Is The Dark Knight the most unheroic Batman movie ever made?

[The Laughing Fish]

I think the biggest reason why I personally despise The Dark Knight so much is that it makes Batman look so incompetent and unheroic.  Despite it was established that Batman kept crime at an all time low in the beginning of the movie, he does a lot of stuff that completely undermines this good work i.e. collateral damage, and his handling over the Joker crisis comes across as not only reckless, but reprehensible too.

Some people may criticize how Batman was ineffective in preventing the Ice Princess's death and saying hypocritical things to Catwoman towards the end of Batman Returns, but the fact of the matter is he still saved Gotham from the Penguin in the end. Batman didn't care about being framed for a murder he didn't commit - he kept going and eventually won in the end. As much as I don't care for Batman Begins and The Dark Knight Rises very much, I won't deny that Batman eventually saved Gotham in those movies too, no matter how badly contrived I thought the endings of those movies were. But Batman in TDK allowed the Joker terrorize Gotham and kill so many people, and betrayed his own trust in people by taking the fall for Harvey in the end; paving way for disastrous events in the third movie. Basically, he was just there for the sake of plot contrivances i.e. setting him up as a criminal in the end and a bogus moral dilemma with the main villain.

[Vampfox]

Yeah I hate how Batman and Gordon decide to lie to the people of Gotham about Harvey. It just seemed to me that they thought that the people of Gotham were too immature and stupid to handle the truth.

[Edd Grayson]

Yeah I hate how Batman and Gordon decide to lie to the people of Gotham about Harvey. It just seemed to me that they thought that the people of Gotham were too immature and stupid to handle the truth.

Same. Batman taking the blame is anything but heroic, it's just unnecessary.

[johnnygobbs]

Yeah I hate how Batman and Gordon decide to lie to the people of Gotham about Harvey. It just seemed to me that they thought that the people of Gotham were too immature and stupid to handle the truth.

Same. Batman taking the blame is anything but heroic, it's just unnecessary.

Harvey was the 'white knight'.  The guy who played by the rules (i.e. the law), or so everyone thought, rather than take the law into their own hands as Batman, as his many misguided imitators did.  Thus he was seen by Batman as an incorruptible symbol of hope for the city to aspire to.  Batman, as a vigilante who operated outside the law (i.e. forcibly taking a Chinese citizen to Gotham without using proper legal rendition measures, and using sonar to illegally tap the phones of every person in Gotham), was not that incorruptible figure.  Thus, he took the responsibility for Harvey's crimes so that the people of Gotham could believe that Harvey was a hero.  Was it a misguided and/or condescending position to take?  Probably.  But it still makes some sense, and Batman was acting like a hero in taking the fall for a man who may have been a worse person than him but nevertheless signified something greater.  Like Nolan says, the key text that inspired 'TDK' is 'A Tale of Two Cities': "It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known" (i.e. Sydney Carton dies to spare his best friend, Charles Darnay).

[The Laughing Fish]

Sorry johnny, but I completely disagree. For all the talk about Harvey Dent being "the white knight", a "symbol of hope" etc, not only does he come across as quite arrogant for somebody who is constantly in danger, we don't even get to see what the public really thinks of him. And for that matter, we don't really get to see what they think of Batman either, except for a few copycats. For "the white knight" concept to actually work, we needed to see what sort of impact that he's actually having on the city, not just being told about it. You know, show - don't tell. Instead, what we're really shown is Dent being completely useless without Batman's help. Despite what we're told on screen about how "great" Harvey is and Batman believing he can stop his personal crusade, we see:

• Batman being recognized for saving Gotham from the League of Shadows at the end of BB.
• Batman making an impact by terrifying criminals whenver they see the Batsignal light up, and cleaning up the streets from scum i.e. Scarecrow.
• Batman agreeing to help Harvey to kidnap Lau from Hong Kong and bring him back home to help the case against the Maroni mob.
• Batman is the only one who can potentially stop the Joker. Because if he doesn't then nobody else can.

