Last year I blogged about my favorite movie ever. That came about because there weren’t any sports to watch with the pandemic. I’ve had the idea for this blog post in mind for many years and I finally got around to do it. The Dark Knight trilogy is my favorite movie trilogy and I decided to watch each movie on consecutive days once the Olympics ended. I’m not big on superhero movies, but Batman is the best superhero. Even though he’s the best superhero, I didn’t have much interest until I was hanging out with a friend one time and he had The Dark Knight on. We watched part of the movie and then went out, but I needed to see the whole thing. And then I made a point of seeing The Dark Knight Rises in the theater and I hardly ever see movies in the theater.
I really enjoy each movie, but there’s a lot of stuff in them that doesn't make much sense. So that’s what this blog post is about. It’s quite possible that some of these things I got wrong or I just missed something that explains something that I’m not getting. So if that’s the case, please leave a comment and set me straight. If you think I missed something that doesn’t make sense, leave a comment about that as well. None of these things diminish my enjoyment of the movies, but if you think me poking holes in the movies will diminish your enjoyment, then feel free to not read this. And if you haven’t seen the movies, stop reading, go watch the movies because they’re awesome, and then come back and read my thoughts. Anyway, let’s start at the beginning.
Batman Begins
When young Bruce gets scared at the play and they leave early, why do they go out into a back alley? Why not go out the main exit? You know, besides the fact that you don’t have a story without his parents getting killed.
Young police officer Jim Gordon puts his coat around young Bruce’s shoulders after his parents are killed. We’ll come back to that one much later.
How old was Bruce when his parents were killed? I would have put him at like 10 or 11, but 14 years later he’s been kicked out of Princeton when he goes to the hearing about Joe Chill being released from prison.
When Bruce Wayne goes to court for the hearing about Joe Chill being released from prison, it’s set in the past, but it’s not that far in the past. What kind of security do they have at this court if Bruce Wayne can get a gun into the building? Haven’t courts had metal detectors for a long time? Bruce spent seven years traveling the world and training after he had planned on shooting Joe Chill and then confronting Carmine Falcone. So that puts that part of the movie sometime in the 1990s. I definitely don’t think you’re getting into a court in a big city in the 1990s without going through a metal detector.
Bruce trades coats with a homeless guy. We’ll come back to that one later.
What are all the League of Shadows ninjas doing when Bruce burns down the temple? Bruce fights the fake Ra’s al Ghul. What are the rest of them doing? Did they escape? They are not helping fake Ra’s al Ghul stop Bruce from escaping. And then he saves the unconscious real Ra’s al Ghul from sliding off a cliff while barely avoiding falling off the cliff himself. Look, I know Bruce is supposed to be in pretty good shape, but the physical strength he would have needed to save Ra’s al Ghul in that situation is pretty absurd (he pretty much uses the strength of one arm and no other parts of his body to do it).
When Bruce returns to Gotham and is becoming Batman, he goes to talk to Jim Gordon about taking down Carmine Falcone because he knows Gordon is an honest cop. How does he know this? He did meet Gordon after his parents were killed, but that was like 21 years earlier. Maybe he remembers that encounter, but does he remember Gordon specifically? Even if he does remember Gordon, how does he know anything about him?
The homeless guy still has Bruce Wayne’s coat seven years later?
Everything Batman is doing in his first night going after the mob is very quick. But then he has the time to create the bat signal when he ties Falcone to the spotlight?
Alfred mentions how Bruce needs excuses for his injuries after his first night fighting the mob. That makes sense. But fortunately, he won’t have any injuries for the rest of the movie.
The microwave emitter was turned on when it was stolen from the ship. It seems like it would be kind of dangerous to transport a weapon that vaporizes water on a ship.
Dr. Crane drugs Falcone in prison. They said Falcone wanted an insanity defense and that’s why Crane comes in. But wouldn’t anybody who interacted with Falcone realize that he was completely different after he met with Crane? Like obviously Crane did something to him.
Speaking of Bruce not having any injuries, Crane drugs Batman, pours gasoline on him, and lights him on fire. But he doesn’t have any burns or anything. That makes sense.
Okay, apparently Bruce is celebrating his 30th birthday. That would make him 9 when his parents were killed. That makes sense, but then he was kicked out of Princeton when he was 23?
Batman takes Rachel to the Batcave in the Tumbler after Crane drugged her at Arkham Asylum. He tells Gordon he brought his car. Was he just driving this around Gotham and nobody noticed until now? And then he’s driving across the rooftops in the Tumbler. I know the Tumbler is supposed to be a defense project or whatever, but it can jump from rooftop to rooftop and go invisible. It seems like pretty unrealistic technology.
