Batman, Upholder of the Status Quo: A Critical Analysis of the Nolan Trilogy

August 15, 2012

BY ADAM PARKER

I don’t know if Christopher Nolan intended for his “Batman” trilogy to deliver a message in support of the political and economic status quo (my guess is he didn’t), but the pro-capitalism, pro-institutional leanings of the films are, upon reflection, disconcerting.

Why, you ask, should we expend any energy analyzing Hollywood blockbusters made as grand entertainments and money-making engines? Why consider “Batman” to be part of a film tradition that warrants serious critical scrutiny? Because these movies are seen by many millions of people worldwide, because many hundreds of millions of dollars are collected from those audiences and because such serious business inevitably influences the way we think — the way we expect movies to entertain us, the way we perceive good-and-evil dichotomies, the way we make myths (which by definition are lasting) and the way in which attitudes can be shaped by the stories we engage in.

The Batman figure was conceived as an anti-hero — a man who bucked the system, employing vigilante tactics, in order to seek retribution for the murder of his parents and restore balance to his injured psyche. What makes the character compelling is that his goals are unobtainable. His purpose is not enlightenment. No justice can be obtained, no balance achieved, yet he is compelled by dark forces within to keep on keeping on. He possesses no superpowers; he relies on technology, smarts and brawn in an attempt to appease his troubled soul and, meanwhile, serve the interests of the populace. We sympathize with Batman because we can understand his dilemma.

That dilemma is twofold. He is an injured man seeking an ever-elusive healing, and he is a member of the oppressor class whose family wealth was the result of exploitation and violence (Wayne Enterprises is a holding company whose lines of business include weapons and chemical manufacturing), and who continues to lead a double life. As Bruce Wayne, he inflicts damage; as Batman, he attempts to repair the damage. These unresolvable conflicts make him a tragic figure, doomed to his dark fate. His destruction is only a question of when, not if — at least, so goes the myth, though Nolan chooses the easier way out, delivering a happy ending of redemption instead.

It is the third Batman installment, “The Dark Knight Rises,” that shines the spotlight brightest on the main themes of Nolan’s trilogy, and it gives us a chance to look back over all three films in our effort to understand the messages therein. The Origin Story, “Batman Begins,” presents the young Bruce Wayne, describes the early trauma that would shape his life, and reveals him as a seeker of the unobtainable. He trains successfully as a presumed member of the League of Shadows, a group of vigilante ninjas, but is cast out once he understands that the League’s mission is not benevolent. His association, however, sets the stage for later confrontation — a sort of meet-your-maker showdown that is only finally resolved in the third film.

The ostensible motivation of the corrupted bad guys is corruption, an odd contradiction that remains unexplored by Nolan. The League of Shadows sets its sights on the irredeemably depraved Gotham City, with its ignorant residents, vile institutions and excessive capitalistic enterprise. This is Sodom, and it must be destroyed. In the darkness, Batman befriends the trustworthy cop, James Gordon, roots out and defeats the evildoers, saving millions of innocent lives and billions of dollars in shareholder value. Gordon represents an inadequate but ultimately honorable police force firmly on the side of good. It is guilty only of underestimating the forces stacked against it. These policemen do no racial profiling or unnecessary search and seizures. They don’t shoot immigrants in vestibules or torture them in bathroom stalls. They are, essentially, victims.

Gotham is saved and life goes on, until a new villain arrives — the Joker — who, as Nolan presents him and Heath Ledger plays him, is the ultimate nihilist psychopath, an amoral fiend bent on revealing the inner corruption of human nature. We are all jokers, he seems to say, even Batman, especially Batman. Here, Nolan had a real opportunity to undermine our prized institutions and expose the injustice that permeates all of them. Ledger seems to push in that direction, but the script keeps contained the character’s larger impulses, forcing the Joker to serve the interests of the story, denying him the opportunity to explode it. Surely it would have been more interesting to see his nihilistic drive toward unleashed chaos destabilize the entire mythmaking effort itself, to force us to question all of our assumptions about the political and economic underpinnings of society, but Nolan was unwilling to go that far.

At the end of the second film, “The Dark Knight,” Batman takes the fall in order to protect his protector (Gordon) and the people of Gotham, who apparently needed a proper myth to believe in (the presumed honor of the crime-fighting district attorney, Harvey Dent). Bruce Wayne becomes a William Randolph Heart-like recluse, descending into his darkness, abandoning for eight years his business interests, social life and destiny. But his fate becomes evident again when the League of Shadows returns to Gotham in the form of the villain Bane, who shatters the peace and plots to destroy the ever-corrupt city and its inhabitants with a nuclear device — a device unintentionally provided to him by Wayne Enterprises, it turns out.

Bane, whose face is obscured by a monstrous mask that relieves what would otherwise be an insufferable pain caused by a mysterious injury of the past, is a cunning brute who, until Catwoman returns late in the film to dispose of him, succeeds in outsmarting and outpacing Batman as well as the police. The dramatic highpoint of the movie comes when Bane, standing atop a disabled police car, admonishes the citizens gathered round for allowing themselves to be victimized by the rich and powerful. He encourages them to take justice into their own hands, which they do with a brutal conviction, betraying their true nature. The masses cannot be trusted; they are ignorant and malleable, prone to violence and betrayal. Bane the Wise knows this and exploits it, using the populace to further his agenda of destruction.

The people do not understand that they are the ones betrayed. They will suffer damnation so that the Shadow World may gain control. The police, who are meant to protect them, are but pawns in the game. Only Batman the flawed outlaw can face off with Bane, confront his fate, and save Gotham from the shadows in which he himself dwells eternally. At the end of “The Dark Knight Returns,” audiences are treated to a not-altogether-unexpected plot twist in which Bane is suddenly portrayed as a vulnerable human being capable of tears. It’s too late to stop the bomb, but Batman flies it miles from the city so its detonation disturbs only the ocean. He indicates his custom 'copter will fly on autopilot, though witnesses assume he has been killed in the explosion.

The butler, Alfred Pennyworth, played by Michael Caine, who had become estranged from Wayne in a previous scene and left the manor house, encounters Bruce Wayne alive and well, sitting at a café table in Florence with Selina Kyle, Catwoman, played by Anne Hathaway. Wayne, we are expected to infer, has finally redeemed himself and shed his darker side. The wealthy anti-hero becomes hero, a destiny of eternal conflict gives way to unexpected enlightenment. The subversive is transformed into the conventional. The populace of Gotham is left in the dark. The people might have been spared nuclear incineration, but they are no less ignorant, no less untrustworthy. Wayne Enterprises survives its near-death experience and, presumably, flourishes again under the leadership of Lucius Fox. Capitalism triumphs over the Occupy Movement, and the Wayne estate is converted into an orphanage, appeasing the guilt of the exploiter.

It’s a lazy finale to a bombastic trilogy that offers an appealing aesthetic but a conventional worldview. No institution is deemed too corrupt to save. No painful lessons are learned. Bruce Wayne, meant to suffer forever, instead ends his adventuresome run smiling in the sun at a charming Italian café with a beautiful, unpredictable woman. The status quo persists because it must. This is the final message of the Batman trilogy, a product of its time.