The Dark Knight Rises: 20 Blunders in Chris Nolan’s Trilogy

6. No One Should Outshine the Batman

I entered into Nolan€™s Batman franchise thinking €˜Batman€™s going to be awesome€™. And he started out that way; Bale gave as good as he got, performance wise, next to Liam Neeson and as Batman Begins€™ credits rolled, I couldn€™t wait to see what Nolan would do with the character next. The Dark Knight was a great movie too (far from perfect, but that€™s another article); not because of Batman but because of The Joker. It€™s really Heath Ledger€™s time in the sun, and if it weren€™t for his terrifying take on the Clown Prince of Crime I think TDK would be looking at far worse reviews and final scores than it got upon its release. Batman was dwarfed by this binary opposite and at times, I found myself weirdly disappointed whenever we were pulled away from The Joker€™s exploits for Batman€™s scenes. How is that possible? Tom Hardy was nowhere near up to Ledger standards as Bane but I'll admit that he wasn€™t half bad most of the time. And for me, even he outshone Batman who by TDKR had become little more than a device to get us from one sketchy plot point to the next without stopping for much introspection or insight into the character we're paying our ticket fee for along the way. To a certain extent, The Dark Knight Rises was Tom Hardy€™s movie (until it was revealed in the plot that he was actually a pretty meaningless pawn €“ sheesh). This is not what I want from a Batman movie. This is not what the fans want. No villain should be more exciting than the Batman, this is a world gone topsy-turvy.
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Contributor

Stuart believes that the pen is mightier than the sword, but still he insists on using a keyboard.