The Man
A constant criticism of the latest Batman movie has been the supposed lack of Batman in the movie but not many of those same reviews bring up the fact that Bruce Wayne is the main character of the story.
TDKR is about the fallible man who has lost not just the woman he loved in the last film but also a real reason to move on with his life. As Alfred reminds him, hes not living; hes just waiting for something bad to happen again. When the misfortune comes though he does spring back into action as Batman again but its different. He wears the cowl and the armor again after eight years of movie time but hes not the Dark Knight anymore rather just a man going through the motions. Was it any wonder Bane defeated him so easily in the Gotham sewers? Bruce Wayne, the man, went through a most interesting arc in the just concluded trilogy. Growing from the scarred young boy who watched his parents murdered in front of him to an angry young man who blamed himself for their deaths. An anger that drove him to accept Ducards offer of training with the League of Shadows in
Begins to focus that emotion before it consumed him from the inside to coming back to his home of Gotham City to do the work needed to become an incorruptible symbol to remind the people of his city that a hero can be anyone trying to do the right thing. Just as the Playboy persona of Bruce Wayne had never been truly explored on the screen, a mortal Bruce Wayne who made mistakes and lost his way wasnt either. Bale showed how lost Wayne was when he took a gun to kill Joe Chill, his parents murderer, at his parole hearing and how he underestimated the depths of the Jokers madness for much of
The Dark Knight by believing the Clown was just a run of the mill criminal to easily figure out and defeat. Bales Wayne was still able to move past his mistakes by tossing the gun he planned to kill Chill with and coming back from a serious injury to not just defeat Bane but save his city in the latest film. With apologies to Rachel Dawes, she was wrong because Bruce Wayne, not the bat-eared cowl or the playboy persona, was the characters true face. Like any human, he made errors but like the best of us Bale portrayed a Bruce Wayne who learned from his mistakes and grew as a result of them. Christopher Nolan and company were able to create a series of movies that read like a dense tome chronicling the life of Bruce Wayne more than the adventures of Batman. An actor with chops like Bale was the perfect choice to show the beginning, the fall, and the rise of not just the Bat but the man in the costume. The heart to hearts Wayne had with his surrogate father, Alfred, or the witty back and forths he would have with his very own Q, Lucius Fox. Those interactions combined the palpable sense of loss over Rachel and the weight of living with the lie he and Commissioner Gordon created to keep the truth of Harvey Dents murderous fall from grace hidden from the public made for an arc worthy of any actors skills. An arc that reached a satisfying end when the real Bruce Wayne became whole again after learning how to pick himself up after he fell. He didnt just rise out of Bane and Talias pit; he rose from the same pit he had lived in since his parents death. Rising from that pain allowed him to leave all the masks behind to pass his mantle to a worthy successor while cementing the incorruptibility of his symbol. Click "next" for the final part...