From the hero's origins to centuries of injustice,
the Dark Knight trilogy possesses a gritty
yet fascinating world. Here, we'll explore
the history of Bruce Wayne and his more realistic
rogues' gallery, and how three films made
us believe a man could, you know, not fly,
but do wingsuit stuff.
In a chaotic world, it can be comforting to
imagine that there's a singular force behind
history's most horrifying events, organizations
so powerful and secretive that they can hide
in plain sight while pulling the metaphorical
strings of a society.
In the Dark Knight trilogy, those theories
would be entirely well-founded, since an enigmatic
group known as the League of Shadows has been
molding civilization for more than a thousand
years. Their theory is that when a great nation
becomes too large and decadent, it needs to
be purged like an overgrown forest.
Secrecy is their calling card, but we're given
a few glimpses of the League's actions over
the centuries through their leader, Ra's al
Ghul.
"We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague
rats, burned London to the ground."
His former claim likely refers to the attack
on the Roman former capital in 410 AD by the
Visigoths, an event that led in part to the
fall of the Roman Empire. But Ra's al Ghul
further implies that the League retained power
through the 14th and 17th centuries.
Around the early-to-mid-'80s, a young Ra's
al Ghul, then a mercenary for hire, falls
in love with the daughter of a powerful warlord.
The warlord orders that Ra's is to be thrown
into an infamous prison known only as "the
Pit," a deep hole in an unnamed but ancient
country. The warlord's daughter arranges to
take the place of Ra's in exchange for his
freedom, never letting Ra's or her father
know. A few months later, also without Ra's'
knowledge, she gives birth to his child, a
girl named Talia. The girl's mother is attacked
and killed by fellow inmates a short time
later, and Talia falls under the protection
of Bane, a man who's spent his entire life
in the Pit.
As a young girl, Talia attains a legendary
status among the Pit's prisoners when she
becomes the first inmate to successfully escape.
While she climbs to freedom, Bane holds back
the other enraged prisoners and is gruesomely
disfigured in the process. Talia tracks down
her father, now a high-level figure in the
League of Shadows, and he goes to the Pit,
executing the people responsible for his lover's
death and extracting Bane, recruiting him
for the League and treating his injuries with
the use of a mask that continually doses him
with pain suppressants.
Far away from the Pit, on the other side of
the world, the League of Shadows' plot to
cause an economic collapse in Gotham is thrown
off by an unforeseen factor: the rise of philanthropist
power couple Thomas and Martha Wayne. Thomas,
a celebrated surgeon, is also the chairman
of Wayne Enterprises, a technology and real
estate development company, as well as the
head of the charitable Wayne Foundation.
"I leave the running of our company to much
better men."
"Better?"
"Well. More interested men."
Thomas and Martha invest heavily in improving
Gotham, funding the construction of an elevated
train system suspiciously similar to Chicago's
"L." Ironically, Thomas and Martha succeed
in pulling Gotham out of its depression, but
only in their deaths. The two are shot and
killed in a mugging by a low-level criminal,
Joe Chill. The city's elite are inspired into
action, helping to clean up Gotham and create
a better, if imperfect, place to live, little
knowing that this will inspire further, more
insidious actions by the League.
Joe Chill is hastily arrested for the deaths
of Thomas and Martha Wayne, and he spends
roughly a decade behind bars. While there,
he shares a cell with mob boss Carmine Falcone
and manages to glean information on his criminal
activities. And that's when Chill decides
to become a stool pigeon, exchanging testimony
about the gangster for parole.
Bruce Wayne attends Chill's hearing with a
small revolver in his pocket, intending to
kill the man who killed his family. Unbeknownst
to Wayne, Falcone has bribed the judge, moving
Chill's hearing into a public space so that
one of Falcone's assassins can get to Chill
before Bruce is able to.
After a meeting with Falcone and a slap-heavy
chewing-out from Rachel, Bruce realizes that
he's ill-equipped to stop crime in any meaningful
way or protect the people he loves.
"Now you think because your mommy and your
daddy got shot, you know about the ugly side
of life, but you don't."
Burning his identification, Bruce goes off
the grid, travelling the world in search of
meaning, understanding, and mentorship. He
gets that in Bhutan, where he's offered membership
in the League of Shadows.
Told that the League is a force for order,
the world's greatest detective doesn't realize
that a group of explosive-enthusiast ninjas
might be in the business of killing people
until his initiation ceremony, during which
he's told to take the life of a man who's
killed his neighbors. Expressing a philosophy
of non-lethal violence, Bruce blows up the
League's compound with everyone still inside,
only managing to save his mentor, who he leaves
in the care of a local villager.
