The Dark Knight Rises Anyone else not like the 8 year exile plot?

[Drunkard Esq.]

Here's the thing did Gotham really need Batman after the Dent act? Would it really be worth it for a broken man to night in night prowl what is now apparently a remarkably safe city?

Remember how blake joked that gotham has become so safe cops would have to spend their time tracking down people violating library fees now?

The relation gotham and batman have is that gotham really is a cess pit of crime without that element i think batman would indeed be lost and wondering if he's needed.

Well the mayor said that they still had crime, just that the organised crime gangs had been taken down. Even still, surely Batman would want to be the one chasing down the library fees.

Besides, I thought it was Bruce himself who needed to be Batman, i.e that Bruce Wayne was the facade.

 

[stefan850]

Well the mayor said that they still had crime, just that the organised crime gangs had been taken down. Even still, surely Batman would want to be the one chasing down the library fees.

Besides, I thought it was Bruce himself who needed to be Batman, i.e that Bruce Wayne was the facade.

In Nolan's trilogy Bruce Wayne was definitely not a facade. It was in a few scenes when he shows off in front of Gotham etc...everyone know's clearly what those scenes are and besides them Bruce Wayne is not a facade....Batman is just an extension of Bruce, not even that...it's just a name given to Bruce when he's under that mask, just a nickname, nothing else. It's Bruce Wayne all the way.

 

[TheDarkKnight08]

Eight years was a bit too much.

4, 5 years would've been good, as I find it strange that Bane and the LOS would wait so long to strike. However, it was good to show that Bruce's age was an obstacle for him. Another challenge for him to overcome, which makes his return all the more rewarding for him, as well as the audience.

 

[Golgo-13]

Yes also if he really did retire right after dent dies why did they continue with the rebuilding of the batcave? The computer set up, the raised vehicles platform, the batsuit container?

There's no way they would continue building that up if he straight retired then.

In case Gotham needed Batman again. Rememeber there was not guarantee at that time that the Harvey Dent thng would have worked. Hell Gordons kid, who would be a young man or at least a teen before TDKR might have blown the whistle on Gordon and Batman's cover up. Plus Alfred said that Bruce was waiting for things to go bad again so he could put on the suit, so Bruce continued going down in the cave wating for that day.

On a side note, after Bane defeats Batman in sewer, i'm assumingthe LOS got rid of his suit. How then did he have on his new TDK suit when he returns to Gotham? I say that because i think it would have been a great opportunity for Bruce to have donned the bulkier Batman Begins suit, because that's would have been all he had access too, under the lock down Gotham was under....

 

[Drunkard Esq.]

In Nolan's trilogy Bruce Wayne was definitely not a facade. It was in a few scenes when he shows off in front of Gotham etc...everyone know's clearly what those scenes are and besides them Bruce Wayne is not a facade....Batman is just an extension of Bruce, not even that...it's just a name given to Bruce when he's under that mask, just a nickname, nothing else. It's Bruce Wayne all the way.

Yeah, well in Nolan's trilogy the real Bruce goes crying off for eight years because rather than channel the inner strength that the death of his parents appeared to spur in the first two films, he just couldn't be bothered. That's emo territory. That's not Batman.

Nolan is trolling. That's the only conclusion I can come to due to the lack of respect for the character.

 

[stefan850]

Yeah, well in Nolan's trilogy the real Bruce goes crying off for eight years because rather than channel the inner strength that the death of his parents appeared to spur in the first two films, he just couldn't be bothered. That's emo territory. That's not Batman.

Nolan is trolling. That's the only conclusion I can come to due to the lack of respect for the character.

I don't like or dislike this Bruce Wayne because he is faithful or not to the "original" character.

There are some of us who don't care that much about all that and first and foremost want a good movie with good characters. Which I got, and I can't be more happy about it.


This Bruce Wayne left Gotham in Batman Begins after that speech from the mafia guy where he told him how there are judges, cops, politicians in that restaurant and he could kill Bruce Wayne and no one would say one thing. He wanted to change that, he wanted to make the city a better place. Already in TDK he was hoping that Harvey would step up and he would stop being Batman right there and than.

