Christopher Nolan’s Batman Trilogy

The Dark Knight Rises (2012) is a superhero epic of a scope hard to explain in a few short paragraphs. It is the third film in Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. This film takes place over the course several months, primarily in the fictional Gotham City, an American city which had until recently been rife with crime and corruption which had made great progress in these areas due to the events in the previous films. The protagonist is Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale), the eponymous Dark Knight, who has retired his Batman alter ego after taking the fall for the crimes of Harvey Dent at the close of The Dark Knight.

Wayne has discontinued a fusion reactor project out of fear it could be weaponized, resulting in profit losses for Wayne Enterprises. Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) steals Wayne’s fingerprints and gives them to Phillip Daggett (Ben Mendelsohn), a businessman who intends on taking over Wayne Enterprises. After a kidnapping gone wrong, Selina escapes from a double-cross by Daggett’s associates. Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) riddled with guilt over the lies told to the public about the events of the last film, writes the truth, but chooses not to go public. He is captured and brought to Bane (Tom Hardy), a mysterious man who has escaped CIA custody and is now living with his men in Gotham’s sewers. Gordon escapes and is soon impressed by a policeman named John Blake (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) whom he promotes to Detective. Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange at Daggett’s request in order to bankrupt Wayne. Wayne resurrects the Batman persona in a failed attempt to foil Bane’s attack.To prevent his company from falling into Daggett’s hands, Wayne hands over the reins of the corporation to Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) with w...

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...es himself to be the people’s champion. He begins his public takeover of Gotham at the football game with the first of a series of speeches, which advocate populism in its most savage and militant incarnation. “Gotham is yours,” he tells the people. Like the people of Paris in 1789, the revolutionaries storm the prison. In the mind of Bane, criminals are forced into crime because of the domination of the elite. Blackgate and the Bastille are symbols of “oppression”. They are the allies of the people not their enemy. Bane tells the people the truth about Harvey Dent, that he is a “false idol” preventing the people from tearing down a “corrupt city”. It is Bane’s narrative that a corrupt lying elite has been keeping the people down with a “myth of opportunity.” The uprising of Bane is a cautionary tale, it is 21st century populism taken to militant extremes.