15. Where Were The 8 Million?
Gotham City has eight million residents according to The Dark Knight Rises' script, and yet when Bane takes over, the streets are largely deserted, with everyone apparently happy to wait in doors until something happens to save or condemn them. The problem here is that the story makes only the two extremes of the city's population important at all, and in doing so, Nolan makes Bruce Wayne's decision to turn his back on his duty to Gotham's residents a lot easier. Because when it boils down to it, there's no-one for Batman to save: he is presented with a shit-storm of a situation whereby the criminal and lower classes have risen up to join Bane, thanks to the evils of the upper, apathetic classes, and he's asked to intervene. Despite being Batman's chief focus, the middle levels of the population don't matter, because they're completely absent from the final third of the film, albeit apart from the busload of children who are tasked with rather insistently representing Gotham's innocent heart. But it's just not a message that is particularly well communicated, and it's hard to really feel the authentic weight of the peril that faces all of Gotham's residents, when they're conspicuous by their absence.