I'm quoting this from the previous iteration of this thread:
ronny said:
I think Bane is going to break Gordon's back. There simply is not enough time to sufficiently show the whole Knightfall arc of Bruce being defeated and then coming back to face Bane. We've got to get enough time for Catwoman, all the existing characters. It's too cluttered to have Batman actually be 'broken'.
But Gordon is a different story in my opinion. And in some of the newer comics he does walk with a cane, does he not? Sure, that was from a bullet wound. But what if Nolan changed things a little?
I think having Bane destroy such a beloved character would be preferable to trying to fit in this massive rdemeptive storyline. This film is about Batman redeeming himself, whereas Knightfall is him at his lowest ebb. The Joker already dragged Batman to his lowest point, it's time he went on the offensive.
I think it's perfectly possible to produce a reasonable facsimile of Knightfall, appropriately Nolanized. I don't think it's realistic to say "This film is about Batman rising, so he can't go any lower because that's not rising." What matters is the arc, and where it takes him in the end--not where it puts him in the middle of the film.
As Batman11 and I were discussing in the Broken Bat thread, Batman's in a bad place: with Rachel gone there's no normal life for him to go back to, and as a result he's gone deeper into his life as Batman, because Batman is all he has left in his life. If you take that away from him with an injury that threatens to put him out of commission forever (though, realistically, not as serious as the injury in Knightfall, which required magic powers to heal), that's got to be the worst thing in the world for Bruce.
That's going to force him to confront that this life of violence was all he had in his life, which is not a healthy way to be regardless. If you've got Selina around during his recovery, there's someone who can bring him back around to a more balanced, healthier way of thinking. If Catwoman has one important thing to teach Batman, it's that it's okay to look out for yourself once in a while.
Nolan is going to do his thing and it's sure to be completely different from what I've suggested here; this is just one of the ways I think it can be made to work. The real obstacle isn't about fitting so much stuff in; people said the same thing about Two-Face and that worked out fine (naturally, some disagree). I'm not worried baout these elements being tied together in a way that flows and make sense; TDK proved that's something these people excel at.
The real obstacle, in my mind, is injuring Batman in such a way that the audience can believe two things: first, that this injury could end his career as Batman; second, that the injury is something that, with enough effort, he can recover from and return to that career. That's the tricky part.
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