Bruce Wayne walks into his party and they’re singing Happy Birthday before he was even there? That makes sense.
Ra’s al Ghul says that the League of Shadows has been around for thousands of years. That seems a little unrealistic.
Ra’s al Ghul says that Bruce burned his house and left him for dead. That’s half true as Bruce saved his life. But also, he means to leave Bruce for dead. But the League of Shadows is proving to be incompetent. Ra’s al Ghul easily could have made sure Bruce was dead. And his henchman that he left at Wayne Manor couldn’t stop Alfred from rescuing Bruce.
The Dark Knight
During the bank robbery, when the one bank robber suspects that the Joker is going to kill him, the Joker says that he kills the bus driver, which of course he does. But counting on the bus to crash into the bank and kill that other robber didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Of course, the Joker could have just killed the bus driver and the other robber if the bus didn’t hit the other guy as planned, but it was just like there was no doubt that the guy would be in the right spot right when the bus crashed into the bank.
Why is Crane not locked up after the events of the first movie?
In the parking garage, Batman jumps down and lands perfectly on Crane’s van as it’s speeding away. It seems incredibly unlikely that he’d be able to time that perfectly considering he can’t even see the van. And why does this speeding van just stop when Batman lands on it? That’s not going to be the last time that the laws of physics are violated in this movie.
Okay, in the last movie we had a gun in the court building presumably in the 1990s. In this one, we get somebody trying to shoot Harvey Dent in a courtroom in the present (2008, but maybe it’s not actually three years after the first movie). You definitely weren’t getting into a court building in a major city without going through a metal detector in 2008 or whatever year the movie is supposed to be set in.
At Bruce Wayne’s fundraiser for Harvey Dent, the Joker drops Rachel out of the window. Batman goes after her and somehow gravity pulls him down faster than Rachel and he catches her. And then they both land on a cab after falling several stories and … they’re fine. That wouldn’t cause any serious injuries or anything.
What’s the deal with Batman taking the shattered bullet from the brick after Richard Dent and Patrick Harvey are killed by the Joker’s henchmen? That’s followed by the scene with Bruce and Alfred with the machine firing at bricks. It seems like he’s comparing different shots to the brick he took from the murder scene to see which one was the right one so his computer could reconstruct the bullet to get finger prints. But wouldn’t that only work if you knew exactly the distance and the angle from which the original bullet was fired? Of all my complaints, I feel like this one has an explanation that I’m not totally getting. But this is Batman doing some scientific work, so this is a good time to insert this video:
Jim Gordon takes a bullet for the mayor at Commissioner Loeb’s funeral and then they fake his death. What did faking his death accomplish? He says later that it was to protect his family and it’s as if it was premeditated, like he knew he was going to get shot. And it seems like nobody knew he was alive. Like his family didn’t know and Harvey Dent and the mayor were surprised to find out that he was alive. But somebody had to be in on this plan with him.
I definitely have some issues with the Joker’s attack on the convoy of Harvey Dent. Batman jumps over a car in the Tumbler to take a bazooka shot from the Joker to save the convoy. How could he know when the shot was coming so that he could time it perfectly? After Batman has the Tumbler self-destruct, he’s on the motorcycle and he wraps the Joker’s truck up so that it flips over. After this huge truck goes airborne and flips over, the Joker is … totally fine, no injuries. And Batman drives the motorcycle towards a building at a high speed, kind of climbs the wall with the front tire, turns around, and comes to a complete stop. Somebody is going to need to explain the physics on that one to me. And then we find out that Jim Gordon isn’t dead as he arrests the Joker.
When Jim Gordon leaves the Joker in the interrogation room, we find out that Batman is in the room standing right behind the Joker. How did he get in there? Was he already there when they brought the Joker in? I know the light comes on and it reveals Batman, but was this room completely dark and nobody noticed him? Or just the end of the room behind the Joker was completely dark and the rest of the room wasn’t? How does that work? Or did he get in there after they brought the Joker in? How would that happen without anybody noticing?
The Joker seems pretty confident that they’re going to be able to save either Rachel or Harvey, but not both. Of course, Batman does save Harvey (thinking he was saving Rachel), but it was a really tight window to save either of them. Batman barely gets to Harvey in time and Gordon almost gets to Rachel in time. Did the Joker know that Batman would be faster than the police and they wouldn’t get to the other one in time? And did he know exactly when to give him the locations so that only Batman would make it to his location in time?
