Filling In Your Dark Knight Rises Plot Holes

The wide majority of America has seemed to thoroughly enjoy Christopher Nolan's final installment of his Dark Knight Trilogy, however, there are always those very few that have to find some sort of fault with anything that is popular.

I've seen the film a few times now, and I plan on seeing it again. I've heard about all the minor mistakes and "plot holes" over and over again, and quite frankly, I'm tired of trying to explain them over and over again. What I want to do below is list the complaints I've heard the most over the past few weeks and address them once and for all.

So, here we go:

• "It Wasn't Better Than The Dark Knight"

No, it wasn't better than The Dark Knight, but I'd like to contest that it wasn't worse than The Dark Knight either. It was simply different. Before the premiere of TDKR, I watched Batman Begins and The Dark Knight almost back-to-back. One thing that was glaringly obvious was that the films were so different from one another. Batman Begins is a origin story, shot like an epic. It's set in foreign lands, prisons, and vistas. Gotham is dark, grimy, and brown. Nolan had shown his cast and crew the film Blade Runner and said "This is how we're going to do Batman."

The Dark Knight however, looks extremely realistic. Gotham in the day time looks like any city in the day time. It instantly reminded me of the film Heat, which by no coincidence, is the very film Nolan showed his cast and crew this time around. It wasn't a superhero movie, it was a crime drama. It had more in common with The Wire than with Spiderman. It felt worlds away from Batman Begins, almost as if another director had made it entirely.

The Dark Knight Rises follows in this sequence, by being an entirely different film. Nolan took a unique approach to these three films, in that while he used the same characters in each film, he made sure that each was its own film, with its own tone, its own flavor. This last installment was meant to be bigger and badder than the previous two, while still looking to obtain a satisfying ending to Bruce Wayne's story arc. The people who walk out of the theatre saying "Meh, the last one was better," were simply hoping to watch The Dark Knight 2, not The Dark Knight Rises.

• "How can they not mention/have The Joker in it. He couldn't just disappear!"

Nolan has quite publicly stated that Heath Ledger's infamous Joker would not appear in this final installment. "I felt very strongly that the Joker was off-limits. I don’t want to trivialize a tragedy like that by explaining it away in some fashion. I made the choice, immediately, that talking about the Joker was off the table. It’s just the way I feel about it, based on my relationship with Heath." While we all wanted to see more of this insanely captivating character, you've got to respect this choice in direction.

• "I couldn't understand Bane!"

Tom Hardy had the impossible job of following Ledger's performance by playing Bane, the unforgiving mercenary hell-bent on bringing Gotham to its knees. After the prologue was shown in theaters, there were already complaints that Bane's voice was too muffled and incoherent. Now, I didn't get a chance to see the prologue in theaters, (It was only shown on true IMAX screens), but as the video below shows, they actually did more work to make Bane's voice more clear.

Hardy said that he based the voice off of gypsy and bare knuckle boxer Bartley Gorman, but I've heard all kinds of comparisons, from Sean Connery to Darth Vader to Zazu from The Lion King.

This was one of the major details of the film that audiences were talking about. It was creepy, it was original, it was...difficult. Yes, Hardy's choice of accent from behind a mask was odd and creepy, but more importantly, it made you work a little to understand what he was saying. Almost all of Bane's face is covered, including his entire mouth. He could only create so much character using his eyes and movement, which is why I felt this accent was such a smart decision. I hung onto his every word, went back, and tried to decipher exactly what he was saying.

Now, if it pleases the court, I know some parts of Bane's speech are muddled and some are very clear. The muddled parts, such as Bane taunting Batman during their first fight, aren't that important to the story. However, when Bane is giving important plot points, like when he is speaking inside the football stadium, his voice is as clear as day. Another thing to consider is your choice of venue. I saw the movie in both an true IMAX screen and at a cheap, $5 local movie house. It was a little bit harder to make out not just Bane's speech, but anything at all, with the booming score on their low quality speaker system.

One thing is for certain: No one was talking about what a let down of a villain Bane was after The Joker. I think who you liked more is more of a personal taste, but people forget what an almost impossible job Hardy had, going into this movie billed as the new number one villain after Heath Ledger. It's a good thing he was so badass. I mean, Hardy just challenged David Haye to a real life boxing match for charity. The fact that people seem to like how he played Bane as a character, his storyline, and really enjoy trying to copy his voice, means Hardy made all the right decisions. Look for tens of thousands of Bane costumes come this Halloween.

