. She’s tired of doing what she does, and she wants out, but people
who want to use her talents won’t let her. But she is essentially good, even if
she has done bad things. Her guilt is very evident at two points: when she
turns Batman over to Bane, and when Bruce returns to Gotham from his prison.
This is not the characteristic trait of a psychopath.
The other is the very beautiful and rich
environmentalist, Miranda Tate. She has been trying to get on board with Wayne
Enterprises regarding a clean energy project. She comes off as a dutiful and
concerned citizen, not wont to sit by idle while the world wastes itself. Much
akin to Bruce himself. But it’s all just a mask, for she really is Talia al
Ghul, Ra’s al Ghul’s daughter come to take revenge. She is the actual leader
behind everything going on at Gotham. She needed to get on the board of Wayne
Enterprises to get access to the nuclear device, nothing more. But her role
goes deeper than that. She was another lynch pin in the plan to break Batman.
Although her character was not given as much attention, her role was a solid
one.
Both women are an equal to Bruce Wayne in
different ways.
Alfred fears for Bruce’s life. Bruce is
older now, and not quite at his peak of physical strength, and he expects to go
up against Bane, whom Alfred points out is more than a match for this much
older, more tired Bruce. But Bruce is adamant; he says he will fight harder,
that his body can take it. But Alfred is afraid that Bruce is going on a
suicide mission. “No, I’m afraid that you’d want to (fail),” is what he tells
him. He knows Bruce never got past Rachel’s death, and that he had nowhere to
turn to what with Batman not needed anymore. On Batman’s return, Alfred points
out that Bruce was very much off his game. He believes that Bruce donning the
mask again is an excuse for him to get himself killed in the line of duty and
end his misery. Alfred pleads with Bruce to stop, to see there is something
beyond that cave, that there is a life out there for him. But Bruce has
believed for eight years that his last chance of a life outside of the cave
died with Rachel. And this is when Alfred breaks the truth to him, even though
he knows he will lose Bruce for good. He tells Bruce that Rachel was not
waiting for him, that she chose Harvey, and he tells him why he hid that
information. Betrayed, Bruce tells Alfred to leave. Alfred wishes to leave
anyway, because after raising him and being a part of his war on crime, after
all those years, he cannot watch Bruce set himself up to be killed. But what
about the last eight years of Bruce’s life? It was all based on a lie. It was one
of the worst blows he’d ever received. His faith was broken.
Then came the brush with Bane that left
Bruce virtually bankrupt. This was, at least in part, due to Selina. This was
part of the plan to allow Miranda Tate to join the board of Wayne Enterprises.
It also left Bruce very much humbled and susceptible to the next stage of their
plan.
And it was one of the most far reaching
plans anyone could have concocted. Because Bane was coming not only to finish
the League’s work and destroy Gotham, but also one very important, personal
job: to break Gotham’s protector- physically and otherwise. The main theme of Rises is HOPE and ASCENSION. And it was
hope that kept Bruce going at the end of Begins,
hope that was taken from him at the end of TDK.
Bruce was already broken, so how then does Talia exact revenge on him? Talia’s
prison was the inspiration. As Bane pointed out, Bruce welcomed death. Now,
that would hardly serve their purpose. For betraying the League, Bruce’s
punishment must be more severe. The first stage was the League’s plan of
obtaining the weapons stored in Wayne Enterprises and laying siege to Gotham.
They declared martial law, and claimed to be liberators of the people (what
Selina thought she was fighting for). And thus the oppressed brought down the
greedy and the city fell to ruin. But this was not the point. Back in Bane’s
prison, Bane explains to Bruce how it is the worst prison in the world. Freedom
is there, just outside of the well that looks down into the bowels of the
prison. An inmate need just make the impossible climb and leap across the wall
of the well. But the HOPE is always there. “There can be no true despair
without hope.” And this is what Bane aimed to give the people of Gotham. The
people were given this glimmer of hope, and were meant to “climb over each
other to try and get their place in the sun.” When they had been tortured thus
sufficiently, Bane had a nuclear bomb ready, once again taken from Wayne
Enterprises, to level the city and complete their true task.
Bane does break Batman. The physical job
was done. Not only that, but he took the instruments of Gotham’s doom right
from Bruce’s company. But the job of breaking Bruce had begun a long time ago.