Bruce Wayne's objective, his desire was not to be Batman but to help the honest, good people of Gotham. And in the process of helping them he lost the women he loved.

 

[The Guard]

I don't dislike it, and I think there are definitely great elements to it, but overall, I haven't been all that impressed with Nolan's portrayal of Bruce Wayne and Batman this franchise.

He gets the basic character concepts and themes, but thats about it, and the character feels very incomplete and less compelling than he could have been, and he had three films to work with.

How then did he have on his new TDK suit when he returns to Gotham?

He had a suit in the bunker as we see when he's with Fox there, and one assumes, spares at Applied Sciences.

 

[Rorschach II]

I, too, am not a huge fan of Bruce being a recluse for eight years and giving up the cowl for that time period as well. I think what would've made more sense is if Bruce Wayne become a recluse to the world because he had thrown himself completely into the role of Batman, to the point of absolute obsession. I personally think it would've made for a better character arc, and would've made more sense within the realm of what we know as Batman.

But I've accepted that Nolan & Bale's Batman is a different interpretation than what we're used to. He doesn't feel the need to go out there every night and make sure that what happened to his parents doesn't happen to anyone else in Gotham again. He feels that the victory he obtained by putting away the Joker and getting the Dent Act to pass was enough, and with Rachel dead, he has nothing else to live for.

It's definitely not Frank Miller's Batman, or Grant Morrison's Batman, or pretty much any Batman we're used to from the comics. But, within Nolan's world, Bruce's decision to go into hiding both as Bruce Wayne AND Batman for eight years is entirely believable - however annoying it is to many of us fans.

 

[Drunkard Esq.]

I didn't think that the 8 year gap would have happened after his encounter with Bane breaking his back because it would of allowed an awful lot of time to pass for Bane to run amuck in Gotham while Bats would be incapacitated. Especially with the LOS involved. Personally I didn't like the 8 year time frame. Gotham was crime free with no major villains causing problems which makes me wonder why the LOS continued with plans to destroy it.

Yeah maybe, but apart from the bomb maguffin, eight years would have given Bane time to truly change the way of life of Gotham citizens in a meaningful way, slowly grinding it down until it was just a shadow of it's former self. It would be long enough so that people would begin to forget what life was like before Bane arrived, an almost Orwellian situation. That could have given Batman's return even more gravitas as he gave people real hope and reminded them of the before-time.

 

[Drunkard Esq.]

I don't like or dislike this Bruce Wayne because he is faithful or not to the "original" character.

There are some of us who don't care that much about all that and first and foremost want a good movie with good characters. Which I got, and I can't be more happy about it.


This Bruce Wayne left Gotham in Batman Begins after that speech from the mafia guy where he told him how there are judges, cops, politicians in that restaurant and he could kill Bruce Wayne and no one would say one thing. He wanted to change that, he wanted to make the city a better place. Already in TDK he was hoping that Harvey would step up and he would stop being Batman right there and than.

Bruce Wayne's objective, his desire was not to be Batman but to help the honest, good people of Gotham. And in the process of helping them he lost the women he loved.

It's not that it's unfaithful to the comic character, it's that the first two films were basically just about this growth into Batman, i.e. he only became "the Dark Knight" at the end of TDK (the Batcave hadn't even been finished). My problem with it is that it means that after TDK the character just fizzled out, rather than soaring like he had the potential to do.

 

[DaveMoral]

I'm just going to imagine he had tussles with some of his mahor rogues for a few years after TDK. Let's say 4 years, in which he dealt with Penguin(who is a perfect example of a slightly kooky up and coming mobster) and few other psychos. None of them effected Gotham to the extent that the Joker did. To the point that maybe their more eccentric qualities were basically kept from the public. The Dent Act can't have swept the city clean overnight, so Batman and Gordon cooperated for a while until things were under control by the GCPD such that the onlu remainjng fugitive for them was Batman himself. It coincides somewhat with the mothballing of the fusion reactor and thus Bats and Bruce exit the scene.

Which makes me want Gothan Knight 2.

