Batfan175 wrote:

nolangoatdirector wrote: But as I said in my OP, this "fear of death" was more about saving Gotham than it was desiring his own life. "You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak. How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit - the fear of death?" Bruce then talks about fearing dying in the pit WHILE GOTHAM BURNS, to which the doctor replies "Make the climb... without the rope - then fear will find you again". All of this was just Bruce learning how to use fear to make a jump, at least in a literal sense. So yes, while Bruce did want to "live", he wanted to live as in "survive his ordeal in the pit so as to be able to save Gotham City", and not live as in "move on". Learning how to use the fear of death does not equate to desiring happiness. That's my point.

Well, i'm sure the last scene of the film will not disappoint you then...

Well, I never said that it did (and it truly didn't; I loved it as I said in my OP).

I completely agree. I felt this was missing too and the Pit would have been the perfect place to explore it.

nolangoatdirector wrote: But as I said in my OP, this "fear of death" was more about saving Gotham than it was desiring his own life. "You do not fear death. You think this makes you strong. It makes you weak. How can you move faster than possible, fight longer than possible, without the most powerful impulse of the spirit - the fear of death?" Bruce then talks about fearing dying in the pit WHILE GOTHAM BURNS, to which the doctor replies "Make the climb... without the rope - then fear will find you again". All of this was just Bruce learning how to use fear to make a jump, at least in a literal sense. So yes, while Bruce did want to "live", he wanted to live as in "survive his ordeal in the pit so as to be able to save Gotham City", and not live as in "move on". Learning how to use the fear of death does not equate to desiring happiness. That's my point.

Caekzor wrote:I completely agree. I felt this was missing too and the Pit would have been the perfect place to explore it.

Exactly. Before the movie came out, and even during the movie, I thought that there would be a touching conversation between Bruce and either "Prison Alfred" or the old doctor. I envisioned one of them asking Bruce why he ever became Batman in the first place and what he hoped to do with that persona, along with what he planned to do with his life afterwards. Or something like that, just to remind Bruce, re-motivate him, and change his outlook on life. Just some dialogue to get us an insight into Bruce's head/thoughts and outlook on life as the film progressed. MagnarTheGreat said in the "TDKR did not realize its true potential" thread from a few months back that "One of my big complaints is that we don't really get all that great an insight in the movie into the head of Bruce Wayne/Batman, beyond "stop Bane/save the city"." And I totally agree. I felt that what we got was too much "save Gotham City" and not enough of Bruce's thoughts or how he changed mentally, which we should have since TDKR was meant to be Bruce's story of loss and redemption. Bruce found happiness, but we never saw him *want* this happiness; we only see a two second long shot of him in Italy being happy. Which was great, yet kinda unwarranted.

I think your analysis is solid, and I don't disagree that having a more explicitly shown change in Bruce would have helped seal it.

Except!

Nolan (and WB) aren't above thrilling the crowd and milking the experience for all its worth. A major point of buzz/wondering going into the film was "Would Batman/Bruce live?" That is, would Nolan kill (not metaphorically but actually) kill the character? Giving us an onscreen, explicit (instead of implied) catharsis for Bruce and then having him die as Batman in a nuclear explosion...that would not have worked, I think. We don't see the clearly delineated change onscreen so as to give the climax of the plot weight and tension. All we know, as you say, is that Bruce "found" fear again and thus overcame his suffocating deathwish. What we don't know, and discover along with Fox and Alfred, is if Bruce truly wants to move on.

Obviously on repeated viewings (which I have to assume most of us here will be doing ), this tension is either not there or far less than it was on the first time watching. But I think it's valid for Nolan to have left some things implied or a bit hidden for the final conflict(s) in the film to be suspenseful and have impact.

(I know that I was convinced that Nolan had killed off Bruce until the final moments of the film.)

Aranion wrote:I think your analysis is solid, and I don't disagree that having a more explicitly shown change in Bruce would have helped seal it.

Except!

Nolan (and WB) aren't above thrilling the crowd and milking the experience for all its worth. A major point of buzz/wondering going into the film was "Would Batman/Bruce live?" That is, would Nolan kill (not metaphorically but actually) kill the character? Giving us an onscreen, explicit (instead of implied) catharsis for Bruce and then having him die as Batman in a nuclear explosion...that would not have worked, I think. We don't see the clearly delineated change onscreen so as to give the climax of the plot weight and tension. All we know, as you say, is that Bruce "found" fear again and thus overcame his suffocating deathwish. What we don't know, and discover along with Fox and Alfred, is if Bruce truly wants to move on.

Obviously on repeated viewings (which I have to assume most of us here will be doing ), this tension is either not there or far less than it was on the first time watching. But I think it's valid for Nolan to have left some things implied or a bit hidden for the final conflict(s) in the film to be suspenseful and have impact.

(I know that I was convinced that Nolan had killed off Bruce until the final moments of the film.)

So basically, Nolan and company sold out to us, which is disappointing because that is something he avoided doing in his first two batmans and really in all of his movies to date. It's true that we all wondered if Bruce would survive or not. But don't you think that, in terms of character journey and substance within the actual character of Bruce Wayne, we needed to see him change? Because what we got was Nolan focusing more on "fate" than on "character development", and IMO what we needed was character development and THEN fate. You can still "kill" Bruce even knowing that he wanted to live. This WOULD work because we were led to believe that the autopilot was not working. Not that there was an autopilot but he didn't want to use it. I don't see how a wish for a happy life would have taken away from the ending, because the premise of the ending was that he was forced to fly away a nuke that had no autopilot, meaning he couldn't have jumped out even if he wanted to. Therefore, I think that it could have worked.

nolangoatdirector wrote:

Aranion wrote:I think your analysis is solid, and I don't disagree that having a more explicitly shown change in Bruce would have helped seal it.

Except!

Nolan (and WB) aren't above thrilling the crowd and milking the experience for all its worth. A major point of buzz/wondering going into the film was "Would Batman/Bruce live?" That is, would Nolan kill (not metaphorically but actually) kill the character? Giving us an onscreen, explicit (instead of implied) catharsis for Bruce and then having him die as Batman in a nuclear explosion...that would not have worked, I think. We don't see the clearly delineated change onscreen so as to give the climax of the plot weight and tension. All we know, as you say, is that Bruce "found" fear again and thus overcame his suffocating deathwish. What we don't know, and discover along with Fox and Alfred, is if Bruce truly wants to move on.

Obviously on repeated viewings (which I have to assume most of us here will be doing ), this tension is either not there or far less than it was on the first time watching. But I think it's valid for Nolan to have left some things implied or a bit hidden for the final conflict(s) in the film to be suspenseful and have impact.

(I know that I was convinced that Nolan had killed off Bruce until the final moments of the film.)

So basically, Nolan and company sold out to us, which is disappointing because that is something he avoided doing in his first two batmans and really in all of his movies to date. It's true that we all wondered if Bruce would survive or not. But don't you think that, in terms of character journey and substance within the actual character of Bruce Wayne, we needed to see him change? Because what we got was Nolan focusing more on "fate" than on "character development", and IMO what we needed was character development and THEN fate. You can still "kill" Bruce even knowing that he wanted to live. This WOULD work because we were led to believe that the autopilot was not working. Not that there was an autopilot but he didn't want to use it. I don't see how a wish for a happy life would have taken away from the ending, because the premise of the ending was that he was forced to fly away a nuke that had no autopilot, meaning he couldn't have jumped out even if he wanted to. Therefore, I think that it could have worked.

have i ever said that you post some great posts nolangoat