This was Miranda Tate’s role, to give Bruce
Wayne hope in his life. She came to him at his most vulnerable moment- he
had just been bankrupt, and now he was locked outside of his own house, stuck
in the rain. It was at this moment that she came to him and gave him love and
comfort. She played the womanly charm bit to the hilt. Her purpose as Miranda
Tate was to give Bruce hope before they took it away. A hope that he could
share a normal life with someone, that he could love again. The next part was
to break the other side of Bruce, the Batman, and take hope away from him. This
was to be achieved in the prison. As Batman lay, back broken, he begged for
death. Bane declined, saying he welcomed death and his punishment must be more
severe. Bruce would be kept alive, and would watch on through a television set as
Bane gave the people of Gotham hope that they could rise above the decadence in
their lives, and then wipe them out. All the while Bruce would know that his
freedom lay just outside the well, if only he could somehow escape. Bane went
back to Gotham and exposed the lie that Gordon had purported and put his plan
into action. Bruce was so distraught that in a hallucination he saw Ra’s taunt
him, saying that even with all his resources all he could achieve was a lie.
And when Bane’s plan was complete, and Bruce’s failure would have been
complete, then only would Bane have killed him.
Bruce had forgotten how Batman came to be.
He had lost his fear, but then he lost all the care that came with that. The
one who fears death fights harder. Since Bruce welcomed death, he could not
fight his hardest because it didn’t matter to him if he fell or not. It was in
that cell that he was reminded of the power of fear. His spine was popped back
into place and he began to rebuild his body. Fear remained forgotten, and anger
took its place. But pure, unfocussed rage was not going to help him. Bruce
created Batman as an embodiment of fear, to take the fear that powerful people
use to prey on the innocent and turn it back against them. Somewhere, he forgot
this. It was the doctor who reminded him. He told him the only way to make the
jump is to instil fear inside himself, and use that fear for his own survival,
and only then could he save his city. Make the jump without the rope, he said.
And in one of the best scenes in the entire film, Bruce ascends the wall amid
chants of “rise” from the inmates who watched on. As the music slowly rises to
a crescendo, bats fly out of a hole in the wall, reminiscent of his very first
fear and the symbol he chose to adopt. It was one of the most beautiful,
poignant, and poetic moments in the film. Fear was not a bad thing, fear would
help him defeat his enemy. And then of course, he makes the jump and escapes.
The Dark Knight had risen, literally and figuratively.
Back in Gotham, he enlists the help of
Selina Kyle to get to Lucius Fox who could help him get access to the tools he
needed. It seemed even after being betrayed by Selina, he still needed her
help. I think he trusted her because he believed in her. Like himself, she
wanted out of this life. She wanted to start over fresh. Then Batman led the
police to war against Bane and his militia. Batman defeats Bane hand to hand.
Bane is shocked. How could he return when he had broken him? At the last moment
he is betrayed by Talia. Left to die at the hands of Bane, Batman is rescued by
Selina, in whom he had placed a large amount of faith. She was going to leave
to save her own skin, now that her record was clean, but she came back. In
spite of her telling Bruce he had given these people everything and he doesn’t
owe them at all, perhaps she was touched by his words: “Not everything. Not
yet.”
And at the very end, with little time left
on the bomb, they only way to save Gotham is to use the Bat to carry the bomb
out over the bay. He could have gone anywhere, pointed out Selina, but he chose
to come back. As a parting shot, he revealed to Jim Gordon his true identity. The
Batman gave almost everything to Gotham, more than just his body. But he had
not yet given them everything. And his sacrifice would be his last gift as
Batman to Gotham City. The lasting legacy of a selfless hero; an embodiment of
fear but a force of good.Magnificent.Shining.A beacon of truth; an inspiration.Someone
to look up to, to serve as a shining reminder that people are capable of good.
At that moment we are led to believe the auto-pilot doesn’t work. Batman flies
the Bat out to sea and the bomb detonates.
With his name now cleared, Batman was
hailed as a hero. A monument in his honor was constructed. Perhaps this great
city would carry on. Its greatest threat seemed to have been overcome. Everyone
who knew Batman’s identity thought Bruce Wayne was dead as well. A grave was
constructed next to his parents. In his will, Bruce left everything to Alfred,
and it was a just thing to do for the man who raised him and was his accomplice
in his grand mission. Alfred is of course devastated because he failed to
protect Bruce. Wayne Manor was left to the city to serve as a home for orphaned
boys. But Bruce’s legacy did not end there. He left everything in place
perfectly. In his very last act, he left a protector to look after Gotham even
when he was gone. And with that, Bruce truly had given them everything.
