4. Superfluous Characters
The Problem In an already fairly large cast (in terms of the significance of the characters), Nolan took the opportunity of the third film to introduce a whole new cast of supporting players, including the crucial - Bane and Talia- the important - Blake - and the downright unnecessary - Foley and Jen. It was always going to be difficult to integrate all of those characters without some being pushed slightly back, or the film's length becoming unbearably out of control, but neither Jen nor Foley's stories added anything at all to the overall story. Foley in particular seems to have been shoe-horned in for a little more dramatic tension, to show his character changing and ultimately sacrificing himself for honour and the protection of Gotham, but quite what that was supposed to represent remains unclear. And then there's Jen, who mooned about in the background, suggesting drug abuse and prostitution but not really adding anything at all to our understanding of Selina Kyle, which she clearly seems to have been intended as. How To Fix It Taking an eraser to both Modine and Temple's inclusion in the film would have meant very little to the overall film: Modine felt like a very self-conscious attempt to relaunch another forgotten star (as Nolan apparently enjoys), and Temple feels like the remnants of an abandoned story line dealing more explicitly with Selina's backstory. Given the gift of a time machine, or just pro-active hindsight, neither should have been included - they weren't necessary and they were little more than distractions. Again the lesson for future Batman flicks is to keep it tight, and not to have so many balls in the air at once - especially ones that are so needlessly distracting as Modine and Temple. At it's purest level, the superhero movie is about a simple dynamic - between good and evil - and a Batman film would work if it was just him and his enemy facing off for 90 minutes. The lore of the property of course means that other characters must exist, but the minute they start to infringe too much is the moment the pure essence of the property begins to lose its way. After all, it is no accident that the two greatest Batman films - Batman and The Dark Knight were predominantly focused on Batman's relationship with his greatest adversary. We can all argue that the other elements mattered - and of course they did - but most important of all was the ying-yang clash of the Dark Knight and the Joker.