[Marx]

Originally Posted by The Joker

But that's just it, it was a couple of scenes with Keaton where he basically just says he tried to avoid being Batman but he can't. That's it.

Whereas Bale's Batman actually had a plot line made about it that seems to run over the three movies. In Batman Begins he saw his mission as being finite. In TDK he thought he saw the opportunity to retire the mantle when a better hero in Dent presented itself. By the end of TDK he had accepted he would always be Batman.

Spoiler!!! Click to Read!:

If the teaser for TDKR is any indicator, he again faces some kind of crisis in his mission as Batman when Gordon said Batman was gone and needs to come back and Bruce replied "What if he doesn't exist anymore?". Maybe Bane breaks him or exposes his identity. Who knows? But the teaser makes it clear something along those lines happens.

You cannot equate all of this to Keaton's two scenes. Bale's Batman's dilemmas in handling a life as Batman is unquestionably more fleshed out without being repetitive. Begins was all about his fears. But there was no fears addressed in TDK because all that was dealt with already. I expect TDKR to tackle it from a different angle, too.

...had Burton and Keaton done an origin story, you'd have a point. Neither Batman '89 nor Batman Returns were origin stories. Batman Begins was nothing BUT an origin story.