NOTE: This post contains some spoilers for The Dark Knight Rises.
This is going to be short, but I think it's an interesting conversation to be had.
Christopher Nolan opens Batman Begins with a swarm of bats creating the symbol for what will soon become Batman. The Dark Knight begins with a burst of blue flame. The Dark Knight Rises begins with slow move in on ice as it cracks to pieces. What is the significance of all of this?
I can't really say I have any definitive answers but, from my perspective, the bats at the beginning of Batman Begins are clearly a sign of things to come, not really all that deep. The fire at the beginning of The Dark Knight could be considered a metaphor of any sorts for the chaos to be leveled against Gotham by The Joker, Alfred's quote -- "Some people just want to watch the world burn" -- being the most significant. But what about that ice?
It wasn't until just a few minutes ago that I finally came up with what I believe may be the answer and I think it may have actually serve as a sign of what's to come as well as a callback to Batman Begins.
Remember the lessons of Henry Ducard (aka Ra's al Ghul) played by Liam Neeson. Training on the ice, Bruce Wayne believes he's beaten Ducard when he says, "You haven't beaten me. You have sacrificed sure footing for a killing stroke." He taps the ice, it breaks beneath his feet and he falls in. The less, "Always mind your surroundings."
Later in the film, as Wayne manor is burning around him and he battles with Ra's al Ghul, Ra's says, "You never did learn to mind your surroundings." A burning piece of the architecture falls on Bruce, pinning him against the ground. Ra's leaves him for dead.
Then, one more time, as the train is crashing and Batman pins Ra's against the floor, Batman repeats the same phrase, "You never learned to mind your surroundings!" He's learned from his mistakes, but by the time we reach the events of The Dark Knight Rises the ground beneath Wayne is cracking once again. Even Hans Zimmer's second track on the score for the film is titled "On Thin Ice" and had he minded his surroundings perhaps he would have been more wary about who Miranda Tate actually was.
Late in the film there's a suggestion Batman/Bruce has learned. Crane has sent people into "exile" and their falling through the ice and yet, just as Gordon is sent he's met by Batman, standing on the ice... unafraid. But he still hasn't learned, it isn't until the very end, when another member of the al Ghul family is allowed to get close to him, presumably leaving him for dead. It's here his training comes full circle is able to, as the final track of Zimmer's score and the film's title suggests, "Rise".
I'm sure there is a meaningful quote in the film I'm forgetting, but that's my interpretation... Do you have one?
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I think, personally, it's more metaphorical than that.
For me, the ice symbolises the thin layer of protection holding society together. It's what the Joker is describing when he talks about how people are only as civilised as the world allows them to be. The ice is a very thin, and cracking, surface that protects us from the abyss.
Ra's, Bane and the Joker all believe that if you remove the "rules" holding people in place, they become monsters. The ice represents those rules and social structures. As Gotham reaches boiling point - as society is threatened by terrorism (The Dark Knight) or this economic crisis (The Dark Knight Rises) - the ice begins to crack. It can't support the weight we put on it.
Bane dismantles the social structures of Gotham City. He removes the protections that ordinary citizens rely on. He locks the instruments of judicial rule (the police) in a pit underground. The layer dividing society from a disorganised lynch mob is thinning.
That's why "exile" is to walk on the ice. All those wealthy people, appropriately enough, finds themselves collapsing through it and into the darkness below. What had been metaphorical (walking on thin ice as they try to maintain their social status) becomes literal. Society can't withstand the pressure.
It's telling that Batman can walk on the ice with ease. Batman is "bigger." Batman, as a concept, can operate outside the social structures in the way that a normal person or instrument of social policy can't. He can abduct Lau from Hong Kong, he can listen in to all the phone calls in Gotham. He can work outside the system to protect it.
Nice, I like that interpretation, much deeper than mine for sure. There's definitely room for more than just one take.
Thanks Brad. I think I'm still digesting TDKR. But I do think that The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises are two of the most astutely political blockbusters of the past decade - because they refuse to lecture or to pick one side.
Bane is simultaneously an embodiment of the radical left and the radical right. Simultaneously, Bane is very much of the "Occupy" movement. He incites Gotham to rise up against the "1%." Superficial readings interpret this as a conservative take on the character, but I think that's pretty shallow. Bane is at least couched in as much right-wing iconography, and that's not going to Limbaugh conspiracy theories.
If Batman was George Bush's policy given form in The Dark Knight, Bane is that turned back on him. Batman uses extraordinary rendition in The Dark Knight. He's a victim of it The Dark Knight Rises. Bane arrives in Gotham as a "liberator" commencing an "occupation" and turning Gotham into a "failed state."
