Posted on 08/01/2012 12:02:35 PM PDT by Bratch
While writing my review of The Dark Knight Rises, I found myself doing a lot of self-reflection in regards to why I felt less enthused by Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy finale than I did about the previous installment, The Dark Knight. The performances in The Dark Knight Rises were excellent; it was a more visually sophisticated film, and the action set pieces were bigger and more frequent than ever before. The epic conclusion to the film left a lump in many throats, and by all accounts the movie should’ve been the most rousing and exciting chapter in the trilogy (no doubt some will say that it is).
My issue with TDKR has since come into focus as I’ve had further time to reflect: It’s the story that screenwriters Chris Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer chose to tell. While the story of The Dark Knight Rises is interesting and engaging in its own right, the issue is: it contradicts the thematic points of The Dark Knight.
[WARNING - TDK & TDKR SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!]
I have always been a fan of the Nolan Bat-films, but what truly blew me away about TDK was the boldness of the climax (that last half-hour of the film some (mistakenly) believe to be irrelevant), which posits the theory that sometimes, a noble lie (that inspires hope) is more important than the truth in its ugly detail: “Sometimes truth isn’t good enough – sometimes, people deserve to have their faith rewarded.”
Batman stops the Joker’s rampage, sure, but the real battle – establishing Harvey Dent as the “proper” symbol of hope and justice in Gotham City – is ultimately won by The Joker, who pushes the maimed and scarred lawman to forsake his morals in a murderous quest of vengeance. With all the good they’ve done about to slip through their fingers, Batman and Gordon decide on a lie – that Batman committed the Two-Face murders – in order to protect the fragile hope that Gotham is holding onto. On a personal level, Alfred burns the break-up letter the deceased Rachel Dawes left for Bruce Wayne, so that Bruce has the hope he needs to continue on as Batman.
That theme is quite profound; it’s something that can be applied to real-world politics, our notion of history (the “facts” vs. the established mythology), and even notions of faith and religious belief (if you’re so inclined to open that can of worms). As a (quasi-)comic book movie, TDK is even more profound: the heroes don’t “win,” per se, so they craft victory out of a lie. Whether you agree with the theory or not, it’s undeniable that The Dark Knight serves up food for thought that can be mulled over and debated in a way that few other films in the genre can.
But along comes The Dark Knight Rises, which totally contradicts that deep and unorthodox idea that Nolan and Co. previously put forth.
In TDKR, we find Bruce Wayne and Commissioner Gordon eight years later, being crushed under the weight of the lie they created. That so-called “noble sacrifice” on their part provides the illusion of prosperity and progress for Gotham, until (in a development that is both wonderfully literal and figurative) the ugliness that Gordon and Batman tried to bury literally explodes out of the bowels of Gotham’s sewers up to the surface, as Bane appears on the scene and forces the Commissioner and Bats to reconcile with the fact that their lie was only a superficial accomplishment. In the case of Bruce Wayne/Batman, Bane’s reign of terror forces our hero to suffer through a painful and perilous journey to truly become the symbol of hope and justice he wanted to be in the first place (i.e., what he sought to become in Batman Begins).
While this arc works well in making The Dark Knight Rises an epic and resonant tale, it also leaves The Dark Knight diminished in terms of its aforementioned uniqueness and profundity. Looking back from the ending of TDKR, TDK is transformed into a story about all the ways in which Batman and Gordon screw up – from who they trusted (bad cops), to how they dealt with The Joker (ignored him at first) and how they resolved the issue of Two-Face (a lie that cost them their spirits). The Dark Knight basically said “Sometimes a lie that inspires is better than a truth that defeats,” while The Dark Knight Rises basically says, “Hope and inspiration cannot be falsely earned, they have to be fought for through blood, sweat, tears and sacrifice.” It’s not every day that a movie uses a sequel to contradict the thematic conclusions of its predecessor.
[Of course, it's only fair that I act as my own Devil's advocate: there is a scene in The Dark Knight Rises where Bane is sitting with Bruce Wayne in the cell where he's imprisoned him. As Bane explains Bruce's situation, he makes the point that the prison's greatest weapon is the false hope it continuously inspires, via the sun-lit opening at the top of the pit. The message is that hope - in the right context - can become the most deadly poison of all. Interesting point, but one that TDKR doesn't fully and firmly connect to the events of TDK, in my opinion.]
