9. Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul Appears As A Hallucination
Another question that arose thanks to a casting announcement - though this time as a result of an allegedly unintentional leak - was how Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul would figure in the third film after supposedly being killed at the end of Batman Begins. Those rumours were initially fuelled by set images that showed what appeared to be a Lazarus Pit, suggesting that Ra's might well be revived to lead Bane's revolution from the shadows, or that he would resurrect Batman after Bane killed him. Neither would have spoiled the narrative, though the supernatural elements would probably have sat rather uneasily in the context of Nolan's more realistic Batman universe, even though they might have been received well by fans of the comics. The subsequent revelation at the end of the film (which we'll get to soon) of course made such possibilities redundant, given the symbolic importance of Ra's Al Ghul's death, but that made the speculation no less engaging. Instead Neeson appears as a hallucination during Bruce Wayne's incarceration in the inescapable pit prison that is presented as Bane's birthplace (more of which later) - a prison that the villain casts Wayne into because of its torturous offer of hope, despite the impossibility of escape. During that incarceration, Wayne re-trains himself to once more become Batman, nursing himself back to health following Bane's iconic back-breaker in the prison with the help of Tom Conteh's fellow inmate. In the early stages of that rejuvenation, Ra's appears to Wayne in a vision, spurring him on to escape in a sequence that offers a clever mirror to inspirational speech he makes to Wayne in Batman Begins. Had Nolan gone for a more supernatural approach, he might have re-channelled the comic book spirit that had been occasionally looked over in favour of realism, grit and more conventional drama mechanics, but again it would probably have felt a little too much like a betrayal of the film's tone and direction.