 

[blinkuldhc]

O.K, i get that he had to go into hiding after the Harvey Dent incident..but why 8 years?

And why is Bruce walking around with a cane 8 years later, as if his ordeal with Joker and Two-face happened last week.......? He's been injured for 8 years? What kinda injury lasts that long?

1. Batman was not needed as much (or anymore) after the Dent Act cleaned up organized crime. Even before Bruce Wayne became Batman, Gotham's problem was organized crime, and its plague over Gotham is what drove Bruce to become Batman in the first place. With organized crime erased, Batman is no longer needed. We assume that Gotham's finest ably handled the ordinary street crime; besides, it would be overkill and/or boring to have Batman chase purse-snatchers or investigate mail fraud.

2. Batman needs a cane because his body is paying the career-long toll of being Batman. His TDKR injuries are not really "injuries" in that he did not get hurt from a particular incident. Rather, they're ailments and conditions that are the cumulative result of repeated and sustained physical exposure, exertion, contact, etc. endured as Batman. As was mentioned in the movie, his knees have no cartilage anymore -- it's bone on bone. Basically, his body is not a car that just crashed -- it's a beat-up car with 200,000 miles on it and not much left.

8 years seems way too long of a hiatus...

Here are my reasons why the 8-year passage of time was important and/or necessary:

1. It shows how much Batman means to Bruce Wayne, and how lost Bruce is without Batman. As was said in Batman Begins, his Batman persona was his real identity, and his "mask" was his Bruce Wayne persona, the eccentric billionaire. As the peaceful years go by, Bruce Wayne finds less and less purpose in life, since Batman is no longer needed anymore.

For 8 long years, he had been living as a shell of his real self. It's almost like Bruce thinks to himself, "be careful what you wish for." The 8 years really gave him time to "lose himself," he's clearly a lost soul in the beginning of the film. It makes Bruce's existential re-awakening -- i.e., his re-emergence as Batman, Bruce "finding himself" again via Batman -- all the more profound.

If Bruce/Batman was "lost" only 2-3 years, would it really be as satisfying to see him clean up and come back as Batman?

2. The 8 years ravage Bruce's/Batman's body. It's not just his soul that suffers -- his body really deteriorates over the 8 years. He's clearly way off his physical prime.

As the audience, we realize that the stakes are different now. Batman's physical death is a distinct possibility now. Even Alfred sees it; he not only sees it, but he is worried that Bruce/Batman would embrace such a death, since it seems like Bruce would rather die as Batman than continue living the meaningless experience as Bruce. This worries Alfed, it worries us.

It makes him an even heavier underdog against Bane. The Batman in Batman Begins probably would not allow his vertebrae to be broken like that by someone like Bane; he was agile and skilled enough to fend off Ra's and the League. But we see now that TDKR Batman is not the same one we're used to; we see a washed-up old man in a suit getting destroyed by a beast, and we accept it. We believe it when Bane breaks old man Batman.

And again, the long exile makes Bruce's/Batman's return to glory and defeat of Bane all the more satisfying.

3. It demonstrates how evil Bane is. Like Gordon said, Batman left and things were good for a while, but then this "evil rises." The Dent Act kicked ass for 8 years, no mob family made a single peep in the city, organized crime was non-existent. Bane basically pissed all over the Dent Act and destroyed Gotham's long period of peace. If he did that after only 2-3 years, it doesn't really show how evil Bane is, it just shows how weak the state-of-peace and the Dent Act really were.

4. It allows Gotham City enough time to "get used to" the clean streets -- which makes Gotham's fall that much harder. Even something as significant as the elimination of organized crime would require months-years for a city to fully see its effects. The long time-period of peace makes Gotham's eventual fall all the more tragic and devastating. Imagine if Gotham had been clean for 20 years -- how jarring would it be for the city to suddenly fall under a war lord?

The storm analogy was perfect in TDKR. For 8 years, Gotham had fallen into a quiet, peaceful calm. The 8-year calm set the table for Bane's storm. It wouldn't be much of an uprising if Gotham achieved peace for like 9 months, only for Bane to mess things up.