He is very much American foreign policy used for evil, as Batman is that used for good. Nolan doesn't condemn or praise these concepts - he leaves that to the audience, which I think is smarter. Nolan dares to suggest that you can't make a blanket judgment and that something can simultaneously be used for good or evil - it's down to the people using these tools. (It's telling that Bane uses Bruce Wayne's armoury - "graciously accepted" - in his takeover of Gotham.)
Sorry, rambling.
The only thing I thought the film avoided was assessing the aftermath of what took place. Yes, Bane is an embodiment of the Occupy movement. Yes, the film is also neither right nor left. However, once everything has been destroyed and presumably order will again takeover, how does the city rebuild? It's the main reason I avoided discussing the politics of it because I think it is one thing to use current events to provide an "in" to a story, but I think it's a bit of a cheat to use them and then avoid the resolution. Gotham is destroyed, who is paying to rebuild the city, the bridges, etc?
I don't see Bane as an embodiment of the Occupy movement, personally, because he doesn't really care about the 99%. But he is certainly using those sentiments to cause the destruction of Gotham. He only cares about [fill in the blank if you've seen it] and everything else falls from that. The destruction of Gotham is the goal, whatever sentiment you want to light a fire under will do.
As for the rebuilding, it didn't really matter to me to see what the rebuilding plan was. It wasn't a big deal for me during Batman Begins either. The rebuilding part of Ra's al Guhl's plans - like any madman's was always pretty thin. You got a hint of their French-Revolution-like-rebuilding "plan" - kill or "exile" the rich etc. It was pretty thin back then to and once French society realized that, they ultimately had to turn on the hard-liners who were sending everyone to the guillotine. Bane would never have allowed him or his cronies to be guillotined, of course.
I find Darren's analysis highly interesting but in terms of the film I found Bane to be very undone by the discovery that he is really nothing more than a henchman for Talia.
I felt that really rendered his entire series of actions in the film as being of smoke and mirrors to deflect from her actions and her goal.
Everybody in these films wants to destroy Gotham in particular because it's meant to be a metaphor for society in the wider sense. But none of them have any greater goal. Even Talia just wants to complete her father's actions, she doesn't even seem to share the idea of cleansing the city that her father had.
She merely wants to avenge, and seems to let Bane have his fun along the way, but since he ends up being nothing then I found that really really disappointing.
I agree with you, but aren't the instruments of violence typically secondary to the villains the wield them?
I think it's mistaken to suggest that Bane represents the 99% or the Occupy Movement in any way whatsoever. Selina Kyle is more likely to represent the 99% than Bane. She is a regular(-ish, this is a comic book movie, after all) person, driven to do morally wrong acts because of her place in society. He is a terrorist leader whose goal is simply to destroy society and he uses the wedge of economic disparity to try to drive apart the people of Gotham because he can. Don't forget that in Batman Begins, Ra's al-Ghul himself took credit for creating the economic crisis in Gotham that had allowed the mob to run rampant. (When describing his plan to destroy Gotham using Scarecrow's drug he said that it was not the first time the League of Shadows had attempted to do this, their first effort having been economic.) Batman's efforts in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight had worked to destroy the mob's hold over Gotham City, but he had failed to do anything about the economic problems which had left a handful of people like Bruce Wayne and John Daggett holding the vast majority of the city's wealth. Bane has come to finish the job, to fulfill Ra's al-Ghul's destiny, as he put it.
Also, bear in mind that while Bane talks about giving the city back to the people, he doesn't really talk about that in terms of rich v. poor, which is what the Occupy Movement is all about. He talks about it in terms of oppressors v. oppressed, which is why he frees the inmates at Blackgate and includes someone like Jim Gordon who is clearly not in the 1% among those sentenced by the Scarecrow's court.
Selina Kyle, on the other hand, had no idea what Bane was up to. She wanted a storm to come level the playing field but in the end she saw that that was not in fact what Bane was up to.
To say no way whatsoever I think is a bit of am overstatement. I agree Selina is a representation as well. Both represent different levels of the metaphor in my opinion but Nolan muddies the water in this case, which opens it up for a few different interpretations.
I should also point out (sorry, more rambling) that I like how Daggett is an implicit criticism of Batman. The mayor boasts that organised crime no longer exists in Gotham, and what we see supports that. However, white collar crime and social injustice are still rampant - Bruce is completely oblivious to those forms of crime, and actually fails to do his bit to fight it. John Blake justifiably calls him on ceasing financial support of the orphanage. It's a result of Wayne's financial difficulties, but he should never have been oblivious and indifferent to his responsibilities like that.
I think that's the point. The US still hasn't been able to shake off the current economic dip, so we haven't seen the resolution, both in real life and in the movie. (I'm talking about Gotham, not the batman story. I loved the end.)
Well, to be fair, the script was written before the Occupy movement had really found its feet, so I think Nolan deserves quite a few points for prescience.