• "How did Bruce Wayne get from the pit with a broken back, heal, then get all the way back to Gotham when it was basically quarantined? Why did Bane leave him alive in the first place?"

First off, let me thank Nolan for actually having the balls to break the bat. When I was younger, I got big into comics around the time of the Knightfall storyline and I remember being devastated when Batman & Robin came out because of how Bane was used. Well, Nolan has come back and made a childhood dream come true. Because while that scene was a very harsh and tough scene to watch, it was everything I'd hoped it'd be after reading those comic books.

Now, here is what Bane does next, and it's pretty brutal. He takes Bruce Wayne to this prison/pit type thing, where people can leave if they can get out, but no one really does, because it's almost impossible. Wayne asks why Bane didn't just kill him:

Bruce Wayne: Why didn't you just kill me?

Bane: Your punishment must be more severe.

Bruce Wayne: Torture?

Bane: Yes...but not of the body. Of the soul. I will build you and Gotham up with hope and then destroy you. Hope is really the key to torture. Gotham will build to a point of joy and then be wiped from the map.

Bruce Wayne: You are a madman.

Bane: When Gotham is ashes... then you have my permission to die.

So, basically, he's saying he's keeping Wayne in this prison while he attacks Gotham, after which he'll give them a false sense of hope and then crush them. He's letting Wayne watch all of this on a TV to truly torture his soul. Then, he'll come back and kill him. Pretty brutal for a comic book movie, huh?

So, why leave Bruce Wayne in a prison that has a way out? Bane broke Wayne's back, but left him in a prison where there's still a chance he could get out. As they state in the movie, gaining hope and then having it crushed over and over is a much worse torture than having no hope at all. Giving people hope and then crushing it seems to be Bane's specialty and he's applying this tactic to Bruce.

But let's not forget that Miranda Tate aka Talia Al-Ghul is the one calling the shots. She's still pissed that Bruce killed, or "not-saved", her father. So, she wants him to suffer and these are most likely her orders, not Bane's.

So, Bane drops the hammer on Gotham and all hell breaks loose. They break into the holding area for the fusion energy-thingie and Bane has the Russian scientist pull out the core to make it a bomb. Lucius Fox mentions the bomb's half life is 5 months, meaning, it could be detonated at any time, but will detonate no matter what in 5 months time.

The next time we see Wayne in prison, he has almost a fully grown beard. "Why is this important?" you ask. To which I reply, "In case you haven't noticed, time is a very big theme in Nolan's films." In the film, the way it's cut, it seems there's only been a few days, when actually, it could have been weeks.

Bruce gets his back punched into place and we head back to Gotham for a little more mayhem. Back to the prison, Bruce is getting ready to try to climb out of the pit for the first time. He's watching the TV, which is giving a news report on the craziness in Gotham. In the bottom-left corner, there is a news graphic counter for the days Gotham has been under siege. It says 87. So, the time between when Bane sets off the first explosions all around Gotham to the time when Bruce decides to try and climb out the first time, is 87 days, or about 3 months. We cut back to Gotham, only, now, Gotham is covered in snow. More time has passed.

So, if the time between the bomb being started by Bane and Bruce's first pit escape attempt was 3 months, he had a 2 month period to escape the pit and find a way back to Gotham. This is more than enough time for freakin' Batman to find a way inside an entire city.

• "How did both Blake & Bane just know that Bruce Wayne was Batman?"

This is easy. Bane worked for the League of Shadows and is now working with Talia, who was also in the League Of Shadows. The League knew and helped train Bruce Wayne before he was Batman. He also "not-saved" their leader, which would help a name stick in your brain.

More people are upset that John Blake could have figured Batman's identity simply from a "look" he saw on Wayne's face as a young orphan. Most people annoyed with this are taking it too literally, as if, he saw a look at age 5 and instantly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bruce Wayne was Batman. But, what if instead, he noticed that look and it stuck with him. Then, later in life it became a hunch. Then, after working hard to become a policeman, (and ultimately, a detective), the evidence added up and he was sure his hunch was correct. Then, when Gordon comes back from the sewers with a bullet in him raving about an underground army, Blake steps forward and finally acts upon his hunch. This makes the same statement a little more believable.

