19. Motivation
In Batman Begins, his motivation was clear. Through some pretty classy flash-backage, we were invited to take a long look at the plight of the man behind the cowl, and come to our own realisations about what it meant for the character and what itd mean to us if we were him. We experienced his training and beheld his immense willpower and dedication to his personal code. We looked into his eyes and saw the seeds of the Batman coming to fruition. As a Batman fan, it represented for me the closest any movie had come yet to breathing life into the character. The Dark Knight explored little snippets of that, but most of the 2 hour screen-time was dedicated to the slowly convoluting plot which followed Dents brief origin as Two-Face and Heath Ledgers incredible turn as The Joker. This youll never hear me complain about; for all my gripes about the franchise, I cant find a single fault in Ledgers second-to-final performance, from any angle. But what was Batmans motivation in The Dark Knight? This is arguably one of the things we paid hard earned cash to find out. To stop the Joker. Why? Because he was the bad guy. And unfortunately thats about all we have time for. The Dark Knight Rises all but completely dispensed with any rational explanation of anyones motivation. Why did Batman take an eight year hiatus? Because Gotham wasnt his friend no more. Why did Catwoman get herself involved? Some nonsense about a computer program (despite the fact that they kiss, her romantic attraction to the Batman was given about .4 seconds of development). Why was Bane so poetically linked to the Batman? He just was, stop asking questions. With so many clumsily inserted connections between characters, and so little time dedicated to each one, it was hard to pin down exactly why anyone was really doing anything. And without that, how do we ever relate to the franchise as a whole, on a human level? For me, A-list performances, pacey action and stylish cinematography do little to remedy a vacuous story.