The role of John Blake was that of a
successor to Batman. Gotham would always need a watcher, a protector. Bruce
chose Blake for this duty. It had to be someone like him, someone dedicated as
he was. Blake’s character had an arc of his own. He went from the doubting
Thomas to a believer that what’s necessary had to be done. He had to learn the
hard way that what Gordon had said was true: that sometimes, the rules become
shackles and they allow the bad guy to get away. Initially he condemned Gordon
when he learned about how he hid the truth about Harvey Dent. But he was
educated out there on that bridge when he was trying to get the kids off the
island, but the cops on duty followed their orders to the letter and blew their
last chance of escape. Even after this, he didn’t want the children to die
without any hope. I can only assume he went through some rigorous training before he thought to put on the suit for real.
The people of Gotham City would be
grateful, but they didn’t even know to whom, according to John Blake. He
claimed it was unjust that Bruce died without anyone even knowing what he did.
The people would never know who saved them. Gordon smiled reassuringly and said
they do know who saved them. It was the Batman, and that was all they needed to
know. Even Lucius Fox gets to rest easy in the end when he finds out that the
autopilot was indeed fixed by Bruce himself. He knows now. And the audience is
treated to the sight of a happy, content, and peaceful Bruce Wayne, starting a
new life withSelina Kyle. He got everything he deserved in the end: peace and a
pretty girl who is definitely his equal. And Alfred could be at peace too, no
less than he deserved.
And it was in that last scene that one
thing was made clear, one thing that Rachel was wrong about. Unlike in other
versions of this story, Bruce was never consumed by Batman. He was always the
man that he was underneath the suit. So Rachel was wrong, his mask was and
always remained that of the Batman. The real face was always the man who wanted
to avenge the innocents who fell at the hands of evil-doers. (It was a nice
touch when Bruce went to the masquerade party that he was the only one not
wearing a mask). It was the face of the man who at every step showed the utmost
concern for those under his watch. It was the face of the only man in that city
brave enough to be take the fall for the sake of his people. So the character
arc here is that of Bruce Wayne, and never was of the Batman. They were never
separate people. Bruce always wanted out at some point. Donning the mask was
not something he did because it brought him a sense of power, he did it because
someone had to. But he always had an ultimate goal, he always knew that one day
he would want to step down and have a normal life. And he finally got that,
without even the burden of having to be Bruce Wayne, the billionaire playboy,
an act he’d had to put on for too long.
Another thing to note is the use of seasons
throughout the films. I would like to assume Begins culminated in the spring, and was a new beginning for Gotham
City and Bruce Wayne. TDK took place
during the summer, and was full of vibrancy and urgency. Rises on the other hand begins in the autumn, just as the leaves
are falling from the trees. It signals the beginning of an end. It symbolizes
oldness, a turning from young to aged, a decaying. And then Gotham was covered
in a terrible white winter. There is helplessness and death all around. When
Gotham fell, it was cut off from all of the outside world. Any efforts to help
from external sources was blocked by the threat of the nuclear bomb. The river
is covered with ice and serves as a cruel means of punishment. And then the
thaw comes again. I like to think that when Alfred saw Bruce in that café, it
was a new spring, and a new beginning for all of them.
Nolan has taken a story that was told and
retold a hundred times over and made a marvellous character piece. Everything
falls into place, from the first film till the very last. And I for one am glad
he chose to give his hero a happy ending. Each script was deep and carried so
much weight. I am shocked that TDK
didn’t get more recognition in the Oscars for its artistic prowess, and not
just its technical brilliance. And Nolan does use technology to devastatingly
amazing effect.
And the fall of Gotham was picturized
magnificently. Exploding roads, collapsing bridges… it was mesmerising to
watch. And the haunting vision of bodies hanging from high atop a suspension
bridge will be burned in my memory forever. Bane truly was the greatest
physical match Batman ever faced. And it was not only
that, but everything Bane stood for. It was unnerving to see him snatch Batman
out of the dark like he did. His voice, his mannerisms, his dialogs, and those
burning eyes were all rolled so fantastically into one muscle-bound villain. To
see Gotham descend into anarchy was a terrifying thing. Imagine if that were to
happen to a real modern day financial hub like New York or Mumbai. But it was
handled with such class. Which is not to say that this still isn’t the
trippiest of the three films.
If I thank Nolan, I’d have to go on
thanking everyone. Even those that I don’t know, those who were behind the
scenes. It was everything from the writing to the cinematography to one of the
greatest scores ever written that gave rise to this story of Bruce Wayne that
touched millions. The wait for this movie was a nerve-wracking one. For me, it
is one of the greatest moments in cinematic history. The Dark Knight Trilogy
has come to an end. Bruce Wayne’s character arc is complete. Everything has
come full circle. And now that Bruce can rest in peace, so can I.