5. It allows time for legend to grow. In the 8th year, Dent was being revered as more than a savior or even a hero -- he had reached legend status. The 8-year span shows how effective his legend was (in cleaning up the streets). On the flip side, Batman had devolved to myth; most had all but forgotten about him. But the few who did believe in Batman's legend -- like Blake, the kid, Gordon -- continued to firmly believe in him; even after 8 years, Batman is not dead and certainly not forgotten.

The long 8 years makes the exposure of the Dent cover-up even more shocking, and it makes the return of Batman all the more profound and significant.

6. It allows enough time for the proposal, voting, passage, and ratification of the Dent Act. Assuming it was a unique and/or complicated bill, something like the Dent Act would literally take 3-4 years just for it to be law. And that's just to put it in the books -- it doesn't account for the time it takes to execute the law.

7. Now that the Dent Act is ratified, the 8 years allows the city time to locate, investigate, arrest, prosecute, defeat appeal, and sentence the criminals. It's not like they were all lining up to go to jail. Finding everyone, convicting everyone, sentencing everyone would take years.

8. It shows how important Batman's and Gordon's efforts and sacrifices were. Batman and Gordon fought hard in The Dark Knight for a reason: they believed that Gotham could achieve a state of sustained peace, like in the period leading up to TDKR. Their efforts in TDK and their continuing efforts to cover-up Dent are not in vain, since the Dent Act has/had been cleaning Gotham up for 8+ years.

If the Dent Act worked for only 2-3 years, then it makes the final act of the Dark Knight less significant, since everyone fought and lost so much for a feeble state of peace that would only last a couple of years. The longer the gap, the more effective the Dent Act is, the more crucial their sacrifices were.






Yeah, these reasons are kind of all over the place. Some are logistical reasons within the Batman world. Some are literary reasons. Whatever.... they're reasons why I think the 8-year gap was necessary in order for The Dark Knight Rises to work.

 

[Drunkard Esq.]

1. Batman was not needed as much (or anymore) after the Dent Act cleaned up organized crime. Even before Bruce Wayne became Batman, Gotham's problem was organized crime, and its plague over Gotham is what drove Bruce to become Batman in the first place. With organized crime erased, Batman is no longer needed. We assume that Gotham's finest ably handled the ordinary street crime; besides, it would be overkill and/or boring to have Batman chase purse-snatchers or investigate mail fraud.

2. Batman needs a cane because his body is paying the career-long toll of being Batman. His TDKR injuries are not really "injuries" in that he did not get hurt from a particular incident. Rather, they're ailments and conditions that are the cumulative result of repeated and sustained physical exposure, exertion, contact, etc. endured as Batman. As was mentioned in the movie, his knees have no cartilage anymore -- it's bone on bone. Basically, his body is not a car that just crashed -- it's a beat-up car with 200,000 miles on it and not much left.




Here are my reasons why the 8-year passage of time was important and/or necessary:

1. It shows how much Batman means to Bruce Wayne, and how lost Bruce is without Batman. As was said in Batman Begins, his Batman persona was his real identity, and his "mask" was his Bruce Wayne persona, the eccentric billionaire. As the peaceful years go by, Bruce Wayne finds less and less purpose in life, since Batman is no longer needed anymore.

For 8 long years, he had been living as a shell of his real self. It's almost like Bruce thinks to himself, "be careful what you wish for." The 8 years really gave him time to "lose himself," he's clearly a lost soul in the beginning of the film. It makes Bruce's existential re-awakening -- i.e., his re-emergence as Batman, Bruce "finding himself" again via Batman -- all the more profound.

If Bruce/Batman was "lost" only 2-3 years, would it really be as satisfying to see him clean up and come back as Batman?

2. The 8 years ravage Bruce's/Batman's body. It's not just his soul that suffers -- his body really deteriorates over the 8 years. He's clearly way off his physical prime.

As the audience, we realize that the stakes are different now. Batman's physical death is a distinct possibility now. Even Alfred sees it; he not only sees it, but he is worried that Bruce/Batman would embrace such a death, since it seems like Bruce would rather die as Batman than continue living the meaningless experience as Bruce. This worries Alfed, it worries us.

