By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight is one of the most beloved superhero movies ever made. It’s a deconstruction of the medium as a whole that pits Batman and the Joker against each other like archetypal forces of nature, all while giving us top-notch writing and characterization. However, some fans have always had a problem with the film’s ending, in which the titular Dark Knight takes the blame for Harvey Dent’s crimes. Sure, we got a cool Commissioner Gordon speech out of it, but Batman could probably have escaped to inspire and save lives another day.
Plus, The Dark Knight Rises largely undoes that ending. Batman enables the same authoritarian overreach he previously preached against, and his sacrificial arc is rendered meaningless because the Caped Crusader ultimately ends up clearing his name. Interestingly, The Batman basically fixes The Dark Knight’s ending because Robert Pattinson’s Batman ultimately learns the lesson Christian Bale’s Batman never did: unless his vigilante activities become a source of hope instead of fear, there is no real meaning to his endless quest for justice.
Hanging Up The Cape For All The Wrong Reasons
The Dark Knight is an insanely well-written film, and one that sets up Batman’s fateful decision very early on. You see, the Caped Crusader runs into multiple vigilantes who are clumsily trying to follow in his footsteps, using violent weapons (including guns) to stop the criminals of Gotham City. This is part of why Bruce Wayne is so enamored with Harvey Dent. Not only does the ambitious District Attorney inspire people without wearing a mask, but he inspires them to do something better than distributing street justice while wearing bad cosplay. At the end of the film, Batman preserves Harvey’s reputation by taking the blame for the crimes he committed as Two-Face.
This makes for a tragic ending, one where Batman has to become the public’s number one villain so they could have the hero they needed. However, the sequel film, The Dark Knight Rises, undoes much of the impact by revealing that a law named after Harvey Dent greatly expanded police power (remember when The Dark Knight preached against the surveillance state and the dangers of giving anyone too much power?). The movie also lets Batman clear his name, which makes for a heartwarming end to a cinematic trilogy, but retroactively ruins the ending of The Dark Knight by revealing how the titular character’s sacrifice was only temporary.
A New Batman Begins
In its own way, The Batman did its best to fix what Christopher Nolan did to the Caped Crusader. Much of this Matt Reeves film is bleak because it features Batman contending with the sobering fact that he is just one force for justice in a city teeming with criminals. Eventually, he accepts the blunt reality that he can’t make all of the crime in Gotham City go away simply by punching the mentally ill. But after the Riddler floods the city, Batman focuses on saving citizens rather than punishing criminals, ultimately realizing he is more useful to Gotham as a source of inspiration rather than a source of fear.
When I first saw The Batman, the ending really blew me away. I kept muttering to myself, “They actually gave Batman an arc?” Normally, he’s one of the most static characters in superhero media. Sure, big things happen around Batman, but he remains the unflappably cool guy who is always rewarded for using fear and violence to get the job done. Having the Caped Crusader realize that fear and violence weren’t enough seemed like a genuine revelation, and one that intentionally called back to the ending of The Dark Knight, which similarly had Batman realize that his brutal ways wouldn’t be enough to truly save the city.
The Hero They Need AND Deserve
However, Nolan’s Dark Knight decided to simply hang up the cape, retiring (albeit temporarily) the vigilante so that the public could find better heroes to emulate. Weirdly, though, Christian Bale’s Batman never seemed to consider the option that Robert Pattison’s Batman later embraced: simply becoming the change he wanted to see. Obsessed with duality, the earlier iteration of Batman decided that he had to be the villain so that Harvey Dent could be the public’s hero. He seemingly never considered that he had the option of becoming an inspirational hero himself, saving the city while redeeming Batman’s reputation.
Ironically enough, that’s more or less what he does in The Dark Knight Rises. After recovering from the injury Bane gives him, Batman returns to save Gotham City and seemingly dies, sacrificing himself to stop a neutron bomb from killing everyone. Just like that, Batman becomes an inspirational hero to millions of people who once saw him as a murderous vigilante. Becoming openly inspirational rather than striking from the shadows with fear was always an option. It’s just one that Pattinson’s vigilante figures out much earlier in his career, which is why The Batman has a far, far better ending than The Dark Knight.
As it turns out, the secret ingredient to a good Batman ending is simply giving the Caped Crusader a proper arc from the beginning. Bale’s Batman didn’t get to become a different kind of hero until the very end of his trilogy, which retroactively ruined the ending of The Dark Knight. However, The Batman effectively fixed that disappointing ending by allowing Pattinson’s hero to realize he had the capacity to grow and change. He learned it wasn’t that hard to become the kind of hero that Gotham both needed and deserved. Best of all, he didn’t have to fight a terrorist luchador wearing a fetish mask in order to learn that particular lesson.
The Batman is streaming on Max.
