Hello readers! I’m back again after another absence from blogging. Who am I? It doesn’t matter who I am, what matters is my blog. No one cared who I was until I wrote this blog. So for my return I’ve decided to write about something very relevant and topical, very current and important. I will take control, take control of my blog, and this is the instrument of its liberation. I’m going to write about The Dark Knight Rises.
Let the games begin!
You’re probably wondering why I would choose to write about a movie that’s three years old. Calm down readers, now is not the time for fear, that comes later. I’m not writing a review, or a deconstruction, or anything like that, it would be much too long of a post. Instead there is one very specific thing that I want to point out, and its something that has bugged me for a while. I’m bugged by how people perceive the ending of the movie (and therefore the entire Nolan-Batman trilogy). Many of you probably remember the ending, and don’t need a recap, but some might have forgotten, in which case a recap isn’t pure evil, it is necessary evil, so here it is. Early on in the movie, Alfred tells Bruce Wayne that he wants a better life for him, and that he imagines seeing him in a cafe in Florence, with a wife and maybe some kids. At the end of the movie, Batman rides off into the sunset with a nuclear bomb, only for it to be revealed that the Batwing had autopilot, so Batman wasn’t on board when the bomb goes off. Alfred retires, goes to the cafe, looks over and sees Bruce Wayne at a table with Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman).
I’ve talked to people in person, read articles, and watched videos on the internet that all say the same thing. “How does no one notice Bruce Wayne, a famous billionaire who is supposed to be dead, sitting at this cafe.” Obviously the screenwriters and director made a serious mistake with that ending, right? Not as serious as yours, I fear, if you take the it literally. That is what bugs me: am I the only person who didn’t take it literally? Am I the only one who watched it and thought, “Alfred so badly wanted a better life for Bruce, and now that he knows he didn’t die in a nuclear blast, and is on vacation in Florence again, he is imagining his old dreams for him.”
Doesn’t that make more sense? Bruce Wayne disappears and lays low with Selina Kyle, Alfred doesn’t know where he is, but finds himself thinking about what he used to always hope would happen. He goes to the same cafe he goes to every year on holidays, and has the same happy fantasy that he said he had for seven years while Bruce Wayne was gone before he became Batman. It wasn’t meant to be taken literally, its meant to show that Alfred knows that somewhere, Bruce is happy, with a beautiful woman, exactly how he dreamed. I can see where people might get confused though, what with a movie using metaphors, allegory, symbolism and other literary devices to convey a meaning (I think all those terms are correct, it’s been forever since I took a literature class) instead of flat out saying it. Imagine, a movie using theatricality to leave the true meaning of something up to interpretation. Theatricality and deception are powerful agents to the uninitiated, but we are initiated, aren’t we readers? Members of the movie-going public!
This one specific point has been nagging at me for three years, so it’s nice to get it off my chest. I’m almost 100% positive that I’m correct, and that’s why I wanted to share my theory, and I wish that everyone would drop the notion that Bruce Wayne was really sitting unnoticed at a busy cafe. I want to destroy that notion and then, when it is done, and that notion is ashes, then you have my permission to die.
BONUS
I referenced ten Bane Quotes in this blog. Try to find them all, or don’t. This blog is yours! None shall interfere, do as you please!
Ok, This One Time 