I'm more comfortable with one of the comments after the article:
The point wasn’t that “sometimes lying for the right reasons is a good thing,” the point was all about the famous quote that when hunting monsters, you have to be sure not to become a monster.
Bruce didn’t heed that advice. He was arrogant to think he knew better than anyone else and as such, he was the inspiration for the Joker. In The Dark Knight Rises, Bruce is paying the price for his arrogance. THAT’S the point. It’s not a contradiction, it’s a continuation.
“...when hunting monsters, you have to be sure not to become a monster.”
I prefer what Buffy Summers once said: “They might be the things of your nightmares, but I’m what they have nightmares about.”
Someone once asked me how many muslims would I be willing to kill to protect my children and my answer was: “All of them.”
I think it is a good thing for the monsters in the world to know that they exist only at the suffrage of the monsters in each of us.
The problem with the Batman Trilogy is that the Bean Counters at WB screwed it up... What do I mean??
Simple, take the first film, the city is a stylized metropolis with “WAYNE TOWER” at its center, towering over everything around it, and the public transportation elevated train that Bruce’s father built being key to both the city and the storyline.
Installment 2 Wayne tower is now just a building with WAYNE written on the side, non discript and not even the tallest building in town, and that elevated train that was so vital to so much of Gotham in first installment, non existent and never mentioned.
Installment 3, again Wayne tower is once again a completely different building from 1 or 2 etc etc etc.
If you want to know why Marvel has been having hits, while DC has been largely trailing, look no further than this. We believe Batman retired after his battle with the Joker, and being blamed for Dents murder yet, the same batman who ran away at the end of movie 2 for the good of the city, now hobbles around on a cain unable to walk without help?
I think the bean counters just took so much away from what this could have been. It was still a reasonably good action movie, but it could and should have been so much more.
I think the glorious moral statement in TDKR, is even when the intentions are good and noble - the lie will ultimately limit the permanent good only truth can deliver.
Alfred himself makes that statement to Bruce Wayne after telling him the truth about Rachel’s decision in TDK. He states in pain that “Maybe it’s time we stop trying to outsmart the Truth and let it have it’s day!”
The truth always wills out - and that is of God. The pain comes when people realize they have been deceived and that their worldview is built on a lie, even if for a noble reason.
And that is another reason why TDKR is an incredible lesson in Conservatism. The movie serves another indictment of liberalism as far as I am concerned.
I somewhat agree with the comment you quoted. I don’t think TDKR contradicted TDK, I think it elaborated on it. It did not change the “sometimes people should have their faith rewarded” ending ... nor did it change the “hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now.”
>> the point was all about the famous quote that when hunting monsters, you have to be sure not to become a monster.
However, I wouldn’t characterize it that way at all. Almost exactly the opposite actually. I’d say the theme was ‘it takes a monster to hunt a monster ... and the hunter never comes out unscathed’. It isn’t a cautionary tale about avoiding becoming a monster ... it states that to combat the truly evil, compromises will be made. It doesn’t say “don’t become a monster” — it says, you will become a monster, and there will be consequences.
TDKR was about dealing with the consequences.
SnakeDoc
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9405999/How-the-Dark-Knight-Rises-reveals-Batmans-Conservative-soul.html
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From Breitbart, one day before the shooting...
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/18/dark-knight-rises-review-batman-bain-ows
You remind me of one of favorite films, which has a similar theme.
In “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, Rance Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) agrees to promulgate a lie for the “greater good”.
But Stoddard and his co-conspirator Tom Doniphon (John Wayne) are crushed by the carrying the weight of this lie throughout their lives.
A profound story; and I didn’t see the similar theme in TDKR until I read this post!
The following is from ABC's Good Morning America, via Yahoo News...
"Law enforcement sources confirmed to ABC News that [Colorado theater shooter] Holmes said "I am the Joker" when apprehended by authorities."
