2# Reverse Engineering Bullets... The Dark Knight (2008)
Again, this is perhaps only a small point and it won't annoy people as much as the points above, but out of all of the technical advances showcased in The Dark Knight (2008) I felt that the reverse engineering of a bullet was the least convincing. Setting up a row of identical wall bricks, shooting at each in turn and using the fragments to find a fingerprint on an already shattered bullet? For this to work would Bruce not need to use the same type of weapon, the same type of bullet and shoot from the same distance and elevation? How does he know that the bullet was fired on a perfectly horizontally plane into the wall? Surely in the excitement of the confrontation shots would have hit the wall from multiple directions and at multiple angles? Also, do all bullets always shatter in exactly the same way, even if they are fired in identical conditions? I know, I know. Its a film. I should just deal with it. After all, the theory of reverse engineering a bullet is no stranger than transforming every mobile phone in Gotham into a sonar transmitter. However, the crucial difference here is that the sonar was at least pre-empted and developed to give it a degree of credibility; Bruce refuses to tell Lucius Fox about an alleged Military Telecommunications project throughout the film, before revealing near the finale that he has adopted a piece of technology developed by Fox for use in Shanghai and deployed it on a much larger scale. Therefore, the technology is grounded within the reality of the film and can be readily explained. By contrast, reverse engineering a bullet is not mentioned before or after the scene in which it features, nor is it included in Batman Begins (2006), giving the impression that it was used only as a narrative device to advance the plot when the writers were stuck in a rut.