The Playboy
Bruce Wayne comes from old money that works for him, as long as cat burglars dont steal his fingerprints, so he parties like the careless trust fund baby that he is. Thats at least what he wants Gotham City and the world to think so he has the cover he needs to pancake cop cars on the evening news.
The Dark Knight Trilogy is the only set of movies to integrate the playboy persona of Bruce Wayne into the story. This is a ruse going back to characters like the Scarlet Pimpernel, Zorro, and the Shadow where the stalwart hero conceals his courageous nature under the guise of a feckless layabout to take suspicion away from him while hes out righting wrongs. It was very common in the pulps and still used in comics today but not so much in movies where the heroes are the same in costume as they are out of it for the most part. Christian Bale has the looks and charm to pull off the playboy guise as proven in his breakout role as Patrick Bateman in
American Psycho as a well-dressed serial killer equally at home with a martini in his hand as a chainsaw. He likely called on that previous role for the public face of a Bruce Wayne who played in pools with European models in his tailored suits and spirited away a Russian ballet company for a cruise on his private yacht all in service to his role as Batman which was so good the Rachel Dawes character seemed to even think it wasnt such an act even after she found out he was the vigilante. Theatricality and deception truly are powerful agents. Previous Bat-actors like Val Kilmer and George Clooney had the looks (Kilmer) and the charm (Clooney) it took to be plausible as Playboy Wayne but they werent required to make that little shift in posture or cast of the eyes like Bale did which signified he had put aside the guise and gone into hero mode. The change is noticeable in the second movie when the Joker crashes the Harvey Dent fundraiser and he springs into cold, competent action by taking out a Joker henchman without breaking stride while going to get his true power suit. Its a minute change but not insignificant because it works as a silent nod to the audience that Bale has put the public face aside. Thats where the skill comes in because a true thesp can show just as easily as tell. Christian Bale in
The Dark Knight Trilogy was able to successfully bring to the screen the playboy persona of Bruce Wayne as a distinct facet of the whole character. He wasnt the absent-minded goofball of Keaton in
Batman 89 or the smirking clown of Clooney in
Batman & Robin but the perfect fop needed to deflect suspicion from the real man behind Batmans mask and the playboys wine glass. Click "next" for part 3...