It makes him an even heavier underdog against Bane. The Batman in Batman Begins probably would not allow his vertebrae to be broken like that by someone like Bane; he was agile and skilled enough to fend off Ra's and the League. But we see now that TDKR Batman is not the same one we're used to; we see a washed-up old man in a suit getting destroyed by a beast, and we accept it. We believe it when Bane breaks old man Batman.

And again, the long exile makes Bruce's/Batman's return to glory and defeat of Bane all the more satisfying.

3. It demonstrates how evil Bane is. Like Gordon said, Batman left and things were good for a while, but then this "evil rises." The Dent Act kicked ass for 8 years, no mob family made a single peep in the city, organized crime was non-existent. Bane basically pissed all over the Dent Act and destroyed Gotham's long period of peace. If he did that after only 2-3 years, it doesn't really show how evil Bane is, it just shows how weak the state-of-peace and the Dent Act really were.

4. It allows Gotham City enough time to "get used to" the clean streets -- which makes Gotham's fall that much harder. Even something as significant as the elimination of organized crime would require months-years for a city to fully see its effects. The long time-period of peace makes Gotham's eventual fall all the more tragic and devastating. Imagine if Gotham had been clean for 20 years -- how jarring would it be for the city to suddenly fall under a war lord?

The storm analogy was perfect in TDKR. For 8 years, Gotham had fallen into a quiet, peaceful calm. The 8-year calm set the table for Bane's storm. It wouldn't be much of an uprising if Gotham achieved peace for like 9 months, only for Bane to mess things up.

5. It allows time for legend to grow. In the 8th year, Dent was being revered as more than a savior or even a hero -- he had reached legend status. The 8-year span shows how effective his legend was (in cleaning up the streets). On the flip side, Batman had devolved to myth; most had all but forgotten about him. But the few who did believe in Batman's legend -- like Blake, the kid, Gordon -- continued to firmly believe in him; even after 8 years, Batman is not dead and certainly not forgotten.

The long 8 years makes the exposure of the Dent cover-up even more shocking, and it makes the return of Batman all the more profound and significant.

6. It allows enough time for the proposal, voting, passage, and ratification of the Dent Act. Assuming it was a unique and/or complicated bill, something like the Dent Act would literally take 3-4 years just for it to be law. And that's just to put it in the books -- it doesn't account for the time it takes to execute the law.

7. Now that the Dent Act is ratified, the 8 years allows the city time to locate, investigate, arrest, prosecute, defeat appeal, and sentence the criminals. It's not like they were all lining up to go to jail. Finding everyone, convicting everyone, sentencing everyone would take years.

8. It shows how important Batman's and Gordon's efforts and sacrifices were. Batman and Gordon fought hard in The Dark Knight for a reason: they believed that Gotham could achieve a state of sustained peace, like in the period leading up to TDKR. Their efforts in TDK and their continuing efforts to cover-up Dent are not in vain, since the Dent Act has/had been cleaning Gotham up for 8+ years.

If the Dent Act worked for only 2-3 years, then it makes the final act of the Dark Knight less significant, since everyone fought and lost so much for a feeble state of peace that would only last a couple of years. The longer the gap, the more effective the Dent Act is, the more crucial their sacrifices were.






Yeah, these reasons are kind of all over the place. Some are logistical reasons within the Batman world. Some are literary reasons. Whatever.... they're reasons why I think the 8-year gap was necessary in order for The Dark Knight Rises to work.

While I respect your opinion and you clearly put thought into it, I find your post problematic. To argue that the 8-year gap makes more sense at the start of the film due to the hypothetical political efficiency of a fictitious city while at the same time accepting that a man of "realistic" phisiology can recover from the injuries Bruce did in a matter of weeks/months seems to be grasping at straws.

Obviously the dramatic reasons for having Bruce in a state of retirement are condusive to the plot as it is in TDKR, but surely all the drama of having him return could have been channelled into when he returns from injury which could have been given the more realistic time-frame of 8 years.