And while Bane's actual beliefs don't have anything to do with social equality, he does still use the tools we associate with both the radical left and the radical right. He plans to blow up Gotham anyway, but just cause as much discord as possible beforehand.
And while the Occupy movement is, at the risk of turning this debate political, about the "have" and the "have nots", it also has a lot of issues with the authorities that police and enable the system that protects the "haves." That includes legislative authority and law enforcement.
Brad, with regards to consequences, I think that would have been for another film we'll never get. After all, The Dark Knight Rises is built primarily off consequences of other actions. Bane uses the lie at the climax of The Dark Knight to destroy the public's faith in the authorities. Talia is motivated to destroy Gotham because Batman killed Ra's. (She explicitly describes it as "murder", and he doesn't disagree.)
I know that leaves the movie without exploring the consequences of this film - and I'm more interested in how people go back to be neighbours after those trials and murders, rather than boring stuff like building repairs - but I think that the message is clear enough. Society can pull itself back from the brink. Just like Bruce does. Despair can't exist without hope, Bane is correct, but hope is still a powerful and good thing. Gotham - with Batman as glue - pulled itself together. That was the improtant part, as interesting as the mechanics might be.
I think Darren just made commenter of the week (not that that exists, but if it did, Darren would win it). Seriously dude, you fuckin lit it on fire. You just made TDKR sound 10 times more interesting in 5 minutes than Nolan could in almost 3 hours.
Your comments have me thinking about it a lot more than i had when i had just saw it
Couldn't agree more. And this was an immediately communicated metaphor (knowing what was coming based on the trailers etc); a self-destructive society unable to support it's own weight. It was a message of what was to come.
I did not, however, put together the metaphor of the exiles walking on ice. Nicely done. In hindsight, not sure how I missed that!
I completely agree. I think you hit it on the head.
That's a really good assessment of what the ice might symbolize. It's something that I didn't even think about.
Brad I'm so glad you did this because these openings are one of my favorite things about the films. Now I'm not sure if you notice this or not but in each of these openings the Bat symbol is formed. First you mentioned it in Begins which I look at it as Batman is forming and the golden sky shows hope. But I also view it as Bruce is using his fear (Bats) to become a symbol and fear is the Theme of Begins. Now for The Dark Knight we see blue flames but we see the bat symbol emerge from the blue flames. The Dark Knight theme is Chaos and I view it as Batman emerging from the chaos and overcoming it because the Bat symbol stays intact unlike in Begins when it's formed but then goes away. Now for Rises in the cracks you see the bat symbol emerge through the cracks so I feel what you both said about Gotham crumbling on thin ice takes into account as well as Bruce not minding his surroundings but I feel that Batman again emerges and overcomes it all. The theme for this one is Pain and I feel this also shows him emerging through pain the ice cracking shows his body is breaking and his spirit but yet he still Rises through it. That's the meaning behind them I believe. But of course this is just how I see it I agree that it's left open for many interpretations.
My first intuition upon seeing the cracking ice was that the Batman was coming out of hibernation. The events in TDK have left Wayne and his alter ego static for 8 years, bearing the guilt of Dent's death, crippled in spirit and body.
I like that you're already starting to open up discussions on the film, and I hope you have a more in depth one similar to what you did with "Prometheus." Though I found the film to be quite flawed with some pretty gaping plot holes that bothered me to the point I found them hard to overlook, I think it's a film full of solid ideas and themes -- that just weren't as properly explored as Nolan probably could have done.
I am working on one for tomorrow, not as massive as Prometheus, but a discussion piece nonetheless.
I wonder too if each of these symbols could signify the characters of each film. As Brad said, the bats in Batman Begins are Bruce Wayne's fear and the symbol he would soon become. The fire in The Dark Knight figuratively representing The Joker's chaotic nature and, more literally (again as Brad pointed out) his desire to watch the world burn. And the ice in The Dark Knight Rises paralelling Bane's cold, calculating nature.
Sorry that should read paralleling.
SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY
My first reaction was that this was foreshadowing the "Breaking of the Bat" by Bane. I think it also sets the tone for the movie. In Batman Begins we have the orange sky and the terrifying flock of bats, likewise the main topic of that film is fighting fear and the predominate colors are oranges and reds with a grungy feel as most of the film takes place in the narrows. With the blue fire in Dark Knight I see it as a wild uncontrolled nature of the Joker, as well as Alfred's line about "burning the forest down". Also just from a feel standpoint the majority of that movie has a blue tint. Now with TDKR we have a very cold villain, who (as the exact opposite of the Joker) has a detailed master plan. Obviously it also ties in with the winter theme of the movie, very bleak.
Just my thoughts and guesses.