Never mind the fact that Harvey's case against Maroni wouldn't have gone anywhere without Batman's assistance, he wouldn't have a city to save if Batman had failed to stop the League of Shadows from destroying Gotham. And furthermore, despite what Bruce says to Rachel, Gotham is NOT ready to move on without Batman. Especially if Bruce has to hide Dent from the Joker before confronting the psycho five minutes later.

Yes, Dent worked within the system, but you know what? So did Jim Gordon. So did Rachel Dawes. So did the original DA who Rachel was working for - the one who was shot to death from behind in BB. Why not make Gordon become the "symbol of hope"? After all, he's been in the system much longer than Harvey, he helped Batman to defeat the League of Shadows in BB. That's way more heroic than anything that Dent ever contributed for Gotham!

Batman may have been an outlaw, but it doesn't change the fact that he has been the most effective in 'protecting' Gotham, regardless how many times I complain how reckless he is in BB and in the first half of TDK. And for him and Gordon to lie about Harvey is incomprehensible. And what's even worse, Batman deciding to take the blame himself not only compromised his own symbol which was supposed to inspire people, he also betrayed his own trust in people as well. He tells the Joker "this city is ready to believe in good" at the end of the boat crisis; and he kept saying nobody would kill each other the whole time. Well if Batman really believed that, then the public should've have been more than capable in understanding that Dent was driven madness by the Joker's ridiculous manipulation. Otherwise, Batman is agreeing with the Joker's bleak point of view on human nature after all. Batman and Gordon lying to the public isn't heroic. It's cowardice. Nolan can refer to any piece of classical literature all he wants, but I'll NEVER buy this pathetic excuse of an ending.

And besides, why the hell would anybody believe that Batman suddenly became a cold-blooded murderer after being a crime-fighter for a year? And even if people believed he was responsible, that would've been a LOT more devastating to Gotham than revealing the truth about Dent.

[johnnygobbs]

How did Batman inspire people?  To become vigilantes themselves?  That's not the inspiration Batman wanted for the city.

And like you said, Batman was lauded because his tactics were based on evoking fear in his enemies; once again, hardly a way to inspire hope in Gotham's citizens.

As for Commissioner Gordon becoming Gotham's symbol of hope, perhaps you're right, but Batman can't choose Gotham's 'white knight' for them, and besides as good a man as he was Gordon was compromised by his association with dirty cops within his own department.  Like Gordon said, he was willing to turn a blind eye to some of those dirty cops because he didn't have the resources to do otherwise.  Also, like Batman and Gordon said at the end "Dent was the best of [the three of] them", or at least was in terms of how he was perceived.

Look, I'm no blind Nolanite.  Far from it.  And I agree that TDK arguably fails in this respect by 'telling instead of showing'.  A lot of the themes I refer to, although understandable and coherent, are nevertheless articulated through speechifying rather than through more organic storytelling that let the audience come to their own conclusions without major signposting.  But I do think the film at least made it clear why Batman took the fall for Dent.

[The Laughing Fish]

How did Batman inspire people?  To become vigilantes themselves?  That's not the inspiration Batman wanted for the city.

And like you said, Batman was lauded because his tactics were based on evoking fear in his enemies; once again, hardly a way to inspire hope in Gotham's citizens.

And that's another problem I have with trying to make Batman as a symbol in this series. Batman says he wants to inspire people...well, what exactly did he mean by that? Did he seriously think he wouldn't inspire any copycats? Like everything else in this series, the characters' motivations are WAY too vague, and that's putting it nicely.

But really, that's beside the point. It's not a matter of "inspiring" anybody: the fact of the matter is that people were aware that Batman was fighting villains like Scarecrow, Ra's al Ghul, Joker and mobsters. And no matter how many times I poke fun at Batman for causing collateral damage, he was still the only one with any potential to save Gotham from mad men. Whether people are scared of him or not, they surely must be aware by now that the guy seems to have some good intentions. For people to believe that he really did kill Harvey and others, it requires a ton of suspension of disbelief. An impossible one, if you ask me. And it still doesn't change the fact that Batman's contradiction in his belief in people goes against everything he stood for. He supposedly trusts people have the compassion and courage to overcome any crisis? Okay then Bats, back it up! Otherwise, his decision to take the fall felt like the boats blew each other up after all! Like I said, that's not heroic -  that's cowardice.

