8. Take Your Time With Romance (Even In A Blockbuster)
Here's something that you don't really notice until it goes wrong. And when it isn't done properly, romance is both awkward and frustrating to sit through. If you, as an audience member, don't believe it, or it's rushed to the point that you know instinctively that it's being crammed in as a future plot device, there's only one person to blame: the screenwriter. And
The Dark Knight Rises - with its many, many plot points - decides to ham in not one, but two romantic encounters for its protagonist. One of which, between Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle, is a standard enough blockbuster romance. Contrived perhaps, lacking complexity, but anywhere else it might feel less than clumsy than it does here - what more can we expect? But consider this: we spent a large part of two movies working through a turbulent and complex romantic relationship concerning Bruce Wayne and Rachel Dawes in
Batman Begins and
The Dark Knight.
Two movies. It's a relationship that works, because it feels real, and comes with problems that are related to the films as a whole. If Bruce is Batman, can his relationship with Rachel really work? That's good writing, because the two characters are linked directly to a major theme within the movie universe. We also know that they were friends as kids, and there's a nice "will they?/won't they?" dynamic running through both movies. Simply put, we feel invested in these characters because we know them. Juggling so many plots meant that Nolan didn't have enough time to develop a relationship of such resounding resonance here. Which is fine, because killing off Rachel gave Bruce a new vein of angst to struggle against. Screenwriting is all about conflict, after all, external and internal. But when Bruce suddenly shacks up with Miranda Tate, a character who has only been introduced in this third movie, we can't really invest in their relationship. We don't know anything about Miranda. Put bluntly, she's an extremely boring character. And though the scene in which Bruce and Miranda sleep together at his mansion is there to make her later reveal more "personal," because the romance is rushed, it lacks any real punch. We've forgotten that they were even romantically involved at this point, anyway, and that's mostly down to the fact that - above all - their relationship felt forced. It's important to remember, then, that just like in real life, love takes time. And though real life romance likely takes years and years of work, it's up to cinema to grant us - at the very least - the
illusion of such things. The Bruce Wayne/Miranda Tate romance feels like a plot point at work, because that's exactly what it is. But here's where one useless scene (and there are plenty in
Dark Knight Rises) could've been traded for one that would've further grounded their relationship. As it stands, it feels awkward, and that's mainly because it's not earned.