The Dark Knight Trilogy Film Analysis

1. The Dark Knight Trilogy Film Analysis 593432

2. Summary of Batman Begins In the beginning, Bruce Wayne went to see a movie with his parents, and on his way home, they were murdered by Joe Chill. Bruce is then raised by the family butler, Alfred. 14 years later, Chill is granted parole to testify against a local mob boss. Bruce then goes on to explore the criminal underground and becomes a prisoner himself. In a prison, Henri Ducard teaches Bruce martial arts in the temple of the League of Shadows. He finds out the League plans to destroy Gotham City, so he burns down their temple and sees Ra’s Al Ghu, the head of the League, die, but saves Ducard. Afterwards, Bruce returned to Gotham city and met Lucius Fox, who worked at Wayne Enterprises. Lucius Fox showed him many technologies that the company was developing, which ended up becoming the Batmobile and the suit that Batman is known for. After he takes up the identity of Batman, he intercepts a drug transport and uses the evidence to get Carmine Falcone arrested. Carmine and his goons are transported to Arkham Asylum by Dr. Jonathan Crane, who had been using Carmine to get shipments of a terrifying drug that caused hallucinations. Crane becomes the evil Scarecrow soon after. While investigating Crane, Batman gets exposed to the drug but is given an antidote by Alfred. Crane reveals to the DA, Rachel, that he had been dumping the drug into Gotham’s water supply, and then injects her with it. Batman saves her and interrogates Crane, who reveals he had been working for Ra’s Al Ghul. Afterwards, at Bruce Wayne’s birthday party, Ducard reveals to him that he was the real Ra’s Al Ghul, and tells Batman his plan. The League then sets fire to Bruce’s mansion and begins to poison Gotham. Batman then saves Rachel and begins to fight Ra’s on a train, and Ra’s dies when the train crashes. Batman becomes a hero and disappears into the night, after learning of a new criminal who leaves Joker playing cards at crime scenes.

3. Summary of The Dark Knight In Gotham City, The Joker and his accomplices rob a mob-owned bank. The accomplices kill each other off one by one in a sequence masterminded by the Joker, who escapes alone with all the money. Batman and Lt. Jim Gordon decide to include the new district attorney, Harvey Dent, in their plan to eradicate the mob. Although Dent is dating Rachel Dawes, Bruce Wayne is impressed with his idealism and offers to throw him a fundraiser. Mob bosses Sal Maroni, Gambol, and The Chechen hold a videoconference with Lau, a Chinese accountant who has hidden their funds and fled to Hong Kong. The Joker interrupts the meeting, warning that Batman is unhindered by jurisdiction. He offers to kill Batman for half their money, but the mob bosses refuse, and Gambol puts a bounty on him. The Joker kills Gambol and takes control of his men. Batman captures Lau and delivers him back to Gotham to testify against the Joker and the mob. The Joker announces that people will die each day unless Batman reveals his identity. He then kills Commissioner Gillian B. Loeb and the judge presiding over the mob trials. He also targets Dent at the fundraiser, but Bruce hides Dent. Gordon foils the Joker's assassination attempt on Mayor Garcia, apparently sacrificing himself in the process. Bruce plans to reveal his identity, but Dent instead names himself as Batman to protect the truth. Dent is taken into protective custody and pursued by the Joker across the city; Batman rushes to Dent's aid. Gordon, who faked his death, helps apprehend the Joker and is promoted to Commissioner. That night, Dent and Rachel disappear. Batman interrogates the Joker and discovers that Dent and Rachel are held in two separate buildings filled with explosives. The Joker reveals their locations, and Batman goes to Rachel's, only to realize that the Joker has tricked him into finding Dent moments before both buildings explode, killing Rachel and scarring half of Dent's face. The Joker detonates a bomb in the police station and escapes with Lau. Coleman Reese, an accountant at Wayne Enterprises, deduces Batman's true identity and plans to reveal it. The Joker kills Lau and The Chechen, then threatens to bomb a hospital unless Reese is killed. Gordon and Bruce protect Reese, who changes his mind. The Joker visits Dent in the hospital and convinces him to seek revenge. The Joker then blows up the hospital and escapes with hostages. Dent starts to go after people responsible for Rachel's death, deciding their fates by flipping a coin. He kills Maroni and a cop who had helped kidnap Rachel. It is revealed that the Joker rigged two ferries with explosives to escalate chaos; one ferry is full of citizens, the other full of prison inmates and guards. He then gives the passengers of each ferry the choice to blow the other up before midnight, otherwise, both ferries will explode. The passengers ultimately refuse. Batman asks a reluctant Lucius Fox to use a city-wide tracking prototype device to find the Joker; Fox agrees, but says he will resign immediately afterward. The Joker dresses up hostages as his men, luring Gordon's SWAT team to strike them. Batman fights off the SWAT team and the Joker's men, then rescues the hostages. Batman apprehends the Joker, but the Joker gloats that he has won, as Gotham will lose hope once Dent's rampage becomes public. The SWAT team arrives to take the Joker into custody. Dent lures Gordon to the building where Rachel died and holds Gordon's family hostage. Batman confronts Dent, who judges the fates of himself, Batman, and Gordon's son with three coin flips. He shoots Batman, spares himself, then flips again to determine the boy's fate. Batman, who is wearing body armor, tackles Dent off the building, killing him and saving the boy. Batman then convinces Gordon to frame him for the murders so that Dent will remain a symbol of hope for the city. Gordon destroys the Bat-Signal and launches a manhunt for the Batman. Alfred Pennyworth burns a letter written by Rachel to Bruce announcing her engagement to Dent, and Fox watches the signal tracker self-destruct.

