Let me begin by stating, perhaps uncontroversially, that I believe Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy to be a masterpiece of cinema. The depth of character with which he invests Christian Bale’s protagonist and the strength and breadth of the thematic arc across all three films – from the fear of setting out in Batman Begins to the chaos of act two in The Dark Knight and finally the pain of endings in The Dark Knight Rises – is virtually unrivalled. That’s without even mentioning the villains, the impetus behind any Batman film, Wally Pfister‘s cinematography, Hans Zimmer‘s soundtracks, etc., etc.
Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy has won Oscars, been interpreted as political allegory, inspired intense critical debate – all things superhero movies have otherwise singularly failed to do. So, with all the apparent genius that went into the series preparation and execution, it’s a little bewildering that these plot holes went unnoticed by the writing team of Nolan and Co. A few of them are actually pretty destructive to one’s enjoyment, so I’d like to take this moment to remind you that ignorance can, in fact, be bliss. If you’d rather face the hard truth, here are just five examples of plot holes you could pilot The Bat through.
SPOILERS!!!
5. The League of Shadow’s Plan, Batman Begins
The League of Shadows is a secret order dedicated to restoring harmony in the world by overthrowing any society that becomes too decadent and corrupt. According to Ra’s al Ghul (Liam Neeson), the League was responsible for the sacking of Rome as well as the consecutive plague and fire that devastated London in the 1600s. Though, with plans like their one for destroying modern day Gotham, its difficult to believe they could even manage a Boston tea party.
They plan to use a prototype microwave emitter stolen from Wayne Enterprises to vaporize Gotham’s water supply, thereby weaponizing the deadly fear toxin that they’ve been feeding into it for months. The only issue is ensuring that none of the water from the system ever gets the chance to become breathable vapor before their plan is put into action, you know, such when people boil a kettle or have a hot shower.
Even if nobody in Gotham turned on a faucet during the time it took for the League to carry this off, the human body is 60% water: as soon as they turned on that machine, it should’ve been like popping the entire population of Gotham City in a microwave. Ra’s would only have succeeded in turning the entire population of The Narrows, if not all of Gotham, into human popcorn. So much for using technology as a means to encourage social justice.
4. There’s Too Much Order in The Joker’s Chaos, The Dark Knight
For a guy who claims not to be a planner, Heath Ledger‘s Joker is awfully good at, well making plans. His speech to Harvey Two-Face aside – in which he compares himself to a dog chasing cars – The Joker’s knowledge and understanding of the people he manipulates borders on the clairvoyant. For one thing, his plan requires Batman and the whole justice department of Gotham to behave exactly according to plan.
When Lieutenant Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman) is seemingly killed in the line of duty, Harvey Dent steps up and “reveals” Batman in front of the press corp. He is then taken into police custody under the belief that The Joker will try to hijack Dent en route, which he does. Events pan out and The Joker is captured, but only after, amongst other things, firing a bazooka at Dent’s convoy.
The Joker’s thugs kidnap both Dent and Bruce Wayne’s childhood sweetheart Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal) while The Joker is in police custody. Under duress, The Joker gives Batman two addresses, one for Rachel, one for Harvey, both of whom are wired with explosives. Batman chooses the address he believes Rachel is at, but discovers Dent there instead. The police turn up just too late to rescue Rachel who is killed in the explosion. Batman saves Dent, but Dent’s face is horribly scarred in the explosion, which, along with the loss of his fiancé Rachel, turns him into the vengeful Two-Face.
Meanwhile, The Joker manages to provoke a guard into taking a swing at him then takes said guard hostage. He demands a phone call in exchange for the guard’s life, which he is granted; the phone call is to a makeshift bomb in the stomach of one of his henchmen who had been arrested alongside him. This explosion, the third in about as many minutes, kills a whole bunch more police officers and sets The Joker free. Phew…
There are a lot of moving parts in that plan, a lot of variables to account for, the failure of any of which would have ruined the whole thing. What if Batman hadn’t saved Dent from The Joker’s attack on the convoy? What if Batman had chosen to head to the address he thought Harvey was at instead? You can claim The Joker guessed at his feelings for Rachel based on a scene I’ll address next, but that’s a big gamble. How did he know Dent wouldn’t be killed in the explosion thereby preventing his becoming corrupt? How did he know the cop would rise to his taunts thus allowing The Joker to take him hostage? Did he even want to kill the Mayor? The list goes on.
Ultimately, The Joker arguably carries the whole thing off just to prove how clever he is, but it’s difficult to claim you’re an agent of chaos when you put quite that much work into making sure that absolutely everything goes your way – even if it’s never entirely quite clear exactly what “your way” is.