What happens when the Joker sets off the cell phone bomb inside the guy in the MCU? You have this huge explosion and the Joker and Lau are totally fine, but all the police are killed/incapacitated? How does that work?
When the Joker meets Harvey in the hospital, he talks about plans and how everybody is okay with things going according to plan even if the plan is horrifying. He says, “If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger will get shot or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics because it’s all part of the plan. But when I say that one little, old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds.” That quote makes no sense. How is the example of the mayor different from the other examples he gives? Wouldn’t that be part of a plan also?
Harvey shoots Maroni’s driver causing the car to accelerate and flip over. Of course, Harvey escapes this incident unscathed (he did put his seatbelt on before shooting the driver, but I don’t think the seatbelt is preventing serious injury when that happens).
When Batman throws the Joker off the building, he shoots the grapple gun at the Joker to catch him. Of course, he hits the Joker’s foot and he’s able to pull him back up. That’s a pretty ridiculous shot to be that accurate and nail him in the foot.
In the last scene, Harvey flips the coin to decide if he’s going to shoot Batman, himself, and Gordon’s son in that order. Of course, the coin decided that he wouldn’t shoot himself, but why wouldn’t he put himself last? And as he’s flipping the coin for Gordon’s son, Batman tackles him off the building. This time, there’s actually a consequence for this. Harvey is killed by the fall. But Batman is fine.
The Dark Knight Rises
Is Bane running a highly trained military? Because that’s what it would take to pull off this plane crash while kidnapping Dr. Pavel and getting him off the plane safely and onto another plane. I guess watching the rest of the movie you could say that he is running a highly trained military. How does he have the money to do that?
How does Bane eat?
How did Bane get to Gotham City? He’s wanted by the CIA. He’d be pretty easy to recognize. How does he get into the country?
So Bane is just living in the sewers? How does that work? Does he have a bed down there?
How does John Blake know exactly where Commissioner Gordon is going to end up when he escapes from Bane? Bane, who lives in the sewers, doesn’t seem to know where Gordon is going to end up, but Blake knows?
Blake met Bruce Wayne as a kid and knew that he was Batman because of a look on his face? Nobody else can figure this out, but some kid figured it out?
Bruce Wayne goes to a doctor and gets a pretty terrible report on his physical condition. We’ve seen him limping around. He’s at least in his late 30s by now. But he’s going to just go back to being Batman?
Alfred tells Bruce the rumors about Bane. Where has Alfred heard these rumors?
We see Bane going through security at the stock exchange and how he gets through. How did everybody else get their weapons into the stock exchange? How did they get these motorcycles into the stock exchange? It seems like late afternoon when Bane leaves the stock exchange. But then it’s totally dark during the chase. How long was this chase going on for? During the chase, we have one of the hostages on the back of a motorcycle who just ascends from the motorcycle into the air. Um, what? How did that happen? Was Batman rescuing him somehow? Am I missing something obvious? And what’s the deal with Batman’s motorcycle when he makes a sharp turn? The wheels like roll over sideways. How does that work? Then Batman escapes on the Bat. How did he get it there? Did nobody notice this very odd aircraft flying around Gotham before Batman used it to escape?
During the fight on the roof, it’s Batman and Selina Kyle against several of Bane’s thugs. Bane’s highly trained military can’t handle two people? And Selina Kyle has a gun that Batman won’t let her use, but none of Bane’s thugs have guns (other than the one guy who starts shooting at them from above and forces them to flee)?
John Daggett gets mad when Miranda Tate takes control of Wayne Enterprises and he asks where Bane is during his tirade. Um, Bane is standing right there. Look around the room and you’ll see him.
When Selina Kyle takes Batman to Bane, they’re walking together. She says to one of Bane’s thugs, “He’s behind you.” And then Batman appears from behind the thug. How did he get there without the thug noticing?
Bane sets off an explosion to show Batman that he’s below his armory. This seems like a very impressive feat of engineering that he’s able to set off an explosion that doesn’t cause the whole thing to collapse upon him.
Selina Kyle knocks out the police officer who tries to arrest her at the airport, but then she just surrenders to John Blake? I guess you could say that the police officer approached her in the bathroom with nobody else around, but Blake confronts her in public on the jetway. How does Blake get to the jetway without encountering her before that point? How did he know which plane she was getting on unless he followed her to the gate? I’m assuming she used an alias since she was wanted for kidnapping a Congressman. But the fact that he’s coming from the opposite direction down the jetway towards her suggests that he didn’t just follow her.
