The Dark Knight Rises (In His Pants)

I’ve only just watched the Dark Knight Rises in theatres, a month since it’s release and I’ve noticed strange things about the plot nobody seems to be talking about. After being one of the last people to see it in theatres, you have no excuse to cry about any spoilers, but I’ll say it anyway: SPOILER ALERT.

1: Robin:

Why is Robin (Blake) hanging around Wayne Industries, or why is he at Bruce’s funeral? There’s only one scene where they’re publically linked together as Blake and Bruce Wayne. That’s hardly enough to get your foot in the door at a multi-national corporation. Alfred has next to no idea who the fuck he is, other than the fact he knocked on the door and he answered. The ass-end of the movie sets up Robin to become… Robin, as he gets 15 seconds of hands-on training from the man himself before earning the Batcave as a type of inheritance. Bruce Wayne is trapped in the Pit for five months, though, where he has little to no time to set up anything for a successor. His only tip of the hat is to tell Robin he should wear a mask to protect his loved ones, which really didn’t work out too great for Bruce to begin with. The entire dénouement is of him hanging around Bruce’s old digs with no real explanation as to why he’s there. How is Wayne’s mansion even standing after the crisis in Gotham? Was it outside the city lines? Every other building was ransacked completely. Also, Bane was out to destroy anything with Wayne’s name on it, and the mansion was the last thing he had. Why not torch it like Ra’s Al Ghoul did?

2: The Motive:

The entire movie is about Bane and Talia’s revenge of Bruce Wayne for killing Ra’s Al Ghoul. Only he didn’t kill Ra’s. They don’t know he killed him, either, they’re just assuming he did. It was actually Gordon who killed Ra’s by blowing up the rail the train was riding along. There were no witnesses to Ra’s death and his body was likely never recovered from under the wreckage. The only evidence linking Batman to the death is hearsay. Based on that, they come up with an incredibly convoluted plot to destroy Gotham out of revenge, well after Batman has gone into retirement. Since he quit, Gotham pulled a 180 and stopped being the evil city Ra’s was out to destroy with his convoluted plot. Its not even clear to outsiders that Bruce even cares about Gotham anymore. Blake certainly doesn’t think so because he stopped funding the orphanage programs. Why attack a city directly to get revenge on one man, then move that man across the planet to a prison where he can only watch helplessly from a black and white TV screen? Bruce even breaks the TV near the end of the five months, so he has no idea what’s going on. With everyone in the prison presumably working for Bane, shouldn’t someone at least be checking on Bruce to see he’s watching? The entire punishment boils down to Bruce watching Gotham being destroyed on TV. Then what? Was someone supposed to kill him? Bane was going to kill himself in Gotham as well. The bad guys had no escape plan in place. They were supposed to be suicide bombers. Bruce could have potentially escaped after the bomb went off and went on to live out the rest of his life. Sure, he’d be living with the knowledge that he let Gotham be destroyed, but it wasn’t exactly his fault.

3: Talia:

Why does Talia fuck Bruce? How did that fit into her revenge scheme? Her plan was to leave Bruce in the Pit for the rest of his life, so he was never going to know who she really was. She was never going to get a chance to betray him, because he would never know, and she was going to die in the suicide attack along with the rest of Gotham. She fucks him seemingly for the sake of horniness. Also, she’s in his lair, and she’s sleeping while he slips away into his Batcave and goes on patrol. Wouldn’t that have been a good time to be evil? Bane wouldn’t have needed to break into the Arsenal because she’d have access to Bruce’s secret stash under Wayne Manor.

4: The Pit:

That one spot in the Pit where Bruce had to jump and kept failing… Why didn’t he bring something up along with him to form a bridge? There’s plenty of spare materials around to use, and he’s fucking Batman. Also, he has a rope. He’s connected by a rope to the top of the Pit. He could just climb up the rope. All that bullshit about being afraid of death, and not being afraid of death, and his father’s ghost was a little unnecessary.

5: The Joker:

We all knew the Joker wouldn’t be back, but what actually happens to his character between the two movies? Presumably, he’s in Blackgate when Bane lets out the prisoners, or he’s dead. With Gotham being Joker-free for eight years, you have to assume he’s dead.

6: The Leg:

Why is Bruce walking around with a bum leg when he has the special equipment he needs to fix it in his Batcave waiting for him, perhaps for eight years?

7: Gordon:

How stupid is Gordon for not figuring out the Bruce Wayne is Batman? Bruce even went into his hospital room wearing a ski-mask, and an Armani suit, and he couldn’t put it together, although in his defence he was probably high on morphine. Then when Batman gives him the last clue, it takes him longer than it took Katie Holmes to figure things out, and it took Katie years to figure out who Tom Cruise really is.