The Dark Knight suit is trash and in retrospect I wish Nolan had just kept the BB suit despite its restrictions.
Completely agreed. That is exactly how I felt when I watched The Dark Knight last week. It is such a great Batman movie, but Batman looks horrible in it. It's not like the action choreography really used the added mobility anyways. Reminds me of Craig's ridiculous skinny suits in Skyfall. Great movies that utterly botch the iconic looks of their heroes.
Sadly, the Begins suit also looks pretty bad in The Dark Knight. I don't know if it is because they reused suits made for Begins and they had degraded in the meantime or no longer fit Bale right due to his leaner physique, but the Begins cowl often look like a pale imitation of its former self:
I thought it looked great in the daytime. This shot in particular is an all-timer for me.
For me, the TDK suit looks good here and in some other shots because the cinematography hides most of its details and therefore its flaws. The strong overhead lighting helps hide the Batbra, and the shadows are well placed to hide most of the Lego legs and excess detail around the neck and abs.
The big problem for me is that every shot like this where it looks good, there are many more where it looks meh or bad.
I just hope he doesn't have a drastically different suit in the sequel. I understand it's early and everything is a work in progress, but it's beautiful.
If anything I hope for a TDKR situation where that suit looked miles better to me than it did in TDK. I think Bale lost a little too much weight for TDK, so maybe that's what it was, but it looked much better, specifically the cowl.
I totally get that and agree. My idea in that regard, that probably other posters are sick of hearing, is that they should approach upgrades to this Batsuit like Indy's classic outfit (and its minor changes in the original Indiana Jones trilogy) or Aragorn's costume in the LOTR trilogy. Keep the core costume the same, but add some upgrades or accessories in a piecemeal fashion and only for story or character reasons. To use the Aragorn example, Aragorn's core costume is the same throughout the trilogy, but he gains some accessories or other items over the story that tell the story of his adventures and character development without fundamentally changing his costume. In Fellowship, he replace his ratty cloak with the Elvish cloak from Lothlorien. After Boromir's death, he wears his fallen friend's vambraces in his memory. In Two Towers, he adds a new chainmail undershirt under his existing duster, braces, cloak, etc. in order to have more protection as the war and danger escalates. In The Return of the King, he adds Anduril as his weapon in acceptance of destiny as king.
I feel like they could take a very similar approach to Battinson's already gorgeous suit. Give him new more heavily armoured vambraces with functional blades for added combat funcitionality, or a new scalloped cape when he upgrades his wingsuit into a more traditional glider cape. Maybe give him a new utility belt as he adds new, more sophisticated gadgets to his arsenal. Etc.
Those short of changes would keep the bulk of the costume the same while allowing for upgrades to show that this Batman is maturing and becoming more sophisticated.