Warbler said:
timdiggerm said:
And the brings us to the thing I hate most about this movie. Bruce Wayne leaving Gotham with Catwoman. That is so wrong on so many fronts. Bruce Wayne would never stop fighting crime in Gotham, you'd have to kill him or disable him permanently to stop from crime fighting.
Remember what Alfred said, early in the film, about how he hoped that Bruce would find peace. Bruce being at the cafe means that that's happened.
Bruce would never give up fighting crime in Gotham, period end of sentence.
I think you really need to disconnect from the comic books. This Bruce Wayne is a different character. In Batman Begins, the scene where Bruce explains Batman to Alfred when they're on the plane, he makes it very clear that Batman would be temporary - a symbol to inspire people. In The Dark Knight, he sees Harvey Dent as the man who could inherit his inspiration. He sees Dent, a true hero, as the real symbol Gotham needs. He makes it very clear that he is going to retire Batman. Then, of course, Dent goes mad, but at the end, he decides that Batman could take the fall so Dent could remain as the true heroic symbol of Gotham. Now, in The Dark Knight Rises, his plan has worked, and they've cleaned the streets. Bruce is no longer Batman, but he isn't really living. Alfred leaves because Bruce turns again to Batman when Bane comes around because he believes Bruce is looking for death. Now, fast-forward to the end of the film, Bruce has realized what Alfred said was right. He wasn't afraid of death, but he should have been. Bruce managed to save the day, but he's older now. If he keeps Batman up, he will die, and for what? It doesn't matter who's behind the mask - it's the symbol of Batman. So he retires, but he doesn't do it how he did before. No, now he decides to have a life beyond Batman, as Alfred wanted. To me, it's the perfect conclusion to THIS Bruce Wayne's character arc.
As for Catwoman, he knows there's more to her than a criminal. I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, after deducing that she isn't poor enough to steal, that "she must be mixed up with the wrong people." He also later says that she must want the clean slate as "a way to start fresh." He believes that she did time before, honestly regretted it, and is now only working for Daggett because she wants the clean slate so she can get rid of her record. The fact that she comes back to save him kind of proves that he was right.
As for leading him to Bane, if I remember correctly, she said she did it because he would have killed her otherwise, and really Bruce wanted to find and fight Bane. After he got ass-kicked, he realized that he really was just looking for death, and he couldn't really blame Selina because it was almost entirely his fault he was put in that situation.