• "How did every single cop get stuck underground?

Foley, the Deputy commissioner of Gotham City, played by Matthew Modine, has a very hard time believing that there is really an underground army planning to rise and attack Gotham. However, once the stock exchange attack happens, Foley changes his tune and reports all this to Gordon, who's still in the hospital. Gordon then tells Foley to deploy every policeman they have to the sewer system to flush Bane out.

They try to warn Mayor Eyeliner, but he's off to watch his Gotham Rogues play a football game and doesn't have time for such shenanigans. Now, most of the cops rush to the sewers and Bane waits until they're mostly underground, before he blows the concrete explosives, effectively trapping them inside.

Now remember, this film is rated PG-13. Studios push PG and PG-13 films because they have the highest audience, and when you're spending $250 Million on a film, you want the most people you can get into the theaters. It's smart business, but I'm not a fan of it creatively.

Here's why: Throughout the trilogy, it felt like Nolan had to tight-rope his way under an R-rating. Remember in The Dark Knight, when The Joker pretends to be dead, then jumps up and puts a knife to Gambol's mouth? He tells him a fake story about how he got his scars, looks to one of his goons, says "Why so serious?" and then....we cut to reaction and Gambol falls to the floor. Now, cut a guy's face would hurt, but it wouldn't kill you. How did Gambol die? We'll never know, because while Warner Bros. had grown the balls to give us a darker Batman series, they're not ready to go "R-rated dark."

That's why in The Dark Knight Rises, we see many shots of Bane grabbing a guys face, then cut away to reactions. There's an entire city under siege and yet there is almost zero shots of any blood. And that that's also why the majority of the policemen are trapped underground and given food and water, rather than being crushed to death or left to starve. Again, Nolan has been forced to curb the extreme violence or keep it off screen in order to retain the largest possible audience.

Forgive my memory, I forget which character said this, (it may have been Blake), but they say "Be careful out there, they're shooting cops like dogs." This line is to convey to the audience that while there are a small army of cops trapped underground, it's not all the policemen. The rest are being killed in the streets by Bane's army.

• "If Wayne was broke, where did he get the money to come home and become Batman again? How did he end up with Selina in Italy with no money?"

The day after the stock exchange attack, Lucius and Bruce are discussing the coded application that Bane and his henchmen used at the stock exchange. Wayne asks something along the lines of "Um, it was just all over the news that Bane broke in, hurt people, and did all this. Can't they just undo it?" Lucius tells him that it would take many, many months for the courts to decide in his favor, which times up nicely. Lucius also takes Wayne to the underground area Wayne used in The Dark Knight, where it seems he had a spare set of Bat-stuff.

• "What happened in the scene where Selina Kyle was at the bar and then the police came?"

Daggett is a Wayne Enterprises board member who wants to take over the company. He enlists Bane and his henchmen to come to Gotham, break into the stock exchange, and execute a series of bad trades that would weaken the company, where then Daggett could obtain it. Bane says he would do this if he was paid a large some of money and had full access to Daggett's construction crews and equipment so that, we find out later, he may use it to plant explosives all around the city.

There's only one problem with this plan. They needs Bruce Wayne's finger prints in order to execute the trades. That's when Daggett enlists Selina Kyle, a slightly infamous "cat burglar." After stealing Bruce's mother's pearls as a decoy crime, she also gets his prints.

Selina was under the impression if she got Wayne's fingerprints for Stryver, (who is Daggett's henchman), that in return she would get the little device that would delete her personal records so she could start over with a clean record. She shows up at a bar with a drunken man to meet Stryver and to make the exchange, prints for little record deleting device.

She hands over the finger prints and Stryver balks on the deal. Selina says, "Oh, well looks like you don't count so well. You need the thumbprint and I still have it, so gimmie the little device." Stryver pulls a gun on her and says "I can count to 5." So, she has Stryver call her friend (who's waiting outside) on a cell phone, and her friend comes in with the last thumbprint.

Stryver looks like he's going to kill her anyway, saying "Even in that dress, no one's going to miss you," so she says "Well, they will because I'm with him" referring to the drunken man she arrived with. The drunken man turns out to be the senator from the beginning of the movie, and the TV is shown where a news report says the senator is currently missing.