[snip]
There are more parallels. In Frank Miller's iconic 1986 comic book series, "The Dark Knight Returns," the Joker murders a television studio audience by deploying "smile gas." Holmes began his massacre by setting off smoke bombs throughout the theater.
In the same book, Arnold Crimp, a disturbed man who just lost his job, pulls out a handgun in an adult film theater and kills three people. A scene from the strip shows a news anchor saying, "Three slain in Batman-inspired porn theater shoot-out." ..."
(Excerpt) Read more at gma.yahoo.com ...
Right. TDK didn’t adopt the position that the ends justify the means, even though a couple of the good guys did adopt that position. The reviewer just assumes that the film was endorsing their choice, when that was left open, as it turns out, intentionally.
I learned to read using comic books, and it would be accurate to say their morality plays helped define my worldview during adolescence.
I will watch The Dark Knight Rises when it becomes available on Comcast, not until. By then, I’m sure I will enjoy it
What’s the point?
Especially if mixed with CHANGE!
I doubt the author of the article recognized how profound this sentence is when expanded to the Presidency.
"Law enforcement sources confirmed to ABC News that [Colorado theater shooter] Holmes said "I am the Joker" when apprehended by authorities."
In other words, there well may have been a political (Leftist, anti-Capitalist) motive for the murders. He was dressed in "BlackBloc"-type clothing during the shootings. The BlackBloc is an ultra violent faction of the Marxist/Anarchist "Occupy" movement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/9405999/How-the-Dark-Knight-Rises-reveals-Batmans-Conservative-soul.html
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From Breitbart, one day before the shooting...
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Hollywood/2012/07/18/dark-knight-rises-review-batman-bain-ows
Yeah, maybe there were political motives, but absent any actual evidence, that’s not any different than the media types speculating that it was a tea partier. I mean, saying he was dressed in “BlackBloc” type clothing is pretty meaningless when that really just means black clothing. A significant percentage of young people dress like that every day and have no connection to Black Bloc.
Also, the Joker isn’t a politically motivated character, even if people are reading his enemy, Batman, as a conservative archetype in these films. The Joker was just a lunatic, and any pretense to being an anarchist or something like that is just a symptom of his madness, rather than an ideological position.
A lot of anarchists and marxists could easily be classified as lunatics.
Bill Ayers: "I considered myself partly an anarchist then and I consider myself partly an anarchist now. I mean, I'm as much an anarchist as I am a Marxist which is to say I find a lot of the ideas in anarchism appealing."
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"Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at"
--Bill Ayers (1970), quoted in New York Times, September 11, 2001:
Article: "No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen"
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F02E1DE1438F932A2575AC0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1>
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"Dig It. First they killed those pigs [ie, rich people], then they ate dinner in the same room with them, they even shoved a fork into a victim’s stomach! Wild!"
-Weather Underground leader and wife of Bill Ayers, Bernardine Dohrn, referring to the Manson murders
Article: Allies in War -by David Horowitz
FrontPageMagazine.com | Monday, September 17, 2001
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=63512670-BF7C-42A0-B41D-5D0FB9E09C09
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Undercover agent Larry Grathwohl discusses the Weather Underground's post-revolution governing plans for the United States:
Larry Grathwohl:
"I asked, 'well what is going to happen to those people we can't reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?' and the reply was that they'd have to be eliminated. And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers. And when I say 'eliminate,' I mean 'kill.' Twenty-five million people. I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people. And they were dead serious."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ
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"It was at the Chicago home of [Bill] Ayers and [Bernardine] Dohrn that Obama, then an up-and-coming 'community organizer,' had his political coming out party in 1995. Not content with this rite of passage in Lefty World — where unrepentant terrorists are regarded as progressive luminaries, still working 'only to educate' — both Obamas tended to the relationship with the Ayers."
Article: The Company He Keeps:
Meet Obama’s circle: The same old America-hating Left
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YThjYTU1ZDBjNmQ2YzcwNzU1MmYwN2JiMWY0ZGI0NDA=&w=MA==
From the website Examiner...
