What happened, Batman? You used to put up a fight. (Why Arkham Knight is a Perfectly Told Story Part III Part I)

All right.
Here we go.
I have posted about some of my problems with Nolan's universe up till now, but most have been relatively minor.
Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are well made films and in their own right, splendid.
Now, we come to the close...
The Dark Knight Rises.

(We who are about to die salute you!)

What a steaming pile!
It was...not good.
I cannot do better than most every other satire out there, but really.
Something went horribly, horribly wrong in this one.

1) The Villain
The main villain is not Bane, who right off the cuff, could have been really great!

Bane is a master tactician who also happens to have super human levels of strength and endurance.
He is a phenomenal villain for Batman.
But, he is not the villain

(I know Tom Hardy!)

Instead it is Talia al Ghul, come back to avenge her father.

And how does she do this?
It is really, really unclear!

1. At first she sets Bane loose on the city.
2. He amasses a mercenary army and overtakes the whole thing.
3. Batman comes out of retirement to go toe to toe with Bane only to have his back broken.
4. He declares martial law and releases all of the criminals that Batman has put away.
5. Batman is dropped into a prison without a roof (poor planning)
6. Then, they hold the whole of Gotham hostage with a ticking nuclear explosive that could detonate at any time, but also has a detonator.
7. Once Batman comes back and we can feel good about his coming back, a high speed chase with the LIFE NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVE ensues and Talia dies with it and it is going to explode anyway because it was GOING TO EXPLODE ANYWAY.

Was the plan to detonate the bomb in the city?
Was the plan to die with the bomb in the city?
Also. Why does Ra's al Ghul show up in a "dream" sequence in the prison and outline Talia's plan and her relationship to Ra's to a semi-conscious Bruce Wayne?
Is Liam Neeson just that good at delivering exposition?
Is Bruce Wayne that good at putting circumstantial evidence together that he can do it in his sleep?

 

Yup.

2) Batman.
*head shakes*
This is probably the absolute worst thing about this movie.
It was actively painful to watch for the first few minutes and thereafter.
We start with a retired and reclusive Bruce Wayne.
It has been eight years since anyone has seen the Batman or Bruce (coincidence?) and life has been unkind:

Bruce Wayne is broken.
Quite literally, the litany of injuries his doctor rattles off is staggering.
He is physically and emotionally broken at the start of the film.
He is meant to be an aging and decrepit Batman a la Frank Miller's run at Batman in The Dark Knight Returns:

(Except I'm not a pansy)

He is in mourning for his dead girlfriend and the fact that there are no supervillains to fight.
At least until the masked menace Bane shows up!
So Bruce puts on a magic knee brace

 a cop talks nostalgia and suddenly we are back!


With new toys from Lucius Fox, everybody is on board to stop the new hulking threat of Bane!

The thing is, this is a very fun scene.
I really love it.
They managed to actively mess with our expectations by saying Batman is washed up and we, as audience, believed it based on the performance and editing.
Good on you!
But, Batman is back and...

Bane breaks Batman's back....so....
Then drops him down a whole, we get a shady prison doctor, some implied rehab, a training montage, and suddenly he is climbing out of prison, walking across a desert and is back to his old tricks

(Are you wearing your knee brace?)

Point is that we have very few moments in this film to really root for Batman and the reason is because we keep having to dismantle him and his legend at every turn.

Nolan set Batman up as a has been to build him back up to legend status to have him crushed by Bane in order to overcome adversity and scrape by as a hero and cooling at room temperature, not living the high life with Selina Kyle in freaking France the way Alfred dreams

(Like the end of Inception: This didn't happen!)

So what are we left with?

A Batman who looks like this:

Ugh.

I don't know if anyone was confused, but this was a terrible film.
Like, really, really bad.
One of my friends though maintains (I'm looking at you David Moan) that this movie perfectly follows a trilogy structure.

• The main villain from the first is hearkened back to.
• The central conflict of the character is resolved (where do they go from here)
• The crusade ends
• The character achieves a kind of apotheosis

In this series that would be Ra's al Ghul, his legacy as Talia, the attempt to destroy Gotham, and to corrupt Batman into taking human life.
I think this is an interesting point and one that I would like to explore.
Because I think he is right.
It follows this structure almost perfectly.
Looking at another example: Return of the Jedi

• Vader is brought back to the light side of the force, kills the Emperor in Luke's stead
• Luke becomes a Jedi in his own right and leaves
• The Empire is overthrown
• Luke is seen conversing with all of the characters, including his father in their force selves

Okay.
Here it is...
You know what?
It needs its own post.
I am going to use a trick I learned from the makers of Harry Potter, Twilight, The Hobbit, Hunger Games, and I can only assume Divergent...
Two parts!