Yeah, but The Dark Knight wasn't the end of the story that begun with Batman Begins. There's a reason why the new Star wars trilogy brought it back to A New Hope and the original trilogy in order to move forward AND to tie everything together. Same with the prequels which will figure into the new films whether we like it or not, because Episodes 1-3 were the beginning of that story. It doesn't mean you have to use Ras Al Ghul himself as a villain, or that Talia had to be there. But making the LoS relevant to the story was important, i think.
Bruce, in TDKR, must rediscover himself before passing the torch forever and letting go. He rediscovers Batman (and FEAR which was a nice nod to his training). He must become that character again to defeat Bane. OK, could they have done this with a dream sequence with Ras? Yes. But my main concern would have been with Bane's motivation and having this new villain come across like a random Joker type who just comes out of nowhere and learns about Batman, tries to push his boundaries, tries to take over his city..
It always felt like the League of shadows was unfinished business. Ras died. But all that talk about Ras being immortal. He made it sound like it was a mindset passed on from generation to generation. If Ras dies and everything falls apart within that organization, then so much for immortality. Plus merging Ducard with Ras was a huge deal in Begins. This is the guy who trained Bruce Wayne. Was a father figure to Bruce in his 20's. He learned how to become Batman through the League of Shadows before they had a major disagreement. If Bruce is learning how to be Batman again (and yes i do think the same scenario would play out if Bane broke Batman in an imaginary film that excluded Ras)...then what better way than dive back into the roots of BATMAN. Not in one line or a dream sequence either. The link between Bane and Batman was made stronger IMO because of Nolan's choice to bring the LoS back into this post-Dark Knight world. And it made Bruce's origins more important instead of acting like Heath's Joker was the single greatest thing to happen to those movies. Heath was great, make no mistake, but too many people didn't see Batman Begins and were shouting to the rooftops that Joker was the most important thing in TDK and Nolan's films. By bringing it full circle, it made a point that Rises is not only a sequel to the successful Dark Knight movie, but a 7.5 hour mini-series basically. A novel. A third act. That was the single most important thing to Nolan in making another movie. The key to that is HOW Bruce became Bats, so you can't do that by side-stepping the major involvement of Ras Al Ghul.
There's a whole rogues gallery there and Joker didn't need to be in more than a few scenes to get the job done. Bane was the perfect choice. Even better than Joker going solo again, or Two-Face remaining alive, or another mob guy trying to run Gotham into the ground, or Riddler sending Batman puzzles. Linking Hardy's Bane to the Al Ghul family was incredible. It gave the sequel to TDK more weight. It put more eyes on the roots of this trilogy, Batman Begins. It made it clear that Bane wasn't just going to be a random dude from some country that stumbled upon Batman. That would have felt so random. It's the end of a single story not just episode #3. If Nolan announced he had hopes for this franchise to keep going past film #3, then hell yeah, i'd be into that Bane story, cuz it's a good story to tell on film or not. Yes you would still have the imagery of Bruce falling into the pit. I get why people didn't care for Talia and the League in TDKR, but for me it added a lot to the big picture.