The reports that Aurora movie theater gunman James E. Holmes was a former member of the “Black Bloc” faction of the Occupy movement have caused considerable debate. Yet the most strident denials of this reportage seem to come almost entirely from the political left. More objective sources as well as blogs and web sites on the right seem to assert Holmes was a member of the group.
The “Black Bloc” faction of Occupy has targeted law enforcement in other instances, and three members of the group are facing charges of attempting to kill cops in Chicago. It has become clear the “booby-trapping” of his apartment with trip wires and bombs was intended to kill the most likely next persons to enter that apartment, namely law enforcement. Aurora, Colorado police have state they are angry at knowing they were targeted in this way by the alleged movie theater shooter.
The web site GodLikeProductions.com has done an analysis of the commonly seen picture of Holmes along with two others that are allegedly him also, one from the dating site profile that is believed to have been his that had the line about visiting him in prison soon, and another of a mug shot of an Occupy New York member arrested in October of 2011.
Private Investigator Bill Warren reported on his blog the connection between Holmes and the Occupy movement, and his web site is still reporting that information as a result of his investigation of the issue. As some of the left seem to more stridently deny the connection, it appears more evidence is reported showing that Holmes might well be a member of the Occupy movement or a former member of the group.
"To stand up for truth is nothing. For truth, you must sit in jail. You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.
In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.
If I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible what was the main cause of the ruinous revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: 'Men had forgotten God; that is why all this has happened.'
A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage . . . . Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elite, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society"
What Batman and Gordon do at the end of TDK is to let a lie come into Gotham.
They keep silent about the evil Harvey Dent succumbed to, burying it deep within the wreckage Joker and the Mob made of Gotham, so that no sign of it appeared on the surface in 8 years. In the process they implanted it, and it rose up a thousand fold from the sewer with Bane. By not reproaching the evil Dent did at the behest and twisting of the Joker, Batman and Gordon did not simply protect a failed hope in a failed man, they ripped the foundations of justice from beneath a new generation in Gotham.
Ultimately, the truth is revealed, and Bruce and the entirety of Gotham has to rot in a prison constructed for them by an oppressive enemy hellbent on killing not the body - but their souls before their bodies.
To restore justice, to put hope in an idea and not a man - war to the death was necessary, or complete annihilation of everyone was their fate.
It took the full revelation of truth to set Bruce and Gotham free to do what was necessary.
Had they waited any longer - all would be lost. In the end, the window of opportunity to defy the odds and overcome evil was decided by those who risked everything - and lost it all in order to give the future , a chance.
One has to wonder in current circumstances - will life imitate art for our futures?
Hoo boy.
Ok, first of all, the “Examiner” is not a really reputable source, it’s basically just a blog. Secondly, of course most of the denials come from the left, because it is people on the right who would like to believe that Holmes was one of their ideological opponents. No surprise there, but it’s certainly no kind of evidence. Third, lots of criminals hate law enforcement and might like to kill them, so Black Bloc is not special in that regard. Fourth, godlikeproductions is even less reputable than the Examiner, and the connection of Holmes with the photo of the NY Occupy protester has been debunked after other photos of that protester were found. The original blogger who posted the photo has retracted the claim.
As for Bill Warren, who was the first to come up with this idea, well, he’s free to speculate, but that is pretty much all he is doing. He hasn’t offered up one single piece of actual evidence that Holmes is a member of this group, nor have you.
The fact that the movie portrays Batman as a pro-Capitalist, pro-Conservative superhero and this nut case said to police afterwards that HE was the Joker, Batman’s longtime enemy, is reason enough for me to keep the possibility wide open that a political motive COULD be behind it. The Left tried to dismiss the evidence that Gifford’s shooter was Left wing. That the Unabomber was Left wing. That Stack (IRS building plane crasher) was Left wing. That Amy Bishop was Left wing. That Lee Harvey Oswald and “Reverend” Jim Jones of the Jonestown Massacre were Left wingers.
Joe Stack (IRS plane crasher) sums up his “manifesto” with this, a popular Karl Marx quote and a stab at Capitalism...
“The communist creed:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
The capitalist creed:
From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.”
-Joe Stack (1956-2010)
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Full text here: (CNN PDF file)
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