zombie84 said:
CP3S said:
I think The Dark Knight Returns and the rest of Miller's Batman works serve much more as a defense for Warbler's side of this discussion than anything else. In other words, Miller got the character, why couldn't Nolan?
Going to have to disagree here. Dark Knight Returns opens with Batman already having given up being Batman. But he decides to come back for a final fight, with the understanding that it will probably kill him. Like in Dark Knight Rises, his health problems and the realization that this battle may be his last are hinted at throughout.
I have no qualms about him having already retired and coming back. In The Dark Knight Returns, he calls it quits after Robin dies a brutal death and comes back he sees Gotham needs him. In The Dark Knight Rises he retired after taking the fall for Dent and ruining his reputation. It makes sense in that context to retire, Batman is now a symbol of the wrongs in Gotham and thanks to Dent, Gotham crime levels have reached a point manageable by the police force. I think both of those scenarios are believable enough (Nolan's perhaps more than Miller's even), but in both those situations he retains his identity, his resources, and everything needed to jump back into the game.
In The Dark Knight Returns Bruce fakes his death to get a government that wants him dead off his back. Millions of dollars of Bruce Wayne's money mysteriously disappears and the mansion burns to the ground. In Miller's story, there is a purpose for his death, he doesn't die to retire or quit, he dies and a means to continue fighting. In Nolan's story, it really feels like the main reason it is there is simply because Nolan was making a salad out of elements from his favorite Batman stories. He fakes his death when the was no real logical reason for it to be necessary.
He could live and still go to France. Or anywhere else he wanted. There was simply no real reason to let the world think he was dead.
Finally at the end, Batman does give up being Batman. The suit is retired, and he instead decides to spend his days training new recruits to do the work he once was able to do so effectively, passing on the torch as it were.
That simply isn't true. The suit is never retired. He is wearing the bat suit, fighting Clark, he "dies", then the very next scene with him it is revealed he is alive and training his recruits. Never any talk about not being Batman. When he says, "She is perfect" in regards to Carrie, he isn't talking about a replacement, it is in response to Alfred questioning him for accepting another sidekick after what had happened to the last Robin and how hard on him it had been.
Ever time I've read The Dark Knight Returns, I've gotten the impression of Batman being an old man who is determined to wear the cowl until his heart stops beating, not someone looking for a replacement so he can chillax
(Dark Knight Rises is way more realistic: Bruce's body would be spent for good before he was forty)
Like the part where he gets his back broken and is fist fighting Bane mere months later?