Stryver says, "They'll never look for him here." And Selina goes, "They will now, since you just used his cell phone."

Right then, the cops show up, Selina grabs Stryver's gun and uses his hand to fire at his own men. When the cops bust down the door, she acts terrified, making the cops think she was just a normal patron caught in gun fire. She then slips down a back alley.

• "At the end, they totally should have just shown Alfred kind of smiling at his table in Italy, then just cut to black."

I've heard over and over again from friends that, while they were very satisfied with TDKR, they would've rather had Alfred look over in the cafe in Venice, smile, and then cut to black, giving the audience a more ambiguous ending. Did Alfred see Bruce Wayne? Or didn't he?

In the actual movie, yes, he does seem him. It is NOT a figment of Alfred's imagination. Nolan very intentionally cuts to Bruce and Selina, and here's why:

Before Alfred leaves, he and Bruce Wayne get into an argument. Bruce thinks he needs to become Batman again to save the city from Bane. Alfred begs him to just help the city as Bruce Wayne and that he has many other talents to give other than his life. He asks Bruce to move on from Batman.

Bruce says, in so many words, that he can't because since Rachel died, he has nothing to move on to. Then, Alfred reveals to Bruce that Rachel had written him a letter, explaining that she knew he'd never stop being Batman, so she decided to choose a life with Harvey Dent. This pisses off Bruce, and Alfred leaves, the conflict never being resolved.

This last scene in the cafe at the end of movie resolves two previous conflicts. It shows that Alfred is content now that he sees Bruce is happy, resolving their conflict.

But, by actually showing that Bruce is there with Selina, we see that he too has been able to move past Rachael's death and find happiness.

Also, we see Selina's resolution as well. She's gotten her clean slate with Bruce. Had we just cut to black, we never would have gotten those resolutions. So, technically those two shots, Alfred then to Bruce and Selina, gives the audience closure for three of our main characters.

• "So, is Batman dead? Is Alfred just imagining things?"

No, he did not die. If Nolan wanted an ambiguous ending, he would've never showed Fox speaking with an engineer, working on the Bat. Fox says something like, "I just want to find out what I could have done differently" or something to that effect. The engineer says, "The auto pilot's already been fixed around 6 months ago," and Fox asks who's ID was it that fixed it. The engineer says "Bruce Wayne" with a puzzled look.

And he also would have not shown Bruce Wayne with Selina in Florance, Italy. He would've just shown Alfred looking and half smiling.

But we actually see Bruce and Selina there, and this fits into when Bruce & Alfred are talking about becoming Batman in Batman Begins, how the symbol can bee more than just a single man, but an ideal. Batman could be anyone.

• "So, why was John Blake's name Robin and not Dick Grayson?"

In the original Batman Begins, we hear about Bruce forming this idea: That by being Batman, he becomes a symbol. He becomes more than a man, he becomes legend. He feels this is a way to inspire the city and to scare away the crime that has deteriorated it.

By having John Blake assume the mantel, we see that not only does Bruce Wayne gain the ability to have a good life after Batman, but he's able to do so with sacrificing his symbol, The Batman itself, as it lives on through Blake. The fact that his name was Robin was just a tip-of-the-hat to fans.

Now, don't get me wrong. There are no more Batman films to be made in this Nolan-verse. This wasn't a cliffhanger for a Robin or Batman Beyond movie. This IS the last one.

Bruce Wayne's struggle was that he wanted a normal life, but his passion for protecting the city against crime after his parents' death prevented that from happening. At the end of Batman Begins, in the rubble of Wayne Manor, we see a glimmer of hope in Wayne's eyes when he is presented with a possible life after Batman with Rachel.

In The Dark Knight, that hope is crushed when she is killed by The Joker, a man he fails to understand or stop before it's too late.

In The Dark Knight Rises, we see Wayne struggling in a world that no longer needs Batman. He can't let it go, because he has nothing to move on to. This is why the last montage is so satisfying as a trilogy ending sequence. We think, we believe, as Gotham does, that Bruce has sacrificed his happiness, his family, and his life for the greater good of Gotham. Most of us almost shed a tear with Alfred as mourned over Bruce's grave. But, what we find is Bruce has figured out a way to move on with Selina, without having to put an end to the legend of the Batman. Bruce is finally enjoying his life, and the mantle has been passed on. Someday, Batman will again rise.