The Dark Knight Rises How long did Nolans Batman actually fight crime?(SPOILERS)

There is no way...

a female would seriously pose this question.

 

yea thats pretty lame, and in those few years he didnt want to be Batman.

 

It's not out of character at all for the world Nolan created.

 

It was less than a year spanning Batman Begins and Dark Knight I think. Plus the duration he returned as Batman again in Rises. But yea, at most it was probably just a little over 2 years if you add it all up.

I honestly didnt give this much of a thought until Comicvine mentioned it in their review of Rises.

 

Woah everyone is way off in here. Nolans batman fought crim from 1999 to 2013 minus the 8 year gap where we assume he did absolutely nothing. that makes him "Active Batman" for roughly 6 years... all this as per the official Dark Knight Trilogy Manual timeline!

 

He started out in 1999? I'd like some proof of this.

 

I was thinking about this too after I saw the movie. Nolan's Batman couldn't have been around for more than a few years, which is more realistic than him being around for a few decades when you think about. But still, I would've preferred for him to be more than just a blip in this Gotham City's history.

 

It wasn't quite clear how long he was active. But it couldn't be that long. He only started midway in Batman Begins, and basically retired at the end of the Dark Knight (unless I'm misremembering things).

Thing is, Batman for the most part only dealt with major crime. Once the mob was essentially dismantled, and the Joker defeated he really didn't have much else to deal with. Sort of explains the retirement.

What else was he going to do?

In comics there are dozens of super-villains, here, not so much.

 

This was always one of my concerns going into TDKR. Not only was he active for a short while, but he was only in his prime, arguably, for maybe a few months.

 

Then buy the TDK trilogy Manual... the only reasoning people are using against the official timeline is the fact that Joker says "Let's wind the clocks back a year" ...

 

Yup...

 

Considering the physical toll it takes to be Batman fighting crime, it makes quite a lot of sense for him to be Batman in only the limited time he was. And it's not like it translated into Batman appearing in each film for only 2 minutes so I don't see why it really matters. Heightened realism is obviously at the forefront of Nolan's Batman movies so this would translate into a real man fighting crime for this long. Everyone saw the damage he had suffered in TDKR from just the limited he was Batman and that was before the events of TDKR!

 

Yeah but I found the realism of all that sudden damage to be a bit questionable.

 

Courtesy of Umair Dar on the facebook fan page:

2003 - Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City, has his first night out, begins prowling as the Batman.

2003 - Jimmy is a two year-old infant when Batman visits Gordon at home.

2005 - Batman defeats Ra's Al Ghul on the train. Remember this is on the SAME NIGHT that he has his 30th birthday party.

2005 - 2008 - Offscreen, Batman wages war on crime, working his way up to the big fish of the mob. Assuming this is true conveniently explains several things:

- (1) Like SnakeDoc suggests, it is not until a year before TDK that he is finally having an impact that is really hurting them and making them take notice.

- (2) All during this time, while Batman is building his reputation, Joker commits random crimes and builds up his own legend among criminals. This is where we get the "So why do they call him the Joker?" "I heard he wears makeup..to scare people...y'know, war paint" lines. It makes sense that it takes a while to build up that kind of rumormill/reputation. It also explains the "Two-bit wack job, cheap purple suit" line from Maroni and the "Him again" line from Batman. Joker wasn't wearing the purple suit during the bank robbery, so Maroni must have seen/heard of him before. Like Batman, dispite his crimes, he views him as just a minor nuisance to be dealth with later.

- (3) Guestimating this three-year gap between the films also neatly explains the line in The Dark Knight Manual that he was wearing the Original Suit for 5 years---he was---from 2003 to 2008.

- (4) Finally, this 3 year gap ages little Jimmy almost perfectly. If he is two years-old in 2003, then he is seven in 2008. It doesn't take much stretching in either direction to make him an 8 year-old, or to even just assume he is supposed to be seven in that film.

The Dark Knight Rises is eight years later.

2016 Now I know the Gotham Civil War poster contradicts this, with the date of the exhibit ending in 2014. But this is the only really hard-set date we know of (as of now anyway), and it's not really clear if it even appears noticeably on-screen or if a hard-set date of 2014 appears in the final film on screen, so I'm willing to overlook it. Also, I realize this is just an excuse, but that poster could be an "old" ad that was never taken down, or pasted over with something else newer that is peeling off. It certainly doesn't look like it's supposed to be in new condition. Just sayin'.

Working backward from the above dates, we can make the milestones in Bruce's life fit too.

2003 - Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham. Based on the above that he turns 30 in 2005, he turns 28 in 2003. Since we know he was away for seven years, he dropped out of Princeton at 21 (or 20, depending on his birthday) as an undergrad in his senior year, just shy of graduation.

Working farther back and using the casefile of the Wayne murders in The Dark Knight Manual

November 8, 1983 - The Waynes are gunned down. Bruce is 10 or 11 years old (again, depending on his birthday)

1972 or 1973 - Bruce Wayne is born.

 

Batman Begins takes place over 2 years when Bruce returns to Gotham?

 

He comes back Gotham at age 29 and creates Batman, fights Ra's on his 30th birthday, and then he takes the fall for Dent's crimes and disappears (presumably) less than a year later. In TDKR, [blackout]that was the last known sighting until he returns 8 years later for a short period of time and then fakes his death.[/blackout]

Anyway, Nolan's Batman is a deconstruction of the idea of Batman. [blackout]It's a disease Bruce Wayne had to be cured of in his point of view in order to move on with his life[/blackout], and it was better for [blackout]an ex-cop that wasn't driven by the same things as Bruce to presumably take over his job.[/blackout] And of course, in order for Bruce Wayne to move on with his life, he had to [blackout]fake his death and exile himself from Gotham entirely--which is what Alfred wanted[/blackout]. Not too happy with this or the logic behind some of it, but there it is.

 

And I thought I read somewhere that TDK takes place like 6 months after BB

 

I've seen a lot of contradicting stuff.

I assumed it was a year, but not much more.

 

The construction of the Bat-Cave, still have Wayne Manor set up for the cave, Alfred saying to Bruce that he hadn't been down in the cave in a long time, and the existence of two batsuits and new weaponry lead me to believe that Batman was active in those 8 years.

Remember, 'the last CONFIRMED sighting of the Batman" 8 years ago. I think Batman was still going at it for a few years after, thus the injury and further scarring and injuries as pointed out by the doctor.

 

Long enough to earn a chance at a happy and peaceful life.

 

Long enough to be deemed deserved, but perhaps not long enough to be needed.

 

This. This. This.

 

As a famous archaeologist once said, "It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage."

 

2014 is TDKR. Minus 8 years makes 2006. "One year ago" is 2005. I'll just stick with this. I don't think it really matters how long Bruce wore the cape and went out at night -- it feels like a long time and a long, torturous journey for him to endure.