Batman...

[Warped9]

Christopher wrote:

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It's about more than that, though. The arc of the two films so far is the redemption of Gotham. In the first film, the city was so corrupt and lost that it needed Batman and his extreme methods to save it from itself. Batman gave Gotham a symbol of hope to start pulling them out of despair and back toward the light, but that was just the first step, an extreme measure for an extreme situation. The next step was healing Gotham to the point that the system could work again and the people would have enough hope and belief in their city that they could make it a safe, just place on their own, without needing the crutch of Batman anymore. Building up Harvey was about that, about giving Gotham a legitimate champion who worked within the system and out in the open. Batman could only take the city's recovery so far, and he needed to hand it off to Harvey to take it the rest of the way. Batman's sacrifice at the end was about completing that transition: replacing Batman with Harvey as the city's symbol of hope and justice, weaning Gotham of its dependence on Batman and enabling it to stand on its own as a healthy society once more.

Except the symbol of Harvey is a lie. Harvey did indeed live long enough to be a villain. He crossed over to where Bruce wouldn't go. Harvey got to the point where he was willing and did murder.

And isn't that one of the things to be brought up in TDKR, that Harvey was a lie?

[doubleohfive]

Yeah, you and I know that. But at the end of The Dark Knight, the only people who really knew Harvey was "a lie" were the Joker, Batman, Gordon, and Gordon's son (if he was even cognizant enough to know what the fuck was going on.)

What after-the-fact opinions Gotham has about Harvey Dent in The Dark Knight Rises has yet to be revealed, but I'd say that despite the fact that Harvey became a villain, the whole point of Batman's sacrifice at the end of The Dark Knight is that the image of Harvey as a symbol of hope for Gotham was preserved after all.

[sonak]

I still don't get why they had to pin the blame on Batman, though. Keep Dent as the heroic symbol, pin the deaths on the Joker. If they're going to lie, why make it a stupid lie?

[Hartzilla2007]

Admiral_Young wrote:

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I think a Nolan verse Penguin and Riddler would be very similar to the versions we saw in Arkham City. I've called the Arkham games a near perfect merging of the Timm'Verse and Nolan'Verse before. Penguin was awesome in that game, and he's been pretty much a manipulating gangster character for a while now. Using the Iceberg Lounge as a front for his operations.

I also though there was a little bit of Burton in there

billcosby wrote:

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The version of The Penguin in the game Arkham City is the winner.

Yeah, but I kind of cringe every time I see that version since I found out what they replaced the monocle with I mean saying that it had to hurt is probably a major understatement.

[Trekker4747]

sonak wrote:

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I still don't get why they had to pin the blame on Batman, though. Keep Dent as the heroic symbol, pin the deaths on the Joker. If they're going to lie, why make it a stupid lie?

Enough people would know that the Joker was terrorizing the ferries and captured by Batman while Gordon's son got kidnapped and Dent killed. It'd be hard to "gag" that many people for such a lie to work.

But why pin Dent's death on any real person? Why not say Dent was killed/kidnapped along with Gordon's family by a factious person who remains at large?

[Christopher]

Warped9 wrote:

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Except the symbol of Harvey is a lie.

Yes, but it's what the city needed. The truth would've destroyed their renewed faith in justice. Ultimately it isn't Batman or Harvey that matters. One person can't save a city. The people of the city had to choose to save themselves, to decide for themselves to lead a better life and stand up for their own ideals. Batman and Harvey were the symbols, the myths, that inspired them to do that. And the whole point of both these movies is that the myth is more important than the man. Because men are fallible and mortal, but myths can remain pure and eternal and continue to inspire people to better themselves.

Which makes me inclined to give credence to some speculation I've heard about The Dark Knight Rises, the idea that it might involve

Bruce passing on the mantle of Batman to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, the myth transcending the man.

Trekker4747 wrote:

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But why pin Dent's death on any real person? Why not say Dent was killed/kidnapped along with Gordon's family by a factious person who remains at large?

Because, as I said, the people of Gotham needed to be weaned off of Batman. Batman gave them hope and inspired them to start building a functional city again, but his methods, necessary as they were in the depths of the chaos and corruption, are themselves too lawless and rough to be appropriate in a healthy, stable society with a functional legal and judicial system. So the people had to renounce their old, rough-hewn symbol of hope (Batman) in favor of a more civilized one (Harvey). They needed to reject Batman's methods, to outgrow their need for him, in order to truly take responsibility for creating and preserving the society he wanted them to achieve.

It's kind of like the Operative in Serenity. He did what he did in order to create a better world, but he understood that the dark methods he employed meant that he could never have a place in that world. It's not exactly like that, but there's a similarity.

[Trekker4747]

It's odd to say, though, that the city needed to "out grow" Batman considering he'd only been working for less than a year which is hardly enough time to completely turn the crime-ridden hellhole that is Gotham into a city that could self-sustain its crime fighting procedures, especially considering corruption still existed in the police department.

I don't disagree with your analysis and it is what I think they were going for but at the same time it doesn't make much sense in "reality," Gotham still, very much, had countless problems beyond what the local police department(s) and justice departments could do.

[Christopher]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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I don't disagree with your analysis and it is what I think they were going for but at the same time it doesn't make much sense in "reality," Gotham still, very much, had countless problems beyond what the local police department(s) and justice departments could do.

But the point isn't that all their problems were solved -- the point is that the people themselves had become inspired to stand up and address those problems themselves. As was symbolized when the people of the city (well, mainly Tiny Lister) refused to sink to the level the Joker tried to drag them down to, and essentially saved themselves.

I hesitate to invoke the "teach a man to fish" cliche, but it kind of works here. Nolan's Batman is more about being a symbol to inspire others than about doing all the do-gooding himself.