Maybe it’s time we all quit trying to outsmart the truth and let it have it’s day. — Alfred

Each villain is an incarnation of fear. Batman must become more than a symbol of fear to overcome them.

In Act I (Batman Begins), we meet a Gotham overcome by corruption. The city rots, and crime runs rampant. The few good Gothamites are to afraid of organized crime to make a stand. This fear takes Bruce Wayne’s parents, so Bruce resolves to take back his city.

Bruce becomes a symbol of fear. His goal is to out-terrorize fear.

Bruce’s plan seems to be working – he saves the city from Ras al Guhl and the League of Shadows, and inspires men like Jim Gordon to stand tall against crime.

But as Act II (The Dark Knight) begins, we learn that the fight is just beginning. A new villain – the Joker – arises against Bruce. The Joker wants to prove that Gotham is irredeemable, that people are basically selfish and fearful.

The Joker torments Harvey Dent, Gotham’s new DA who represents everything Bruce had hoped to inspire using the Batman persona. Harvey succumbs to the Joker’s plans, going on a murderous rampage of vengeance before falling to his death. To protect his reputation and the city’s improvement, Gordon and the Batman lie, blaming Batman for Harvey’s crimes.

Act II ends with Batman failing to inspire Gotham to hope instead of fear. His tenuous victory rests on a lie. The scene is set for the final act, The Dark Knight Rises.

Act III resolves the conflict. The main character – through their Hero’s Journey – acquires the skills necessary to achieve victory and a renewed sense of person and purpose. Continue Reading…

This town deserves a better class of criminal. — The Joker

The Dark Knight is Nolan’s second act in a masterful classic three-act story structure.

Building on what Act I established, Act II brings the conflict into the open. The main character tries to solve the problem, only to find his situation worsening. He learns that he lacks something that keeps him from his goal. Continue Reading…

If you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can’t stop you, then you become something else entirely… A legend, Mr. Wayne. — Ras al Guhl

Whoever did this deserves a medal.

By now it’s undeniable that Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy joins the elite ranks of masterpiece cinematic trilogies. Why? What sets these films – and other great trilogies like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and The Godfather – apart from the almost-greats like Rami’s Spiderman, the X-Men films or the Matrix movies?

Nolan’s Batman films tell one big story, building around a core theme and using fictive Gotham to tell mythic stories about contemporary society.

Through Batman, Nolan meditates on the nature of fear, good and evil and hope and despair. So far from being a film tacked on to make another buck, The Dark Knight Rises gives us a story that needs to be told. Without it, the story just isn’t finished.

While each film in Nolan’s trilogy follows a classic three-act structure, the whole trilogy also follows this pattern, which means the final film has the biggest payoff. Continue Reading…