Bruce returns to Gotham, where he befriends
experimental weapons designer Lucius Fox,
an employee of Wayne Enterprises who outfits
him with equipment to combat the city's criminal
element.
"What's that?"
"The tumbler? Oh, you wouldn't be interested
in that."
Creating the Batman persona and initiating
an uneasy partnership with Detective James
Gordon, Bruce stops a fresh League of Shadows
plot to release a hallucinogenic neurotoxin
developed by local psychiatrist Jonathan Crane.
Somewhere around this point, Bruce Wayne visits
an orphanage funded by the Wayne Foundation,
where a young kid named Robin John Blake is
living. An angry child, Blake recognizes something
in Wayne: anger masked behind a smile.
"Not a lot of people know what it feels like,
do they? To be angry, in your bones."
Blake feels a kinship with Wayne, looking
up to him as a hero figure. He deduces that
Wayne is probably Batman and, out of either
a sense of respect or an understanding of
what Bat-snitches get, doesn't tell anyone.
Blake will grow up and move out of the boy's
home, eventually becoming one of the rare
incorruptible cops on Gotham City's payroll.
There, he'll partner with James Gordon and
become entangled in Batman's world of gritty,
animal-based vigilantism.
At the end of Batman Begins, Gordon informs
Batman that his wearing a mask and generally
making a scene has led to "escalation" from
the city's criminal element, with one particularly
troubling new figure committing a series of
crimes and leaving behind a Joker playing
card each time. Nine months later, the man
calling himself the Joker is still at large.
Plus, at a lower rung on the calamity ladder,
Jonathan Crane has fully adopted his Scarecrow
persona and is somehow making a living selling
recreational fear gas, presumably thanks to
the fact that teenagers will try anything
these days.
With public safety at the forefront of the
political landscape, a new district attorney
is elected: Harvey Dent, a handsome optimist
who gives a recently promoted Lieutenant Gordon
the leeway he needs to continue collaborating
with Batman. Bruce keeps a watchful eye on
the new DA, in part because of the lawyer's
romantic involvement with Rachel.
As the Joker's crime spree picks up momentum,
Bruce decides to focus his efforts on stopping
the city's organized crime rings, ironically
not seeing the threat inherent in a single,
exceptional, dramatic symbol. His war on the
mob opens up Gotham's underworld, leaving
it vulnerable to the forces of chaos.
"Do I really look like a guy with a plan?"
With Batman's attentions divided, Joker takes
control of Gotham's organized crime, kills
a judge and the police commissioner, and reframes
the public's perception of Batman. During
his reign of terror, Joker kidnaps Rachel
and Harvey, killing the former and mutilating
the latter, burning off half his face and
driving him into the depths of vengeful, homicidal
madness.
As a result of these actions, Batman pulls
his emergency cord, a high-tech surveillance
system that creates a three-dimensional sonar
map in real time by employing the use of every
cell phone in the city.
In the end, the Joker is captured, but Harvey's
revenge ride concludes when he kidnaps Gordon's
family and holds them at gunpoint. Batman
tackles Dent off of a ledge, killing him,
and agrees to take the blame for the disgraced
DA's string of crimes.
"Gotham needs its true hero."
He rides into the night, a wanted fugitive,
and Harvey's death becomes the precipitating
event in the enactment of a series of laws
that enable the police to go even tougher
on crime, suspending their civil liberties
in the name of law and order.
During Batman's self-imposed exile, Bruce
Wayne works to better Gotham City in ways
that rely more on working towards meeting
the needs of its citizens by creating a sustainable
future and less on punching guys who steal
stereos. He helps to fund an exciting clean
energy project, but his sense of moral obligation
forces him to shutter the experiment after
it's revealed that the machine at the center
of things could, with a little light tweaking,
be turned into a nuclear bomb. After that,
nobody sees or hears from Bruce Wayne for
three years.
"But you're not living, you're just waiting,
hoping for things to go bad again."
The tough-on-crime laws inspired by the death
of Harvey Dent, called the Dent Act, have
allowed now-Commissioner Gordon to wipe crime
off the streets of Gotham, but at a great
cost to his conscience. He's drafted a letter
of resignation admitting to his and Batman's
ruse. He keeps the letter close but stays
on the force, mentoring a young officer, John
Blake.