As for Gordon working in a corrupt system...hey, so was Harvey Dent and Rachel Dawes.

As for Commissioner Gordon becoming Gotham's symbol of hope, perhaps you're right, but Batman can't choose Gotham's 'white knight' for them, and besides as good a man as he was Gordon was compromised by his association with dirty cops within his own department.  Like Gordon said, he was willing to turn a blind eye to some of those dirty cops because he didn't have the resources to do otherwise.  Also, like Batman and Gordon said at the end "Dent was the best of [the three of] them", or at least was in terms of how he was perceived.

That's because the story decided to choose who was supposed to be "the white knight" without  justifying why. I'm not a writer, but I remember reading in a screenwriting guide that made this recommendation: if you want to convey empathy for a character, you need to show an example on screen. For instance, if you want the audience understand a character is brave, you need to have the character perform an act of bravery to convey this message. If you don't, you might unintentionally make your character come across as arrogant. That's the problem with Dent in TDK. For all the talk about being an "inspiration", he doesn't do anything that justifies what we're told on screen at all. He doesn't come across at all as somebody who would inspire anybody. In fact, he's quite arrogant a lot of time. We're just supposed to believe Harvey was "the best out of all of them" because the film said so. That's not good enough.

On top of that, Dent's fall from grace was so incredibly poorly done and made the film even longer. And besides, there's no way that the presumably still alive Joker would allow Batman and Gordon cover everything up. But admittedly, all of that belongs in another topic.

[The Dark Knight]

But Batman in TDK allowed the Joker terrorize Gotham and kill so many people

To be fair, TDK isn't unique in this regard. A lot of Batman media has this.

[The Laughing Fish]

But Batman in TDK allowed the Joker terrorize Gotham and kill so many people

To be fair, TDK isn't unique in this regard. A lot of Batman media has this.

That is true, but the problem with Nolan's series is that he was never consistent about his moral code. One movie sees him killing off Ra's al Ghul, but in the next one, he suddenly won't kill the Joker despite the fact he's an even more sinister mass-murderer than Ra's was...but then Batman had to kill Two-Face to save Gordon's son? And in TDKR, Batman justifies killing Ra's to Talia because he was trying to kill millions of people, despite the Joker was trying to do the same thing?! WTF? It can't be both ways.

At least most of the comics I've read or the animated films I've watched stayed true to the character's beliefs.

[johnnygobbs]

But Batman in TDK allowed the Joker terrorize Gotham and kill so many people

To be fair, TDK isn't unique in this regard. A lot of Batman media has this.

That is true, but the problem with Nolan's series is that he was never consistent about his moral code. One movie sees him killing off Ra's al Ghul, but in the next one, he suddenly won't kill the Joker despite the fact he's an even more sinister mass-murderer than Ra's was...but then Batman had to kill Two-Face to save Gordon's son? And in TDKR, Batman justifies killing Ra's Talia because he was trying to kill millions of people, despite the Joker was trying to do the same thing?! WTF? It can't be both ways.

At least most of the comics I've read or the animated films I've watched stayed true to the character's beliefs.

Did he actively kill R'as or just leave him to die on the train?  Batman didn't need to kill the Joker because he had his enemy hanging upside down on a rope dangling mid-air, and thus the Joker was no longer a threat who had to be killed-off to prevent any further innocents from dying.  Plus, the Joker's plan had failed.  The citizens of Gotham had shown him that they were nothing like him. 

And yes, Batman accidentally killed Two-Face because he posed an immediate threat to an innocent's life.  He wasn't trying to kill Two-Face out of vengeance.