8. The Eight Year Absence
It all seemed so obvious - at the beginning of the film Batman was going to encounter Bane and be broken, forcing him to take an eight year hiatus as a direct response of not only his physical injuries, but also his debilitating mental condition, as the defeat, coupled with the Harvey Dent situation eat steadily at his sense of self and conviction to his altruistic double-life. Then something personally devastating would drag him back into the worldof crime-fighting, ablaze with vengeance once more to finally face off against Bane and defeat him, getting the girl and saving the world in the process in conventional superhero fashion. But then Nolan's Batman trilogy has never taken a conventional superhero approach (albeit apart from the ending of this film - which we will come to), and that explanation of Batman's absence would probably have been too conventional. Instead the eight year absence is a matter of choice for Batman, who flees the aftermath of Harvey Dent's death by leaving Gotham entirely for seven years. They don't miss him, with Dent's legacy leading to a sanitised and organised crime-free city, and when he returns to Gotham it is to the sanctuary of one wing of Wayne Manor, where he stagnates for a further year before a break-in by master cat burglar Selina Kyle inspires him to put the suit back on. That might seem like a less interesting narrative decision, but crucially, Bane's impact, and indeed the impact of his financially contextual rabble-rousing depended entirely upon the sterile state of Gotham, culled of organised crime, and yet still toxic with the greed of the ruling classes and pungent with their apathy towards the other classes. That is the "calm" before the storm that Bane brings, with both Bruce Wayne and Gotham having fallen to states of stagnance, proving that both the man and the city require the presence of great crime to inspire greatness. A very interesting concept that, and one necessarily preceded by the narrative decision to simply let Bruce Wayne fade away from Gotham for eight years.