Just a little addendum to what Darren is saying: the TDKR Bat motif is unique, in that Gordon's speech at Dent's funeral is heard over it - the words "I knew Harvey Dent". The thin ice of the lie at the end of TDK is already beginning to crack, and we're plunging into it.
I think he uses the bats at the beginning of the movies because they're batman movies.
I think the first two intros are pretty straightforward; the bats simply signify what is to come and make for a cool intro, while the blue fire represents the chaos brought by the Joker. I think that the ice is the collapse of the lies that have held Gotham together over the eight years separating the two films. Gotham has once again "limped on ever since," as Ra's al Ghul puts it, but things are about to fall apart.
Not everything needs to be broken down to the nines. Even, I've done some art where I just thought it was cool imagery & when friends were like Oh, were you aiming for this or that.. it's like Hmmmm Mayyyyyybe. No, I wasn't- just was a fun thing. It also wasn't that deep a film - the audience was mixed when they came out.. some thought "SPOILER MAYBE FOR SOME" the Bane ending was a cop out and made everything before it that he did less convincing or digestable so to speak.." Some of the best dialog came from Joseph Gorden Levitt for sure. DARK KNIGHT RISES - ONLY OKAY.. NOT A MASTERPIECE, NOW THAT IT"S HERE & VIEWED not THE MOVIE OF THE YEAR... the trailers are better than the movie. MY OPINION, go bananas if you want but I am also a huge Batman fan doesn't mean I'm not going to call it as It is.
interesting...
I think if i had to give an opinion without making it War & Peace, it was just a symbol not unlike when the Queen takes over in Snow White and the gloom hits the fan over the kingdom.. SAME here- Batman after 8 years is no longer and the Ice shows that gloom & yearing.- period. Nothing more nothing less. It really wasn't a brilliant film to be broken down too much - lots (I mean lots didn't work) and some stuff did. It was as fun as it could have been and it was a fine end to a good trilogy. The Ending with not the Bane part (noooo-) but the other part (you know who I mean, waterfall,,) don't want to give too much away but that was good.
i feel like i need to see this film again, in order to analyze it properly. i too love the opening shots (no titles). i missed the bat symbol in the rises opening, and thought it was just a shot of cracking ice (and i was looking for it!).
the crimson glow of the begins opening, matches the cinematography choices of that film...as does the blue tones from the fire opening in TDK. i also noticed that TDKR was shot with more cold and sterile lighting choices, tying into the cold, cracking layer of ice.
again, i feel like i need to view it at least once more...the first time i see a film, i have a difficult time really analyzing the themes. it's super annoying that i'm not smarter!!!
I think this may have something to do with Robert Frosts poem, Fire and Ice? It is a description of all the levels of hell, based on Dantes inferno. It describes the end of the world. It could relate to how Gotham is potentially coming to an end; both fire and ice are symbols of destruction, fire is irreversable damage and therefore the final act of destruction.
Or perhaps Nolan just thought the ice-cracking, bat-symbol, opening effect just looked really cool.
Thems the facts
Given the motif of ice cracking in the film and add that to the fact that the guy is an obviously thoughtful filmmaker (see themes found in TDK, TDKR, The Prestige, Inception etc.) that comes across as a pretty shallow argument.
Bats=the coming of the Bat
Fire=things sure are heating up for the Bat
Ice=the Bat is no longer in cryosleep
I think about it a little different. Here is how I see it. I think the bats in Batman Begins is a symbol of the darkness that he has to overcome and the fact that it is also what he has to defeat in Ras al Ghul. In the dark knight it is fire because it is a symbol of the fire that is inside the joker and the fire that is in batman to get revenge and to protect his city. The ice in the dark knight rises is a symbol for bane and how he is cold calculated and batman's cold nature that he has to overcome since he is no longer out in the open eye of the public.All of the scenes are there for us to tell you what batman has to overcome and what kind of threat he is facing. I think all of these films are brilliant and I don't know which I like the best but I look at trilogy's as just one massive movie/story because you can't have batman begins without the dark knight and so on and so forth. This is the way I see the beginning of each of the movies. I did not read any other commenters just yours Brad
Bats = fear
Fire = chaos
Ice = pain
The openings represent the theme of each film.
The theme to TDKR is Evil not pain
Bats = Fear
Fire = Chaos
Ice = Evil
The teaser trailers gave segments of the theme.
BB: "They told me there was nothing out there.. nothing to fear" "something terrifying"
TDK: "Some men just want to watch the world burn"
TDKR: "Now this evil rises"
....not really a fan of the genre,however since symbols seem to follow me where ever I go-I would suggest that any breaking of ice is symbolic of breakthroughs, and thin ice is meant to symbolize how dangerously close the breakthrough may crash in upon the unsuspecting hero.