4. Summary of The Dark Knight Rises Eight years after Harvey Dent's death, the Dent Act grants the Gotham City Police Department powers which nearly eradicate organized crime. Feeling guilty for covering up Dent's crimes, Police Commissioner James Gordon writes a resignation speech confessing the truth, but decides not to use it. Batman has disappeared; Bruce Wayne has become a recluse. Cat burglar SelinaKyle obtains Bruce's fingerprints from his home, kidnaps a congressman, then disappears. Kyle hands Bruce's fingerprints to Phillip Stryver, an assistant to Bruce's business rival John Daggett, in hope of having her criminal record erased. Stryver double-crosses Kyle, but she uses the congressman's stolen phone to alert the police to their location. Gordon and the police arrive to find the congressman, then pursue Stryver's men into the sewers while Kyle flees. A masked man called Bane captures Gordon. Gordon escapes and is found by John Blake, a once-orphaned patrol officer who has deduced Batman's true identity from their similar backgrounds. Gordon promotes Blake to detective, with Blake reporting directly to him. Wayne Enterprises is unprofitable after Bruce discontinued his fusion reactor project when he learned that the core could be weaponized. Later, Bane attacks the Gotham Stock Exchange, using Bruce's fingerprints in a transaction that bankrupts Wayne. Alfred Pennyworth, concerned that Bruce has not moved on from being Batman, reveals to him that Rachel Dawes had intended to marry Dent before she died, and resigns in an attempt to dissuade him. Fearing that Daggett, Bane's employer, would gain access to the reactor, Bruce asks Wayne Enterprises board member Miranda Tate to take over his company. Bane later kills Daggett. After being promised the software to erase her criminal record, Kyle agrees to take Batman to Bane, but instead leads him into a trap. Bane appears and reveals that he intends to fulfill Ra's al Ghul's mission to destroy Gotham with the League of Shadows remnant. He delivers a crippling blow to Batman's back, then takes him to a foreign, well-like prison where escape is virtually impossible. The inmates tell Bruce the story of Ra's al Ghul's child, born in the prison and cared for by a fellow prisoner before escaping, the only prisoner to have ever done so; Bruce assumes the child to be Bane. Meanwhile, Bane lures Gotham police underground and collapses the exits. He kills Mayor Anthony Garcia and forces an abducted physicist, Dr. Leonid Pavel, to convert the reactor core into a nuclear bomb before killing him. Bane uses the bomb to hold the city hostage and isolate Gotham from the world. Using Gordon's stolen speech, Bane reveals the cover-up of Dent's crimes and releases the prisoners of Blackgate Penitentiary, initiating a revolution. The wealthy and powerful have their property expropriated, are dragged from their homes, and given show trials presided over by Dr. Jonathan Crane, where any sentence means likely death with exile forcing the defendants to walk across the frozen bay to get to the other side. After months of recovery and re-training, Bruce escapes from the prison and enlists Kyle, Blake, Tate, Gordon, and Lucius Fox to help stop the bomb's detonation. While the police and Bane's forces clash, Batman defeats Bane, but Tate intervenes and stabs Batman, revealing herself to be Talia al Ghul, Ra's al Ghul's child who escaped the prison aided by her fellow prisoner and protector, Bane. She plans to complete her father's work by detonating the bomb and destroying Gotham, but Gordon blocks her signal, preventing remote detonation; Talia leaves to find the bomb. Bane prepares to kill Batman, but Kyle kills Bane using the Batpod. Batman pursues Talia with the Bat, an aircraft developed by Fox, to bring the bomb back to the reactor, where it can be stabilized. Talia's truck crashes, but she remotely destroys the reactor before dying. With no way to stop the detonation, Batman uses The Bat to haul the bomb over the bay, where it detonates. In the aftermath, Batman is presumed dead and is honored as a hero. With Bruce also presumed dead, Wayne Manor is left to the city to become an orphanage, and Wayne's remaining estate is left to Alfred. Fox discovers that Bruce had fixed The Bat's autopilot, and Gordon finds the Bat-Signal refurbished. While visiting Florence, Alfred witnesses Bruce and Kyle together. Blake resigns from the police force and inherits the Batcave.