Meanwhile, overseas, the League of Shadows
has been reformed thanks to two leaders: Talia
al Ghul and Bane. After years of work, the
two begin enacting a plan to finish what their
predecessors started and destroy Gotham.
John Daggett, a crooked construction company
owner, brings Bane to the United States in
the hopes of taking over Wayne Enterprises.
His plan involves a stock market raid and
shady business dealings after first employing
Bane to help secure diamond mining rights
in Africa.
Of course, a merry series of mishaps occur.
Daggett is killed by Bane, who's been using
the businessman's construction firms to plant
explosives all over Gotham. In order to protect
Wayne Enterprises from a hostile takeover,
Bruce hands control of his company to fellow
clean energy enthusiast Miranda Tate, who
he doesn't yet realize is in league with the
League. Bruce brings the Batman persona out
of retirement and, with the help of a lithe
jewel thief, tracks Bane to Gotham's sewers.
However, Selina Kyle, the jewel thief, was
working with Bane, who's waiting for Batman.
He lays a thick layer of the smackdown on
Bats, then has him imprisoned in the Pit,
where he's tortured with a TV view of the
destruction of his beloved city. With Gotham's
Dark Knight out of the way, Bane closes off
all land entrances to the city, blowing up
bridges and tunnels.
"We came here not as conquerors, but as liberators,
to return control of the city to the people."
He then drops the truth on the public: Harvey
Dent was a killer, the Dent act was unjust,
and Bane has turned Wayne Enterprises' clean
energy project into a bomb, which will explode
when an unknown Gothamite presses the button.
The bomb will explode regardless of whether
or not it's triggered, but Bane uses the chaos
to impose martial law, releasing the criminals
in Blackgate Prison and employing Batman's
stolen armory of vehicles. For around six
months, Gotham is a military state where any
crime is punishable by execution.
Bruce, meanwhile, is still recovering from
his injuries. He learns about the prison's
history and makes several attempts to escape
the Pit, finally sticking the landing the
third time.
Through unseen means and with no money or
resources, he returns to the United States
and infiltrates Gotham's blockade. Back in
the city he loves, Batman reaches out to the
jewel thief who betrayed him before because
he has a good feeling about her. Sometimes,
in a story about a guy who fights crime with
animal shaped boomerangs, you just have to
extend your disbelief.
"Impossible."
With the help of the city's surviving police
force, Batman and Catwoman go to war with
Bane.
In yet another twist, it's revealed that Bane
was never in charge of the League of Shadows.
He was the Darth Vader to the Emperor Palpatine
that is Miranda Tate, aka Talia al Ghul.
Talia takes off to protect the bomb, while
Catwoman takes the opening and explodes Bane
with a shot from the Batpod she has on loan.
Together, the heroes chase down Talia, and
Bruce forces her truck off the road, killing
her and really making the audience look back
at all those car crashes he's caused over
the course of the trilogy with a more skeptical
eye towards his "no killing" policy.
In a final act of bravery, Batman latches
the bomb to his snazzy helicopter, making
sure we all know that the autopilot is on
the fritz and that this is the only way. He
flies the explosive out over open water and,
with a tug at our heartstrings, blows right
up.
Or does he?
A number of things change in the months following
the Siege of Gotham. The public's trust in
Batman is restored, enough so that a statue
of the Caped Crusader is commissioned. Bruce
Wayne is pronounced dead, and a token funeral
is held, sparsely attended by Alfred, John
Blake, Lucius Fox, and James Gordon who, after
years of cooperation, finally pieces together
that Batman and the only guy in the city who
could afford a custom VTOL aircraft might
be one and the same person.
The Wayne fortune is left to Alfred. Wayne
Manor is converted into a home for orphans
and at-risk kids. John Blake, recently having
left the police force over concerns with its
effectiveness, is left with instructions on
how to enter the Batcave. This is where we
learn his first name is Robin, implying that
he will soon possess the least effective secret
identity in superhero history. And then Lucius
discovers that the aircraft Bruce flew into
that long goodnight actually had its autopilot
functions repaired.
Sometime later, Alfred goes to get lunch at
an Italian cafe that he'd told Bruce about.
There, he sees Bruce and Selina enjoying a
meal. Is it a dream? The wishful imaginings
of an old man? Or did Batman really escape
Gotham to start a new life with Catwoman?
Well, since we don't see any Inception-style
tops spinning, we're going to assume that
the Dark Knight trilogy concludes with a happy
ending.
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