What’s the deal with Bane’s prison? Like it’s a prison and it’s really hard to escape from, but if you can escape, that’s totally cool. Where is this prison? It certainly doesn’t seem to be in the United States. How did Bane get Bruce Wayne out of the country to bring him there? How does Bane get back into the country when he is definitely a wanted man? This might be the part of the whole trilogy that makes the least sense to me.
Bane says that the bomb is going to explode in five months. Let’s keep that one in mind for later.
Hines Ward returns the kickoff for a touchdown as the explosions are happening and the field collapses. And then he just turns around and looks at it like, “How ‘bout that?” Like wouldn’t he be trying to run to safety in that scenario and not just hanging out in the stadium that is collapsing?
Commissioner Gordon just knew that two guys were coming to kill him in his hospital room and was ready for them?
There have been almost 3,000 cops underground for three months. They say they’ve been getting food and water. How are they getting food and water underground for 3,000 people for three months? Now Lucius Fox says the bomb is going off in 23 days, which would be about a month earlier than Bane said it would explode.
Bruce escapes the prison. Now he’s in the middle of nowhere with no money or identification. How does he get back to the United States and back to Gotham?
Lucius tells Bruce that the bomb is going off in 12 hours. This happens when it is still daytime and it’s in the winter. In the winter, you have less than 12 hours of sunlight. So if the bomb is going off in 12 hours, it should be dark when it explodes.
Batman has 12 hours to save the city, but he spent some of that time rigging a flaming bat symbol on a bridge?
Batman tells Selina Kyle they have 45 minutes to save the city. At that point it’s still dark. But it’s going to be very bright by the time the bomb explodes. And they’ve got 45 minutes, but Batman goes to fight Bane? I know he’s got Gordon working on dealing with the bomb, but shouldn’t finding the bomb be the priority? Leave Bane alone and find the bomb. He’s trying to get the trigger for the bomb from Bane. That would make sense if you had lots of time to spare, but that bomb is going off whether or not somebody presses the trigger.
Talia al Ghul mentions 12 million people about to die. So let’s say Gotham is about the size of New York City. They had most of their police force trapped underground and that was almost 3,000 people? That seemed like a small number so I googled and found out that New York City has about 36,000 police officers. Maybe that’s why there’s so much crime.
The autopilot issue with the Bat was brought up earlier in the movie. We’re going to find out that Bruce Wayne fixed it. But when Selina Kyle asks if he’s going to eject from the Bat after flying the bomb out over the water, he says, “No autopilot.” I know they want us to think that Batman died, but why even have this exchange in the movie? I guess it’s to remind us about the autopilot issue and have us think that Batman is going to die. But isn’t Selina Kyle one of the few people he wouldn’t want to have think that he’s dead?
When Gordon wants to know who the hero who saved Gotham is, Batman says, “A hero can be anybody, even a man doing something as simple and reassuring as putting a coat around a young boy’s shoulders to let him know the world hadn’t ended.” So we have a callback to a scene from the first movie that would have happened about 30 years earlier. Like maybe Bruce Wayne would remember that event, but remembering Gordon specifically seems a little hard to believe. But Jim Gordon immediately remembers it and knows what Batman is talking about? (By the way, I love this scene and use it when I’m teaching about September 11, but it doesn’t make much sense when you think about it.)
Why is Bruce Wayne presumed dead at the end of the movie? We know why Batman is presumed dead and the people at his grave all know who Batman was, but they’re not telling anybody who Batman was.
So yeah, if I got something totally wrong or you can explain something that I’m not getting, please leave a comment. It’s weird to me that there’s now as much time between Batman in 1989 and Batman Begins in 2005. I haven’t seen it in a long time, but I think 1989 Batman was pretty good. I don’t think the rest of that quadrilogy was all that good (I think I saw all of those movies at some point, I know I saw at least three of the four, but sequels are not that memorable). The Batman is coming out next year and it’s supposed to be the start of a new trilogy. It’s so easy to mess up a superhero movie (I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice on a plane, it was terrible) and it’s going to be tough to follow the Dark Knight trilogy. The Batman is going to have the Riddler and the Penguin, two classic Batman villains who weren’t in the Dark Knight trilogy, so that’s interesting. Maybe Clownface will appear in one of the sequels (see the Simpsons video above). But it seems like Hollywood could have waited longer to do Batman again.
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