3. The Joker Never Leaves the Party, The Dark Knight
The Joker storms Bruce Wayne’s swanky penthouse party in search of Harvey Dent. Instead he comes across Rachel Dawes, also Harvey’s love interest, before being attacked by Batman. Batman quickly disposes of The Joker’s goons in response to which The Joker pushes Rachel out the window – “Let her go!” “Very poor choice of words.” Batman dives after Rachel and saves her, despite pancaking himself on a parked car after a fall of more than a dozen stories.
What’s in question, however, is not how Batman avoided breaking his back (before Bane did it for him), but the fact that we never see him return to the party. The Joker’s still up there terrorizing Bruce Wayne’s guest. What about Harvey Dent, whom Bruce Wayne incapacitated and stowed in a safe room, or that old guy The Joker was tormenting? Are we supposed to believe that The Joker just got bored and wandered off? As the previous plot hole illustrates, he’s a man with a plan. It just might’ve been nice to know how this part of it was supposed to end, apart from defenestration.
2. The Whole Opening Plane Sequence, The Dark Knight Rises
The first big plot hole in the last (and arguably least) of Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy occurs during the opening sequence: in fact, it could be said to BE the opening sequence. It starts off pretty brilliantly with the CIA flying a captured nuclear physicist, Leonid Pavel, out of a conflict zone somewhere in Eastern Europe; along with Pavel, they also have some hooded mercenaries whom the lead operative interrogates for information on a mysterious mercenary named Bane. To cut a long story short, one of the mercenaries is revealed to be Bane himself and he claims that being captured was all part of his plan (isn’t it always?), and he then proceeds with a daring aerial kidnapping.
A second plane, a C-130 Hercules transport, descends. Bane’s men exit it, attaching cables to the CIA’s smaller Bandeirante turboprop. That done, the villain’s Hercules pulls up, tearing the wings from the Bainderante and leaving it dangling, nose-down. Inside the CIA plane, Bane wreaks havoc on his captors; meanwhile, his men on the outside blow off the plane’s tail section, creating a vertical chute. Bane grasps Pavel to him as one of his fellow mercenaries is pumped full of the physicist’s blood and left to make sure the number of dead tallies with the plane’s manifest. The Hercules releases the Bainderante as Bane and Pavel are hauled up and free of the wreckage, which falls to the ground far below some distance away from the tail and wings.
And therein lies the problem.
What happened to the CIA plane is obviously not an accident but a carefully coordinated attack, and you’d assume any crash examiner would pretty quickly be able to determine that. Furthermore, the fanatic they leave behind as a substitute for Pavel shouldn’t hold up under scrutiny: he still, after all, contains quite a lot of his own blood, which would presumably contaminate Pavel’s infusion, not to mention a different set of teeth, with The Agency’s file on Pavel presumably containing dental records. The whole plan is contingent on making the CIA believe Pavel is dead: the mercenaries already have him in their custody, they’ve got no reason to hand Pavel over to The Agency other than to fake his death. Pavel is apparently a high value target, so presumably the CIA would want to make completely sure that he’s dead, especially given that he was apparently killed along with a whole Agency team in a terrorist attack by unknown forces. You’d think someone might’ve put the pieces together.
However, later in the film when Pavel appears as a captive during Bane’s address from Gotham Stadium, the US military seem pretty surprised to learn Pavel’s still alive (well, till Bane snaps his neck). Which begs the question, why fake his death at all if you’re just going to actually kill him a few months later on national television?
It’s hard to say who comes off as more incompetent when all is said and done: Bane and his mercenaries or the US Intelligence Service.
1. How Does Bruce Wayne Get Back To Gotham? The Dark Knight Rises
Bruce Wayne has been crippled and left in the Pit, a seemingly inescapable open-air prison, to rot. Bane has taken Gotham hostage using the stolen atomic bomb and annexed it from the rest of the world, blowing up bridges and filling in commuter tunnels. Martial law is in order and everything is lost.
That is till Bruce Wayne miraculously reappears in Gotham. Now, his recovery from a broken back in only a matter of months, having been broken over Bane’s knee like a piece of kindling, is unlikely enough (it sure was nice of Bane to leave him with the only doctor on the planet who can fix his back) but somehow he ends up back in Gotham undetected, despite all the previous facts and his being stuck in foreign climes (Mexico? Bolivia?) with no money and no passport. It’s not even like he could get in touch with Alfred to ask for the plane fare.
So, how in the hell does he get back to Gotham? Of all the plot holes, this is the one that will niggle at you.
And those would seem to be the worst of them. Any major film series is going to develop plot holes over time, but these are so blatant that they go a long way to weakening Nolan’s acclaimed trilogy. Which is not to say I don’t still love the films, but simply that they are flawed masterpieces and that Nolan and Co. are not infallible.
For all those who secretly hope helm their own superhero franchise, maybe that should give us hope. I for one would like to bagsy the Batman re-re-reboot. Bring back the Bat nipples!*
*Joke. Seriously.