As other posters have suggested, IMO it would have been a better story to have him completely lost in the Batman persona at the start. If he spent a few years battling two-bit criminals while actually avoiding police detection, his arrogance could have grown and thus when Bane says "Your victories have made you weak" it would have meant a bit more. He'd have become so used to easy fights that his hubris would have been believable.

 

[joker1524]

Hes gone for 8 years...comes back n gets his ass kicked n then in the frame of the film is gone for months again...comes back one last time n then hangs it up...kinda dont like it when i think about it now lol

 

[The Guard]

Here are my reasons why the 8-year passage of time was important and/or necessary:

1. It shows how much Batman means to Bruce Wayne, and how lost Bruce is without Batman. As was said in Batman Begins, his Batman persona was his real identity, and his "mask" was his Bruce Wayne persona, the eccentric billionaire. As the peaceful years go by, Bruce Wayne finds less and less purpose in life, since Batman is no longer needed anymore.

For 8 long years, he had been living as a shell of his real self. It's almost like Bruce thinks to himself, "be careful what you wish for." The 8 years really gave him time to "lose himself," he's clearly a lost soul in the beginning of the film. It makes Bruce's existential re-awakening -- i.e., his re-emergence as Batman, Bruce "finding himself" again via Batman -- all the more profound.

If Bruce/Batman was "lost" only 2-3 years, would it really be as satisfying to see him clean up and come back as Batman?

2. The 8 years ravage Bruce's/Batman's body. It's not just his soul that suffers -- his body really deteriorates over the 8 years. He's clearly way off his physical prime.

As the audience, we realize that the stakes are different now. Batman's physical death is a distinct possibility now. Even Alfred sees it; he not only sees it, but he is worried that Bruce/Batman would embrace such a death, since it seems like Bruce would rather die as Batman than continue living the meaningless experience as Bruce. This worries Alfed, it worries us.

It makes him an even heavier underdog against Bane. The Batman in Batman Begins probably would not allow his vertebrae to be broken like that by someone like Bane; he was agile and skilled enough to fend off Ra's and the League. But we see now that TDKR Batman is not the same one we're used to; we see a washed-up old man in a suit getting destroyed by a beast, and we accept it. We believe it when Bane breaks old man Batman.

And again, the long exile makes Bruce's/Batman's return to glory and defeat of Bane all the more satisfying.

3. It demonstrates how evil Bane is. Like Gordon said, Batman left and things were good for a while, but then this "evil rises." The Dent Act kicked ass for 8 years, no mob family made a single peep in the city, organized crime was non-existent. Bane basically pissed all over the Dent Act and destroyed Gotham's long period of peace. If he did that after only 2-3 years, it doesn't really show how evil Bane is, it just shows how weak the state-of-peace and the Dent Act really were.

4. It allows Gotham City enough time to "get used to" the clean streets -- which makes Gotham's fall that much harder. Even something as significant as the elimination of organized crime would require months-years for a city to fully see its effects. The long time-period of peace makes Gotham's eventual fall all the more tragic and devastating. Imagine if Gotham had been clean for 20 years -- how jarring would it be for the city to suddenly fall under a war lord?

The storm analogy was perfect in TDKR. For 8 years, Gotham had fallen into a quiet, peaceful calm. The 8-year calm set the table for Bane's storm. It wouldn't be much of an uprising if Gotham achieved peace for like 9 months, only for Bane to mess things up.

5. It allows time for legend to grow. In the 8th year, Dent was being revered as more than a savior or even a hero -- he had reached legend status. The 8-year span shows how effective his legend was (in cleaning up the streets). On the flip side, Batman had devolved to myth; most had all but forgotten about him. But the few who did believe in Batman's legend -- like Blake, the kid, Gordon -- continued to firmly believe in him; even after 8 years, Batman is not dead and certainly not forgotten.

The long 8 years makes the exposure of the Dent cover-up even more shocking, and it makes the return of Batman all the more profound and significant.

