Christopher Nolan's take on the Dark Knight was an attempt to make the character a little more believable, a little more realistic than the disturbed billionaire playboy who wears tights and swoops down on criminals in the comic books. He did this by swapping the tights for some kevlar armour and...actually, that's pretty much it. He even kept in one of the most confusing rules (and double-standards) the character lives by in the comics: no killing. We don't know if it's a result of Bruce Wayne seeing his parents so mercilessly gunned down, or because a superhero straight-up murdering bad guys would be sort of inappropriate for kids - probably a little from column A, a little from column B - but that's his rule and he's sticking by it. In fact in The Dark Knight Rises he explicitly instructs Selina Kyle "No guns, no killing". Which she doesn't think is a lot of fun, later proving it to be a stupid dictum to live by when she saves Batman's life by blowing Bane away with a rocket. That'll be Bane, the film's main villain, who is at best half-way responsible for the people who fall through the ice of Gotham harbour. We're not sure there was much of a body count on the parts of The Joker, Scarecrow or Ra's Al Ghul in the other films, either, since the Caped Crusader was so good at foiling their plans. He also pushed Harvey Dent off a building to his death, left Ra's to die in a train crash, and very nearly knocked off the Joker by throwing him off another building. He never quite gets the murderous glee of Michael Keaton's Batman, but Christian Bale seemed to still be channelling some Patrick Bateman in the Dark Knight trilogy...
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