5. The Ordinary World In my opinion, the ordinary world is when Bruce is a child. Before his parents were killed, he was just a normal child with rich parents. After they were killed, he took it upon himself to fight crime on the streets of Gotham.

6. Call to Adventure The call to adventure is when Bruce’s parents are murdered in front of him, and when he discovered the League of Shadows’ plan to destroy Gotham. After these events, he truly became Batman.

7. Meeting the Mentor Bruce’s mentors were Alfred Pennyworth, who raised him, and Henri Ducard, who trained him in martial arts and made him the powerhouse known as Batman. http://youtu.be/Uk280jVuH1w

8. Crossing the Threshold Bruce crossed the threshold when he took up the identity of Batman and began to research Dr. Crane and Arkham Asylum.

9. Tests, Allies, and Enemies Some tests/enemies presented to Batman were Scarecrow, Ra’s Al Ghul, the Joker, Two-Face, and Bane breaking his back. Some allies were Commissioner Gordon, Rachel, Harvey Dent before the explosion, Alfred, Lucius Fox, and eventually Catwoman.

10. Approach to the Innermost Cave The approach to the innermost cave happened when Batman gathered a group of people to go defeat Bane while Bane’s goons were fighting the police force.

11. Ordeal The ordeal was Batman’s final battle against Bane and getting stabbed by Talia Al Ghul after defeating him. Batman was almost killed by Bane, until Catwoman killed Bane to save Batman.

12. Reward Batman’s reward during the hero’s journey was defeating his greatest enemy, Bane, finally saving Gotham, and being able to retire from being Batman.

13. The Return With The Elixir Batman’s elixir was saving Gotham and marrying Selina Kyle. He was honored as a hero by Gotham and left his manor to the city for them to turn it into an orphanage.

14. Archetypes • Hero-Bruce Wayne/Batman • Batman is the obvious hero of this trilogy. He saves Gotham from danger many times throughout the series. • The Mentor-Alfred Pennyworth/Henri Ducard • Alfred raised Bruce Wayne after his parents were killed, and made him the way he is. Henri trained Bruce in martial arts and gave him the skills to be Batman. • The Shapeshifter-Catwoman, Ra’s Al Ghul • Catwoman was originally Batman’s enemy, but ended up marrying him. Ra’s Al Ghul masqueraded as Henri Ducard, but later revealed his true identity. • The Shadow-Scarecrow, The Joker, Bane • These were Batman’s strongest enemies throughout the series, and gave him the biggest challenges. • The Maiden-Rachel, Selina Kyle • These are both women that Bruce had feelings for during the series, and he had to rescue them from danger. • The Father-Alfred • Batman’s father was killed when he was around eight years old, so Alfred raised him, and acted like Bruce’s father. • The Threshold Guardian-Ra’s Al Ghul • Ra’s obstructed Batman throughout much of the time when Batman was beginning to become Batman.

15. Citations • Child Bruce Wayne. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Tumblr. Web. • Bruce Wayne and Alfred. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Wordpress. Web. • Batman Destroys the Temple. N.d. Photograph. Bhutan. Amazon.com. Web. • Alfred Pennyworth. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Batman.Wikia.com. Web. • Batman and Scarecrow. N.d. Photograph. Arkham Asylum. Fanpop.com. Web. • Batman. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Amazon.com. Web. • Batman and The Joker. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Fanpop.com. Web. • Commissioner Gordon. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Tumblr.com. Web. • Batman Vs Bane. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Wallpaper.net. Web. • Catwoman Kills Bane. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Collider.com. Web. • Movie Poster. N.d. Photograph. Examiner.com. Web. • Bruce and Selina. N.d. Photograph. Gotham City. Wordpress.com. Web.