6. It allows enough time for the proposal, voting, passage, and ratification of the Dent Act. Assuming it was a unique and/or complicated bill, something like the Dent Act would literally take 3-4 years just for it to be law. And that's just to put it in the books -- it doesn't account for the time it takes to execute the law.

7. Now that the Dent Act is ratified, the 8 years allows the city time to locate, investigate, arrest, prosecute, defeat appeal, and sentence the criminals. It's not like they were all lining up to go to jail. Finding everyone, convicting everyone, sentencing everyone would take years.

8. It shows how important Batman's and Gordon's efforts and sacrifices were. Batman and Gordon fought hard in The Dark Knight for a reason: they believed that Gotham could achieve a state of sustained peace, like in the period leading up to TDKR. Their efforts in TDK and their continuing efforts to cover-up Dent are not in vain, since the Dent Act has/had been cleaning Gotham up for 8+ years.

If the Dent Act worked for only 2-3 years, then it makes the final act of the Dark Knight less significant, since everyone fought and lost so much for a feeble state of peace that would only last a couple of years. The longer the gap, the more effective the Dent Act is, the more crucial their sacrifices were.

Yeah, these reasons are kind of all over the place. Some are logistical reasons within the Batman world. Some are literary reasons. Whatever.... they're reasons why I think the 8-year gap was necessary in order for The Dark Knight Rises to work.

None of these things require an eight year time period, and some of them existed even at the end of THE DARK KNIGHT. The gap "needed" to be a few years maybe, which would have made sense, since it had been a few years since THE DARK KNIGHT.

Its fairly obvious that they wanted to use elements of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, to be able to say that Batman had been gone for a long time, and to show that Gotham had been without organized crime for a long time, and thats why there's an eight year gap. It hardly had to be eight years, and its hardly explored in the film. Its actually more or less glossed over after the first ten minutes or so.

 

[DACrowe]

I figured a lot of fans (especially purists) would hate this aspect of the movie. Honestly, I would have done something different. I would have it implied that Batman continued fighting crime and taking down the "freaks the clown ushered in" until the Dent Act cleaned up the streets and Batman hasn't been needed for the last 3-5 years or so.

Still....this is the direction Nolan wanted to go with it and it works. This is his version of Batman and not mine. And his vision is so clear and defined, I will not complain about that.

I will just add that Bruce Wayne has only been a hermit for 3 years in the movie. I didn't catch it the first time, but in his dialogue with "Miranda," it is revealed that Bruce spent much of the last decade trying to "save the world" as a businessman (obviously making up for not being a crimefighter anymore). He invested half of Wayne Enterprise's capital into developing fusion energy and when Dr. Pavel wrote a piece three years prior to the movie about how Wayne's reactor could be turned into a nuclear weapon, he shelved the project and then became a recluse. Hence, Miranda saying he went into hiding after he failed to save the world.

So Batman has been gone for eight years, but Bruce Wayne has been gone for only three. Hope that helps.

 

[KalMart]

But was it Wayne actually in on the meetings, making the deals, et al...or was it Fox being the the person actually securing the deals, with Wayne just telling him from his den to write the checks?

 

[DACrowe]

While I respect your opinion and you clearly put thought into it, I find your post problematic. To argue that the 8-year gap makes more sense at the start of the film due to the hypothetical political efficiency of a fictitious city while at the same time accepting that a man of "realistic" phisiology can recover from the injuries Bruce did in a matter of weeks/months seems to be grasping at straws.

Obviously the dramatic reasons for having Bruce in a state of retirement are condusive to the plot as it is in TDKR, but surely all the drama of having him return could have been channelled into when he returns from injury which could have been given the more realistic time-frame of 8 years.

As other posters have suggested, IMO it would have been a better story to have him completely lost in the Batman persona at the start. If he spent a few years battling two-bit criminals while actually avoiding police detection, his arrogance could have grown and thus when Bane says "Your victories have made you weak" it would have meant a bit more. He'd have become so used to easy fights that his hubris would have been believable.

Him being injured for eight years is a terrible idea. Simply because it makes the hero look very ineffective and weak, but more importantly it is not believable in the slightest that Bane could keep the entire city of Gotham hostage for nearly a decade without the bomb going off, citizens revolting or the US government cutting its losses and trying to bomb the city to get Bane.

As it stands, five months of that is really unbelievable. Eight years would just make it seem dumb. So, I respect they did it the way they did in that regard.

 

[The Guard]

I'd like to point out...my 90 year old grandmother legitimately broke her back a few years ago...and she healed within a year.

 

[Drunkard Esq.]

Him being injured for eight years is a terrible idea. Simply because it makes the hero look very ineffective and weak,

He looks ineffective and weak at the start as it is. Having him injured for 8 years would have been more realistic for the injury. Plus it would have given Bane more time to truly twist the mentality of Gothams citizens rather than having him basically saying "I've blown up huge chunks of your city but you should follow me because I'm telling you Commissioner Gordon is a big fat phoney." He would have been able to really get into their heads and develop a B.ig Brother style relationship

but more importantly it is not believable in the slightest that Bane could keep the entire city of Gotham hostage for nearly a decade without the bomb going off, citizens revolting or the US government cutting its losses and trying to bomb the city to get Bane.

Oh it's not like real world dictatorships have ever lasted more than 5 months. If we're going to play that game, in reality surely the US government wouldn't have let it last even 5 months.

As it stands, five months of that is really unbelievable.

Bingo

I'd like to point out...my 90 year old grandmother legitimately broke her back a few years ago...and she healed within a year.

That's good to hear that she recovered so quickly.

In the reality set out in these films though, the events at the end of TDK (from which he was able to run away) have left Bruce injured for eight years while the absolute hammering in TDKR (after which he could barely move) only has him out of commission for a few months, max.

 

[The Guard]

Oh, I thought people were talking about having his back broken for eight years. My mistake. I'm sure his existing injuries were more or less permanent.

 

[KalMart]

Oh, I thought people were talking about having his back broken for eight years. My mistake. I'm sure his existing injuries were more or less permanent.

Yeah, I think it's pretty hard to regenerate cartilage for one.

 

[Sundancer]

Let's hope the extras on the home release like interviews or commentaries may clear this up...but they generally don't.

 

[JaD]

I personally didn't like it because it makes it so that in reality, Batman was only active for almost 3 years in the city of Gotham. If Bruce was broken down so badly in the beginning of TDKR I was hoping it was from the wear of being Batman so long, not being a recluse.

Hell, I've put up with working at Safeway for 3 1/2 years before finally hanging up my apron.

 

[DaveMoral]

Unless Bruce was really really really horrible at landings when using that Bat cape/glider, I still have a hard time believing the cartilage of his knees was worn down that much from being Batman for just over a year. I mean, I don't think we ever got a shot of him basically just crashing with his glide-cape in Begins. And by TDK he was skilled enough to drop 4 stories without any effort. The only fall we see is when he was able to deploy only half the cape saving Rachel. That should have resulted in a back injury, BTW. We certainly never saw him crash while gliding like we did Keaton...

So, to me, what injuries we do see him sustain stretches the credibility of him being too debilitated at the beginning of TDKR to have been the Bat for 8 years. I still think it makes sense for him to have accumulated more injuries over another 3-4 years after TDK prior to the Dent Act having been truly successful such that he could no longer do it physically... let alone with the sights of the GCPD fully turned on him.

I can't help but feel like the real reason for the apparent retirement of the Bat for 8 years is that Nolan did not want to leave a gap into which fans could say he should have made another film depicting Batman's battle against this or that rogue that Nolan didn't want to use or couldn't figure out how to use. Which is crazy to me, because with the mob gap left by the elimination of Falcone, Maroni and the others I could see Cobblepot and Sionis sticking their heads in the game. They would both be much more mafioso, but because of the combination of Batman and the Joker they donned their respective eccentricities. Or at least Sionis. He wants his thugs terrified of crossing him and his enemies more terrified. Hence the Black Mask. Cobblepot is just called the Penguin(perhaps to his chagrin as well) because he's a somewhat squat, chubby man who has a penchant for tuxedos. Between Batman and the Dent Act, they are taken down.